It was the break of dawn, and we heard our biker friend from Vancouver Island fly by our tent. He had this crazy AZT bike trip planned by a friend. The day before the trip, the friend tested positive for COVID. He went for it without his buddy. This route requires lots of uphill bike pushing and downhill terror. We’ve seen other bikes limiting their trek to just the friendlier paths. But this guy was going for the gusto. We were up and packing before Colton woke. He popped his head out of the tent as we were leaving just before 7:00.
We only had six miles to go, which turned out to be eight or nine with the two mile downhill path into the small town of Oracle. Biosphere 2 lies just outside the town. Once again rocks were my enemy. I ended up on my back sliding from the rocks. My backpack made it hard to get up so I waited for Terry. He looked down at me and asked, “What are you doing?”
The houses as we came into town were big cliff hangers. The trail dumped us onto a newly asphalted road. We whipped out our phones looking for a hint of which direction to walk. A woman stopped her Honda CRV at our feet. She had just found a tortoise in the road and was calling friends about this. They were in mid-rescue we she came to our aid. She was thrilled to be of help. She called her husband who was in the middle of his two hour daily conversation with his friend who has a back injury. Nevertheless he took her call. Yes, the tortoise was being rescued, but now she had a new project, us. No, he didn’t know the number of the former trail angel, but recommended she should drive over there. So off we went.
At the trail angels, she left the car on and jumped out while the car dinged and dinged to her about taking the keys from a running car. She didn’t care and the car gave up. In the meantime, we hadn’t turned off our Garmin locator so anyone looking at it realized we were heading for town. One of our friends started texting. We had two dramas playing out at once.
No one answered the door to this small motel with little A-framed cabins. Finally she phoned and a man stepped out. We couldn’t hear their conversation, but we watched the drama. They had retired from renting these cabins, but someone else had rooms. She hugged the guy several times, and we were off to find another room.
She was excited because this was a new Air BnB. The owners appeared a bit older than us. A couple of years ago they purchased this large home— over 7,000 sq ft.— or so they say. Now it has three rentals. We took a room and we were squared away for the night waiting to pick up our food.
We didn’t feel good about the next two segments of the hike because of heat and the unpredictability of water, so we got serious about moving forward to the last section. So we worked on renting a car. Then we notified Debbie our friend in Star Valley to visit for a few days while we checked out our next move forward to the Grand Canyon and Utah. We were all set up. I said we better check on the temperature there. Every night for the next 14 days was going to be below freezing. We don’t have clothes for that.
So we cancelled everything and went back to plan A. But we still don’t know about water.
Mountain Peace 