April 9, 2013
Day 2: Tuesday, 9 April 2013: With a good saloon in every single town
My old North Face June Bug still holds a place in my heart as the best tent I've ever owned, but it long ago rotted out and passed on to the big campground in the sky. More recently I've been using a coffin-like Big Agnes Lynx Pass 1, but with the Big Agnes I always need to make the tough decision about what goes inside the tent, either me or the gear, because it sure ain't commodious enough for both.
In March I managed to acquire at minimal expense a new Kelty Salida 2 which accommodates self and all the stuff I lug around on the Surly. Other than setting it up in the backyard once, however, I'd never used the Kelty before driving down to J Tree. It went up easily enough at my site at Belle campground, but I remained a little concerned about how it would hold up in the wind, so I nailed it down solidly, guyed it taut, rolled big rocks over the stakes, and weighed it down with panniers to keep it from blowing away.
Good thinking.
I don't really know what a seventy MPH wind sounds like, but if it's anything like a cross between a jet engine and a runaway freight train, then the gusts—as the Ranger warned me—might have hit seventy on Monday night, because that kind of roaring kept me awake until dawn.
The Kelty flexed and buckled and flapped as the wind blasted it. On multiple occasions, wondering if the tent might collapse on me, I switched on my headlamp and could see the poles and fabric contorting into worrisome angles. I tried to sleep through it, but the roar was too much to ignore. Not only that, the gusts kept blowing bursts of sand under the fly and up through the mesh so that puffs of dust and grit constantly billowed onto my face and everything else in the tent. My eyes teared from the grit. My nose clogged with powder. Sleeping bag, panniers, and all the other gear collected a coating of fine granules. I felt like I was in the 1930s dust bowl, or maybe that scene in The English Patient where the couple gets buried in a truck in a Saharan sandstorm, only I didn't have Kristin Scott Thomas to keep me company.
By the time the sun came up I felt like I'd not slept at all, and the wind continued to howl. I ate a cold breakfast in the tent before slipping out to see the rocks burnished clean and the desert covered in a fresh smooth layer of sand, almost like white paint or new fallen snow. When I wandered into the drafty outhouse, long white streamers from two dozen rolls of toilet paper fluttered and danced in the breeze like ghostly spirits.
Sleep or no, wind or no, ghostly toilet paper or no, my plans called for riding to Cottonwood Spring today, so I packed up and loaded the Surly, carefully weighing down everything with big rocks as I worked so nothing would sail away. That job could have used some bricks.
As I started out, the New Zealander couple at a nearby campsite stopped me to warn about the forecast for more strong winds. Well, I told them, I could sit here until I ran out of water, or I could ride to Cottonwood for a refill. They offered to keep me supplied with water from their well-stocked camper until the weather settled down. A generous offer for sure, but I'd already studied the situation and realized I'd have a tailwind and—mostly—a downhill all the way to Cottonwood, so I put on a brave face and told the friendly Kiwis the Surly and I could tough it out, as if I had a clue what I was doing. Oh, right. I missed all those clues yesterday. Anyway, they told me the offer stood if I decided to turn around and come back.
On the way out I noticed the Dutchman sitting in his buffeted rental car and reading with a glum expression on his face. Maybe his tent blew down again.
As soon as I turned left from Belle campground onto the paved road, the wind grabbed me and propelled me like a revved up motor. I think it was a slight uphill from Belle to the nearby White Tank campground, but the distance unrolled quickly, kind of like the wind-blown rolls of toilet paper in the outhouse. From around White Tank the road began to descend and I would have been hard pressed to hang onto my hat, had I been wearing one atop my helmet. It was all I could do to hold the Surly down to a 30-35 MPH blitzkrieg through the ecological transition zone from the high Mojave Desert to the low Colorado Desert. As I descended, the eroded rock formations disappeared, the joshua trees thinned out and vanished, and the patches of greenery turned to sand. In front of me I could see a landscape that more closely resembled Death Valley rather than yesterday's cartoonish fantasy.
Roughly half way down, however, the joy ride came to an abrupt halt when I reached the flagger at the northern end of the road construction zone. I already knew about the road work from the National Park website and Randy Houk's crazyguy journal. Randy wrote about the one-way convoys ferried through a ten-mile stretch of construction by pilot trucks driven by David and his brother. You can find all of Randy's travels, including his path through Joshua Tree, in his journal, From Bama to where ever the road takes me. Randy's driver was David. My driver was David's brother. I'd meet David later.
Much as it saddened me to miss the remainder of the fast downhill run, I could understand why the crew remained adamant that I couldn't pedal any farther. The road was ripped up and busy with graders, dozers, a water wagon, pick-ups, random workers with shovels, and a steady stream of dump trucks and dual belly-dump semis. I did that kind of stuff the summer after I graduated from high school. Not a good place to be trying to pedal a two-wheeler. Anyway, David's brother and I carried on a laconic conversation during the ten-mile "cheat" and he seemed amused that someone—Randy—would post a photo of David on a bicycling website. I mentioned the Ranger told me the wind might have hit seventy last night. He responded without enthusiasm, "Oh, I only heard sixty." By the time he dropped me and the Surly at the southern end of the work zone, we were in the Pinto Basin and the temp seemed to be up a few degrees. The surroundings were definitely far more dry and barren. Unlike yesterday's route, this part of the park offered very little in the way of manmade improvements, other than the torn up road.
Of course, the wind remained a constant.
It helped push me across the flat basin and then up the hill to Cottonwood Spring. Very little traffic appeared on the road, and when cars came up behind me, they were always in a tightly bunched formation from being recently led through the construction by a pilot truck. No shoulder, so I would get out of the way and let them pass, then have the road all to myself again. Just before I finished the relatively short southbound climb to Cottonwood, a pair of northbound female roadies, carrying only hydration packs, waved but kept going. Hmm. I think that's the way women have always responded to me.
With the downhill blitz and ten-mile lift in the pilot truck expediting my arrival, I hit the Cottonwood Spring campground around 1:00. Water-wise, I remained in good shape, having consumed most but not all of my initial load. As usual, I erred on the side of caution and carried too much, significantly increasing the weight the Surly was hauling around. No need to transport so much to Cottonwood because, unlike almost every other spot in the park, Cottonwood provides water. Carrying coals to Newcastle? It was still a fairly cool afternoon, but I chugged an extra bottle and splashed fresh liquid on my face and neck as a reward for my cautious H2O management.
After setting up camp, I lugged a couple of water bottles with me and wandered around the campground, to the spring itself, along the interpretive trail, and through the desert. I remember the hike to Lost Palms Oasis as the highlight of my 1986 visit to Joshua Tree, but after looking at the trailhead I decided against making such a late start for a round trip of three or four hours on foot.
Later, while I was reading at my picnic table, two 60-something motorcyclists from San Diego came over to check out the Surly. We spent much of the evening talking about travels on two wheels, the magical properties of ibuprofen, and—at our age—the importance of equipping your tent with a p-bottle. Hey, I'm well-equipped in that regard! At sunset the wind finally died away and I spent a quiet, restful night in my sleeping bag, except when a car arrived at the adjacent site around midnight, shining its headlights into the Kelty while a male voice and a female voice argued about how to set up their tent.
Despite that hubbub, I was pleased to know the wind had died down, which would help make Wednesday another easy riding day, or so I conjectured.
Silly me.
Today's Conditions
Belle campground → Cottonwood Spring campground
Time: 9:30 - 1:00
Distance: 20 miles (plus 10 miles in pilot vehicle)
Climbing: Approx 1689 ft
Weather: Chilly morning; cool afternoon; windy all day
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Today's ride: 20 miles (32 km)
Total: 54 miles (87 km)
| Rate this entry's writing | Heart | 6 |
| Comment on this entry | Comment | 2 |
Thanks for creating this journal. I'm enjoying it. I'm interested in someday touring in this part of the country - I've never been to Southern California.
FYI, the link to Randy Houk's CGoaB journal on this page doesn't work, because he is apparently no longer on the site.
Thanks,
Jeff
7 years ago
Thanks. I found Joshua Tree an interesting locale to ride, and easy enough to connect to places such as the Salton Sea and the ACA Southern Tier. Looks like some others hereabouts have done similar.
As to Randy Houk, I didn't realize he and his journal had disappeared. Ah, art is ephemeral, especially on the Web. Anyway, I deleted that link.
7 years ago