In the evening after my MLK Day hike a light rain started which continued throughout the night. The public road I’d parked off was no worse for it by the morning, but the weather was no longer conducive to hiking. I did some work and then made some miles southwest through a squiggly route that looked scenic on the map. I expect it would have been, but after a short climb I ended up directly in the rain clouds, now called fog due to the change in our relative positions.
I briefly visited a cute town called Jerome, including having my picture taken through a kaleidoscope, in a store dedicated to that, namely Nellie Bly’s Kaleidoscopes. I needed to press on so I did, with the hope that the view would clear. What should have been a scenic drive was a slog up and down twisty curves in the haze.
Eventually I rolled out onto the floor of the desert, with scattered saguaros around arrow-straight roads dividing nothing from not much. I went through a no-stoplight town called Hope, followed an instant later by a sign saying “YOU’RE NOW BEYOND HOPE”
The sun started to set behind some mountains and another sign “Entering Brenda” also amused me. I rumbled down a “paved” road in the vast BLM (Bureau of Land Management) lands around Quartzite, aiming for a camp called ParTR (a variant of RTR, a vanlife get-together happening this week.) I wasn’t sure where exactly to go but I saw a cardboard sign that said SINGLES NERDS and I figured it was a good bet for me. I’m resting and writing this and trying to talk myself into some socializing. I’m going to stop now and post this to help with the motivation.
H