Day 13 - February 24, 2010 - Coast to Coast

Day 13 - February 24, 2010 - Coast to Coast

Impressions from the Captain:

What a grueling day! We left Superior knowing we had to climb to 4600 ft. and had to go thru the Queen River tunnel. We immediately started to climb and reached the tunnel (which was 2-3 miles out ) pretty tired. We only mention the tunnel since it was pointed out in our literature as dangerous, and we met a biker on the road that said he had been hit in the tunnel. Scratched up, but destroyed his bike. We decided to wait for our support vehicle and let her follow us thru the tunnel with flashers going.

We were battling, yes, another strong head wind and it was draining us so fast that we could only go from one turn out to the next. The good news was the canyon was beautiful and we got many good pictures at each turn out. When we got to the top of the major climb we found out we were pedaling up a 7% grade! We had to continue to 11 miles to reach the summit but we were pretty whipped and only put in 33 miles. Optimistically we had planned the day before to put in another 20 miles but that was based on the info that the climb was only a 3% grade.

From the Stoker:

Yes, another difficult day but we are sooooo proud to have accomplished such a feat. I think it was fortunate that we had to pull off at every turnout. The views were wonderful and we had fun taking pictures. It is amazing what we are seeing that could never be seen while driving a car through this canyon.

We have found that we are strong enough to tackle almost any climb, but need so much more strength to tackle the wind with the climb. It took us 1 hour and 30 minutes of biking time to climb the first 8 miles and that included a short walk we gave our favorite bike.

We left Superior, AZ on highway 60 to Globe. We picked up highway 70 in Globe and continued east about 8 miles to an Apache Indian Reservation. We are camping in a RV Park that is part of the Casino owned by the Apache Tribe. We treated ourselves to the Italian Buffet Night at the restaurant. Then we decided to treat ourselves to a little gambling. Carol lost $5.00, Dick lost $10.00, and I won $51.00. A great end to a great day.