Heading down towards Banner was heading into a green wall of mountains. I could see no way through at all and was getting more and more apprehensive about the climb up. At least there was very little traffic.
Everything had turned green and luscious. The Banner Grade is the twisting road up to Julian from [...]
As ever in the desert fighter jets scream overhead. The sun, I watched rise and paint the surrounding mountains various colours. I can hear birds all around. The greater valley is called Earthquake Valley with the Pinyon Mountains to the north and Granite Mountain behind me to the south. In a few miles I reach [...]
The road took me quietly back into the desert again and away from the fertile Imperial Valley. After the sand sculptures was the US Navy bombing area. It’s an air to ground target area and you’re not allowed to stop so when I saw 5 parachutists land beside me in the desert I didn’t take [...]
And then dunes. Gravel dunes. Close up not at all pretty. More like a building site. The mountains were red, brown, black, grey, blue. It was impossible to capture them through the camera. Then the mountains turned to a beautiful shade of golden red. This was an old pre-Colombian Indian trail from the Colorado River [...]
The clouds had made the day a lot less scenic than it could’ve been. In the distance (from as little as 5 miles away) mountains were only feint lines. Closer up they were as fabulous in California as in Arizona and New Mexico. Sometimes they look like big sleeping animals and other times, like the [...]
Harcuvar is Mojave for “sweet water” not that I could see any. It used to be a station on the Parker branch of the Atchison Topeka & Santa Fe railroad. It’s also known as “Mountain Pass” after the mountain pass truck stop, which used to be very busy when Highway 60 was the main route [...]
In Aguila, which is a mining town, I stopped at a cafe and had the special - a bowl of stew. When you’re hot and thirsty eating hot stew is very odd. So I had a couple of cokes at the same time. This was almost a nothing town and yet it had 3 motels [...]
I kept stopping every couple of miles and limping around and sitting down. Then I assumed that there was a pain barrier and tried going through it but I couldn’t. I grimaced a lot and screamed out loud a fair bit. I simply had to acknowledge that if my leg cannot bend then I can’t [...]
Here’s a snap from my Cycle Across America photo album. I haven’t even taken the picture out of the album - so you’re looking at a photo of a photo behind plastic. Anyway, I’m just posting it because it goes with the words from the section of the trip I posted yesterday - a day [...]
The descent to Superior was exhilarating. More so than into New York City.
It was so many factors. The rocks were now orange and elongated into almost column shapes. The slope down was 7% and on the feared shoulderless single lane. I was going from 30 to 37mph. To my side was a wall of [...]
