Desert Ramblin’
I’ve never understood some people’s desire to live in the desert. I can appreciate its beauty and marvel at the delicate balance of life in a land without water, but making the desert one’s home? No thank you. Living in drought-stricken California made me feel guilty enough, so I can’t imagine the internal calculation I’d have to make every time I took a shower, which would be often because every time I have been to the desert it has been an inferno.
Imaginably, I was apprehensive to spend nearly two months in the desert this fall but looked forward to experiencing a cooler and damper version of it. As we drove from the snow-covered Rocky Mountains into Utah, its characteristic red sand melded with Colorado’s iconic pine and aspen, creating a novel contrast between the saturated red rocks, deep green pines, golden aspens, and white snow. We were in Moab, which greeted us with 80-degree days and 60-degree nights, a welcome 30-degree difference from Colorado.
I left Colorado a much more confident mountain biker; the elevation boosted my endurance and the well-maintained trails got me comfortable on blue trails picking up a little more speed. Moab is one of the mountain biking capitals of the world, and while I knew I wasn’t anywhere near ready to do The Whole Enchilada with Lee (i.e. why we came to Moab in the fist place), I was excited to bike in a new environment. My naivety caught up to me quickly during my first ride, when I found myself struggling up steep (for me) rock ledges and jumping ship before sandy turns, unsure how much traction I’d have and frightened by the prospect of falling on slickrock. Despite the weather being a treat, I had found a new thing to resent about the desert: biking there is really hard.
I felt like I was regressing to my early days of mountain biking, grumbling in frustration as I avoided the smallest obstacles that I would have easily popped over had they been on dirt/loam. Lee kindly let me borrow his bike one day so I could benefit from its full suspension, vs the hardtail I usually ride, only to be equally frustrated by my backsliding. He barked at me to reattempt parts of the trail I chickened out at, and I snapped back at him for not empathizing more with my struggle, insisting he couldn’t appreciate how hard it was for a beginner. He would have none of my excuses, and simply said, “I don’t get it, you’re aggressive about everything in life but when it comes to biking, you’re so passive. You’re not even trying.” Did I recognize that he was trying to provoke me? Of course. Did it work? Absolutely. Never one to be called passive about anything, I gritted my teeth and started barreling towards obstacles just to prove Lee wrong, and as I did that I started to trust the bike to keep its grip and eat whatever was in its path. Lee watched my improvement with smug pride, and annoyed as I was about how easy it was for him to manipulate me, I suppose I should expect it after 11 years together.
From Moab we headed south to Arizona, visiting Flagstaff, Prescott, Phoenix, Sedona, and the Grand Canyon. Prescott and Flagstaff we loved; the former is a quaint pioneer town with a classic western town square, the latter a college town in the mountains with fantastic food and bike shops. Sedona was a disappointment; it’s pretty, but terrible for camping. Due to an increase in the number of people camping on federal land, the local government decided (https://www.signalsaz.com/articles/new-designated-dispersed-camping-sites-open-near-sedona/) the best way to limit littering and land overuse was to restrict camping to a handful of open spaces, meaning that of the 32,000+ acres of national forest, less than 36 acres are available to camp on. This meant no privacy and noise at all hours. While the area was very pretty, the mountain biking kind of sucked and the hiking was scenic but flat and heavily trafficked, so we were excited to move on after a few days. Phoenix was hardly a destination for us, but we found ourselves there over my birthday/Halloween weekend, and had a blast at my dear friend Kelsey’s halloween party.
The Grand Canyon was our final stop in Arizona before we headed back up to Utah. Lee had been there before, but it was my first time. We arrived at night and found camping in national forest right outside Tusayan, a couple miles from the park boundary. We planned to ride our bikes into the park the following day on a 25-mile route that would take about four hours. The trails were pretty flat and the second half of the ride was paved, so I wasn’t too worried about the length (the longest I had ridden on a mountain bike prior to this was about 17 miles). Lee discovered a broken chain the next day, and after waffling on whether to do the ride alone, I finally got ready to head out at 1pm. The sun set at 6, so Lee warned me to not do the whole loop because I was going to run out of daylight. I rolled my eyes, said ok, and left. I made good time on the trails, and before I knew it, I was already more than halfway through the ride. I could have turned around, but I still hadn’t seen the Grand Canyon, and figured the longest/slowest part of the ride was already over. Against Lee’s better judgment, I continued and arrived at the South Rim around 3:30pm, right on schedule. I allowed myself five minutes to snack and enjoy the view before heading out, knowing I had to get going if I were to beat the sunset. I made my way through the park, speeding along on the paved roads. After what felt like an eternity, I checked my map, and realized I had missed a turn and biked a few miles out of my way. I nervously stared at the sky, trying to figure out if I should just continue on my roundabout route, or double back and take the planned route. It seemed faster to double back, so that’s what I did, only to realize that the turn I had missed didn’t actually exist; the map I was using must have been out of date, because when I got to the correct point on the map, there was no path there. I had no choice but to go the roundabout way I had been taking before, except I just added about six miles and half an hour to my ride. I sped off as fast as I could on my tired legs as the sun set and temperature dropped. I was grateful to be in a white helmet and light hoodie, because I had absolutely no lights or nighttime riding gear and the park was devoid of streetlights. I finally made it back to camp at nearly 7pm in the pitch darkness, having ridden over 40 miles, to an “I told you so,” look from Lee.
For my birthday, Lee surprised me with a helicopter tour of the Grand Canyon, which we followed with a hike. It was amazing to experience the canyon both from above and from within it, and I was sad that we only had two days here. I’d love to return and hike rim-to-rim or raft down the Colorado river, but we had to head out of town for a car appointment, and I tucked those activities into the back of my mind for another day.
This was around the time when we started having heater trouble, and we spent the following few weeks chasing pockets of warm weather around the southwest, heading to Hurricane, Utah and on to San Bernardino, Temecula, and Palm Springs, California. We returned to Hurricane/St. George for Thanksgiving, where our friends Maddie and Matt met us. We spent Thanksgiving hiking Angel’s Landing and preparing a campsite feast, grateful that we had friends to spend the holiday with in such a beautiful place.
We headed up to the Bay Area in mid-December to prepare for our trip east for the holidays and then on to France for skiing, and were not sad to leave the desert behind. We both agree that we like the desert in small doses, but that we’re always eager to be surrounded by greenery again, which the Bay Area delivered. I appreciated seeing a different side of the desert; the cooler temperatures, filtered winter sunlight, and snow gave it an enchanting quality that I hadn’t experienced when we had been there in the warmer months. While I still have no desire to ever live in the desert, I leave with a new appreciation for its magnetism.
