I had one of my best sleeps of my trip, I think I slept solid through the whole night. I was still a bit groggy when I woke with the sun, but I was excited for another day of riding. When I discovered that my fridge had turned off overnight because of the stupid cigarette lighter plug I decided to do something about it. Honestly, the piece of shit, you had to wiggle the plug just right in the socket to get it to work. Solution? Cut the plug off and wire the fridge directly into the solar regulator. The fridge will always be on and it has its own on/off switch, so no reason not to. I was done in ten minutes. No more fridge cut-offs! Happily, that also bypasses my voltage drop issue, which I still need to fix, but now it is not so pressing.
Breakfast of cereal, then I drove out of camp to Cottonwood trailhead. I was doing this on a suggestion from Kona Kelly, otherwise I may never have known about it! The trailhead is in a town called Blue Diamond, just south of Red Rock Canyon National Park. It’s a beautiful small town. Once I drove in, I parked near the few other cars with bike racks. A few more people filed into the same place as I got ready. I pulled out my riding clothes from yesterday but donned a long-sleeve shirt this time, mostly because everyone else in the carpark was doing it, but it was a little colder out further into the desert.
I got going by riding through town following another rider. I hit the trailhead soon enough. I planned to do a big clockwise loop, starting on the Blue Diamond loop. About a mile in, there was a small inner loop called “Hurl”, “the most technical trail in the network” according to MTB project. It earnt its name on the climb up. A lot of bouts of walking due to loose rock that was impassable for my legs. I still managed to get Queen of the Mountain status on this section! At the end of the climb, I was atop a plateau, looking down into the desert. The downhill made it all worth it, but it was nothing too technical. Finishing out the back half of the Blue Diamond loop was flowy but not hard. I preferred this riding to Boulder because of the desert. There was a lot more fauna and there was a stunning backdrop of canyons and cliffs on the west side that kept distracting me.
On the “Rubby Ducky” trail I came across a tree full of duckies! Haha, very cool. Made me smile. I carried on until I reached the south carpark, then got onto “Late Night Loop”. I was hoping this would be worth it since it wasn’t in MTB Project’s recommended loop. Wow, it was stunning. The desert bush became more dense here, with a huge variety of trees, cacti and shrubs. Not only that, the red cliffs came closer. This was an absolutely beautiful trail, with two gradual climbs and two fast, twisty descents. The dirt changed from brown to red to purple and when it wasn’t dirt, it was white, orange and red rocks, most of the time chunky and loose.
On one of the descents, I turned a corner and my handlebar, and therefore my left hand, punched a cactus. I hadn’t even seen it, probably from tunnel vision focusing on the trail, but I definitely felt it! I yelled out loud. It was solid and sharp! My knuckles hurt and inspecting my fingers, I had multiple puncture wounds and splinters, one of which actually penetrated through my skin. Ow!! I got most of the them out, but some would have to wait for tweezers back at the car. Flexing my hand, it still throbbed, but better to get going than wait for something to swell up! I would pay more attention for cactus in my peripheral vision! Ten minutes later, I did it again, this time with my right hand. I think I realised at the last minute so shifted my hand so it wasn’t as bad. The yell was more from frustration this time, rather than pain. I bit more surgery to remove the spikes and I was away again.
I really, really enjoyed the last section of “Late Night” and the fun continued on “Land Mine” which took me back to the trailhead. The cliffs came ever closer and the scenery was brilliant. Such a great ride. I did 30km in all and it had only just gone 10am. I would figure out later that daylight savings had ended, hence my early schedule.
Back at the car, I went into the bike shop to ask if the cactus I ran into has any poison in it. I felt a bit dumb asking the question, but my left hand did feel a bit numb… I thought the guy in there was pulling my leg when he said they are poisonous, but it’s all good poison! He started naming different cactus and the types of poison they have, so I showed him a photo of the one I hit and he said they do have an anaesthetic in them, but nothing harmful. Good!
I spent some time on my fingers with the tweezers and I had success, I think I got them all. I parked the bike on the roof, but left my riding gear on because I was considering doing the Cowboy trails, closer to Red Rock Canyon. According to the bike shop guy, they were more technical than Cottonwood. I felt great as I got in the car to drive towards the canyon, I was listening to some great music, the weather was perfect!
At Little Creek Canyon, there were a bunch of cars parked alongside the road. I got FOMO, so I pulled over and decided to do the 1.5 mile walk in to the canyon which sat between two impressive rock towers. I was certain there would be climbers in there also. I decided to jog it, just to make the easy trail more challenging. I felt a burn in my legs as soon as I got going, but stuck with a slow jog most of the way. I eventually made it into the shade of one of the mountains and it was great to get a close-up view of the rock formations. They are cathedral like, but with different horizontal bands of colour. Lo and behold, I did see a group of climbers, all on one section of the rock on the south-side of the trail. Crucially, it was in the shade. I jogged back to the car through a maze of trails, eventually finding the main one and sticking to it. It was from here that I got my first glimpse of red rock canyon. They mean it when they say red! I wish I’d been to Ayres Rock in Australia to compare, because I know that is supposed to be red.
I downed a bunch of water and continued driving north. When I reached the Red Rock Canyon overlook, I joined the cyclists and motorcyclists in the carpark there to enjoy the view and have lunch. Ham, cheese, tomato and capsicum wrap. The cold ingredients went down well with heaps of water. As I was finishing up, a cyclists named Joel came and talked to me because he was admiring what I’d done with the Astro. He was in Vegas selling a house for his parents and had previously ridden his bike all the way across the country from San Diego to Florida in two months. It was interesting to talk to him about that experience. He’d also been riding in Portugal and Italy. Not a bad idea!
I drove into Red Rock after waiting in line at the entrance gate. I think there had been a complication with refilling the empty roll of paper to print receipts so had been a delay. Sigh. Anyway, inside the park, I went to the visitor’s centre where I didn’t learn much, but felt very indecisive about what I was doing. Michael (from Joshua Tree) had told me about Red Rock and how amazing it was to climb there. The Red Rock map also listed it as one of the top five places to climb in the US. This made me feel like I should stay here and climb, but Michael also mentioned it’s hard to meet buddies because the campground is outside of the park and after driving past a few crags, there didn’t seem to be any common area, just separate crags. I felt pretty crap about this. I was tired from the riding so didn’t really feel like climbing anyway but what a place! Surely I should do more than just drive through? I told myself that if I went to the effort of trying to get a climb in, I wouldn’t really be experiencing Red Rock, I’d just be climbing for the sake of saying I’d done it, which isn’t worth it. I was tired, it’s ok to just take in the sights. But I still feel lame because of the type of people that normally do that. They were all around me in their rental cars, wearing their active wear for nothing-hikes and constantly hanging out their selfie sticks for a photo. I am not one of those people! Anyway, I did my best to enjoy the breathtaking scenery. It was another place that is nothing like Australia. Completely unique. I did see climbers dotted all over. The crags seemed endless.
The scenic drive complete, I said goodbye to the red rocks and drove east across Vegas, peering out from the highway to see the places on the strip I had been almost a year ago. No desire to go back in there. I was heading for the Valley of Fire State Park. This was another one I ummed and arred about because I knew there would be an entrance fee, but Sophia and Clements (from Joshua Tree) had been there and Lonely Planet listed it as one of the places to see in Nevada, so decision made. At the turn off to the park, there was a festival of some sort going on, so I stopped in for a look. I had a throbbing headache, maybe because of lack of water, maybe because my headband was too tight, maybe because I was stressed out!! Anyway, the festival was about native Indian dancing and very weird music. It was a competition with age categories. I sat down on the grass just as the junior girls did their thing. The music consisted of four boys beating one drum and making noise with their mouths, kind of like a chant. The dancing was a lot of stomping feet, it was mostly about the costumes, which were elaborate. Everyone was sitting around watching, I suspect mostly families of the children dancing. I stayed to watch the boys dance, then had enough. The drums and “singing” were hurting my head and the sun was stating to sink.
I got to the Valley of Fire just after 3pm, paid my $10 to get in. If I had have been half and hour earlier, my timing would have been perfect. I was in time to see the rocks of the park lit up by the sun in powerful orange and red, but this faded before long as the sun went behind the surrounding mountains. Never mind, it was still beautiful and sunset was amazing. This was another case of driving through, though I did get out at Atlatl Rock to see some petroglyphs and again at Mouse’s Tank to walk through a canyon and see yet more petroglyphs.
On the way out of Mouse’s, a guy standing high up on one of the rocks whistled out to me and pointed behind me, where a big horn sheep was standing. I was awed by it. It was grey/brown, with a brown coat and two sleek horns curling slightly at the back of his head. He looked like an oversized goat more than a sheep. I stood watching him watching me. Eventually, he turned his head away and climbed down off the rock, his mate joining him. I thanked the guy for pointing them out to me, how cool to see them!
The sun was well and truly setting by the time I was near the White Domes. I turned around here. Some people had a prime spot out on a Pride Rock lookalike (Lion King reference). Jealous. The park closed at sunset so I started making my way out, taking a lot of photos out the window of the car. The ranger was already rounding people up as I drove out. As soon as I was out of the park I was keen to find a camp. Strange that it had only just passed 5pm. I would have to get used to the time difference, I don’t like the days getting shorter.
I used freecampsites.net to see what options I had coming up and there were plenty because I was in BLM land. I came across a big open area on both sides of the road where there were dozens of RVs parked, so I decided to join the crew, I parked on the town-side of the road where I could look down on the twinkling lights of Overton.
I had a well-looked forward to shower before trying to call Alex, which didn’t work. At this point I got frustrated with my phone because it showed full bars and “4G” and I had no internet connection. What the f*** is 4G supposed to mean if not internet connection? Sometimes I think it would be better to live without technology. Happily, the phone wasn’t completely useless, it was great at holding the pages of my book down as I ate dinner, which was chorizo and pea risotto.
My hand hurts.
