As I peered out the motel window, Im glad that we decided to leave later rather than earlier. It is a foggy chilly morning, and my bike says it is 41 degrees fahrenheit or 5 degrees celsius.
It is absolutely fantastic to be back on the road, continuing our adventures down from Alaska. We merge onto one boring, dry and dusty highway…Highway 5. There is not much to see as we barrel across the central valleys fruited plains that quickly turn into farms starved for water and a congress led dustbowl…per the road signage! The air is filled with various pesticide concoctions, and I think to myself, if more people rode a motorcycle they would realize how nasty this stuff is!
Crossing the Tehachapi Mountains was beautiful, and as I looked out across at the "edward scissor hands" looking wind farms, I was thankful that not many of then were spinning! Yucca trees started to emerge as we entered the Mojave Desert area, the temperature is now 70 f / 21 c!
Kev has his navigation set on Saskwatch talk…it is absolutely hilarious. It squarks, clicks and screams at you for the directions. We end up skwatch talking back and forth to each other…a stupid way to pass the time riding through the desert, but fun! Even though the desert landscape is desolate and barren, there is a simplistic beauty out here. We rode to Joshua Tree for lunch then onto Westmorland, California and called it a day.
My Autocom is playing up so we will spend a couple of nights in Tucson to overnight parts to fix the problem.
Just by chance I realized that Arizona's clocks are an hour ahead. If we are going to get there before the end of the business day and possibly receive our Yellow Fever shots from the travel clinic, we better have an early start. We both wake up bright and eager this morning, and after a bowl of complementary Raisin Bran we are on the road. It is 7:30am California time, 8:30 am Arizona time. It is great because the clock on my bike was 1 hour ahead and now I do not have to change it! We are on the road early enough to see the road blocks being set up by police, and I'm glad that we are not waiting in line to go through them. The mornings are beautiful to ride in and I also feel that I can accomplish so much with many hours ahead. It is misty, a little windy and definitely crisp.
About 2 hours into the ride the wind starts to amp up, so much so that for the remainder of the day on the road we were leaning heavily to the right…into the wind. Dust and sand blew in gusts across the freeway, tumble weeds rolled in front of us, which prompted my response of "Weeeeed" into the communication system! Sorry you have to be an Aussie to get that one!…ha ha ha. Huge mature Saguaro cactus begin to forest the countryside, so impressive it is really hard to take your eyes off them. Maybe turning my head into the wind elevates some of the stress on my neck pushing against the wind….luckily for me it is in the direction of the amazing cactus. Did you know it can take a cactus up to 75 years to grow one arm?
I didn't realize how tired I was until I pulled off the freeway. My tired upper body didn't want to pull the clutch in any more, balance the bike, or be in traffic at all! Still we powered on to try and make it to the travel clinic for our shots. We did manage to catch the nurse, she had contacted us earlier, although, if we are not connected to wifi we do not get messages, and today we did not have the opportunity to connect to wifi. We received our Yellow Fever vaccinations, then rode on to AAA to pick up our international driving licenses. That is all for today. Weary we found our hotel, drug our bags in and flopped on the bed! I was out almost immediately.
Arrival in Mojave, Ca
Lunch at Joshua Tree.
Filling up??..NO, at $7.50 per gallon I think not, even though it is 100 octane
It was very windy, and dusty traveling into Tucson today!
A cool Expedia score in Tucson to recover and fix the bikes before heading over the boarder.