October 7, 2021

St. George, UT to Beaver Dam, AZ

Over dinner the previous night, we’d consulted with Bob about our route options to get towards Vegas from St. George. Combined with some other helpful info online we concluded there was really only the one way – up and over the big Utah Hill separating the Paiute Reservation from Arizona, and then across the tip of Arizona. (Fun fact: Google tells you to bicycle through the Virgin River Gorge on I-15, which is not just insanely dangerous with winding turns, close rock walls, and no shoulder, but also explicitly illegal. Thanks Google).

We woke in the morning and Bob was already fast at work making all three of us breakfast. He was competing in the Huntsman World Senior Games, a yearly event with a bunch of competitive sporting events in a bunch of different categories – he was, of course, competing in some cycling races all week. So suffice it to say, he needed the fuel too! He whipped up a delicious breakfast of eggs, bacon, fruit, and protein pancakes, and we enjoyed more easy conversation as the three of us woke up over a meal.

Breakfast down, Alyssa and I tidied up the room we’d slept in and got our bikes in operational order. Bob (& Sam!) saw us off, taking the front seat of his tandem and riding with us to the edge of his neighborhood to make sure we found our route alright. We hopped back on the path we’d rode in on, headed north this time, and we were on our way.

We pit stopped briefly at a Walmart on the way out of town to do some grocery shopping for the coming days. Now that we were leaving Utah, we were entering the broader section of our trip that contained significantly fewer resources, and we planned accordingly. For today, though, we were riding northwest out of St. George, and then up and over the 4,731 ft summit of Utah Hill, planning to ride clear through Arizona to a casino motel just over the border into Nevada in the town of Mesquite.

The riding out of St. George was immediately frustrating. We began climbing as soon as we left the bike path, merging onto a road that was very generously marked as a bicycle route despite being 4 lanes with a ‘bike lane’ about a foot and a half wide, pocked with sewer grates. Good stuff, for sure. By the time we’d reached the outskirts of town to the last gas station before our climb, we were both a little pissed off about the rough ride despite St. George’s size and ostensible resources for bike infrastructure. Oh well.

We took a break at said gas station for a snack and drink, half as an excuse to refill all of our water bottles guilt free. On the edge of the Paiute Reservation, I found it interesting to see the bilingual signs all around the gas station, in English and Paiute together.

Fueled up, we began our real climb for the day. Without mincing words, it’s a bitch of a climb. The grade is never terribly extreme, and the road itself is fine, but it’s really unrelenting – there’s absolutely nothing but 4%-ish grade uphill for miles and miles and miles without so much as a squiggle in the road to offer a brief respite. It was cloudy, so we were saved somewhat from the heat of the sun, but even so it was a sweaty slog up the several thousand foot climb up to its summit. The top is marked by a slightly horrifying dilapidated Christmas arrangement in a roadside tree, and we breathlessly cheered its waypoint marking.

I lost the head game on this one and spent much of the climb gutturally screaming in frustration at the sky.

The climb up is matched by the descent on the other side, which is easily 20 miles of a near constant descent, the last 10-12 miles of which are basically a perfectly straight line through wild scrub and joshua trees. We screamed down the other side, barely pedaling for minutes on end, soaring through new, alien (and beautiful) desert landscapes. Although we continued to follow the course of the Virgin River (and would, all the way to where it meets Lake Mead) the landscape around it couldn’t be more different, and it was immediately clear as we passed into Arizona that we were beginning to reach deserts that looked the way they looked in my imagination; deserts painted in shades of dusty red and sandstone, speckled with short mesquite and bushy juniper, with honest to goodness tumbleweeds tossed into roadside ditches.

In planning the day I spotted a bar at the bottom of the descent, still in Arizona, where we could stop for a well-earned beer and to refill our water supply before heading another 15 miles or so down the road into Nevada towards our motel. Alyssa, always descending faster than me, beat me to it, and I found her at the bar inside the Beaver Dam Bar with a water and an ice cold PBR.

The Beaver Dam Bar looked like an oasis from the outside, and felt like one from the inside, too. Large, welcoming mid century awnings strung with lights and plants beckoned you inside, and the bar itself was decorated in perfect, dive-bar fashion, complete with vintage topless poster of Madonna and old concert bills for the Stones and Janis Joplin above the door. The bartender, Rhonda, shot the shit with us as we sipped our beers, and she immediately gave us the pitch to just stay here – a very convincing pitch, at that. They had a grass yard out back where we could pitch a tent for free, we could hang out and drink all night with the backdrop of live music, the bathrooms were left unlocked 24 hours a day, and we could even get breakfast as there was a breakfast food truck parked on premises that opened at 7 AM. Both Alyssa and I were instantly sold – who needs a motel when the Beaver Dam Bar covers your every need?

So we agreed to stay, and the locals came out of the woodwork to come chat with us. There’s a small group of folks who live on the property behind the bar, in various trailers, campers, et cetera. Many of them help out at the bar in various ways, maintaining the grounds, maintaining the building itself, even tending bar. It was a regular community, centered firmly on the Beaver Dam Bar, and everyone involved had nothing but the kindest air about them. We finished our round and went out back to get the lay of the land and set up our tent, and by the time we made it back there the man who handled most of the building maintenance had already run a shop light out to the backyard on an extension cord for us in case we needed it after dark. By the time we got back inside to the bar, the local we’d been lightly chatting with about our trip had already covered our next round. The Beaver Dam Bar rolled out the red carpet for us, and we both felt truly welcomed by everyone present.

And so we whiled away the evening, chatting with folks at the bar. We cooked dinner, one after the other, on our camp stove at a picnic table out front (which was absolutely a spectacle for the regulars, who all came out to have a smoke and watch us cook mac & cheese and mushroom risotto, respectively). As we ate, we chatted with a man whose ancestor on his dad’s side was one of the earliest big name Mormon settlers in the area – we’d see streets with his family name on them all the way to Vegas. We also seemed to provide endless entertainment for an older woman smoking cigarettes outside, who kept chuckling with incredulity at how far we’d come, at our cooking setup, at our whole deal. 

This lady was from Winnetka and had moved West after her husband passed away a few years ago. Small world!

Inside, word got out that we were staying out back and made its way to the owner of the bar. Bill was an extremely easygoing guy, paying a visit to the place with his friend and traveling companion, and as a seasoned traveler himself he was thrilled for our adventure and probed for details about our route, past and future. He had some gentle suggestions of things to see, but mostly just shared in our excitement to see more of the world. He and his friend were soon to be on their way to Peru, with a plan to have no plan at all until they arrived – my kind of guy, for sure. We only interacted briefly, but in chatting with some of the locals later on in our stay, everyone had only kind things to say about him. He seemed to foster and enable this community here, not just in letting folks stay on his land, but by making this bar a gathering place – they even throw their own yearly music festival here, the Beaver Dam Jam. Based on what I heard, he seemed to have the local community thing all figured out.

As the day turned to night, the real entertainment arrived. A man with a respectable cowboy hat and even more respectable mustache named Mel arrived with his guitar and small travel amplifier, leading the patio area through country and bluegrass classics (truly leading them, with the occasional group chorus singalong with all the folks sitting nearby). The warm lights of the large awning cast a perfect glow over the whole scene. I chatted for a long time with a woman named Patty who was born and raised in the Bay Area, coming of age during the late 60s and early 70s. She had distilled California energy, with long, straight hair and a distinct California-coast accent. Her life story was fascinating, and she was another easy conversationalist. She told me how one of her forebears made it big in the real estate growth of early Los Angeles, and purchased a bunch of land – everything from redwood camps in Northern California to huge tracts of acreage in the desert. The only remaining plot still in the family was the one she inherited from her mother, and the one she lived on now, near the Arizona/Nevada border. We talked about her personal history from seeing huge name musical acts in San Francisco in the late 60s all the way to what led her out this way – it was a great conversation. She was excited for us, to see us doing a weird thing out on our own, and I could feel her genuine enjoyment at having a chat with both of us. It was a lovely way to while away the evening in Beaver Dam, AZ, and we took our leave at a relatively reasonable hour in preparation for getting on the road again tomorrow (even though there was a forecast for rain that we didn’t quite believe).

October 8, 2021

Beaver Dam, AZ to Mesquite, NV

We were woken early in the predawn morning by the howling wind loudly whipping our tent. The rain always sounds a lot more serious from inside the tent, and although we were skeptical (I mean, why would I believe a forecast for rain in the desert??) and it wasn’t yet coming down strong, it was fully evident that we were about to get poured on. After half an hour or so of trying to sleep through it (read: pretend it wasn’t happening) Alyssa roused me so we could break camp before all of our stuff got wet. It’s no fun to put a tent away wet.

So, in the dark, we broke down our tent in fast forward. The wind made it impossible to do anything in an organized manner, and we hurriedly crammed all our stuff inside the back doors to the bar, in a little storage and shop area. I was still 80% asleep for this ordeal, and by the time we were done I was primarily sad to be robbed of an opportunity to sleep in. Oh well.

We spent the morning putzing around the bar, attached store, and patio, watching the rain wax and wane throughout the first few hours of daylight. We patronized the breakfast food truck while we waited it out, and had a lovely meal prepared by another one of the locals (who let himself into the truck just to get it going on our behalf, in another of the unending gestures of gentle kindness of the folks around here).

It rained for hours, to my surprise. We reeled our plans for the day way back, and based on the weather forecast (and my incipient exhaustion, being a bit of a baby about our rude awakening) we decided to just scoot down the road to our previous day’s intended endpoint – the casino motel just over the border in Mesquite, NV, some 10-15 miles down the road.

We waited for a break in the rain, and when it arrived we left the sanctuary of the Beaver Dam Bar for the unwelcoming outside world. The miles between the bar and our destination were marked by winding, hilly highway, that ducked into and through narrow washes and valleys of stone. Even including the spattering of rain, it was a dramatic and beautiful stretch of road, for sure.

However, coming down into one of these valleys, I caught up with Alyssa at the bottom of the hill. She was recording a short video on her phone to commemorate the moment (and my tiredness) and happened to catch the exact moment we both realized that I had a rapidly deflating tire. I’d caught a flat on the descent immediately prior to this stop. Whoops.

Alyssa stayed with me to help me change my tire in the drizzle, and because it was only my front we could leave all the bags on the bike and just yank the wheel out. We had it fixed as fast as a Nascar pit-stop, and with a new patch we were back on the road.

Alyssa pulled ahead of me again, and she arrived in Mesquite while I was still about 2 miles out. As I pedaled up one of the last hills before town, I felt the characteristic squishiness of low air pressure in my rear tire. Sure enough, I looked down – another flat, this time on my rear. The rain was actually coming down now, and I cursed loudly into the empty highway through my rain jacket hood.

In my deflated state, it took me a decent chunk of time to fix this second flat in about 5 miles. I needed to remove all my bags, flip my bike, remove and fix the flat, then reassemble my whole kit – in the rain. I was unhappy about it and Alyssa went on ahead to sort out the accommodations while I struggled with my own situation.

Alyssa, being the amazing hard worker that she is, has what sometimes feels like an endless list of former coworkers who are ready to spring into action to help us at a moment’s notice, and Alyssa called in another favor offered by one of these former coworkers. The casino motel in Mesquite jacked up its prices in the time between when we last looked and now, and Alyssa’s former coworker Mary very kindly put us up for the evening since I was spent and the weather was garbage. This enabled me to, when I had my flat fixed, roll into town and straight to the motel, where Alyssa had already checked in and gotten the room already. Thank you Mary!!

Despite only going something like 12 miles, I arrived at nearly the time we’d normally be done riding for the day anyway. We relaxed away the rain from the safety of a building with a roof and four walls, and I warmed up with a hot bath. I treated myself to a rare full meal from McDonald’s – I had had a morning that only the nostalgia of  chicken nuggets could fix.

I spent the rest of the day enjoying the safety of the room, working on things for my Etsy store, planning our route for the next couple days, and turning in early to undo the unexpected exertion of the day. Phew.

October 9, 2021

Mesquite, NV to Valley of Fire State Park

We woke pretty early in anticipation of a long day in the saddle. Our plan was to try and hustle hard to make a detour that multiple people had recommended to us – Valley of Fire State Park, outside Las Vegas. It was only slightly out of the way in terms of mileage, but added a good amount of elevation. We decided that it seemed worth the detour and set off with our goal in mind in the cool morning.

The route for the day began as many of the last several days had – alongside the Virgin River as it wound its way across multiple states to its destination in Lake Mead. We followed it through a valley that was verdant thanks wholly to its moisture – up on the road, the plant life was spare, small, and scrubby; down in the valley just a few hundred feet away, the river supported angular trees, reeds, and grass.

Eventually though, our road led up and away from the river, and about 10 miles west of Mesquite it led us to I-15. Out here in Nevada, our options for roads passable on our heavily loaded road bikes were very limited, and for this 25 mile stretch northeast of Vegas it was our only option. On our Pacific Northwest tour in 2017, we rode on a stretch of I-5 for a few miles, and it was not nearly as bad as we expected. I would even say it was a nice ride. The scenery was incredible and the tailwind we got from all the traffic passing meant we were going like 17mph without even trying. I-5 was the desert highway experience I’d seen in the movies, a big long straight road that just stretches forever across a huge expanse of white sand and blue sky, the edges only bounded by moutains seen in the distance. This was much the same, although the feeling of biking up a highway on-ramp on a bicycle is pretty bizarre.

So up we went, onto the freeway. And frankly, it was great riding; cars pass us going 80 miles per hour on roads without a shoulder all the time, and the interstate has a cleared shoulder that’s wider than a lane, so it feels much safer than you’d expect. Also, the heavy traffic creates its own little micro-system of wind, and we had a generated tailwind for the entire section. We absolutely flew through the desert on the gently graded highway, and made it to our turnoff towards Valley of Fire in what felt like no time. Oh wait, I spoke too soon. Yeah – it was a good day of riding.

We paused for a moment after our freeway sprint to make a plan to stop for lunch in the town of Overton, maybe 7 or 8 miles before the entrance to the park. The riding down from the freeway was easy, mostly downhill as we cruised into the Moapa Valley. In particular I was feeling the riding after flying down the interstate, and beat Alyssa into town by a few minutes, for once!

We made the executive call to NOT go to Criss Angel’s restaurant called ‘blp’ (breakfast, lunch, pizza) even though they had one of the funniest menus I’d ever seen at a restaurant, complete with a chibi anime drawing of the Mindfreak himself in the kids’ korner. I’m not paying $15 for a sandwich in a no horse town, especially if that DOESN’T EVEN INCLUDE FRIES. Instead, we went to the normal townie diner and ice cream shop next door and got some sandwiches.

We made a pit stop after lunch to the grocery store to grab dinner for tonight in the park. Cooking sounded unappealing, so we grabbed some cheese, hummus, apples, and crackers to have a tiny little meatless charcuterie dinner.

Errands complete, we got back on the road towards the park. The landscape changed out of Overton, and the flat tan basin of the valley gave way to short, sharp hills of red earth. We made the right turn into the park and reached the actually difficult part of our day’s riding agenda: the climb into the park! The last ten miles brought us almost 1300 vertical feet higher, and often over very sharp, short grades.

I’ll never forget the ride into the park. I was listening to The Village Green Preservation Society by the Kinks and the sun was low in the sky as we rode through the Lake Mead National Recreation Area. There’s a specific, wondrous feeling that I get when we encounter a new type of landscape – the amount and variety of natural beauty that exists even within the American Southwest is truly mind-expanding. I was definitely vibing.

Nevertheless, we continued on, and made it to the welcome center of the park just on time to see a herd of bighorn sheep crossing the road between us and a waiting car behind us. Between the wildlife spotting and the increasingly alien landscape of jagged, red stone sharply jutting out at all angles, the park was already delivering for sure.

We climbed and climbed and took for-ev-er to make it the last 5 or so miles to the campground we were shooting for. The setting sun felt like a laser beam during the physical challenge of pushing our bikes up the climb. The view, however, was really difficult to beat – the red rock formations that give the Valley of Fire its name enclose you on every side, shining like an unrefined ruby in the setting sun. Climbing as we were, I arrived at the campground first. I attempted to shoot Alyssa a text amidst very weak cell service, and then went in to do a loop of the campground.

It was a Saturday evening, already late in the day, and as one might expect, the campground was totally packed. Not a single free site. I did two loops to make sure, and was just about to turn around and try the other campground when a man walking his dog hollered at me to ask if I needed a campsite. I replied in the affirmative, and he offered to share his spot – he was camping in his van, and not even using his tent pad at all. I happily accepted, introduced myself, and then headed out to find Alyssa.

When I entered the campground, I committed a bike touring faux pas, and neglected to leave my helmet or some sign of life to show Alyssa that I had made the turn into the campground. She had ridden clear past it, looking for me at the other campground, and having not found me (or a campsite), she came all the way back out to the road, where we happened to run into each other more or less on accident. Whoops, sorry!

But all was well, as we had a place to sleep. We gathered ourselves and moseyed over to our new friend’s site, and began setting up shop while he finished walking his dog.

Our ‘host’ for the evening was Roger, a retired systems administrator from Phoenix who’d spent the hottest weeks of the year bumming around Utah and other more northerly climes, and now that things were cooling down he was working his way back towards home, via Death Valley National Park. He described himself as not much of a socializer, but we had lovely conversation all evening as Alyssa and I got settled and enjoyed our (extremely delicious, actually) dinner.

I’ve buried the lede here for sure though – the campground itself was among the more incredible that we’d stayed in on this trip. Narrow spires and wedges of jagged, red rock shoot from the ground at all angles, densely packed like a model city of stone. The campsites weave between these stone ruins, so close it almost feels sacrilegious.

On TOP of the insane vistas at our doorstep, the campground also has some of the best camp showers I’ve ever seen – not time limited, free, with temperature controls, lighting, and a bench. Frankly, I’ve stayed in motels with worse showers than at Valley of Fire State Park – way to go Nevada. Preach!

Roger retired to his van soon after sundown, and we retired to our tent in kind, reading and working on some art on my iPad. It had been a decently effortful day, but felt really worth it as we drifted off to sleep amidst the silhouettes of towering red rocks.

October 10, 2021

Valley of Fire State Park to Henderson, NV

Valley of Fire State Park has many hiking trails of varying difficulties as entertainment to its guests, and Alyssa vocalized her desire to check some of them out the night prior. I counted myself out, saving my energy for what was looking like a hard day of riding, but Alyssa chased her bliss – when I woke up in the morning, she’d already taken off to go exploring. I lazed in the tent until the sun came out to heat me out of bed, and then broke camp, having a relaxed conversation and goodbye with Roger as I did.

Roger said something that stuck with both Alyssa and I as we shared his campsite: he suggested that we had a social obligation to talk to curious folks about our trip when prompted on the street at random, as often happens. His rationale was that we were living a dream, something that most folks don’t ever think is possible in their own lives. Because of our often conspicuous weirdness (people often walk up to us just to ask us what we’re doing with all the bags and such), it was our responsibility to inspire these curious folks and broaden their horizons. Food for thought, for sure.

I rode back down and shamed my previous evening’s riding performance by flying downhill to the Visitor’s Center in just a few minutes, where I’d agreed to meet Alyssa. I settled in for just maybe 5 or 10 minutes or so before Alyssa happened to show up, one nice hike later. She’d meandered through the red stone wonderland early enough in the morning that for large sections she was completely alone – it sounded lovely.

It really was lovely. One thing I regret about this style of travelling is that we get to go to all these wonderful places, but are frequently too tired to hike or do any meaningful exploring once there. I was happy I had the umph to get going that morning and add another 700ish feet of elevation to get up to the hike I wanted to do. Walking through a sandy slot canyon, all by myself, and being able to do my morning meditation sitting on a rock watching the sun fully come up was a great start to the day.

We took our time getting ready for the day behind the Visitor’s Center, having a snack-based breakfast, using the restroom, refilling water containers, et cetera. We were psyching ourselves up for a long day on the bike – all the way into Greater Las Vegas, to the city of Henderson about 10 miles from the Vegas Strip. This amounted to about 60 miles, but our largest day of climbing of the trip yet. This blew my mind – Vegas is surrounded by mountains? Duh, says everyone else. The tall rolling hills of Highway 167 amounted to repeated climbs of 600 or 800 feet, over and over, all day long. So we dilly dallied just a little, enjoying our morning before the climbing.

Eventually though, we got on the road. We made great time out of the park, and climbed the sharp ridge back to the welcome center just as someone was staging a photo shoot of some kind. They saw us roll up, fully out of breath, and the entire group gassed us up by exclaiming in disbelief that we’d come all the way from Chicago. They all asked for our instagrams and such, and snapped some pictures of us at the top of this short hill in the morning sun – I felt like a celebrity. Our own personal photoshoot over, we got back to business, down the winding road out of the park back to Highway 167.

With Lake Mead intermittently shimmering on our left hand side all day long in between rolling desert landscape, the vistas were truly beautiful. As we worked our way towards the first big climb of the day, we encountered a spring that the photographers had told us about, and popped off the road to check it out. It was arranged like a veritable desert oasis – in the unreal landscape of sandy scrub, a spring poured out of the stone and down a creek towards Lake Mead. It gathered in pools, surrounded by tall palm trees and waving grasses and plant life. We took a few minutes to take a dip in the roughly ambient temperature water (something like the high 80s this particular day) before heading back on our way.

The climbs were extraordinarily beautiful – the texture of the stone seemed to change around every bend, and the road wound like a car commercial test track through this postcard landscape. The climbs weren’t so bad individually, either! We both felt the power this morning, and charged up hill after hill after hill.

As the day wore on, my energy levels definitely declined. These repeated climbs were really something else – you did get the benefit of racing down the other side, but the climbs themselves were often fairly steep and quite long. We traded positions as we exchanged roadside breaks in the shadeless desert, trying to snack our way to success.

The riding was exhausting but excellent, and I felt much more gratitude to be there than frustration at the hill climbing, for sure. That being said, the last 5 or so miles out of the park reminded me of the South Park meme where Stan’s dad is all beat up and bloody with the boxing gloves, exclaiming “I didn’t hear no bell!”. There’s one final pair of climbs, 400 feet followed by another 300 or so feet, that just about knocked both Alyssa and I off the bikes after working in the hot sun all day.

This was a strange riding day. The scenery was so beautiful and remote, and the hills were broken up into mostly-manageable chunks that it was a mostly enjoyable challenge. There wasn’t much traffic, but we did start seeing a good amount of luxury vehicles, I think we were passed by at least two Lamborghinis and a good amount of Porsches. It felt like we were riding into Vegas, for sure. The last two hills, and about final 7 miles were absolute torture. We basically came up a good hill, descended around a bend and were greeted by an absolute stone cold evil bitch of a climb up to our final turn before Henderson. Seeing that nasty girl as I came around the bend took all the wind out of my sails and the final few miles were accompanied by much whining and cursing at fate. We ended up doing about 70 miles and 5000 feet of elevation that day.

We made it though, and after ditching the hilly bike path for the adjacent graded bike lane, we rode into Henderson. We stopped at a gas station to get snack rewards for our achievement, and I slammed some treats in the laser beam late afternoon Nevada sunshine in the parking lot.

I was so destroyed that I couldn’t figure out how to unlock the bathroom at this gas station and needed to tearfully find Kevin to assist. Then I had a donut and everything was okay again.

From there, we’d hoped to have made contact with a Warmshowers host, but upon returning to cell service we discovered that no one had responded to us. Oh well! We scouted out our motel options for a few minutes before settling on a (of course) casino hotel about halfway to Las Vegas proper, making our ride the next morning to meet Doug and Jack just 10 miles or so. We grabbed takeout dinner on the way (Panda Express for me, Chipotle for Alyssa) and arrived at our hotel around 5.

We checked in and got settled – it was a really nice room, with a fancy schmancy bathroom. We both took luxurious showers and did our preening before strutting our stuff on the Vegas Strip all week with our friends. I shaved and gave myself a haircut, and we relaxed in our double queen luxury, reading and cruising the internet until the evening time. It was definitely nice to be back indoors, and also a little weird to be back in ‘civilization’ for real… Vegas was the biggest city we’d ridden into on this trip, and our largest city since Salt Lake. We scouted out donut joints to stop by in the morning before turning in for a well earned night’s sleep.

October 11, 2021

Henderson, NV to Las Vegas, NV

We woke up in the morning to a handful of text messages from Doug and Jack, who’d caught an early early morning flight and had already landed soon after we woke up. Only 10 miles away with a donut pitstop in between, we let them know we were on our way and packed up and checked out.

Doug and Jack had hatched the idea a few weeks back that since there was four of us (and because the prices were super low compared to pre-coronavirus times) we could splurge a little bit and get a suite at one of Las Vegas’ most famous casino hotels, the Palazzo at the Venetian. So Alyssa and I were in for a tone switch after spending most of the last 2 months either outdoors or in the cheapest possible motel available.

Our destination in mind, we rolled into Las Vegas proper. Stopping briefly to take a picture of A Las Vegas Sign (not the ‘official’, famous Welcome to Las Vegas sign, but one that looks exactly like it on another road), we rolled down busy streets towards the donut shop we’d scouted out. Once we arrived, we found it was closed despite the hours on the door and online suggesting it’d be open… oh well, such is the way of things in 2021 I guess. We pivoted to another excellent looking donut shop down the street and got our fix, grabbing a half dozen donuts to greet Doug and Jack with (and some extras for Alyssa and I to enjoy right then).

Donuts tucked safely away, we rolled down towards the Strip. It was a moment I’d looked forward to since we left – our scummy selves rolling down past the glitz and glamour of all the fancy casinos. It was just like how I envisioned it! We turned onto Las Vegas Blvd headed north, and drew confused looks from the tourists walking the streets with giant alcoholic beverages in their hands at 11 am. We rolled up to the valet parking at the entrance to the Palazzo and gawked at the ridiculous ostentation all around us for a moment. We made it!

October 11 – 14, 2021

Las Vegas, NV with Doug and Jack

We met Doug and Jack on the casino floor after we’d stowed our loaded bikes safely with the departure desk. After we made eye contact, we all rushed together and Jack picked both Alyssa and I up in a hug next to the high roller blackjack tables. It was great to see them – and so bizarre. We’d ridden our bikes all the way here, and they’d had to fly a couple hours and change time zones just to meet us! It sent home just how far we’d come under our own power.

Much like our time in Salt Lake, it’s hard to sum up how nice it was to see familiar faces and have good times out on the town together. But broken down, here’s roughly what we got up to:

• walk the casino floors of almost every major casino on the Strip, getting a flavor for each one
• lost money on slots, as one does. Specifically, lost money on slot games I made the art for, which was kind of neat to see on the grand casino floors of Las Vegas
• played blackjack for the first time at a low minimum bet table at an off-Strip casino. Super fun!
• went whole hog at a delicious all you can eat sushi dinner
• got honestly amazing Mexican food right on the Strip at Tacos El Gordo
• cheered Jack on towards getting 16th in a poker tournament at Caesar’s Palace
• bar hopped between classic Las Vegas dives, including an excellent tiki bar with fun cocktails
• got pedicures, all 4 of us, which was Jack’s first ever
• took in all the typical Vegas Strip sights, including the fountains at the Bellagio
• got a $5 piece of original art from a converted cigarette machine on the floor of the Cosmopolitan that now vends cigarette pack-sized originals
• visited the Neon Museum and did the guided tour at night through the boneyard of old Las Vegas classic neon signage… maybe my favorite thing we did
• drove a rented car out to the Hoover Dam, which is a truly mind bending feat of engineering achievement in person
• relaxed with drinks in the hot tub
• took full advantage of our Prestige status at the hotel (yes, really) by using the included Prestige Lounge floor to get free breakfast and free cocktails every morning and evening
• walked around Chinatown, grabbing a delicious pho dinner in the process
• generally pretended to be rich people for 4 days

It was tremendously fun, and difficult to put into words how nice it was to see my two best friends in such a weird place on such a weird journey. It was an activity-filled couple days, and not exactly tremendously restful, but I’m so glad we got to spend so much time with familiar faces after months on the road.

October 15, 2021

Las Vegas, NV rest day

Doug and Jack were due to fly out that last night of their stay, so we spent the day with them going to see the Hoover Dam and enjoying Chinatown for dinner before saying our goodbyes as they dropped us off at the other hotel Alyssa and I had scooted to in order to save some dough. (Still the Circus Circus, another famous casino hotel on the strip).

We woke up the next morning knowing that after the last couple days of activities we were in no shape to be riding again just yet, and needed a rest day (or as close to it as we could muster). Since now it was approaching the weekend, we couldn’t afford to extend our stay at Circus Circus and decided to move 9 miles to the south edge of Las Vegas to a motel we could actually afford.

On our way, I scoped out a great retro diner type joint for breakfast not far from our motel destination. We had a super delicious breakfast and talked about our route options for the next few days and weeks – we were entering the most remote sections of our US riding plans, so it required some finessing in order to properly understand where we could get food, water, and sleep as we crossed the portions of the Mojave, Colorado, and Sonoran deserts between us and Los Angeles.

Planning for the next couple days done, we hopped over to check into our motel. The very nice older man working the front desk was outside having a smoke when we rolled up to the front office building and he was tickled by how weird of a thing we were doing. In between perfunctory questions related to our stay, he would prod me for details of our trip.

All checked in, we dropped our stuff off and walked over to the nearest large strip mall to do some grocery getting. Between Big Lots and Target we got our needs met, and did a little bit of fun window shopping at a fun & crazy clothing store in the same area. Alyssa also made a pitstop at a Sally’s to grab some neon green hair dye to change things up a bit in the name of Halloween.

We sorted out the groceries back at the room and afterwards I decided that I wanted some alone time, and took off on my bicycle to do some mostly unnecessary errand running as an excuse to get out and ride around solo for a while. I got some treats at the nearest Trader Joe’s and pit stopped at a great, small bike shop in Henderson in search of spare tubes and brake pads for Alyssa. Mostly, I just spent the afternoon cruising around busy outer Las Vegas boulevards listening to music, going as fast as I could to enjoy the feeling of a bike without like a hundred pounds of stuff strapped to it. It was a nice little break, for sure.

Back at the motel just before sundown, Alyssa and I got to cooking dinner (pasta with red sauce, mixing it up from the usual pesto this time) while having a nice long video call with my sibling Andy. It was really nice to catch up about things going on back in Chicago, and to see our old apartment (and how much it’s changed) after a few months on the road. Alyssa definitely did the lion’s share of cooking as I was engrossed enough in conversation to not be much help – multitasking is hard, alright?

After dinner and our call, Alyssa and I tried to relax in our motel room as best we could in prep for getting back on the road, but it was honestly kind of hard. We were both feeling pretty burned out after racing to get to Vegas and then 4 whirlwind days of activity. We asked some pretty big questions in a difficult and tired conversation that lasted intermittently for most of the evening – how do we want this trip to go? How can we change our pace or technique to make it better suit our mental and physical health needs? Is this method of travel wrong for us? It was hard stuff, but I’m thankful we keep it as a part of the ongoing conversation around the trip – it all comes back to the weird privilege of the thing we’re doing. We’re lucky to be opting in to this itinerant lifestyle, and thankful for all that we get to see and do while we’re out in the world, but the fact is that we are constantly unsure of where we’re sleeping or getting our next meal or drink, and that is often difficult and exhausting even in (and sometimes especially in) a big city. We were both feeling the cumulative effects this particular night, even though we were lucky enough to have been sleeping indoors for the better part of a week now. It’s complicated, for sure. We retired to bed without a ton of resolution, knowing that we had some difficult riding ahead of us through the desert.

October 16, 2021

Las Vegas, NV to Primm, NV

We slept in, by our standards, and got moving close to 8. We planned for a medium length day straight to the border of Nevada and our 9th and final state of our US leg, California. (Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, Colorado, Utah, Arizona, Nevada, California, for those keeping score at home).

Our destination for the day is the weird border casino resort town of Primm, and our method for getting there was to go back to Las Vegas Boulevard (which is literally the street that makes up ‘the Strip’) and take it until it ends. We climbed slowly and gently out of the shallow bowl that Las Vegas sits in, tracking alongside I-15 for the entire morning. We rode separately, listening to podcasts and putting our blinders on to get the miles in, carrying a little bit of the difficult energy of last night’s conversation with us.

We stopped at a roadside attraction about halfway to Primm – a public art piece of a series of giant painted boulders stacked on top of each other. Mildly neat to see, but even better people watching, as we sat in the parking lot and had a quick snack while checking out the tourists coming and going from their extravagant trips to Sin City.

Hopping down the road a few miles, we stopped again for the use of a Real Bathroom at a truck stop in Jean, NV. I grabbed a mango Pepsi (which I can’t remember if I’ve mentioned – they’re the absolute best and my new vice) and bag of chips, and Alyssa grabbed a bag of Cheetos. We bolstered our moods, snacking in the shade of a parking lot tree, enjoying the weird sights of an empty, permanently closed casino hotel across the street. Alyssa made sure to pose for a picture in the dilapidated metal statue in front of the parking lot to commemorate the weirdness.

Back on the road, we kept on Las Vegas Blvd as it continued worsening and worsening in quality – not in a bad way, in a fun way. Traffic lessened and lessened as the road quality declined, and eventually, the road itself emptied out onto a dirt track still labeled as Las Vegas Blvd. We pushed our bikes up and over a sandy wash onto the ‘street’ and laughed at how insane it was that if you took this dirt road long enough you’d arrive at the glitzy Las Vegas Strip.

The riding was actively fun, with absolutely no cars anymore, on a bumpy and often only vaguely delineated road through the desert scrub towards the cut-rate Disneyland that is Primm on the horizon. Some 8 miles of 95% rideable dirt led us into the town, which by all appearances is really just a handful of ridiculously extravagant casino hotels with roller coasters and themed building facades next to giant truck stop gas stations on either side of I-15.

Again, it was the weekend, so the hotel prices were pretty firmly out of our budget. On top of that, there was apparently some (super sick, actually) dirt track buggy race happening on the racetrack behind Primm that weekend, and the vast majority of the rooms were booked. Nevertheless, I figured I’d take a whack at a somewhat harebrained idea I had on the ride in – I’d seen a billboard offering $100 Free Play if you signed up for a Players’ card at the casino there (Free Play, for those who aren’t familiar, is essentially free money for use only on gaming in the casino). I chatted with the hotel desk clerk, and then the folks running the player services desk, to see if I could sign up for a Players’ Rewards card and then just use the credit towards a hotel room – the answer was no, and we couldn’t even use it to try and gamble our way towards winning enough to get a stay because of a 3-day waiting period for new card members. Boo!

Still early in the afternoon, we bummed around the ‘town’ a little bit, popping over to the convenience store to ask about where we might be able to put up a tent. Not a ton of useful intel from the kind clerk, who suggested we probably couldn’t camp near the truck stop because of all the trucks coming and going. We decided to just sort of spin our wheels for a little while, and hang out at the McDonalds to soak up the great indoors and free WiFi.

Long story short, we discovered that BLM land extended alllllll the way up to the property line for the casino hotel on the north side of I-15. As in, right up to the parking lot. So we rode our bikes over there in the late afternoon and set up our tent, fully legally, within walking distance of a 24-hour gas station and the twinkling lights of Whiskey Pete’s casino hotel. I still think this is hilarious, actually – why does anyone even stay there? You can just camp for free and still use the bathroom literally any time you want, it’s a 2 minute walk. Amazing.

After we got our camp set up, I returned a call from my older sibling Dylan and had a nice conversation with them, my first of this trip. We had a lot to catch up on and it was really very nice to walk around the undeveloped desert as the sun went down over the mountains, chatting away.

The sun down, Alyssa and I both retired to the tent to read and draw as the temperature dropped down into the 40s that night. At this point I was getting pretty used to the chilly fall nights, even here in the desert, and they often made for a solid night’s sleep – and this night was no different.

October 17, 2021

Primm, NV to Kelso, CA

We woke in the slightly-too-cool-for-comfort air and got to breaking our tent down in the blue sky sunshine of our last Nevada morning. As we packed up, a man from the adjacent truck parking lot came by with his dog, going for a stroll and reading the informational signs about the recreation area we were camping next to.

After a beat, he broke the silence and began to chat with us about our trip. And so we met Don, a smiley middle aged man with a charming upper Midwestern accent that felt vaguely like home. Don lives up near the Canadian border in Minnesota, running a ferry service across the border in the summer when it’s viable, and then taking the odd trucking job to “move stuff around the country” as he put it. He has a friend who occasionally calls on him and asks if he’d care to make a few bucks driving cargo for a few days – seems like a great gig for a seasonally busy single guy.

Don excitedly chatted with us about his life and ours for a little while, before asking us what our breakfast plans were – he wanted to take us out to the IHOP at Whiskey Pete’s to keep our company a little while longer. Not ever ones to pass up good company OR a decent breakfast, we of course happily obliged.

Captain Don (as Alyssa and I came to call him – he is a captain, literally!) grabbed a table while we got our act together enough to meet him for breakfast. We found him already seated, and we spent a lovely meal in each other’s company, chatting about how covid affected life on the border, trucking, our trips, his trips, and more.

Captain Don is of the type of people we’ve mentioned more than once on this blog, whom we’re always thankful to meet – folks who don’t need anything from you, fully-formed and buttoned-up, with a casual air of self-assuredness that makes conversation especially easy and stress-free. Not to mention the breakfast; if you’re reading this Don, thank you again!!

After breakfast, Don noted the time for us and said that he didn’t want to keep us and suggested that he wouldn’t be hurt if we had to go. We got our things together, said our goodbyes and thank yous, and then got on our way.

We took a moment to get our heads screwed on straight in front of Whiskey Pete’s, and Alyssa exclaimed aloud to no one in particular how dry the desert had been making her hair; out of nowhere, a woman in a nearby car hops out and says, “I’ve got hair mask on me, do you want some??”, and like an angel just popped on over and let Alyssa grab some. It was a beautiful moment of long hair solidarity.

Finally on the road, we crossed over the highway to make our way towards and into the Mojave National Preserve, a tract of protected beauty we were really looking forward to biking through (even if it meant leaving the relative resource abundance of Greater Las Vegas). Following a back road out of Primm, we crossed the non-existent border into California onto a dirt track.

This dirt track led us towards the Ivanpah Dry Lake Bed, a bizarre point of desert landscape interest, the remnants of a moderately sized lake that has long since dried up, leaving only the silty, salty deposits to bake in the sun. As we rode towards it, we crossed paths with a park ranger in a truck, who pulled over and chatted with us for a while.

He was also jazzed about what we were doing, and had a very fun and funny air about him. He was very affable and quick to crack jokes, while also giving us very useful direction information for our upcoming riding. This included the explicit instructions to leave the road completely and ride straight across the dry lake bed – so we did just that.

Riding across the lake bed was extremely surreal. It was flat and mostly smooth, with a very bizarre texture that felt like riding on toasted bread – crunchy and rigid on the very top crusty layer, with a spongy (and slightly muddy) texture just beneath. It’s flat for maybe a half mile in every direction, and at points you feel like you can’t even see the other side due to the heat distortion on the horizon.

On the other side, we reached where the ranger had pointed us, which turned out to be an access path that was mostly sand and brush, and we spent the better part of a half hour very laboriously pushing our bikes back up the the “road” – which in this case, was an only-slightly-better dirt and sand track.

We rode/pushed our bikes along this second path for 7 miles or so before it rejoined up with pavement just at the entrance to the Mojave. The plan for the day saw us climbing a pretty good amount very gradually as we passed around and then over the ridge we’d be looking at all day. The landscape became a different kind of beautiful as we climbed in the hot sun (and hot wind, right in our faces), eventually transforming into a veritable forest of joshua trees – burned to nothing on one side of the road, and branching and wild on the other side. Something had clearly happened fairly recently near the top of this ridge.

As we neared the top of the climb, we saw someone’s house (side note: how do these people just live on national land? How is that possible and also where do I sign up?) and decided to pull over to ask for water to replenish our reserves. An older man was operating a tractor in the yard when we rolled up, and very kindly stopped what he was doing to speak with us. He brought us cold water in water bottles, and then refilled our normal bottles from his tap inside (attesting that their well was “great for drinking”, which it really was).

He told us that the fire that had claimed the joshua trees on one side of the road had almost claimed his entire property. He had spent all day that day building fire walls with a tractor and backhoe, trying to stop the wildfire from spreading over his house. The reason that the fire stopped right at the road was because the firefighters did what he called a ‘burnback’ – as the fire was spreading towards the road, the firefighters start another, contained fire, burning away from it. As the ends meet, the fire has a new, controlled front. This burnback probably saved this man’s property. Pretty crazy to see the evidence of those events all around us.

We kept on down the road, now tired and hot from our windy climb up, but with the benefit of having summited the climb near the house, everything else for the rest of the day was more or less downhill. Our goal for the evening was to try and camp near the old Kelso Depot, a former train station and post office-turned visitor’s center in the bottom of one of these great big geographic bowls that make up the Mojave Preserve.

When I was planning this route, I wanted to make sure we had adequate resources the whole length. So, I called the NPS to ask them about the Kelso Depot – specifically, if there was potable water. The man on the phone assured me that yes, there was water and yes, it was potable. I asked again, “I’m self-supported on a bicycle, can I absolutely count on that?”, and he confirmed.

We rolled into the Kelso Depot just as the sun set behind the ridge after a long, hard day of riding, and sure enough – the water is not potable. We were okay and had enough water because of the kind man at the top of the ridge, but it was still disappointing. It’s a lot nicer to know you don’t have to conserve water, for sure. As I was complaining about this fact out loud, someone who stopped to use the public restroom at the depot walked by and mentioned that they had plenty of extra water they could share if it was helpful, and gave us an entire unopened gallon. Ask and you shall receive!

As we were getting our food stuff out to have a dinner of cheese, hummus, apples, and crackers in the waning light, we saw another bicycle weirdo roll up toward the depot parking lot. Scott, a friendly and open man in his 50s, has been riding for the better part of two years (covid aside, kind of). He had bicycled all over Australia and Southeast Asia before coronavirus happened, and so he holed up in Cambodia for the intervening time. Eventually when it really seemed like this whole thing wasn’t just going to blow over, he flew back “home” to the United States, where he re-kitted up his bicycle and restarted riding with a new goal in mind – to visit all of the National Parks in the US. We caught him passing the other direction on his way to Death Valley.

We swapped road stories and chatted about gear and such for a bit while we all ate some food. He was the only other bicycle tourist we’d seen carrying as much stuff as we were, which was weirdly validating since he was the only other one we’d met who’d done some international touring on his rig, really.

Camping is explicitly forbidden on the signage at the Kelso Depot, so we scouted out the private property behind the burned out post office across the street and decided we were obscured enough from the road to not get bothered – and who would roust folks camping in the middle of the Mojave Desert, anyway? The three of us set up our camps behind various line-of-sight shields from the road; behind the old chimney of a building for us, and behind a small cabin for Scott.

As we got ready for bed, Scott and I were chatting about route-finding standing next to the road on the private property side of the street, when a ranger in a Park Service pickup drove by and rolled down his window. He said, “Is this your property?”. Thinking on my feet, I decided to play a little dumb to avoid having to move my stuff, and I said, “Nope!”. “Well, it’s private property, so you can’t stand on that side of the street.” I immediately nodded and walked away, hoping to avoid further confrontation.

The rest of the night, we were a little on edge about getting rousted now that we had been somewhat seen. I didn’t think they’d seen our camping setups, otherwise they would’ve said so, but still – not the most relaxing moment. To top that off, it turns out the highly remote road through the Mojave is actually heavily trafficked at night for some reason, and cars drove by multiple times a minute until well after midnight. On top of that, someone who had parked in the lot apparently had car troubles that necessitated a tow, which caused a big scene involving rangers and tow trucks and more. And on top of THAT, a tractor trailer took down a huge branch of a tree some 15 feet from our tent and folks had to come out to clear the road in the night. It was a very active, sort of nerve-wracking night of fitful sleep at what was apparently the busiest rural highway in America.