It speaks for itself
12/08/09
Day 53
45 miles
Thank goodness for our cozy KOA recreation room to hang out in and get warm and dry this morning. Surprisingly, our tent fly was actually dry this morning because the wind had blown it so much last night. We ate breakfast and packed up slow this morning, leaving Blythe at 11AM. Well, actually 12PM because the time changes back to mountain time in Arizona. Almost as soon as we crossed into Arizona today we saw saguaro cactus scattered all over. This truly is a beautiful desert, ringed by jagged and dry mountains. We rode much of the day on the interstate, which has its ups and downs. On the upside, the shoulders are about eight feet wide no matter where you are. On the downside, trucks are zooming past you at 70mph and there is often a moderate amount of road debris on the shoulders, mostly broken glass and shredded pieces of tire tread.
The riding was quite nice with long but very gradual uphill sections and long gradual downhill sections. Being in southern Arizona in December has really given us a good idea of the number of people who come down here to winter in the nice weather. The communities made up of trailers and RVs have by far outnumbered any communities with permanent dwellings here. It is clearly snowbird season in Arizona. Many people have asked us how we weathered the storm last night, and proceeded to tell us how much it shook their trailer or blew their things around. It occurred to me that if this storm had happened somewhere where people lives in permanent homes, no one would have noticed the storm or asked us how we handled it, but because everyone here lives in RVs, the storm clearly affected them. In Quartzite locals said they had a tornado just outside of town and winds gusted up to 70mph here. Wow! I'm glad we were at the campground we were at instead of camping out in the desert with no shelter from the winds.
When we got to the town of Brenda, which is a community of RVers, we stopped at a cafe and had pizza. We didn't make it much further than Brenda and decided to pull in to the Three Dreamers RV Park and ask if they allowed tent camping. Thankfully they said they did. The camp host informed us that we were lucky we stopped here because most parks do not offer tent camping. We had planned on riding further, but I'm glad we stopped. The temperature began to drop very rapidly as soon as the sun fell behind the horizon, which prompted our stop here. It only got up to about 55 degrees today in the sun, and it is expected to freeze tonight. In fact it is probably below freezing already right now at 7:00pm I'm glad we have good warm sleeping bags.
Dani
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