The Big Up

 We took a zero mile day Saturday staying with old friends Dale and Lisa Youngs. They were wonderful hosts, feeding us and giving us the run of the house. Dale did a Home Depot run and did an excellent upgrade on the rack to frame joint that had failed earlier on the trip. He also took us the the bike shop and let us use his garage and shop to do some minor bike repairs.  And the homemade lasagna that Lisa made for us and served us on the back patio was great! Thank you Dale and Lisa and we are expecting a visit next time you’re in Ohio!




Sunday’s route was from Chandler to Live Oak Flats outside of Superior just off US60.  We had just over 60 miles with the first 40 being mostly flat with a bit of headwind. There was a lot of climbing to get to Superior then a fairly steep one getting to the campground.. The last stretch was up the Cottonwood Canyon- the pictures don’t really do it justice. But I’ll just say it was a classic mountain climb.






Along the way we stopped and talked to a woman who had done roadside cleanup on her stretch of road for the last 20 years, for which we thanked her . She said she had just used her grasper to get a garbage bag, but a rattlesnake was under it so she reluctantly decided to leave that piece of trash there!




Monday we will have some more climbing then a long downhill to Globe. We don’t have any good options for camping past there so we may have to improvise with some more cowboy camping.


Dinner tonight was couscous with canned chicken, broccoli, pepper, and green onions. Dessert was a bag of Keebler chocolate chips which disappeared very quickly! Since we rode up here we had no cold drinks so I walked around the campground- after telling several people I was trick or treating for beer I scored a couple of Mich Lite Ultras! They went down very easily.


Postscript- I had another flat last night- on my air mattress- it was a slow leak so I got up every 3 hours and blew it up again. The suspect root cause is a goat head thorn that hitchhiked into the tent on my camp shoes! Hope I can patch it!


Fun Fact: there are more pickup trucks than people in Arizona! This is based on my observations!


Sundays ride was 60 miles.





Comments

  1. Dale YoungsNovember 1, 2021 at 1:05 PM

    We really enjoyed hanging out with you and Brian this weekend. Thanks for stopping.

    ReplyDelete

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