Day 5: Long Short Days

Today was expected to be a pretty easy day as we clmbed out of Idyllwild and then spent much of the day descending into the San Bernardino Valley town of Yucaipa.  We figured it would be somewhere around 40 miles which would be nice after the last  few days.  We started the morning climbing through the towns of Idyllwild and Pine Cove.  It was really amazing to see the difference from the desert towns of earlier in the ride.  At about 6000 feet they semmed much more like what I expect to find in Colorado than in Southern California.   My perspective has changed a bit now.

Our morning climb was rewarded with some really nice (and pretty long) descents as we came back to below 2500 ft.  It was fun but not a time to relax as the VERY strong winds were back on the descent.  No problems though and we continued on.  The temperature was back in the 80s so another application of sunscreen was due.

Not so safe for critters today

We have been following the Sierra Cascades route outlined by the Adventure Cycling Association (ACA).  In general, these are great maps that make an effort to keep you on good biking roads which generally means lower traffic roads.  Unfortunately, they don't show current construction.  We encountered a road closure that we could not talk our way through (which was reasonable given the level of activity) so we had to backtrack a bit and find another way around a highway.

Not getting through there

A couple additional miles ticked by.  By then we had waited much too long to have something for lunch (not much time to stop on the long descents) so we again deviated from our route a bit to find a good lunch spot (Subway veggie sub). Another extra mile ticked by.  As we cheked the maps, we realized that it was actually a bit farther than we had originally calculated and we would need to ride a bit further to hit a grocery store to resupply.  A few more miles added on and now our 40 mile day was looking like a 50+ mile day.  Naturally, the last 10 miles to our destination (another Warm Showers host in Yucaipa) was, yep, up and over another hill.  The climbs late in the day are definitely worse than the morning climbs and the heat didn't help.  To make it worse, my computer quit working again on the climb.  Not at all clear what the issue is there but it wasn't welcome.

Exactly!

In spite of the longer riding day, we made it to Yucaipa pretty early in the afternoon so we found a pleasant coffee shop (The White Rabbit) to relax and use the wifi before heading to the grocery store.  It was my first coffee since starting this trip (a frozen mocha) and it was yummy. Through the magic of the White Rabbit, my computer started working again as I left.

There

On the way to the grocery store we saw the town setting up for a Friday night art fair.  It looked like it was going to be fun but we were going to miss it with our early to bed schedule.

We stocked up on groceries for the next few days and headed over to meet our Warm Showers host for the evening.  Our host Tim was not actually going to be there but he had arranged for his mother to let us in.  In addition to being an avid cyclist, Tim volunteers with a youth circus and is in the middle of the few performance weekends that the kids prepare for all year.  Pretty generous of him to accommodate us under the circumstances.  Tim's mom is a really great woman named Nan.  She has had 

and continues to live a pretty adventurous life.  She shared lots of fun stories.  She also made us dinner and made us feel very welcome.  

The lovely Nan

Many thanks to Tim and Nan for the great experience.