Sunrise at Bog Hot Springs
A morning friend.
Today was actually the first completely cloud free morning. We got on the road at about 8:00. We continued on Bog Hot Rd. We rode across the Sheldon Wildlife Preserve. We saw these wild burros.
Kinda hard to see.
Jana was ahead of me and continued on at where we were supposed to turn left. As soon as I could see she was going past the turn, I started yelling. Finally, she stopped, and came back. We decided what would be good to have are loud whistles.
We had the first climb of the day shortly after making the turn. Fortunately, it wasn’t that long, or steep. I managed to ride the whole thing.
You can just see the road (Bog Hot)
Not the steepest…
Jana finishing the climb.
Haven’t seen any live snakes, but we know they are out here!
It was flat for a bit, then we dropped down into the next valley.
See the road down below? We didn’t go on that road. No, we came down and turned left onto a sandy road. As I was riding along, I realized we had just made a big fat u-turn! First I thought this was Virgin Valley, but I don’t think it was.
We had a number of miles of riding the flat, sandy road. Across the way, I could see this road snaking up the mountain. I had a sneaking suspicion…
Part 2- I Think We Are Going That Way
We popped out onto Hwy 140. We noticed that while the route went left on 140 for less than a half mile, we could turn right, and get to Virgin Valley via the Hwy (with maybe a little backtracking). We could see the Hwy going up the side of the mountain. We thought it would be a longer climb, so we opted to stay on the route. Jana still didn’t think we were going up the dirt road we could see. I was hoping we weren’t, but skeptical. As we turned off the hwy and got back on dirt, the way we were riding was making it more clear that we would, indeed, be going up that nasty climb. I started to tell myself that hills always look steeper than they actually are when you start climbing…
We were both getting hungry, so we stopped for some lunch, and once again deployed the umbrellas.
By this time, we absolutely knew we were going up the nasty road. Once everything was back on the bikes, and plenty of water was consumed, we started the trek. From the beginning there was only about 20 yards of rideable road. From then it just went up.
We had to go up that.
It wasn’t smooth.
Some was like this that I had just come up. We had eaten our lunch down near the dark green.
Jana says we can do hard things. It turns out we can do REALLY hard things! It was 3/4 of a mile of solid up ranging upwards of 17/18% grade…maybe more in spots, but rarely less. It took a good solid hour to do that 3/4 mile. We still had another mile to go, but it was easy in comparison.
We had a descent that was fortunately not as steep as the climb had been. I just followed Jana’s tracks.
Off in the distance is what is probably Virgin Valley.
Then there was this. If you zoom in, you can see Jana.
We rolled into Virgin Valley Campground and Hot Springs. This place is an oasis! There is an actual deep pool that is not beastly hot. As Jana said, it’s the temperature of the kiddie pool at the YMCA. We had briefly entertained the idea of going on since it was only 2:15, but we wisely decided that was foolish. I mean, they have continuously running showers, picnic tables with shade trees, and even tap water! Oh, and it’s free! Yeah, not going to pass this up!
See the pool? I swam for a very long time! Then I took a shower, and was actually able to get clean!
This is opal mining country (the Peacock Mine is not far). We’ve even found opals and petrified wood at our campsite. I also found some obsidian today too. I must say, I have made some selections….
Yellow headed blackbirds.
And a little chippy!
Yellow headed blackbirds.
And a little chippy!
Jana, beast woman that she is, decided to ride to a rock shop (supposedly 4 miles round trip, ended up being 10).
It was another beautiful, but challenging day with a great reward at the end!
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