Gas Station Picnics & Trailer Park Sunsets

• he title of this post might be the name of my new country album, featuring the hit song I'm still perfecting, “A Hot Shower and a Cold Beer.” Isn't that all one wants after a day of bicycling?
• Phoenix Sprawl - It probably took us just as long to exit Phoenix as it did for Adrian to fly back home to Chicago. Getting out of the sprawlng suburban area took forever, and we were both tired of the wide streets and facless architecture of these strange desert developments. Plush retirement communities run on and on past the city's Western edge, through towns called Surprise and Sun City. Unveiled in 1960, Sun City is just one of many communities created by the famous real estate magnate Del Webb. His name is everywhere—from the hospital to the arts center, making the whole scene a liittle Big Brother-ish. We had to watch out for golf cart crossings.
• Trailer Park Sunsets – We stayed at the oddest little trailer park in Palo Verde, Califonia. It was a fine place to stay for a mere six bucks, but it was strange in that most of the “mobile” homes were altogether permanent. Ramshakle little boxes with all kinds of makeshift additions, overgrown gardens, and other homey features. Dean, a content Hawaiian guy with long gray hair, faulty teeth, and no shirt, helped us set up a few lawn chairs around our campsite and made us feel right at home. And there was a lovely sunset.
• Dune Buggy Country – After descending into the lush sub-sea level Imperial Valley, and then passing through the Chocolate Mountains and the aerial gunnery there, John and I arrived at the massive Algodones Dunes. From the mountains they appeared to be this strange orange horizon in the distance, and they rose up quite suddenly and unexpectedly at the town of Glamis. Dune buggies—and basically any contraption a motor could be strapped to—were tearing out of the sand as if it were the mid-70s. Luckily the north side of the dunes was a protected wildlife area—the wind-rippled sand was intricate and beautifully patterned. Completely natural and without tire tracks.
• We met a bicycle hobo—not the first one we've seen on the trip—approaching the California border. We asked if he was bicycling across country. “No,” he replied. “I just went to Phoenix to get a typewriter ribbon.” Phoenix was then about five days away—quite a ride for a ribbon, but he did hand John a neatly typed, if half-baked, treatise on the Declaration of Independence.