Day 2 of the Spur of the Moment Overnighter

Knowing I had a few less miles today (turns out, literally 3 less miles), and even though there would be some gravel, I was in no hurry to roll out of my nice warm quilt. That was until the woodpecker alarm kept going off. So much for sleeping in…I was awake for good at 6:30. I was on the road by 8:30.

I was continuing on Satsop-Cloquallum Rd. It’s been awhile since I’ve been on this road. I remember more trees. 

Not like this. 

More like this. 

It was a quiet Sunday morning. Only a couple of cars went by. I stopped for a pee break at one of the gates into Port Blakely land. I noticed that PB seems to be friendly to cyclists. 

Nothing about “no bikes”.

Someone even “decorated” the gate!

Continuing on, I made a turn onto Arrowhead Dr. The road turned to gravel…a surprise. 

But, I looked at the next turn on my Garmin, and it was back onto Satsop-Cloquallum in .8 of a mile. Then it turned out it was even less than that of gravel…like it was only about a quarter mile. Basically, it was an alternate (maybe shorter) way around Lake Arrowhead. 

Lake Arrowhead. 

Shortly after that, I was on Cloquallum Rd. That’s the main road between Elma and Shelton. So, a bit more traffic. But that was only for a couple miles, because I turned off onto West Bulb Farm Rd. (FYI, I didn’t see any signs of a bulb farm).

Did see these two deer, though. 

W. Bulb Farm Rd becomes gravel about a mile or so in. 

While I hadn’t been on this part, I would soon be in familiar territory as this is where we’ve done a couple of gravel rides recently. I was eager to see how Wanda handled the gravel with a load. Also, how I would manage a fairly steep climb I knew was coming. I dropped the tire pressure a bit to smooth out the bumps. The road surface was pretty good, and Wanda did great (I will still put some wider tires on for the Ochoco Overlander Route in May/June). I managed the climb, but I was ever so grateful for the 52 tooth cog in the back. The rest of the gravel was uneventful. 

Unfortunately, it was just 5 miles of gravel. Now I was back on pavement on Hwy 108. This hwy has been referred to as the Suicide Hwy (not much shoulder, and quite a bit of fast moving traffic), but I was mostly going down, so it was not too bad. Besides, it’s only 5 miles before turning onto Hurley Waldrip, which is a very quiet road. 

I stopped for some lunch at the taco truck at Tipsy Whale at Steamboat Island. 

Chicken quesadilla!

After lunch, I went over to the coffee shop to use the restroom (Tipsy Whale wasn’t open). While there, I met Michelle and Dan. They were doing a ride out Gravelly Beach Rd. They are interested in doing some touring, and thought Wanda looked great. They were already talking about doing an overnight to Rainbow Falls. We said our goodbyes, and I rode the final miles home. 

It was fun doing this spur of the moment bike tour. There were a couple of things I didn’t bring, my thin pad that goes under my sleeping pad and my Z-seat pad. I wish I’d brought them. Lesson learned. I calculated food well, and over estimated water. It was interesting touring on a drop bar bike again. I did 94 miles over the course of the two days. That’s the longest back-to-back rides I’ve done on Wanda. My average speeds for the two days were 10.5 and 10.6mph. I think yesterday would have been faster if there hadn’t been the headwind. Wanda is definitely faster than Billy, but we’ll see what happens when I put the wider tires on. 

Spur of the Moment Overnighter

Today is Saturday, April 26th at 4:00pm. It hasn’t even been 24 hours since I decided to load up everything onto Wanda, and take myself camping. I didn’t have any plans for the weekend, and many of the usual suspects were gone or busy. Most of all, the weather forecast was continuing to be great. So, yesterday evening, as I was riding over to Steph’s for a goodbye dinner (she’s taking herself on a 5 week road trip), I thought to myself, maybe I’ll get outta Dodge this weekend too! Most of my gear was not packed away because I had loaded up Wanda to show the high school kids that I ride with, how to go camping on your bike. I did have to put the rack back on Wanda, as well as the handlebar harness, and the other feed bag, but the frame bag, top tube bag, and one feed bag were still on the bike. I had a dehydrated meal, and partial fuel canisters. I made up one of my breakfasts, and threw in some bars for snacks. 

Notice what is NOT on the bike? Yep, did not need the fork bags. All the food is in one of the rear panniers. Don’t really need a whole lot for just one night. 

Of course, I had to decide where to go. It had to be someplace I could start from home. I wanted something that wouldn’t just be an out and back, but where the days would still be similar in distance. I settled on Schafer State Park. Where is that, you ask? Yes, it’s not a well known park (unless you did the Olympic View Road Race, which goes right by it…even then, you might not have noticed it). It’s on the Satsop River up away from Hwy 8 between Elma and Brady. 

I’ve actually stayed here twice before. The first time was a shakedown overnight before I did the ACA Sierra Cascades bike route back in 2011. I was riding my Cannondale t2 (Stella). What I remember about that trip was that I had two flat tires (but had zero flats on the Sierra Cascades tour)! The second time was with Annette as a shakedown for our Selkirk loop trip (she rode Stella, and I rode Mama Cass because Tilmann wasn’t done yet). 

Anyway, I left home just before 9:00am. It was cloudy and about 50 degrees. I knew it wasn’t going to rain, but it was going to be a bit windy, and not in my favor. Oh well…it is April after all. The first quarter of the ride was just getting out of town. As I was waiting for the light at Mud Bay and Kaiser, I saw Brian Koder in his pickup (likely going to Joy Ride based on the time). He waved and continued on. 

I took Old 410 up to Hwy 8. I made a brief pit stop at the Kennedy Pond turn off (where we do dog gravel). 

Hwy 8. Highway riding is not the quietest, but there is a wide shoulder. Just 7 more miles before I would be getting off. 

Been here many times before. 

Got of the Hwy at the McCleary exit. 

Hmmm…did not bring my bear spray. 

I was thinking I would stop for a slightly early lunch at that sandwich shop that used to be a Subway. Well, now that’s not there anymore either. There is another “cafe” on the other end of the building. 

At the moment, calling it a cafe is a bit of a stretch. Currently, it’s more of a donut shop. In all fairness to Chrissy, it’s only been open for three days. She has big plans. In the meantime, the donuts were fresh, and she was very nice. 

Sugared up, I continued along McCleary-Elma Rd. Sometimes, I think the Hwy is actually better. There’s not much shoulder on the old hwy. The speed limit is lower, but there is still quite a bit of traffic. At least the scenery changes a bit more. I got this view of the Satsop Towers (which I could have also gotten from the Hwy).

Like bookends for the trees. 

Not long after the “town” of Satsop, I turned onto East Satsop Rd. This was the aforementioned race course, but in the opposite direction. That means it was a heart-thumping uphill instead of a screaming downhill. Oh well, it wasn’t a race today. I looked at the upcoming climbs after that one. That was the last one for today. I had about 6.something more miles to the park. Next climb was in 10 miles. I made one more pee stop before getting to the park (I always hate when I have to immediately seek out the restroom when I get to the campground).

Four miles later, I made it to the park road. 

East Satsop is a nice rural road. 

Made it! 47.4 miles.

My first thought was that I did not recognize the park at all. But, I remembered that the last time I was here, the camp host had said they were going to remodel the whole park. It must have been awhile before they started work, because it is all very new. The fire ring in my campsite doesn’t even look like there has been a fire in it!

First I headed to the Hiker/Biker site. Unfortunately, that loop of the park is still closed for winter. So I found a walk-in site in the other loop. I wasn’t sure if I had to pay $20 for the site because it’s not the H/B, or if I still paid $12. When I came in, there was no ranger in the building. After I set up camp, I walked back to the entrance building. I saw a park vehicle. The building was still closed, but the ranger was inside, and came to the door. I told him I was on a bike, but the H/B site was in the closed part. I asked if I needed to pay $20 or $12. He said $12 would be fine. But I only had a $20 and 5 $1 bills. He had closed out the till, so he said, just put $5 in the envelope. How nice was that? We chatted for a bit. He has done the STP several times. Nice guy! I told him I noticed the showers no longer take tokens. Washington State Parks has finally joined Oregon State Parks in having free hot showers!!! The shower building, being new, is very nice, including having heated floors! 

I returned to my campsite. Oh, and the clouds completely went away. It’s still fairly windy, but warm. 

Paved path to the walk-in sites. 

My campsite. The park isn’t full, but there are quite a few people here. I walked over to the closed loop to check out the H/B site (there’s just the one).

It’s okay…

The East Fork of the Satsop

Where the park gets its name. 

I think the loop that is closed is original park, as is the day use area. It’s much more rustic. I’m guessing there would be more mosquitoes over there. It’s a little early for them now. 

Now for some dinner…

Heading Home…

Our flight wasn’t until 3:30, so we had plenty of time to pack up the bikes and gear. This time, I moved Billy and the bag out to the hallway near a window for more space and better light. It was a smooth pack up. Everyone else also seemed to have no problems packing their bikes. Once we were all packed, we moved our stuff down to where the hotel had stored our cases while we were gone. Then we went for a final meal in Tucson at Turmerico. 

We returned to the hotel, dragged out our cases and bags, and loaded it all into the shuttle. It was quite the game of Tetris getting four bikes boxes/cases and 4 duffle/backpack bags, but we managed.

Good thing the van was a tall one! Billy is sitting on top of Jana’s bike box!

Now I am sitting on the plane, once again, in the very last seat. Back in Seattle in about 3 hours. 

Goodbye Arizona!

Jana, Catherine, Makaela, and I all agreed this was a good trip. It was challenging, but not too challenging. Our concerns about heat didn’t really materialize. We managed food and water pretty well. Mostly, it didn’t feel like we were rushed each day. I think the itinerary worked out, and we only changed a couple of things. We communicated pretty good (which is often a hard thing to do). I did discover that no matter how much singletrack I do, I do not become a mountain biker. But that’s okay, I still got through it. We ended up riding a bit over 300 miles total over 9 days. The Garmin initiated 41 climbs, but we counted 6 where, as Jana said, we saw something different from the top. 

All in all, a great trip! I’d be happy to bikepack with these awesome women again!

Day 9-The Good Thing About the Last Day Being the Hardest…

…You are ready to be done with your trip. But, I’m getting ahead of myself. 

Fortunately, this morning was one of those days we got going at 8:00. We needed every bit of the day. First we had to continue on the rough double track. I was walking a fair amount, of course. Makaela and Jana were ahead of me. My Garmin started beeping. I stopped, and saw that the route went back to singletrack…yay (not).

One lone saguaro sentinel. 

Well…I’ll be walking. 

Nice view though. 

It took me over two hours to go less than 4 miles! I was able to ride bits, but after awhile it was just faster to keep walking, instead of continuously getting on and off the bike. At least I didn’t get attacked by any cactus!!!

While Makaela made the turn onto the singletrack, and I did, both Jana and Catherine missed the turn. Jana ended up doing an extra 5 miles. Both Jana and Catherine passed me. 

Even after finishing the singletrack, there was still another few miles of gravel before the glorious downhill on the pavement from Madera Canyon. 

Ah, finally…blessed pavement!

I got to where we camped the first night, and would start a new route back to Tucson, but no one was there. I texted, and they said they were close. They had pulled off at the entrance station for the canyon. I didn’t see them when I went by. 

Once we were all back together, we started the route back to the hotel. We had met a guy at our first night’s camping spot who said we could ride a different way back to Tucson that had us going through the University of Arizona research area. I created a route on RWGPS. It appealed to us because it was gravel. And it was, but it also ended up being a whole bunch of deep deep sand. The original route I had created to get us back to the hotel was just the reverse of the route we took to get out of Tucson. 

Powerline road. 

Deep sand…unrideable. 

So, back to walking and pushing. I was having trouble getting the route onto my Garmin, but Catherine, Jana, and Makaela had it (and it was on my phone). We were following the route, but it wasn’t working. It brought us to a barbed wire fence with no way to continue. After trying a couple of ideas, we ended up going back part way. Finally, we found a road that would take us to the paved road. Once we were on pavement, we were able to do the original route I had created. 

Finally, a road (photo by Makaela)!

We retraced our route from Sahaurita, through the park (where there was a wedding shower, and prom photos happening. Lots of fancy dresses and tuxedos), along the Nogales Hwy, through “Dog Alley”, and around the airport. 

We made it by about 6:00. We had been riding for almost 7 1/2 hours of ride time. That was a very long day!

Once checked into our rooms (dirty bikes and all), first order of business was a shower. It was the best shower ever!!!

We Ubered to dinner at a place called Boca, and had a celebratory dinner of lots of food (because we were starving).

It was a long hard day, but it’s okay because now we are ready to go home, instead of wishing for more time. I’ll doa final post sometime tomorrow. 

Day 8-And Now For An Elephant Head…Trail

We came to Arizona to get away from the rain! However, I will admit that it doesn’t last long. It’s like at home we say if you don’t like the weather, wait 5 minutes…here it is more like 2 minutes. It rained off and on a bit into the night. When I got up in the middle of the night, there were some stars. It wasn’t as clear as some nights have been, though. 

We planned to skip the next black section when we saw there was an easy short cut. Jana likes the black sections, but she did it last night, so we were good to do the short cut. 

See the shortcut?


The shortcut went through an abandoned ranch. 


We popped back to the route after the black part a few more miles of gravel road to W. Arivaca Rd, which brought us into Arivaca Junction. 

A little shrine to Guadalupe. 

We needed a bit of resupply (Dollar General), then went to the Longhorn for lunch. 

Some serious horns at the Longhorn. 

Bike parking at the Longhorn. 

After stuffing ourselves, we headed back out in sprinkling rain. Again, it stopped after a few minutes. I got started ahead of the others as we had an 8.45 mile climb of which some would be singletrack (turns out only .64 was singletrack, but more on that in a moment).

We had planned 16 more miles after lunch. Fortunately, there were a number of paved miles (even though it was climbing), then some decent gravel, and back to some pavement, before going to gravel again. 

That’s Elephant Head Mountain to the left. We were headed there. 

Once we hit the final gravel, the climb got a whole lot steeper. I had to walk some because I just ran out of steam. I did think to myself that this wasn’t even the singletrack yet!

The first section of singletrack was the Quantrell Mine Trail. I was walking after just a very short bit (I am not a mountain biker!). Occasionally, I had brief moments where I could ride. 

This was one of those moments. 

There were some REALLY difficult spots. Once I got to the top, then I had the idea to lower my seat post as a sort of a dropper post. I was then able to ride some of the parts of the descent. But…mostly…I walked. At least I could walk a little faster going down then pushing Billy up. 

We finally came out to more of a double track, but I still had to walk large portions. It was just too scary with all the rocks. And then there was deep pockets of sand. 

We didn’t get quite as far as we had hoped, but found a decent enough campsite, and called it home. 

Okay, I’m kind of camped in the road intersection…but it’s mostly flat. 

Tonight is our last night camping. Tomorrow we will make it back to Tucson, and the end of our adventure. Today was one of the tougher days as far as hike-a-bike goes, but we knew this was not going to be an easy section. We have a few more miles of this tomorrow, but then it should be smooth sailing downhill back to our hotel. 

Day 7-A Good Amount of Miles in a Short Time

It was a chilly one last night! So cold, that our water in our various containers was frozen! I stayed warm last night, but Makaela was cold, and didn’t sleep well because of that. She had all of her clothes on, but she needs a warmer bag. 

We were a little slower getting going because it was so cold, but we still were moving by 8:30. We had one short climb, then the next climb on the climb profile wasn’t for 36 miles! It was a little rollercoaster-like, but trending down. 

And good gravel too!

Catherine rode with me most of the distance to the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge. The dry and dusty air has been wreaking havoc with my lungs, making me cough a lot. Once I was warmed up, my lungs settled down. It was also helpful that we didn’t have as much wind. 

The Wildlife Refuge was just 6 miles into today’s ride. We were there in under an hour. Yesterday, there was some concern that we might not be able to get water there, but it was no problem (the Visitor Center was closed). There were even restrooms with hot running water! Some did some laundry, I did a sink bath. 

Billy holding up the sign. 

The Visitor Center. 

I’ll not be venturing off the path!

There were numerous varieties of cactuses. 

I really like the purple!

We spent about an hour there. We finally tore ourselves away. After all, we still had around 32 miles to do. 

The next section was very fast. It was still trending down, and with the exception of a few sandy spots, it was an excellent road. 

We’ve been seeing this mountain for a few days now. 

Pano shot. 

We popped out to a brief section of pavement, then quickly found ourselves back on gravel. We took this opportunity to eat some lunch. Then we took a “family” photo with a Yucca plant. We used my little credit card tripod. 

The Fam. 

Catherine has been struggling to keep sunscreen on. She has still been getting burned. I think she has it figured out now!

We’ve had a good laugh over this photo!

The road became more sandy and rocky after lunch. It was slower going, and much harder on the butts and hands. 

This part was okay…it didn’t last. 

Makaela thought this looked like a saguaro cholla!

We were planning to get to Route Mile 125 today, but that would be at 4000 feet, and we didn’t want another cold cold night. We came to a flat spot, and decided to call it a day. 

It was only 3:00, our earliest stopping time yet. Just as we were setting up our tents, it started to rain. It rained for all of maybe 3 minutes, then the sine came back out. It’s been doing that off and on. Of course it’s so dry that the ground doesn’t even get wet!

Jana got her tent set up, then took the bags off her bike, and decided to go for a Mountain Bike ride! She was going to check out the next black section of the route. We have realized we can skip it by just cutting across to the other part of the route. 

Jana, off to do some more riding because she didn’t get quite enough. Amazing! 

We ended our day with 32 miles, one of our longer days, mileage wise, but the shortest time wise. It’s good, though, because we have been riding for 7 straight days.