Today finds me in Wenden, AZ, which is a smallish town with a cafe, a grocery store, and not a whole lot else except for the elementary school in which we are staying. A lot has transpired since my last posting, all of it involving the state of Arizona. However, we will be staying in Blythe, CA tomorrow, thus dealing with our last state line. Then we will be in the land of sun-drenched beaches and such, although we will still have four riding days and desert/mountains to conquer.

The Grand Canyon

Leaving Tuba City (our stop after Kayenta), we embarked on a ride that would nominally be 57 miles to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, where we would camp. However, we found out in the middle of the day that groups are not allowed to camp at that site, and the other campsite onn the canyon rim was full. So our 57-mile day became a 95-mile day: We had to bike along the rim and out of the park to stay at another campground. Still, seeing the Grand Canyon that day was amazing, and in some ways better (it was at the end of the ride instead of the beginning). The canyon itself was breathtaking, and was on an incomprehensible scale — the views of the canyon seemed more like paintings than reality.

After riding the canyon rim, we arrived at the Ten-X campsite, and it immediately started raining. The downpour did not abate until sometime in the early hours of the morning, and everything was wet. For my part, I hose-showered in the midst of the downpour and crawled into my tent at around eight, not to emerge until the next morning. It was a generally miserable experience, but it was also definitely a lot of fun.

Prescott

We spent a day building with Habitat in Prescott, which was fun – Aunt Betty came and built with me for much of the morning. We were building an erosion control wall, and unfortunately I got my finger crushed by an errant rock. A few minutes later (ironically, while drinking Gatorade), I passed out and fell onto a pile of rocks. I’ve never really passed out like that before, and now I have cuts on my face and a story that I will never live down.

A descent, and some real desert

Out of Prescott, we descended some 3,000 feet on some incredible switchbacks. As we went down, one could feel the temperature increasing. The high for our day into Wickenburg was 107, and it will only get hotter. We are in some genuine desert now, with Saguaro cactuses and overwhelming heat. It is quite flat, with mountains far away on every horizon. The heat is going to make the next few days really hard, but we will get through. Almost there!