Not the best night’s sleep for absolutely no reason. There was no road noise, no railway line nearby, nothing, yet we didn’t sleep well. The alarm went off at 6:50 am, but it was 7:15 am before we ambled along to the breakfast room, the smallest breakfast room to date, comprising of a table and six chairs next to the reception desk. As the hotel boasts at least 30 rooms it’s a good job everyone else was having a Sunday morning sleep in.
Fueled up on countless bowls of sugary cereal and danish pastries, washed down with a warm brown liquid that resembled coffee and we were ready for the day. By the time we had faffed about it was 8:45 am before we pressed the start button on our cycle computers and headed out of town. It was a very comfortable sandal and t-shirt morning with zero chance of the frostbite I almost succumb to yesterday.
Within less than half a mile of the hotel, the descent was steep enough for us to stop cycling and continued for almost eleven miles without needing to make a single pedal turn.
The only problem with this was the fact that today we would be cycling over Sitgreaves Pass, so every inch of descent that we were enjoying now would need to be repaid in full before the day was out. To make it worse, the mountains over which we would be cycling were straight ahead of us, looking bigger and steeper as we approached them.
As we came to the end of our free morning ride the road that would take us up over the pass and to our lunch stop in Oatman became visible. It seemed to go up to the sky and then a little bit further than that. When confronted with such a wall there is only one course of action. Select third gear and start to pedal. Third is the chosen gear so that we have at least another couple of gears to drop down to if the going gets tough, first, or ‘granny gear’ is so low on our bikes you could almost cycle up a wall as long as you can make your legs rotate fast enough.
Within half a mile of the ascent, having dropped down to granny gear, we got into our own rhythm and agreed to see each other at the top, although I did stop on most of the big bends and switchbacks to get a photo of the distant dot that was bringing up the rear.
As we climbed we got our fair share of horn honks, thumbs up and waves, although I’m guessing out of pity rather than anything else.
Our Harley riding Texan friend, Charles Sheffield, had driven up the pass a few weeks ago and had warned us to be over it before early afternoon. This was due to the position of the sun and the switchbacks making seeing two crazy cyclists a challenge, so when we reached the top by 11:30 am we were quite chuffed with ourselves.
The view from the top was spectacular and most certainly worth every revolution of our cranks. A small celebration at the top by finishing off the last of yesterday’s milk before it was too warm, then we headed over the other side, with a view south that was equally as spectacular. The initial descent only lasted about 200m as there was a viewpoint that a car and an RV were parked up at, so thought we would take a look too. The view was the same as the top of the pass, so nothing really to write home about there, but on further investigation we found it to be a bizarre final resting place and memorial site of a random collection of people and pets. We couldn’t figure out why, but left it at bizarre and headed back to our bikes to continue with our payback for making it over Sitgreaves Pass just 10 minutes ago.
As we mounted our bikes a fire engine with lights flashing and siren doing what sirens do, headed up the pass, stopping at the very top of the pass, just where we had been standing drinking milk a few minutes earlier.
Puzzled, but wanting to get to Oatman before Christmas, we kicked off and started our descent for real.
We arrived in Oatman all too quickly, just as our legs were getting used to the free ride again. Deborah was the first to enter the town as I was messing about trying to take a photo. By the time I joined her she was talking to a couple from Southern California, Mike and Missy. Mike had done some short bike-packing tours in the past and was interested in what we were up to. While Missy said she wasn’t interested in cycle touring, but you could tell instantly that she would like nothing more than a touring bike and a tent for Christmas this year.
We parked up the bikes further down the main street after fighting our way through a combination of tourists, two-seater off-road vehicles, cars, tour buses, burros (small donkey) and burro poo. The burros are a leftover from the days they were used in the silver mines in the area and now are wild, although those in the town appeared to be reasonably well behaved.
We had read about Oatman, but nothing that we had read prepared us for what we found. We had just landed in a town that looked like a real wild west town that had been invaded by purveyors of tat from the cheesiest of British seaside resorts. All that was missing was ‘Kiss me Quick’ bowler hats and candy rock. That said, if you ignored the tat that was on sale, there were some interesting shops and restaurants if you took a closer look, with the town on the whole somewhere we wished we had more time to explore without bikes.
While Deborah was off checking out the ‘Free Mine Tour’, which apparently was a dark corridor with a red light at the end and I was on bike guard duty, I got talking to Josh about touring. He is the proud owner of the other bike that we almost bought before going for our Kogas, a Surly Long Haul Trucker. Josh hasn’t done much touring recently, but with a thirteen-year-old son I have a feeling that could well change in the near future.
Just as Deborah passed by on her way to check out the ‘Jail Tour’, John sat down on the wall next to me. We got talking a little about where we had been and where we were going. John and his wife Lee, together with a couple of friends, were heading to see London Bridge that afternoon. He suggested we should go there too while we were in the area. I thought from the conversation that we had been having that John was aware that we were using the two fully loaded tour bikes that were sitting in front of us. This became apparent when I said that it would likely take us a day to get there and would be a day off our route, so add another day to that to get back on to our route. Only then did the penny drop that the machines in front of us were our mode of transport. Once that was sorted out, we talked more about life on the road and our experiences of generosity over the past fifty days, before John’s phone rang (great ring tone!), bringing us both back to the reality of the day. He, Lee and their friends had a bridge to go and see, while we still had another twenty miles to cycle to our RV campground in Golden Shores for the night.
Deborah kicked off a few seconds before me, allowing a tour bus to pull out between us. Through the open window of the tour bus, a chap with a huge smile shouted out, asking where we had been and where we were going. Michael, a Mexican tour bus driver had seen us at the Grand Canyon, although didn’t get a chance to speak to us then, and just wanted to say hello and safe travels. He said that seeing us on our bikes again and hearing what we were doing has made him determined to buy a bike and do the same himself one day.
The cycle to Golden Shores was more down than up, but there were still a few big ups to make the cycle more challenging. The landscape that we were cycling through more than made up for the effort involved. The twenty miles from Oatman to Golden shores passed quickly with so much around us to divert our attention from the fact that we were still cycling.
It had been a hot day throughout, so as we entered Golden Shores, the sight of a Family Dollar supermarket was a welcome one. There was only one purchase that would quench our thirst, a gallon bottle of milk. I was, therefore, a little disappointed when we found empty shelves where the milk once was. Opting for a gallon of orange liquid called ‘Citrus Punch’ that doesn’t actually contain any fruit, each took a drink before cycling the remaining half a mile to the RV campground.
We were met by Jeff who showed us to the single tent plot in the RV park, between two large RVs, belonging on one side to Tom and the other to Patricia. Before we could pitch our tent Jeff removed the pile of burro droppings that had been deposited the previous night.
While putting the tent up we talked to Tom, a retired businessman who sold a resort that he created up in Alaska and now lives in his RV, spending the winter in Arizona.
Once the tent was up we ended up in conversation with Patrica. Patricia also lives in her RV and also spends the winters in Arizona and summers in Alaska, where most of her family still live with the exception of her sister Gloria, who also lives in an RV just across the other side of the RV park. As we spoke Gloria came over to call Patricia for dinner, so a good time for us to head back to Family Dollar to buy something for us to eat.
Riding our bikes up the road without panniers on took some getting used to. We both made it to the shop without falling off, but it was close for me on more than one occasion. Without the panniers, the bike felt like a bucking burro, not that I am that of an expert on that. Even with a pizza and a bag of frozen fries, the bikes were still misbehaving on the return journey, but we made it back just in time to watch a beautiful sunset over the nearby Goose Lake.
The price of a night at the campground comes with access to a kitchen and dining area, so after watching sunset Deborah started dinner while I headed over to the tent to collect all of our bleepy flashy things to charge up.
As I was coming out of the tent, Mike, another of the long-term residents of the RV park came over to say hello. We talked for a while about life, the universe and everything, including a chapter on beer and whisky (Scotch). Mike, a Vietnam Vet came across as a chilled-out soul that is enjoying life in the desert without many of the cares that weigh most people down. He had no reason or motive to have walked across the park other than to make us feel welcome, and welcomed by all of the residents that we have met in the short time we have been here.
As Family Dollar only sell frozen fries in bags big enough to feed a small village, we fed well tonight, although Deborah managed to burn the pizza as she didn’t understand the choice of oven setting, bake or broil. She, therefore, baked it for half the time and broiled it for the remainder, which it seems confused the oven enough for it to get stroppy and turn the base of the pizza into something that could fuel a barbeque.
Fed, with the kitchen mess, cleared up, we have adjourned to our tent to listen to the noises that will determine if we get a good night’s sleep……
crickets (constant), distance interstate (constant), local traffic (infrequent), dogs barking (infrequent), coyotes (possible), burros (possible), trains (forgot to check)…