USA on a Bicycle: 06/14/12

Day 62 – 06/03/2012 – Needles, CA

We had spent the whole previous day sleeping. The way to Needles was a 53 miles long ride in an unknown elevation, but judging by the hard time we had arriving in Searchlight, we were expecting having a hard time.

We left the hotel around 1:30 am and headed to a local casino where they had a convenience store with snacks and coffee. We eat a sandwiches each, had coffee and took a few donuts with us for the road. By 2:20 am we were on our way.

To our surprise, that was an easy ride. In fact, for the first 13 miles we didn’t have to pedal at all! We were going downhill pretty much all the way. We passed by a small city called Nev Ari, then another one called Laughlin. We then crossed the Nevada / California border and, as usual, stopped at the state line sign to take pictures and update the blog. The road was good and we didn’t take long to approach the Needles area.

For the last nine miles we were forced to one more time enter the I-40 interstate, but it was a short ride due to the fact we were still going downhill. Later we discovered Searchlight had an elevation of about 4000 feet, while Needles was at only 500 feet.

Once we arrived in the urban area we passed by several hotels in a row, but decided to go get food before checking in. We crossed the bridge over the Colorado River and in less than a mile we were on a different city called Mohave Valley, in Arizona. So basically that was the third state we had visited on that day! There we found a Dollar General and got part of what we wanted, then waited about half an hour for a Family Dollar to open to buy the rest.

Once we were done we headed to the hotel, which was clean and cheap.

They had a pool in that hotel and we were not really tired from the ride we decided to get in the pool! We changed our clothes and had a good time diving and relaxing in the water. A local handy man started chatting with us and gave us several tips on our next planned stops. He also helped us finding a place to stay in Ludlow, our next destination.

We then went back to the room and slept the whole afternoon. By 10:30 pm woke up and started preparing for the long ride to Ludlow.

We had planned to go through the interstate just because this was one of the longest stretches we had to cover, and we just wanted to get over it. But no sleep or preparation of any kind could prepare for what we were about to face and witness on this next ride.

Day 61 – 06/02/2012 – Searchlight, NV

It was about 8:30pm when we left the casino where we had spent the whole day waiting for the temperature to drop. At this point it was almost night time already. We one more time rode towards the desert, but before getting into it we stopped at the shoulder space to exchange our t-shirts. We were wearing long sleeves because of the sun, but since we were about to ride at night we could wear short sleeves. After that we quickly covered the first five miles of downhill. After that point, however, things got difficult.

As we progressed we entered a lightly ride uphill. We were going upwards constantly, and although in the beginning that inclination didn’t represent much of an issue, as time passed we started to get more and more tired from going uphill non-stop. We were also very tired from being awake since early morning that day and riding sleepy can certainly represent a major challenge.

That uphill stretch extended as much as the eyes could see. After a few hours riding we realized getting to Needles, CA was a very unrealistic goal, and looked for a nearby place where we could stop and rest. Our sleepy feeling had become overwhelming and any motel or campground would work just fine.

The GPS showed the next place was a small city called Searchlight, but there were no motels showing for that location. Still, we had no choice but to pass through that city so we hoped we would find a place to sleep over there.

Once we entered Searchlight’s city limits we immediately started seeing a very extensive public illumination, which caught our attention. At this point we had already been awake for more than 20 hours, so our first worry was to find a motel. And we found one right away. The front desk lady was very friendly as gave us a discount due to the late arrival, which was nice.

Once we got in the room we cooked the food we already had using our electric pan, showered and went to sleep as soon as possible.

By morning time we had slept just four hours due to the late arrival on the previous day. We had to wake up in order to go talk to the hotel’s manager and get the room for one more day. There was no problem with that and, with the room secured we had breakfast with the last slices of bread and a few eggs we had. Then we slept the whole afternoon, then woke up at 7:00 pm and decided to go out and get something to eat.

The options in that small city were very limited. The only food store was a gas station convenience store with a few frozen pizzas and snacks. We got one of the pizzas and some drinks and went back to the room. We eat and went back to sleep.

Since our plan was to ride during night time we slept until midnight. In summary we spent the day resting from the previous day’s ride and preparing for another long one that was about to come.