Bikely map

I woke up at 8:30am to heavy rain (again), and decided once again to be restful and slow getting going in the hopes of the weather lightening up as I dragged my ass. This included taking my breakfast in the ranger station, while checking various weather forecasts to help make a better decision on when to actually leave.

Not that I actually found the forecasts too useful as information to act upon, as there wasn’t much suggestion of decent weather windows until a good chunk later in the day. Instead I just waited for a break in the rain, and headed out before it felt like a bad idea again.

This got me on the road at around 11am, though it wasn’t very long before the rain started up again (and was often heavy at that). It came with plenty of headwinds, so I had the wet sides of my hood getting blown into my face at times, and reducing my visibility to the point where I just had to stop, face backwards, and wait for the weather to back off a little.

I continued on like this for a little shy of 60km, before getting to the Agawa Bay campground at around 4:15pm and (with the weather starting to clear for what was forecast to be much of the evening) used my camping permit from the previous night to freshen back up with a shower and some laundry (particularly drying out my sopping wet clothes) at the campground facilities.

A little before 6pm, I was ready to get going again, and the weather was pretty sane to ride in. I’d heard that thunderstorms were forecast for later in the evening, but figured that I’d just make camp as soon as possible on the first sign of rain, and see what sort of extra distance I could cover before that became necessary.

Note that, while generally sane, the weather still had some fun to it:

ahhh yes, quite scenic indeed.

Actually, the dense fog, and the threat of rain were quite a disappointment, as I had been hoping to take a look at the petrographs at Agawa (the ones whose red pigment I’d already seen and noted the source of), but I really felt compelled to put in the miles, and wasn’t sure that I’d be able to get close enough to the petrographs to actually see them, so I rode on, hoping to myself that I’d have another chance to see them later on.

A little while later (after getting a decent chunk of distance out of the park) I felt a few drops, so I hastened to make camp as quickly as I could (which turned out to be quite quickly), decided to polish off my sandwiches instead of making pasta (and requiring myself to buy lunch the next day), and packed it in for an early night.