Wrapping it up in Yuma -- for this season . . . .

Well, its time to get things packed up and hit the road again.  We need to be in Des Moines by May 11 for our job, and we want to do some stops and riding along the way.

Our friends Larry and Jan are storing their 5th wheel in our storage unit in Yuma for the summer rather than take it up north and then just bring it back down in the fall.  We've got the back end and one side of our 50 X 14 storage "garage" loaded up with our stuff, but we managed to arrange it so their 39 foot fifth wheel just fit.  Mike took over the final stages of the maneuvering to get the rig in -- but all worked out as planned.


We wanted to bring all five of our bikes with us for the summer, so we spent some time figuring out how to engineer all of them in the back of the Odyssey.  The tandem and the two mountain bikes are pretty inaccessible for riding until we get to Iowa, but we arranged things so that the road bikes are pretty easy to get out -- we plan on riding in Santa Fe and during our week in Denver.  We hope to do some rides with our cycling friends, Mark and Sandy and will meet up with them when we get there.






We left Yuma on Monday morning the 21st, heading north to Kingman, Arizona,  before going east on I-40 to Flagstaff for Mandy's doctor visit.  This route is only 40 miles further than going through the Phoenix area, and up I-17, and it misses all the metro area traffic, as well as the climb in and out of the Verde Valley / Cottonwood area north of Phoenix.  We stopped for lunch just north of Quartzsite, at the location where we've boondocked several times during the Quartzsite RV show -- no one was there (surprise!) and we were able to get a couple of good pictures of the rig.


We're currently at Meteor Crater, just east of Flagstaff, where we worked last summer -- and where the wind is blowing as usual -- 20-25 sustained, with 40 mpg gusts.  The slide topper awnings on the motorhome are getting a real workout!  The wind should die down some by mid-day tomorrow, but we're glad that we're not on the road today -- even though its a quartering wind, it was blowing us around a bit on the short trip here from Flagstaff.  We'll visit with our friends here for a day or two and then head for Santa Fe to see my brother and get a bit of biking in, the altitude there should be challenging.

April 7 -- Springtime in Yuma

Over the last couple of weeks, we've been able to enjoy all that the desert southwest has to provide -- before it gets too hot later in the year to be out after 10 am.  We've now moved our bicycle club rides up to an official starting time of 9 am, although many of us start our rides at least an hour or more earlier.  The daytime temperatures are getting consistently into the low 90s, with the evenings nicely cooling off to the mid-60s and even down into the 50s.
Lots of winter visitors here have already left for their homes up north, or for their further journeys on the road, but we normally stay until at least mid-April, which we think is the nicest time of the year here.  Finally the traffic has died down a bit, and the supermarket and Wal-Mart are not nearly as crowded as a month or so ago.
We've taken advantage of this pleasant situation to accomplish several activities -- an abandoned mine exploration, some mountain biking along the Colorado River, and finishing up our cycling season with a "century"-- riding 100 miles in one day.

Hull Mine
The Hull Mine is an abandoned mine site about 35 miles north of Yuma, on the way to Castle Dome peak, which is the dominant figure on the desert skyline north and east of Yuma in the Kofa Wildlife Refuge.  This mine has been worked a number of times since the late 1800s, with the most recent being in the 70's.  Its unique in that the main shaft, instead of heading straight down into the rock, goes at an reasonable angle and is quiet large.   A number of our group went several hundred yards into the mineshaft, until the air became a bit stale and scarce, and the number of bats and associated guano turned them back.  There are many ancillary shafts for escape, air circulation, and just other attempts at finding ore veins, so you have to watch your step as you wander around the mine site.  As you can see from the pictures, we all had a great time exploring this area of Arizona's past.



Mountain Biking
Both Mandy and I got mountain bikes last summer when we were at Meteor Crater, but have not had a chance to use them much since then, since most of our riding is on our road bikes or our tandem.  However, given the weather and the scenery, we just couldn't resist taking them out to the Imperial Wildlife Refuge north of Yuma along the Colorado River and getting a few dusty miles in.  This is no technical single-track riding -- just tootling around on the dirt roads and taking whatever side roads that look interesting.  There are lots of wild burros in the area, as well as some mountain goats (we didn't see any) but we saw their game trails going from the hills down to the river - regardless of where the man-made road goes!  We had lots of fun, and will be sure to get more of this in next year.
 

April Century
Each season here in Yuma, we try to ride a century at least once -- a century, in cycling terminology, is riding 100 miles in one day.  This season we've ridden several metric centuries (100 km -- 62.2 miles), but had not gotten around to the real one.  On Saturday, April 5, we went on a leisurely ride -- planned for about 40-50 miles -- to Sommerton, south and west of Yuma, with several other riders.  As is often the case, the day turned out to be good, and we all felt strong, so we continued on to San Luis, on the Mexican border, and then headed east, to arrive back at Yuma directly from the south.  Before we knew it, we had about 70 miles on our odometers, and decided that today was the day to go for our century -- spurred on by the promise of root beer floats at Lisa's if we all made it.  We got back to the Yuma foothills in one piece, and then wandered around our usual routes there for 30 miles until we made our goal -- 100 miles.  We will be riding multiple consecutive 50 to 80 mile days when we do RAGBRAI later this summer, so this was a good early test of our legs, our butts, and our bikes.  As you can see from Mandy's odometer picture below, the temperature when we finished was 85 degrees, and the ride time was a little over 7 hours -- giving us an average speed of almost 14 mph.
The root beer floats tasted great -- thanks Lisa -- and thanks to Cheryl, Muriel, Lori, Joe, Patty, and Judy for participating!