This Is Why They Said Don't Camp Near The Border

The weather cleared up and we got in a healthy 60 miles after Luann
dropped us off in downtown El Paso. It has been colder the past few
days than anything we have yet experienced on this trip. Even though
it's dry, it is very windy, and the temperatures are staying in the
forties.
It was really cold last night when we found a spot to camp. Just
outside of McNary Texas, within shouting distance of the Mexican
border, we found an apparently uninhabited stretch of knolly
scrubland, perfect for finding concealment not far from the road.
Within minutes of stopping, I had on every bit of cold weather gear I
had with me, and the temperature continued to drop. We had a quick
dinner of peanut butter sandwiches, and got in our warm sleeping bags
shortly after dark.
We have heard coyotes howling in the dark many nights in the desert.
Last night, when they spoke up in protest of a passing train right
after we laid down, we were a bit unnerved with how close they
sounded. They could not have been more than 100 yards away. Indeed,
when morning came, we found frozen scat within fifty feet of our
campsite.
Sometime later in the night, I was awoken by a persistent sound. It
seemed some sort of off-road vehicle was driving back and forth, the
rough sound of the engine growing and fading, then growing again, over
and over. As I laid there, the realization slowly dawned on me that a
helicopter was circling nearby.
With each pass, the sound grew louder and louder. I had been cacooned
in my sleeping bag, shut off from all outside light. I drew back the
drawstring and pulled my head out as the sound became a roar and the
helicopter passed directly over us, not 100' off the ground. To my
horror, the inside of my bivy sack lit up like Monday night football.
We were directly in the beam of a searchlight.
Dwight - uh, Adam, are you awake?
Adam - of course.
Dwight - so, they see us, huh?
Adam - obviously.
Dwight - so, what do we do?
Adam - what CAN we do?
Dwight - hmm...
Adam - yeah
I pulled back the cover of the bivy sack, watching the helicopter as
it circled, keepig it's light trained on us. Presently, a second light
floated into sight, and a disembodied voice call out "¡bueños nochés,
Señors!"
Dwight - uh
Adam - good evening!
The speaker continued in English, "What are you guys doing here?".
From there, a surprisingly friendly Border Patrol Agent proceeded to
quiz us on our names, where we we coming from, our destination, and
our homes. He decided the two guys wrapped up like mummies laying
beside two bicycles loaded with gear were not, in fact, border jumpers
who had decided to stop for a nap, 500 yards across the Rio Grande, in
17 degree weather.
He concluded with, "well, we're looking for two guys out here, but
you're obviously not them. You guys go back to sleep."
Yeah, right.
17 degrees showed on the thermometer when we woke this morning. My
fingers hurt trying to stuff all of our gear, wet with melting frost,
into their respective bags  Cold to start, and it stayed cold the
whole day. All day long we rode in jackets and gloves, and still our
fingers and toes never warmed up. Tonight's not supposed to be as bad,
we look forward to a low of 35.
We have gone around 75 miles today, putting our total at 950. We
should (knock on wood - a precious commodity around here) pass 1000
miles tomorrow on our way to shelter at the famous McDonald
Observatory, right outside of Fort Davis!

The Cavalry Drives a Mini-Van

It has been an eventful few days.  We have climbed some tall mountains and seen some great sights.  We had our best campsite so far in the Gila National Forest outside of Silver City, and our best ride, from Silver City to Gila Hot Springs on near deserted high mountain roads.

No matter how spectacular the natural wonders, equally memorable are the interesting and incredible people we have been meeting along the way.  All along our route we have found friendly faces and helpful attitudes.

In Bisbee, our host (who saved us from a cold night searching for a campsite in the dark) took us down this tunnel, which was not on the published walking tour:

It was an underground (literally and figuratively) art gallery.  There was some beautiful and colorful graffiti down there, far past the reach of any outside light:

The Warm Showers list hooked us up with Patrick and Elieen in Silver City.  Patrick is a former cross-continent cyclist, and his wife is an accomplished fiddle player.  She put on a short show for us our second evening there, playing Irish jigs, marches, and aires. 

While in Silver City, my map geek side surfaced.  Elieen works at the public library, and Patrick took us by to visit.  I found the map chest, and we spent the next hour going over USGS topo maps of the terrain we planned on crossing the next few days:

Here are Patrick and Adam inspecting Adam's swollen toe in the middle of the library. A spider bite seems to be the consensus diagnosis.

Also, in answer to Mom's question - the wound from the loss of the unimportant part of Adam's knee is doing great - as I said it was an unimportant part.

In Silver City, we had our first encounter with other cross-country cyclists. Tony and Brendan are on the same route we are, and caught up to us in Silver City. We spoke for a while and exchanged website information and said our goodbyes, reasonably confident that we would run into them on the road again.  Check out their blog at http://justanotherbikerideacrossamerica.org/ .


In Gila Hot Springs, we ran into our most colorful crowd yet. This tiny campground was tucked in a bend in the river in a little valley near the end of a 14 mile long, one-way road mountain road. It had three little pools dug out, fed by a nearby natural hot spring.

The campground was inhabited by a crowd of RVers and campers, the likes of which I have never seen. There was a crazy/hyper man named Bill, his wheelchair bound wife, and her service dog Lightning in a pop-up pull behind, Josephine and her well lived in, dirty old van-sized RV,  (and not pictured below) two surfers from Florida bound for California (we had noted their car passing us earlier - who drives with a surf board in New Mexico?), and a grizzled old hippie whose name, conveyance and form of shelter remained a mystery.

And they all soak naked.

But hippies are wise in their ways, as we were to learn. Getting out of the 110 degree water into 25 degree air, then making it back to your campsite, drying and changing while staying reasonably warm is an impossible task. I was shivering and cold to the bone by the time I got in my sleeping bag, and it took quite a while to get warm enough to fall asleep. So our morning soak was done hippie-style. There is nothing better than taking a dip in hot water upon waking up and seeing the thermometer on your bike's computer display this: (if you can't see it says 20 degrees - 30 min and 4 degrees after waking up)

The cliff dwellings we visited that morning are a great segue from people to places. A series of caves between high mountains have made the perfect hiding place for many of the successive inhabitants of this land. The mix of natural grandeur and historic culture is incredible.

At the cliff dwellings we met our second group of touring cyclists - Sundance and Yana, two Aussies whose itinerary makes me feel like a wimp. They started in Ontario and are heading for the west coast, where they hope to find a yacht to crew en route back to Austrailia. They, too, are writing a blog about their adventures, check it out if you're interested: http://meanderingmarsupials.blogspot.com/

Wisely, they had paused in El Paso and rented a car to check out some of these more northerly areas. As we were to learn, it can get cold and wet quickly.


Since the cliff dwellings were at the end of the long mountain road, we had to turn around and head back out. Clouds were rolling in and the wind picked up as we approached the climb out, the longest, steepest stretch of road we had yet faced. A pack of javelinas charged across the pavement as we rode, not twenty yards in front of us. As I frantically tried to get out the camera, the little pork chops huffed and snorted and stomped out of sight. We had been hearing about these creatures for days, and it was a treat to get to see them.

The climb was long, slow and hard.  The beautiful vistas I remembered from the day before on the same stretch of road-

Had faded into snowy, fast moving clouds by the time I struggled through the pass:

By the time we reached the bottom on the other side, snow was falling steadily, and I was trying to convince Adam that we should look for paid accommodations for the night.  We lucked out with our place to stay, and ended up with a nice cozy cottage for 50$/night.  The owner was a retired NC State professor (!) who was a former long distance horse-riding camper, so she has a soft spot for people like us. 

By the time we were inside and settled in, the scene outside made us happy we had found shelter.

We enjoyed a beautiful sunset, all the more so as we knew we had a warm den to retreat to.

In the morning, we found that more bad weather was predicted for the next three days.  I was of a mind to wait out the storm in the snug little cottage, but our food bag was getting light, and there was no store nearby that could provide us with and groceries, nor any restaurant. There was supposed to be a break in the weather for a while that morning, so we packed our things, said goodbye to Frances, and headed out in the snow.

It was very pleasant at first, with a light snow blanketing the trees, and rocks, leaving the canyon walls bare and stark in their contrast.  Before long, however, the snow had soaked through our gloves and jackets, and we began to freeze.  Snow began to accumulate on the bags on our bikes and Adam's beard.  My fingers started to burn.  The thermometer dropped from 35 to 34.  As we climbed numerous small hills, I began to sweat, threatening to soak through my hat and shirt.  Meanwhile my fingers ceased to burn and went numb instead.  They felt like frozen hotdogs stuck in gloves.  The thermometer dropped to 33.  I was worried that if it dropped below freezing, we would start to risk frostbite. 

You notice there are no pictures from this leg of our trip.  We only stopped once so I could add another layer of clothing, we were intent on making it the 20 miles to San Lorenzo, where there was supposed to be a store and cell service.  We were not in the mood for piddling around framing shots.

Clumps of snow were falling off my hat as the wind picked up and the icy snow stung harder against my face. I began to wonder how much more I could take.  If a pickup truck had passed our way, I would have flagged them down, but for once there was less traffic that could be desired. 

Nothing has been more welcome than the sight of the sun starting to push through the clouds, and the feel of the snow getting lighter against my face.  It continued to clear, but we did not get warm or begin to really dry out till we pulled into the only cafe in San Lorenzo.

From San Lorenzo we took a good look at the weather and the road before us.  There was supposed to be a break in the weather for a while, but the snow was supposed to close back in on us before evening.  We had 2500 feet to climb, and it appeared that while we were in a dry spot, the pass before us still looked quite frosty. 

For once we decided to play it safe, and we called Adam's family friend Luann to come pick us up from El Paso.  It was torture sitting around for a couple of hours in perfect weather, thinking about the climb we were passing up.  At least it gave us a chance to check out the bakery run out of a trailer behind the house of a clan of "Not-Mennonite Mennonites", as described by the waitress at the cafe.  Not where you'd expect to find a gouremet bakery, but we keep our eyes open for good bread wherever we go.  We found this place on a tip from the Wise Hippies of Gila Hot Springs.

Luann arrived and put us in her minivan and took us to her home in El Paso.  So instead of hunkering down in the snow, we sit around drinking coffee in her sitting room,

watching the olympics on her 60" HDTV and mixing drinks at the wet bar,

and lounging and reading and writing on the computer in her library:

All while hanging out with Barney and Karen,

and eating Luann's delicious homemade chili.

We'll wait out the bad weather here, and probably head out Tuesday afternoon.  Our highest elevations are behind us, and we plan on taking our time exploring southern Texas, a place I have never been, and Adam's childhood home.

Snowbound!

The thermometer on the bike said 18 degrees when I woke up this
morning. We had been warm in our bags, but by the time coffee and
grits were put down, our fingers and toes were numb. What was there to
do but strip naked and jump in the water?
The day before we had climbed our highest pass yet, 7440'. It was a
great ride, starting in dry scrubland as we left Silver City, climbing
through dry juniper-pinyon forests.
There was very little traffic on this twisty and steep road, and every
time we rounded a corner, we were met with a completely different
grand vista.
Spruce and fir trees were just starting to show up as we crested out
final summit, and a stunning view of the Gila Wilderness opened up
beneath us. The last several miles of the day were a screaming drop
into the valley, where we found a campsite at the Gila Hot Springs
campground, populated by a unique mix of small rv campers, surfers
from Florida, and old hippies.
A nice long soak in the hot springs set us right up, but walking back
to the campsite with wet shorts in sub freezing weather was chilly
indeed.
So this morning we had learned the lesson of the wet shorts, and we
stripped to the skin and joined the naked hippie rv campers in the hot
spring, where we were offered a morning "toke" and favored with 9-11
truther theories.
Dry-shorted and toasty warm, we hopped on the bikes, bellies full of
grits and hippie tacos. Where might a stranger find grits, in a land
where people say "what's grits?" They hide grits with the Mexican
food, labeled as "yellow cornmeal polenta". Ha!
A few miles down the road, the only bridge to the Gila Cliff Dwellings
had been washed out, and only bike and pedestrian could cross. It was
the first time in our entire trip that we got such looks of envy,
passing the formerly car bound down the final 1.5 miles of road to the
cliff dwellings trailhead.
After our short hike at the site came decision time. We had thousands
of feet to climb, and bad weather was setting in. If we got caught in
the high pass, it would be a chilly night. We had met enough of th rv-
ers that we thought we could bum a ride over the next couple of passes
into the low land below, where the weather would present not a mortal
threat, but merely severe discomfort.
Of course we decided to push for it, and we began to climb up the hill
we decended yesterday, 1500 feet in five miles, with some slopes of
8%. There is a professional bike race called the Gila Monster that
makes this same out and back trip, and this is truly a monster! In my
lowest gear, I struggled to keep my feet moving, the road a never
ending ribbon stretching up and up in front of us.
A few miles in, the wind began to pick up, boxing the compass. Icy
gusts of 20 mph cut through my sweat-soaked shirt, checking my
miserable, strained 4 mph to a near standstill. Adam climbed on out of
sight, and the mountains and grand views we enjoyed the day before
disappeared in rain and snow.
The first snow began to fall on us as we summited the pass, so light
at first that Adam thought I was seeing things. We threw on our warm
gear after climbing in shorts and t-shirts. Adam busted out a set of
pushups to spit in the mountain's eye and we set off down the mountain
in thickening snow. By the time we reached bottom, snow was falling
steadily, sticking to our jackets and hats.
At a small "fine dining restaraunt and motel" the waitress called down
the road to see if she could find us a sheltered camping spot. That
put us in the care of Francis, a retired inn owner a few miles down
the road. She was worried about people camping in the worsening storm,
and offered us a 170$ cottage for 50$. This even though she's closed
for her birthday this weekend!
So tonight we sleep in warmth and watch tv, as the snow piles up
outside. I won't get to send this post untill tomorrow, we haven't had
cell service since we left Silver City. Tommorow we face Emmory Pass,
the highest point left on our route, and our biggest hill yet,
climbing past 8200 feet. If snow doesn't block the pass, after that
summit, it's downhill all the way to the Mississippi.

Snowy sunset

We got snowed in this afternoon. It started as we crested 7440 feet
heading south from Gila Cliff Dwellings. If the roads clear, we'll
head to a pass through the Black Mountains that tops 8000 feet.

Silver City Refuge

Today we rode 42 mountainous miles, yesterday we did 71, for a grand total of around 770.

We crossed our highest pass yet at 6355' on our way into Silver City.  I had previously made contact with a couple on the Warm Showers list who have been generous enough to host us for the evening.

I had to explain the Warm Showers list to my then-girlfriend Karen the first time I told her some girl from the Warm Showers list was coming to stay at my place for the evening.  It's an online network set up to give touring cyclists potential contacts throughout the world - possible offers of shelter, laundry, warm showers and, if you're lucky, food.

Our current hosts, Patrick and Eileen, live in an original adobe brick house built in the 1930's, a few blocks away from downtown:

That's Patrick's grandmother's spinning wheel against the wall.

Upon our arrival in Silver City, we cleaned up and Patrick took us out for lunch and showed us around town.  The main street from the town's early days when it was a working silver mine is now a 50' deep ditch that the locals call the "Big Ditch".  Rain and floods over time slowly washed out main street, until eventually there were numerous pedestrian bridges crossing over.  The wall of water that smashed into Silver City in 1895 destroyed much of main street, and the remaining businesses began using their back doors for entrances.  Main street is now one block over, and the curbs on the street get as high as 2' or 3' to accommodate the water that still floods the town.


Silver City has survived the closing of the silver and then the copper mines by transforming into an art mecca.  There is a food co-op, several gourmet coffee and deli shops, lots of arts and crafts shops, and an active downtown restoration and revitalization effort.  There are even two bike shops in a town of 10,000!

For dinner Patrick and Eileen served us spaghetti with home made sauce, and for dessert Patrick made me a nice espresso to go with the blueberry pie from the local deli.  It sure it tough out here on the road.

In Your Face

Title suggested by Adam.

It was an inauspicious start, Adam took a little spill on the tricky
streets of Bisbee, not a hundred yards after leaving Shayna's front
door, tearing off a small, unimportant part of his knee. Unimportant,
but it's absence has been rather painful.

We spent the last two days since leaving Bisbee beating into a strong
headwind, cutting our average speed in half. It's been grueling,
demoralizing work. At least when you're climbing uphill, you get some
great views and a ride down on the other side. After twenty miles of
fighting twenty mph gusts, you stop to rest, you look like you're in
the same spot, flat and sandy with lots of yuccas, with distant brown
mountains on the horizon. Then you realize you could turn around and
go back the same distance in a quarter of the time.

Just east of Bisbee is a giant pit mine, inactive since the seventies.
Shayna told us that with the current high price of copper, there are
plans afoot to reopen it.

This thing is huge! A mile long, and at least 1000 feet deep, it
boggles the mind. My camera phone does not do it justice, I'll post
some better pics when we get to a computer. In this one, you can just
make out the buildings on the left for some scale.

Surprise Mountains and Trail Angels

There's so much to write today!  It feels like forever since my last post, and indeed we have had lots of fun and pain since then.  Adam covered the outline of the past few days pretty well, I'm going to try to fill in with some pictures and a few stories.

Another word of apology - a few people have asked for info on total and daily mileage.  I can guess, but for now, the computer is out of commission again, and we will not be able to get those numbers till we find the correct parts to get it mounted again.

It was great to get back on the road again after Tucson.  We were there almost three full days, and it felt like forever.  The break did give some of our aches and pains a chance to fade a little bit, and we left feeling great and looking forward to the ride.

Coming out of town, we followed the shared-use path beside the river, which actually had a little running water on the eastern end of town.

The caverns were a great stop.  The tour guide was a young art student, with an ironic attitude and a full bag of cheesy lines about the caves he very obviously enjoyed showing off.  "There are stalactites and stalagmites, and here are the stalaglights (motions to indirect lighting features covered with fake rock)".

Shortly down the road from Colossal Caves Mountain Park, we had two good bird sightings.  We think the first one was a Cooper's Hawk sitting on the end of a dead agave blossom:

The second could be a Red Tail Hawk, but I'm not sure.  I'm pretty bad at bird IDs, if there is anyone reading that has a clue, please post in the comments.

From that point on it was a pretty rough day.  The wind was in our face as we headed south, towards Tombstone.  A slight uphill grade began to wear on us significantly as the miles wore by.  Locals in Tucson had told us that there would be a significant climb in elevation to Brisbee after Tombstone, but never mentioned the Santa Ritas, well before Tombstone.

As the afternoon grew old, we hit these mountains totally unprepared for them.  We needed to make it about ten miles to get to National Forest land, where we would not be trespassing as we camped.  The initial estimate of 45 minutes for this leg transformed into a grueling two hour climb into the seemingly ever-ascending mountains.  

Right before sunset, we crossed into National Forest land (I was too tired to note the particular name of the forest, and we certainly weren't stopping for pictures).  The sun was slipping below the hills to the west as we pulled off and stumbled upon a tunnel or culvert built under a high point in the road, which appeared to be constructed to allow wildlife to cross the roadway without risking the traffic.  Barbed wire fences along the roadway herd larger animals to these tunnels for their and the auto drivers safety.

We thought it would be a great place to camp:

Since our first day out we have not pitched the tent, preferring to sleep out under the stars under a tarp.  The dew has been a problem, so in Tucson we ditched our tent and picked up a couple of bivy sacks, and thus saved ourselves a lot of space and weight in the bargain.  For the first night, they worked great, keeping us warm and dry in a sub-freezing night.

Tombstone was a bit of a disappointment.  More like a wild-west theme park than a real city.  We ate at Big Nose Kate's Saloon, where the Kurt Russel version of Tombstone was playing on several flat-screens around the room, as local actors reenacted scenes from the same movie.

Our plan as we left Tombstone was to camp halfway between there and Bisbee, our next destination.  It was only a 20 mile trip, but there is a big climb on the way to Bisbee, one we had advance warning of.  However, as we rode downhill out of Tombstone with the wind at our backs again, and the thought of a warm bed and shower tempting us, we made the decision to try to make the push up the hill and hit Bisbee that night.  It was Saturday night, and we heard Bisbee was a great town to party in.  

Adam gave you the exact amount of gain we made.  Unlike the Santa Rita mountains, this was one long uphill with an ever-increasing grade.  Six miles into the climb, I was wondering if I could make it to the top.  It was after sunset, sweat was pouring off my brow, and my legs and lungs were burning fiercely.  I was seriously considering thumbing down one of the pickup trucks passing us going uphill. 

Unexpectedly, we crested the hill, and rode through a tunnel under the Great Divide, and sped downhill the last two miles into Bisbee, just as the darkness was starting to settle in.  

We rode into a festive downtown filled with couples during an evening art expo and listening to street musicians.   

We kept our eye out for a cheap-looking hotel.  We did not consider the Valentine's Day factor, and there was also a Yoga expo in town.  The first three hotels we passed had "no vacancies" signs.  When we finally stopped and asked, we were told that there were no vacancies in town, and we might have luck in a neighborhood five miles down the road.  Down the dark, cold, hilly road.  

I was going through the list of local hotels on a phone in a The Grand Saloon and Hotel when a young woman named Shayna overheard our plight and offered to put us up for the evening.  This has been the best stroke of luck on our trip so far.  

We had a couple of drinks with Shayna as we got to know each other. Her house is tucked into the hillside, just a block away from down town so we dropped our bikes and gear off at there and headed out for the evening. 

Since then we have been getting the insider's look at Bisbee.  Shayna runs a gourmet coffee roasting company downtown, and seems to know every local here.  She knows a lot of the history of the town, and all the good places to go. 

Today she gave us a back alley tour of the city.  Begun as a mining camp for the local copper mines, it's population peaked at near 70,000 around the turn of the last century, and the current population is around 6000.  It's stacked on top of itself on the steep hills of Tombstone Canyon.  We took the picture at the top of this post from Castle Rock, which juts up out of the middle of the city.  You can click on it for a larger version.

The area is criss-crossed with huge staircases, narrow and winding streets, and hidden vistas.  

While standing on the street taking pictures of a house particularly pointed out by Shayna, we were spotted by the owner of the house and invited in for a tour. It was an amazing yard filled with deep pools, twisted stone arches and, big coy.  My pictures cannot do it justice, and the owner Lee told us that there are good pictures on his website TheMermaidCastle.com

Now we're relaxing before dinner.  Shayna has promised us rosemary grilled chicken, made with rosemary grown in her back yard.  We'll be on the road again tomorrow, heading east with an eye towards heading north to Silver City in New Mexico.  We'd like to see the Gila Cliff Dwellings, but have to be careful because it can still get snowy there this time of year.  

Since Tuscon we've done about 150 miles for a total of around 600 miles.   We're well into our trip!

Please post any questions you have in the comments.  Most people we meet on the road have all kinds of questions, and I'd like to know what kind of things people are interested in hearing.

Our next promise of civilization is in Silver City, where a  local B&B owner hosts touring cyclists!