So after the Grand Canyon we encountered miles upon miles of desert which was much less grand. Our rides have become generally shorter and our wakeup times earlier in order for us to stay out of the extreme heat we’ve been riding through. It wasn’t too bad until we left Prescott and lost 3,300 ft in elevation, (gaining about 25 degrees in average temperature!!) We had a lot of fun while in Prescott, it’s a cool town and we had a good build day with Habitat there. We did some landscaping at two houses which was a first for us, but there was a lot of work for us to do so we were all able to stay busy pretty much all day. It was nice because it makes the day go faster and we felt like we had accomplished a lot.

When finally getting into California I kind of thought that most of the really hard work was over, we were almost there after all. I was really wrong because the desert in Southern California is way worse than any desert we encountered in Arizona, not what I expected. The day we crossed into California, I ended up riding back about 4 miles with a few other riders to go swimming in the Colorado River on the CA/AZ border. It was so refreshing and a lot of fun.

The desert in Cali has been unlike any other riding we have done. We’ve been getting into our host sites much earlier which has been nice. We’ve had more time to nap and relax, and we’ve needed it because the heat really took a lot of energy out of us. We had one near 90 mile day into Brawley that was particularly brutal. Our Program director Brendan was along for the ride that day and wrote the best journal entry of the trip documenting it, I highly recommend reading it if you haven’t already, its really long but a good read.

So today we had our last challenging ride into El Cajon, less than 30 miles from the Pacific. We managed to stumble across a cyclists dream while checking the route the day before. The church was in a slightly different location on HW 78 than google maps had placed it so we needed to update the cue sheets, which is the only reason we found it. I had driven the van that day so I decided to ride it myself before finalizing anything to make sure it was all paved. It was a winding back road going down some really fun descents for a while, then one last epic climb up Engineers Road with views rivaling any others we’ve seen on the trip so far. There were great views of Mountains & Valleys filled with clouds, then at the end we came around the other side of the mountain to see a dammed mountain lake below us. I was really happy to ride it twice.

We saw our first San Diego sign today, David & I were sure to have Brendan take a picture of us looking manly in front of it, (we copied the pose from a cool mural we saw at Mile High Middle School in Prescott). While in El Cajon we were treated to some nice surprises from Hannah. She is from really near by so her mom and brother were greeting many of us about 2 miles from the host site with signs, then later in the day she got us all free frozen yogurt from “The Yogurt Mill” where she worked before the trip. It was the best frozen yogurt I’ve ever had and huge portions, perfect for a hungry Bike & Builder. Hannah even got behind the counter and prepared them all herself.

Well I’m about to go out for a pre-celebratory drink or two and meeting up with one of my sisters friends, and hopefully her if she gets into town early enough. This entry was kind of thrown together last minute, but I’ll be sure to add one more good one during the van ride back to Chicago.