Day 36: Tempe to Salome, AZ

I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength.

Philippians 4:13

120 miles – 2,123 ft climb – wind: favorable

Bruce took off around 7:00 this morning in order to avoid the temperatures in the 90’s this afternoon. I walked the streets around our hotel in Tempe for about 45 minutes (just to clarify – I am still shooting for 2 miles in each place in my attempt to “walk across the country”) before taking one last glorious shower in our hotel and heading out. Our hotel was right across from the Arizona State campus. The campus looked like a bunch of beautiful downtown office buildings. It did not feel very campus-y.

We had to drive over 20 miles through Tempe and Phoenix before we finally got to the open road. This was kind of annoying for Bruce because he had to keep stopping at lights. It was annoying for me because there was tons of road construction. With all the cones, I felt like Harvey needed to suck it in a bit. In my head, I know it’s an illusion, but it’s still a little unnerving.

It’s funny because on the map the whole 70 miles out of town was called Highway 60. There needs to be some kind of universal definition of a highway. Anything with stop lights every block and parking spaces on the side should not be allowed to be called “highway”.

We arrived in Wickenburg, our destination, at 11:30 AM. Since we happened to stop in a Burger King parking lot, Bruce got a hankering for Burger King. Surprise! No pb&j today. We each got a Whopper Jr. I’m pretty sure these are the exact burgers that Wendy’s used on their “Where’s The Beef?” commercials. Bruce was still feeling pretty spunky and didn’t want to stop at 11:30 AM. We/I checked the map and found a little town called Aguila about 20 miles further (or farther – I can never remember which) but it did not have any RV parks showing on the Good Sam website. The next town with Good Sam parks was Salome, which we were scheduled to stop at TOMORROW night. Bruce totally disregarded my schedule and decided he could tackle another 57 miles. And if not, we figured we could always boondock some place.

Wickenburg was a really cute little town. One of the attractions I was going to see was the Jail Tree just because it sounded funny. Did they really put people inside a tree when they broke the law? Or possibly tie them to it? On my way there I got sidetracked by all the cute shops in the historic downtown. I had gone in a few and was inside Gina’s admiring all her original art and antiques when Bruce called and said that he had gotten something in his eye and needed me to come with some solution. Rats! I quickly bought a painting and headed to Harvey. Now I will never know about the Jail Tree. Oh, ok. I KNOW I can just google it. But that’s not the same.

When I got to Bruce I found out the rest of the story. He did indeed have something in his eye. But that was because in a moment of inattentive driving, he went off the side of the road. He had to jump ship as he was tumbling over and thought for sure that he had totaled his bike. But luckily although he had some cockle burrs in his kit, scratches on his arms & legs, and dry grass in his hair and eye, his bike was good to go. As he was falling, he had de-ja-vu from his bike wreck when he broke his arm and so rolled to his side instead of sticking out his arm to break his fall. He had taken out his contact by the time I got there, but still had a large piece of straw in his eye that I had to help get out. Since his eye was so irritated he decided to just wear one contact. This is the same man who can not find his glasses in the morning with no contacts in. I guess his left eye is the strong one because after a short break to fill up his water bottles, he rode the next 40 miles with no right contact and no problems. He was even able to take these beautiful pics of roadside scenery. And can I also point out it was 95 degrees. Which he left at 7:00 AM to avoid. This became his longest day, 120 miles! The man is an animal!!

People ask what Bruce thinks about while he’s out there riding the open road. That’s a good question. He listens to and sings with a lot of music. When I asked him if he would get tired of listening to the same stuff over and over, he said no, he has over 1,000 songs. He also listens to podcasts from Eric Metaxes and other people. I’m guessing he throws in a few comedians as well. And he’s almost listened to the whole New Testament. Wowza!

This was a very pretty stretch. There were mountains on both sides of the road for much of the way. This is not how I pictured Arizona at all. The terrain was mostly desert, but toward Salome we came across a few fields that were being farmed and an orchard.

About 20 miles from Salome I saw signs saying, “Watch for animals”. OK. What kind of animals am I watching for exactly? More Elk? Wild animals? Cows? The farm dog? Regardless, I saw no animals.

We got to Salome just before dusk and did a self-check in at Desert Vista RV Park. As I was casually preusing the check-in packet to find the wifi code, I came across a page warning of venomous snakes in the park. Ahhhh! Safe to say I will not be leaving the RV.