Not quite according to plan

March 14

We’re on our way home, just north of Salt Lake City. Nancy is driving and the freeway is so bumpy its hard to type.

What a week! After sitting out a day in Tucson due do the crummy weather, and spending another day riding a not-especially nice route around the south part of town, we loaded everything back in the trailer and drove down to Bisbee. As we drove into town we saw the PAC tour van, reminding me that Judy, a friend from a previous bike tour, was also down here biking this week. After checking into the Inn at Castle Rock (more on that later) we all walked over to the Copper Queen Hotel, where I asked at the front desk and sure enough, Judy and Marilyn, another previous-bike-tour acquaintance, were checked in. Although they were already in PJ’s, they invited the 4 of us up to their room for a visit. It was so great to reconnect with both of them. They are both such inspirations, To celebrate turning 70 last year, Judy rode cross-country all by herself, and is planning to do it again this year with her partner. Marilyn, as near as I can tell, has biked just about full time for many years.

Back to our charming hotel. I stayed at the Inn at Castle Rock the first time I ever visited Bisbee, which was…. Hmmm…. 2001? It was charming then, in a shabby-hippie-chic-sorta way. The next time I was there, it was closed, SO I was delighted to find that it had re-opened, just 7 months ago, is undergoing renovation, and is even more charming than before.

But first I have to describe Bisbee. This is an old copper-mining town On the edge of town is The Lavender Pit, a big old open pit copper mine, no longer in use. (Note that it’s not lavender colored,; it’s named after a Mr. Lavender). Bisbee itself fills the bottom and sides of a small, steep canyon.. The main street runs along the bottom, with dozens of long, steep staircases up the sides of the canyon, and picturesque houses clinging precariously to the hillsides. When I was here a few years ago with a couple of friends we rented the Hummingbird Hill House, near the upper reaches, and had a patio with a marvelous view down on the town.

This is also an artist’s community, with several nice galleries, and much eclectic, eccentric, and hard to describe artwork scattered about town on houses, fence posts, sides of buildings, and staircases: A house with dozens of pink-painted objects fastened to the front: A bicycle, a bunch of old etch-a-sketches, a shovel, a suitcase, boxing gloves…..A downtown building with a couple of exquisite bas relief plaques of desert scenes. Another house with angel and devil gargoyles surrounding it. The more you wander around town, the more of this stuff you find. You just have to see this place.

Another big attraction in the town for me is Café Roka, which I have to say is the best restaurant I’ve ever dined at. And you can get a 4-course meal there for under $20! This was my third time there…. Well, now its 4 times because the four of us enjoyed it so much the first night we decided to go back the next.

Now, the Inn at Castle Rock: Built into the side of a steep hill (like nearly every other building in town) and nearly over top of a creek, there are 2 floors of outdoor porches overlooking the street. You enter through a cosy stone-floored lobby with a small, free-standing wood burning fireplace, than back out onto the porch to your room. We scored the perfect room for the 4 of us, more like three rooms actually, all connected, with two bathrooms, 4 beds, and all for about $160 per night. And the decor: Nancy and I had “Geronimo”, where every available surface seemed to be covered with something Indian related. On our third day there we were still discovering new things. About a dozen dream-catchers, some nice bead work, a spear , original paintings. Cheryl’s room was named Faraway, and was mostly taken up with a huge bed covered with leopard skin bedspread,and about 50 animal themed pillows. On the porch outside our room, Adirondack chairs and porch swings (although too cold to sit out there). In back of the building, a bamboo grove and garden on the hillside. Off of the lobby, a common room with big refrigerator, kitchenware, etc, for our shared use. I highly recommend this place!

And a good thing, because we ended up staying there three nights. After our first night, we intended to to a 55 mile loop ride down through Douglas, on the Mexican border. But, as we didn’t get up and around until almost noon, we elected to do a shorter out and back ride instead. A bit cool but sunny, a nice coast down to the Sand Pedro river and a tailwind-assisted ride back up. We decided to stay another night so we could do the Douglas ride the next day.

The next morning, Nancy woke me up with “You’ve got to look out the window!. SNOW!!!!!! Just a half inch or so, but c’mon, dammit, this is Arizona! Well, we ARE at 5500 feet elevation…. Sadly, no ride to Douglas for us today. We spend the day happily climbing up and down the towns many staircases and shopping. , and decide to spend another night here.

March 12th
Finally on Friday the weather is perfect, but we have to head back towards Phoenix so Gerry and Cheryl can catch their plane northward Saturday morning. But I still want to visit my friend Kathy in Patagonia, and we want to squeeze in one last bike ride, so I drop off the other 3 about 40 miles from Patagonia and drive on to meet Kathy.

Patagonia is really just a wide spot in the road, and the END of the road at that, just a few miles from the Mexican border. But it has character to spare, and is well worth a visit. Kathy and her partner, Bill, have taken the train here from Pennsylvania and rented a trailer for two months, with no transportation but their bikes. I rode the Southern Tier with Kathy in 2005. Kathy and Bill met a couple years later when Kathy rode the Great Divide mountain bike route. Kathy and Bill the road the Northern Tier…last year I think. Anyway, they are just a couple of intrepid bicycle nomads.

After a great lunch at the Velvet Elvis Café, Kathy and I took off down a back road for a fabulous 20 mile ride over many cattle guards, low-water crossings, and a bit of hard-packed dirt road. I finally got to ride in shorts and shirtsleeves, in the sun! By the time we got back, Gerry, Cheryl, and Nancy were waiting for us, in a state of bliss from the perfect ride they had had. And off we went to Phoenix.

March 13th

Nancy and I have decided to take the more easterly route back north, through northern Arizona, Utah, and Idaho. We head north along the Vermillion Cliffs in clear blue sky, with Nancy, who has never been through here before, ooohing and aaahing all the while, and me trying to keep myself from spilling the beans about all the wonderful sights yet to come.

Then we see clouds gathering on the horizon (hmmm…have we heard this story before?). At 3pm we stop at the Page AZ visitor center, and it hits. Sideways rain, and then, you guessed it, snow. After lunch in Page, we push on, in winds strong enough that I get sore shoulders from holding the car in the road. The red rock cliffs are beautiful with a dusting of snow, but it’s not letting up, so we decide to stop in Cedar City Utah for the night.

And in the morning what do we have but … a good 4-6 inches of the white stuff! Well, we knew this was a risk of coming back this route, in high elevation and far from the gentling effects of the ocean. Thought my car has 4 wheel drive,with the trailer we have 6 wheels, two of them without brakes, so we are reluctant to drive until we’re pretty sure the roads are clear.

We try in vain to get the weather channel to tell us anything; they seem to think the country goes west only as far as the Mississipi. Well, they do mention Fargo once, but maddeningly, nothing about a winter storm in the southwest. I trudge through the snow to the local Starbucks, in search of information. We try dialing 511, and the recording nicely tells us there's a winter storm coming through Saturday night (last night) which we obviously already know, dammit, and that there are at least 3 “incidents” on the freeway north of here and 4 wheel drive or chains are recommended, but as near as I can tell this message was recorded at 8pm last night. Some guys in the hotel tell us they drove through that last night and it was awful. We finally call the Chamber of Commerce in Beaver, about 50 miles up the road, and the nice lady says the storm came through early yesterday afternoon and the roads are all cleared by now. So we decide to chance it. But while I’m cleaning off the car, another guy tells us he’s just come from the south and gotten off the here because it was so awful, and is going to hunker down here for the day. What do do????? The lure of home is just too great, so off we go. It’s snowing lightly, but the roads aren’t bad.

Until we get to the first of three or four 5000+ passes, where there's slushy stuff frozen to the roads, it’s still snowing pretty hard, and there’s quite a bit of traffic. We nail bite our way through this at 30 mpgh with our hazard lights on, big trucks speeding by spraying slush, and FINALLY get back to (relative) warmth and sunshine just before Salt Lake City.