Live for the Path

I wake up at around 6, lay in the bag until 6:30, and then packed up and hit the road at about 7:15. I stop in Wickenburg at McDonald’s (clearly) and have some breakfast. I notice here that I am not really able to eat anything at all. Since breakfast the day before I had one and a half McDoubles, and I barely choked down a sausage burrito and a sausage McMuffin today. I guess my body still is in some shock about what is going on. Luckily I have around 3 cups of sweet tea each time to get some calories in me.

World Famous

I’m sure you have been here, it is an important hub.

Bike Path in Wickenburg

I leave there and have a really nice ride up a pass and down to a run down town called Aguila. This place has a ten foot barbed wire fence around the convenience store (still open). Everything, literally everything has bars on it. I quickly leave and head towards Wenden and Salome.

Still so far away.

The desert is still pretty.

The only bad thing… count the beer bottles in the picture.

I had been looking at my map and saw that I was going to basically losing 2500 feet of elevation between the pass just beyond Wickenburg and Blythe. I was excited that I was only going to have to pedal maybe 5 times during these 150 miles, and even considered doing my video at the top of the pass to brag about this. Well, I did not take a 15-20 mph headwind into account. It was in my face all day long after Aguila and it was brutal. I was going 8mph on flat ground and maybe 12 at most on downhills. What should have been an easy day where I could take some time off became a marathon in the saddle. I hate the wind.

That is still the same numbering system from all the way back in Phoenix. Ha.

I still still think the desert is pretty.

Anyway, I stopped a a cool little cafe in a little town called Wenden (no barbed wire in sight!). It was pretty neat, and the ladies that ran it gave me a bunch of almonds and raisins to take with me.

Neat place. Highly recommended.

I then hopped right back on my bike and continued through Salome where I chilled under a canopy of some closed business for an hour (it was hot). I then hopped back on my bike again, and stopped at a little diner in Vicksburg Junction (population 0 – the diner is the only thing there) where I ate pie and ice cream.

I did a few more miles and then bed.

Some quick other thoughts. It is a little sad riding through a lot of these towns. You can look at them and tell that they were really bustling back in the 40s and 50s, but once the interstates were built, and they were not selected to get one through their town, it was over for them. Some have limped along, but the for sale signs and closed businesses are everywhere. One more thing: it seems that the ladies in the small cafes that I stopped in are not from the area originally, don’t really know how they got there, and don’t really like it there. Strange.