With several likely trips to Europe coming soon in 2015, we decided to stay as “local” as possible during the holidays and looked to a (warm) cycling destination in the US. The southern part of the Mississippi valley made it to the short list, but in the end, we decided to head to Death Valley, CA. The initial idea was to fly into Las Vegas and start a bike tour from there (with nights in motels on the way) but in the end we decided that with the short days, relatively long distances and uncertain weather it made more sense to rent a car and go only for day rides. So.. we packed our “break-aways” (I’ll post at some point for the gear freaks who end-up reading this some ‘tech’ info about our bike stable) and headed to Las Vegas.
This was actually our second trip to Las Vegas. On the first one that we took almost six years ago, we got married and went climbing in the Red Rock canyon. Actually we did the things in the opposite order – we started by going climbing and, as this took longer than expected, we postponed the marriage until the next day. Anyways, with clear reasons to celebrate, after assembling our bikes, we headed back to the Red Rocks canyon but this time on our bikes instead of with ropes and camming devices . The place is clearly well used by local cyclists for very good reasons. To enter the actual park and ride a one way road called the ‘scenic loop’ we had to pay a small fee, but that was well worthed. Below are some pictures we took during this ride as well as a link to our route recorded on strava.
https://www.strava.com/activities/231686952
With the extra mobility offered by the car, we extended the “scope” of our trip, and first headed West past the Death Valley to the eastern side of the Sierras, to Lone Pine, a small town just bellow Mt. Whitney. We didn’t know that, but it turns out this is some sort of iconic place in the cinema industry. Basically half the Westerns you may have seen or heard about were shot here. The motel we used had hosted zillion of movie stars as they were proudly showing, the local cafe had breakfast menu items such as “Gregory Peck scramble”, etc. More importantly for us, the views on the Sierras are really magnificent and the whole landscape and scenery around the “Alabama Hills” – a (huge) forest of crazy looking boulders and rocks where all those movies were shot – are completely “unearthy” so we were really happy to enjoy the great weather and discover these places from our bikes. Given the fact that we took more photos than pedal strikes, the mileage was rather low, but the whole experience was well worthed the effort of us bringing bikes over there.
https://www.strava.com/activities/231988117
After Lone Pine, we finally headed to Death Valley, our initial destination. For some reasons, our planning on this third day was rather poor … (Rosalba would argue that this was my planning .. whatever 🙂 ). First stop was this dirt road on the plateaus towering above Death Valley (5000+ ft elevation) on the western sides:
https://www.strava.com/activities/232494835
After riding about 4 miles on this bumpy road we decided it’s too monotonous so we went back to look for a better ride. We ended up down in the Death Valley, close to Stovepipe Wells, the place where we were going to sleep for the next two nights on this other dirt road which turned to be covered in (deep) sand. OK for a 4×4 perhaps, but tough on the bikes. Rosalba pushed hers for a couple of miles, while I did some “sand riding drills”.
In the end, we had to give-up this attempt as well and simply ride a few miles on the main road to the nearby sand dunes where we watched the sunset.
https://www.strava.com/activities/232494835
The final day on this trip was also the best one in terms of cycling. We left from Furnace Creek along the valley towards Badwater, the lowest point at minus 200-something ft elevation. On the way, we took the scenic artist palette loop (with a few nice climbs) before returning the same way with a quick stop at the “Devil’s golf course” for a total of ~50 miles. The strava route is here:
https://www.strava.com/activities/232588523
And with this, our short vacation was almost over.
The last morning offered a nice surprise – a pretty bad sandstorm …. With >40 mph gusts and all the sand, we would have certainly not been able to ride (or to see much). Happy to actually have a car, we packed the bikes and headed back …
Just near Furnace Creek we stopped to check-out the Golden Canyon. Rosalba didn’t want to be sweaty on the way back and flight to NY, but I thought the price was fair (it was 🙂 ) and I went for a short trail run:
https://www.strava.com/activities/232814071
And some final notes:
This is counter-intuitive (I think), but if you ever end up at the Las Vegas airport on Christmas day be mindful – you’ll starve if plan anything more fancy than pizza slices ..
Rosalba’s compilation from this trip are here:
http://www.astro.sunysb.edu/rosalba/bikeDV/index.html
(a few photos ended-up on both pages)
Andrei Fluerasu 