Given the choice, I probably wouldn’t select the America’s Best Value Inn in Seguin to spend my Christmas day again, or indeed any other day. It wasn’t the worst hotel I’ve stayed in by any stretch but it was certainly the worst value. If I’m paying over $40 a night for a room I expect…
Riding through Sanderson, it seemed that, like most other small rural American towns in this area without a tourist industry, it was slowly dying. A lot of the businesses had closed down or were for sale and there was no market, super or otherwise, outside of the petrol stations. I was a little worried I’d…
In Safford I was fortunate enough to be staying with the Larson family. They were kind enough to put me up for a couple of nights so I could rest my legs while a storm blew through. The Larsons were Mormons which was quite interesting for me as I’d never knowingly met a Mormon before.…
Riding off the canal paths in Phoenix was a fairly worrying affair. Huge pickup trucks would whizz by very close and drivers didn’t seem too courteous. Luckily the day before I’d covered most of the city and quite soon I was out of the really urban areas. I was merrily riding along following Googlemaps’ recommended…
All of a sudden I rounded a corner and I was in the suburbs of Las Vegas, disappointingly I could have been anywhere; the neon doesn’t start so far out. That said it didn’t take long for me to pass a casino, I resisted the temptation. My first task was to find where I was…
I left Paso Robles and was soon riding through very flat arid land very different from anything I’d experienced in North America thus far. To date it had pretty much been lush coastal areas, now I was seeing the effect of the long drought California had been suffering first hand. I also passed the junction…
Having got my bicycle fixed up in Ridgecrest I continued on to Death Valley, as the rain kept on falling. The roads were already flooding a little as the ground was not used to soaking up this much liquid. I was now riding from Ridgecrest down Searle’s Valley, the valley that runs perpendicular to Death…
As I started riding on Highway One after Monterey the sun began to set. I knew I didn’t have much more than an hour before it would be dark so I began looking for a camping spot. A few places presented themselves but they would only be suitable when it was a lot dimmer, so…
I’d initially only planned on staying one night in the town of Healdsburg but I’d had such a rotten time on the ride there that I asked Taya, my Warmshowers host, if I could stay another night. She’d been so kind that I didn’t feel uncomfortable doing so and I was glad when she accepted.…
I decided to take a rest day in Newport as I had been riding for about seven days and I try not to keep going for too long without a break. The motel I was staying in, the Money Saver Motel, felt like luxury to me after a lot of the hotels I had been…
Riding ROUND 