The Desert Tour was everything Knox and I could have hoped for, and
more. After our little hotel fiasco-cum-windfall, we spent the first
few days
sightseeing
around San Diego on foot and running last-minute errands to get our
bikes ready for the trip. We walked along the
waterfront,
visited the
arboretum
in Balboa Park, and walked in
Coronado. San
Diego struck me as a blandly pleasant city: the streets were wide and
clean
and everything seemed nice
enough,
but the parts where we were seemed to lack a certain vitality, a
certain je ne sais quoi, during the day.
To be sure, at night the
Gaslamp District came
alive
with partyiers and revelers, all the more so because it was
St. Patrick’s Day.
The biking part of our trip began on a Sunday: we took the street
car
to the neighboring town of El Cajon to avoid the hassles of city
traffic. From there, we immediately began a steep, arduous climb,
after only fifteen miles of which we decided to call it a night at the
town of
Alpine. We
were off to an inauspicious start: we had a heavy rain shower shortly
after we began, and had to buy giant Ziplock bags to protect our tent
and sleeping bags, as we had purposefully not packed wet-weather gear;
this was Southern California, after all! The reality was that, in
spite of our visions of cavorting in Souther California shirtless, the
area was in the middle of a cold spell the likes of which had not been
seen since 1991. In fact, on the second night of our actual biking, as
we were crossing the mountains through Cuyamaca Rancho State Park, we
were surrounded by
snow. The
park and its campgrounds were closed, but the volunteers manning the
welcome center made a few phone calls and obtained authorization to
open up a
cabin
for us, and near the bathrooms at that. Yep, we were the only ones
there, in a little hut with a wood-burning
stove
(which we kept lit throughout the night). It was all very Brokeback,
what with the isolation, the camping, and Knox’s neo-cowboy
hat.
The morning held even more
surprises
for us: a fresh inch or two of
snow
covering our path out of the park, and sleet and sludge on the main
road. We hitched a ride to the town of Julian, locally famous for its
pies, with some San Diego chiropractors in the area for the first
time. It was all downhill from there (literally, certainly not
figuratively!). A hailstorm accompanied us on our departure from
Julian, and my fingers were seared by the cold that rendered my biking
gloves thin wet rags. As we lost elevation, however, the weather
turned gradually warmer and drier, and we were amazed at how quickly
our
surroundings
changed
into
spectacular
mountainous
desert
views. During
one of our
stops,
in fact, a fellow bike tourer with four Ortliebs to my two passed us
with a fleeting greeting.
Our
stop
that day was Agua Caliente state
park,
a natural hot spring in the desert. We soaked in both the indoor and
outdoor pools with fellow vacationers, most of them elderly folks,
until closing time (5pm most weekdays, unfortunately). We pitched our
tent
in the sand among the not-so-shy cotton-tail
rabbits
and got an amazing view of the mottled sky after the sun fell.
After an equally spectacular
sunrise,
we got on our bikes and pedaled on to the Yuma
Desert. We
passed through Plaster
City,
a giant drywall manufacturing plant, and a multitude of plowed
fields
made possible by the
wonders
(hah!)
of
irrigation. Though
we were considering biking up to the Salton
Sea, we decided to spend the
night in El Centro, where
we stuffed ourselves with Mexican food and enjoyed the motel hot tub.
The last and longest cycling day found us on an the worst roads of
all: cracked, abandoned
pavement
running parallel to the highway. Though we were tempted to spend some
time at an alluring hot spring
oasis
by the side of Highway 8, we pedaled on. What few irrigated fields
there were had been
abandoned,
and before long we came to the sand
dunes
that could easily be the set of any Saharan (or Star Wars!) epic–
save perhaps for the helicopters that seemed to hover near us every so
often, probably an immigration patrol trying to convince itself that
latex-clad bikers were probably not undocumented foreign nationals. In
the midst of this isolation, no less, my bike broke down: the
vibration from riding the warped pavement had sheared off one of the
screws holding up one of my front racks, and right as I fixed that, my
front tire went flat (no visible puncture, perhaps it there was
something loose in the bent valve). We persevered, and at 5:14, after
194 miles of biking, we crossed the [not-so-mighty] Colorado
River
into Yuma, Arizona.
Knox’s parents were waiting for us on the Arizona side of the
bridge. After introductions (and an all-too-public change of clothes)
we had dinner and headed back to the Imperial National Wildlife Refuge,
where they are stationed. We were able to stay in our own
guest
trailer,
and were treated to good home cooking and friendly ribbing during our
stay. We went on several
hikes
at the refuge and in the
Kofa
Refuge,
during which we were able to see
barrel,
saguaro,
prickly
pear, and
agave
cacti, as well as
ocotillos,
palo
verdes,
wild honeycombs, lizards, bats (and bat
caves),
and endangered
frogs. The
highlight, though, has to have been the
rattlesnake
that Knox and I stepped over one night and which was only pointed out
to us by Knox’s nephew (who joined us with his mother toward the end
of our stay).
Though I enjoyed meeting Knox’s family and we all got along really
well (even Miss Whitney, the slightly spastic new family dog which one
night
ransacked
the home while we were away), it was all too soon time to part. After
a brief visit to the Yuma
Crossing
museum,
we boarded a
bus
back to San Diego. We got a brief glimpse of
Calexico
and got carded by immigration
authorities. As
we suspected, there were a lot of border crossings and
border patrols during our whole trip, in part because of
geography
and in part because of the
political
events
in Washington.
We stayed just one night at the Hotel Solamar, enjoying a fancy
dinner
and all the
accoutrements
of luxury, before departing on our respective flights– Knox to
Seattle, me to Boston. The time has just flown by, but we consider
ourselves pretty lucky to have the type of life where we can take such
crazy, wild vacations– and we’re already thinking about the next one.
