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!
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