Day 1: Cathedral City CA to Winslow AZ
Mon 10 Jun 2024
Miles ridden today: 479
I couldn't sleep, which was fine as we were up at 4am to beat the heat. The strategy for today is leave at sunrise, head to Kingman, then along Route 66 up to the cool high country of Arizona and stay somewhere around Flagstaff.
The road construction on I-10 was annoying but the traffic was not that horrible, and we made good time to Blythe (the exit/ramp to Desert Center was under construction with a 12 mile backtrack detour, my preferred route). Headed up to Needles to a little stretch of remnant Route 66 for a pictures.
From Needles I decided the Oatman Grade--a slow, tedious, 25mph curvy road--would not be fun to do in 95F heat, so we blasted to Kingman, had a bit, then up the longest existing stretch of Route 66 towards Peach Springs, stopping at a touristy general store where we blathered on and on with three Germans who were riding back to Los Angeles from the Arctic Ocean. They all had flown to SF, bought bikes, then were riding them around the West. It sounds like one of those very-researched but rather dubious German tourist adventures to me, but they made it this far so they must know what they were doing?
We stopped briefly to check out Williams, Arizona and Larry spotted some brotherrrrrrs and had to say hi. Turns out it was a Dutch family reunion all on rented Harleys who flew into Vegas and were coming back from the Grand Canyon.
Then we punched through Flagstaff (with a coffee stop) and settled on a Motel 6 in Winslow. I'm not really an Eagles fan--I'm not a boomer; their music belongs to an older generation than mine--but Larry went out and stood on the corner for that song and I took some dubious pictures of myself, and a great picture of Larry with the sun just so.
The day went better than I expected... I was anxious I'd be sore after riding all that way, but my butt and shoulders felt fine. We'll see about how I feel in the morning though, and I've added a rest day in Dallas on Friday just to make sure I don't overdo it.