Just One More Desert

Sheffler’s Motel in Salome, Arizona

Even a venture as varied and as fraught with complications as this one, has fallen to routine, at least in the mornings.  I rise at 4:30 and begin riding at 5:15, just as the sky has lightened enough to see without a headlight.  So it was that I left Sheffler’s Motel in Salome this morning while the wind was calm.  It would rise later in the day, but this way I rode for two hours without wind.  

Harcuvar, Arizona

Harcuvar, Arizona

Before the sun rose, I saw lights in the distance and soon rolled into the village of Harcuvar, not expecting anything to be open.  And nothing was, only a lighted sign for the KOA campground. 

Shortly after sunup I came the town of Hope, which is a collection of RV resorts that pretty much shut down for the summer.  Someone said that the poor you always have with you, but the rich leave the desert in the summer.  One advantage for me is that motels, in the few towns that have one, are mostly vacant.  

My shadow pointed home after Hope was gone.  Like a carrot on a pole to which I run—to a place where there are things I’m beginning to crave, things besides farm-talk and the craft of roadside bicycle repair.  Am I led like an ox to the slaughter, enticed by what home promises, only to go again on another journey?  But wait, slaughter comes to every ox.  The journey home and the journey away, these are the remaining joys. 

The wind began to rise in mid-morning and rose to a small gale fifteen miles before I came to a safe landing in Quartzsite, Arizona.  Twenty miles from the Colorado River (the border with California), and much farther from any lake, I had to wonder where the yachts were.  It turns out they are trailers which snowbirds have vacated, given names in nautical language, perhaps to attract prairie schooners.  I rest tonight in the Nautilus. 

Quartzsite is capital for rock hunters and traders of stones in the winter, but now it is mostly closed, except for these few sellers of gem stones, fossils and cut rocks.  

He came riding west after I had checked into the Yacht Club and said he is anxious to get to San Diego.  He will go ninety miles today until it’s nearly dark and then camp someplace on the sand.  I can’t imagine it. 

You probably won’t see me for two days.  There are no motels between Blythe and Brawley and it's too far to go in one day.  But amazingly, I met a woman has invited me to stay with her in her trailer on the desert near the midpoint of that distance.  People have been so helpful along this journey, and nobody has been mean.  I am more blessed that I deserve.