49.53 mi / 4:12:45 time / 11.7 mph avg. / 38.0 mp max. / 3635 ft. climbing
Staying at Wildcat Primitive Campground, Monument Valley

Today started really crappy, with me being unable to locate my wallet. We tore the room apart (thanks to Dennis for all his help, patience, and ideas), asked a lot of people, and looked everywhere we could think of, but no luck. All I could figure was that it fell out of my pocket while I sat in the motel lounge the night before, but it seems strange that someone would actually take it. All it contined was my driver’s license, one credit card, and exactly $1. In reality, it probably isn’t an enormous calamity; Dennis has money, there were no charges on my card, and I think I’ll be able to pull off the flight home without an ID. But it sure made me feel like shit. Combined with the flat-tire nervousness of the day before, I was really hitting a low point.

But then, as I’ve experienced many times before, days like this can turn on a dime. Today, that dime was a car and a couple of motorcyclists passing us on the road as we climbed, all of them giving us cheerful and encouranging toots of their horn. At that same point, the surroundings were just beautiful, and there were some cows for me to moo at, so suddenly a huge smile broke out on my face. Yes, this bike touring thing is fun, and crappy stuff can’t keep me down!

So today’s ride took us immediately up a big hill, and from the top of that hill we could already see the Monuments in the distance. Giant red buttes rising up against the horizon. The rest of the ride showed us many perspectives of those buttes, with the final perspective being the classic shot in Monument Valley that I posted as my inspiration for this trip in my first entry.

Here in Monument Valley (part of the Navajo Nation) they have apparently demolished the normal campground and replaced it with a hotel, so we were left with the primitive/overflow campground. That meant we could set up our tents anywhere on the bluff overlooking the valley floor. The great part of this was that we could give ourselves a world-class, front-row view; the bad part was that it was crazy-windy, which made setting up our tents very challenging, and made it impossible to keep the fine red sand from getting into everything.

Though the view is fantastic, the idea of preparing our dinner at that site didn’t seem to appetizing, so we rode back over the horrible rock-and-sand road to the new hotel/restaurant complex for dinner. It was another great opportunity for local eating, as they served several Navajo specialties. We each got a different type of stew, which along with the Navajo fry bread was quite tasty and filling. Once again we had a front-row view of the three famous buttes, as our table was right up against the window in a prime spot. Then we discovered WiFi in the brand-new, classy and comfortable hotel lobby, and since we made it in relatively early, had time to sit and write journal entries amidst the soothing Navajo flute music. So a great end to a good day that started out bad. Well, provided our tents haven’t blown away yet!

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 3rd, 2009 at 7:51 pm and is filed under 2009 Bike Tour, bike. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.