Day 15 - El Centro to Yuma

There is lots of agriculture down here between El Centro and Yuma. Needs lots of irrigation.

These mega-sized bales of hay are 10 times the size of the ones I knew as a kid when growing up in Northern NY state.

I picked up a discarded plastic fork in a wilderness area. We need to stop using disposables. While used for a few seconds, these sorts of plastic disposables will pollute our world for thousands of years.

I think this is a field of alfalfa (?)

It sure is popular with aphids -- hundreds of them on each plant.

We stopped at a hot springs. 

And I had my first flat to fix -- a slow leak that I patched later that night. It was a very windy day -- tail wind luckily -- so hard to figure out where the leak was outside.

We took a "shortcut" on some desert roads. Guess they don't want cross country cyclists ;-)

Little did we know how sandy, rough, and water filled our adventure would become on this desert road. Here is a quick video of some of the challenges we had to overcome.

 

Here is a picture of Ken finally wading across one of the final challenges. Luckily no quicksand...

It was great to get back on a real road again and we made great time with a strong tail wind.

There were some nice wildflowers along our route.

Then we had to get onto I8 for a stretch. Some of the shoulder was beautiful and smooth but also a large chunk had big frost heaves and was very, very bumpy.

Saw lots of sand dunes for people to play on.

Stopped at a smoky casino for lunch that had a small room for non-smokers.

Just before sunset, after riding 80 miles in every road condition imaginable, we arrived at our Warmshowers location for the evening.  Whew!