Update 2/25
This will be very short. It’s Thursday morning and we need to get on the road. Will update when we get to Chandler tonight (Thursday). Arrived in Tonopah at 6:30 last evening (Wednesday) after 69 mile ride from Brenda. Weather is perfect again today.
Addition:The trip from Brenda to Tonopah was an interesting one. As we exited US 60 and on to I-10, we met a young cyclist named Joshua who was headed back where we had come from. He yelled out something, and we stopped to talk with him. He was headed to Tucson, but someone had told him he couldn't travel on the Interstate, so he was taking US 60 and going quite a bit out of his way. He asked if he could go along with us, we agreed, and we headed east toward Phoenix with him trailing us. Not too far down the road he stopped (turned out he had a flat), but we didn't know he wasn't right behind us. When we finally realized it, he looked like a tiny speck back in the distance. He had told us his cell phone had been stolen, so the only option was to go back to him. Not wanting to upset every east-bound driver on I-10 by riding against the traffic, I decided to break the law in another way by walking back to try and help him. After all, it looked like less than a mile, right? I'll never win a contest estimating distance, because it turned out to be almost two miles, and as I finally reached him, he was just finishing up the repair of his tire. Then I trudged back to where Sue waited for me.
We then proceeded on our way, but in just a few miles Joshua yelled out that he had another flat. We stopped, but it turned out that his pack had shifted and we waited while he adjusted it. Then, not many miles down the route, he yelled out again that he had a flat, and it turned out that he did, in fact. We told him that we would go on our way and let him catch up with us, and that was the last we saw of him. In Tonopah in the restaurant that evening a gentleman told us that he had passed a highway patrolman stopped on the side of the road assisting a cyclist holding up a flat tire.
The Warm Showers members who hosted us in Tonopah have hot mineral springs on their property, so we soaked in a claw-footed bathtub filled with the water. No sulfur odor as you sometimes have with hot springs. It was a great way to relax after a day of cycling.
We soaked for about an hour under a star-filled sky, while the hot mineral water soothed our tired bodies. We were serenaded to sleep by a wind chime in the tree by our tent.
Rode 85 miles yesterday