Billy and my tent (oh, and the hole). Note the cloudy skies.
I packed up inside my tent, and then when it stopped raining, got everything on Billy, and my tent taken down and packed.
Everyone else was doing the same thing. Kat had started a fire. I heard Misty say she was heading out. Before she left, I filled the baby seal (dromedary bag) full at 6 liters. With enough water, we wouldn’t need to go down into town, and then back up to continue on the route. Misty also left some bananas and gummy bears. I ate a banana, and stashed some gummy bears in my Chuckabucket.
We were all ready to roll by about 8:45. Kat took a group photo.
Kerry, Bethany, Sara, me, Ashleigh, Aracely , Ello, and Tanya.
A guy from the film crew of the documentary showed up just before we left. He was going to get some drone footage of us riding. He followed us for awhile. I hope it makes it into the documentary.
We rode along with the weather sprinkling off and on. It didn’t rain too hard. Eventually, I was too warm with my puffy jacket on under my Shake Dry, so I took that off and stowed it.
There were moments of sand, moments of chunky rocks, and everything in between. We went through a few fence gates, and over cattle grates.
A rest break after one of the gates.
There is another crater, but it was quite a hike off route. Instead we stopped and ate lunch.
The edge of the crater way off in the distance.
Lunch spot
We licked the bones clean!
The time came for us to part ways with the SheWolves (except for Sara). They had to get back to their cars at Tanya’s place. Sara was riding home, so she would continue with us for awhile longer.
Goodbye new friends! We’ll see you again sometime!
We parted at a fence where you could take a short cut and go over the train tracks. Fortunately, a train had just gone by, so we were good for a moment. This short cut saved us 12 miles (the route goes to the next crossing, then comes back to where we went across the tracks).
The train tracks we had to go over. It wasn’t easy, but we did it. Then we had to go through another fence to pop out on the route road.
Then we were on a very wide, often washboarded, gravel road for a long time. Then we had to say goodbye to Sara. We turned left toward Picacho Peak, and she went straight back to town. Then we were two.
Sara had told us an option where, since we didn’t have to resupply, we could go a shorter way. I thought it was just the part where we would go into town. We would skip that, and just continue. But, she had also told us of another way that wasn’t on my Garmin. Well, we kind of combined the two (not good). We came through a tunnel under I-70. We thought we were to go left (right would take us to town). So we went left. We climbed up a gradual hill on pavement. Garmin kept telling us to make a u-turn, when it should have recognized that we were still on the route. Finally I stopped to look at the route on my phone. Nope, we were going the wrong way. Then I looked closely, and could see that we just needed to go back about a mile, and we could pick up a road called Box Canyon Dr. This sounded familiar. Box Canyon Drive would take us directly to where we wanted to camp!
We made the turn. It was back to sand, rocks, and washboard. Soon we were riding alongside the airport fence. Wait, Sara had said we would ride alongside the airport fence! Then I figured out we were on the road she had told us about. Everything was tracking with what she had said. Woo Hoo! This was a much shorter way to go.
We came to a descent that Sara said was rocky. Yep.
Going down! We walked it because not only were there big rocks, but it was sandy too. The rock formations were pretty cool. Once we got through the canyon, we came back to the route.
There’s Picacho Peak hiding in the clouds.
Now we just had to find a camp spot. Did that in short order, and got camp set up. The rain has stopped, and it looks like the sky had cleared up some. My rain fly is mostly dry.
Even though we rode through rain off and on the entire day, it was a good day. Bethany would have liked to go into town and stay at a hotel, but I told her you have to take the good with the bad. Not all days can be sunshine and roses!
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