The Search for America’s Last Pay Phone

America’s last pay phone?
Brian at Vista Point
Great group of officers at Mary Etta’s
The Desert Tower

Changing a flat tire
Fittest hill of the day was a doozy!
 Big climbing day- we ended up with 62 miles and 6,211 feet of climbing. It made for a long day as we came in just after dark at a  place called the Desert Tower.

 We were up at seven and on the road by eight. Stopped at a nice little breakfast place called Mary Ettas and I refueled with pancakes and eggs. The bikes were deemed to  be safe since most of the county sheriffs department was  in the parking lot (nice guys, see their picture).

The climbing took forever but the down hills were just short of amazing. The terrain ranged from some pretty forest up in the mountains to a lot of what I would call high desert. Tomorrow we should be descending down into some real desert. 

We rode fairly close to the Border fence for a couple of miles. This was the new design and it really jumps up and smacked you in the face as it cuts across the landscape. 

The Desert Tower has a beautiful view down into the valley that we will descend into tomorrow via Interstate 8. . It has a few campsites and the Warm Showers campsite is superb with a platform and a large awning plus electricity.

We’ve been warned of extremely high winds  tomorrow, especially going down Interstate 8 so will take a look and decide whether to stay over or head down.

As to the title, I had thought about making “the search for America’s last P phone” the title of blog. It just so happened that we found one! See the photo below with Brian in the payphone doing what we used to all do all the time.

Two Bicycle Items: I got a rear flat from a tiny little wire that worked its way in my rear tire.None of us enjoy changing rear tires but it’s especially fun when you have about 50 pounds of gear loaded on the back. Lesson learned: take the loaded panniers off before you work on the bike. 

My seat post also kept slipping down which made all this climbing lots of fun. I was finally able to stop that by wiping as much grease off the seat post as I could as I could and then tightening it up without breaking the screw.

PS it takes a lot of water to ride out here. I think I finished 6 bottles and it wasn’t even that hot!

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