Day 210: Roper Lake State Park, AZ

Today started out very well.  After breaking camp, I drove Alea the short distance up the summit from our campground (which I had cycled to yesterday).  When we got to the parking area there we met Lee, who was cycling from Silver City, AZ to Oakland, CA.  It turns out that he had just completed hiking the Continental Divide Trail (having previously hiked the Pacific Crest Trail and the Appalachian Trail).  That was 3,000 miles of hiking that he accomplished in three months!  And when he was done he had his bike shipped to Silver City so that he could ride back home (I like the way he thinks)!

Lee, on his second day on the job.

It was my bad luck that Alea got to ride today, but she (on an unloaded bike) and he (on his loaded touring bike) rode about the same pace, and once we enticed him with ice water, cookies and bananas he was sure to stop when he saw the parked van (he called it "trail magic," but it was bribery, pure and simple).  We left him in Safford, AZ, but there is a small chance we may catch up with him on our way west tomorrow.

At the first stop of the day, two huge mastiffs came bounding over a barbed wire fence, obviously happy to see both Lee and Alea riding bikes down the highway.  They were friendly enough (as was a skinny hound who joined them a bit later), but Lana (sitting in the van with a half-opened window) decided to put on her bossy pants and tell them that she was queen of this particular domain.  That didn't sit well with them, and it was a bit hysterical trying to get my keys out so that I could put the window up, all the while trying to keep them from following inside the cab behind me.  It took a while, but Lana finally crawled in her den and ceased trying to get everyone riled up.

About this time, Alea discovered that she had lost her keys (the van key, cabin key, galley key and the key to the trailer's pass thru storage area).  Since we had only gone a bit more than six miles, I doubled back to see if she had dropped them where we had met Lee, but no luck.  I considered driving back to the campground to look around, but figured it they had been dropped in the pit toilet they could stay there.  Fortunately, we had two spares of every key except the pass-thru key (only one extra copy), so it didn't cause us too much heartache.

So, at one of the stops where I was waiting for Alea and Lee, I noticed that my front bicycle tire had gone flat.  I set about changing it, finding the culprit to be a goathead thorn.  I did this seated on the step of the driver's side door.  When the door is open, the parking lights come on, plus an LED light comes on in the cargo hold (they go off after some set amount of time, but I'm not sure how long that is).  This was the issue that we took to the Ford dealer yesterday, to see if there was any way to prevent this from happening, as it is a drain on our battery.

Anyway, once Alea and Lee had pushed off downhill, I tried starting up the van, but to no avail.  So I once again pulled out the generator, started it, connected the charging cables and proceeded to wait 10 minutes or so until the battery had a sufficient charge to start the engine.  I caught up with Alea several miles down the road, and she was puzzled that it had taken that long for me to catch up with her.

There was a Walmart in Safford, AZ, so we stopped in there to have the battery tested, and we were told it needed to be replaced.  But the design of the engine compartment means that, at a minimum, you have to take the air cleaner assembly off to access the battery.  So they wouldn't touch it, meaning we likely need to find a Ford dealer in order to get a new battery.  So it won't be cheap.  So we plan on doing that once we get in the Phoenix area a few days from now.

So we are camped six miles south of Safford at Roper Lake State Park ($28, power, water, push button showers, no shelter for the picnic table), getting one of the last two available sites (the other once was claimed minutes later).  Since we are near water, the mosquitoes are particularly bad here, but we'll be pushing on in the morning.  But at least we got our water tank filled and the camper battery will be fully charged by morning.

The cacti are getting more interesting!

By the way, we did our tag-team cycling for a total of 125 days last year and have done 210 days so far this year.  So in about a month we will have done a full 365 days of cycling and camping!  By then we will have cycled well over 13,000 miles (but probably more like somewhere between 14,000 and 15,000).  We aren't keeping track of our mileage, but we know that we rode about 5,000 miles last year and have ridden at least a thousand miles every month this year.  So 13,000 miles by the end of November is a conservative estimate.

And another thing about Lee - it turns out that his parents actually have a teardrop trailer, one built by Little Guy.  I would have liked to have learned more about them, suspecting they are the source of his wanderlust...