Day 2 Camp Cummins Phoenix, Arizona

We had to be up and ready for our service call by 6 am. We set the alarm for 5 am. It was cold and dark and it seemed really early!

We headed for Bright and Clean Laundromat. We got 4 loads of laundry washed, dried, and folded in 1 1/2 hours! Gotta love a laundromat for speedy work!

A little after 9 am we were at Rio Vista Community Park. We planned to bike on the New River Trail. First we visited the adjacent Peoria Veterans Memorial.

New River Trail.

Because there were lots of trees, there were lots of birds. It was spring along the bike path…every bird was singing. We saw several kinds of ducks, cormorants, hummingbirds, finches, herons, and lots of other brown and grey unfamiliar birds. We actually saw 2 roadrunners. One was running quickly, the other was in this tree. It appeared to be gathering nesting stuff.

We took the path south and then we saw this sign.

All at once our path was covered by water…lots of water. You can see our tire tracks in the picture. We were going to go through and then we realized the water was getting deeper and ahead we could see the water rushing and forming rapids…we turned around!

We went back the way we came and tried the path on the other side of the river…no go! Usually this is a completely dry riverbed. The recent heavy rains have caused this river to fill and flood the surrounding banks.

We went back the way we came and tried riding north. The path was passable. Soon the river formed a “Y” with a canal. Our bike route took us along the canal. Across the water, we could see baseball spring training happening. We decided that at the next intersection, we would cross the water and come back along the other side to get a closer look at the players practicing. We ended up on a hard packed gravel surface that ran right behind the training center. We even found a stray baseball!

We watched for a little while and made our way further along the path…it started to get a little narrower and a little rougher…but no worries. The trail was intersected by this ditch. It was 4 feet deep and the sides were at 45 degree angles. Tim got his bike across and then came to get mine. I scrambled nimbly down the first side and up the other…well not so nimbly!

Ahead we had to pass beneath a bridge, ducking to get through. “Where are you taking me???”

The next obstacle was this very steep and gravelly hill…we could still see a path ahead…so we kept moving forward.

Once I got down the hill with my bike, we made our way along the narrow path in the riverbed.

Once you are in the riverbed…you have to get up and out…

Once again, Tim had to help me get the bike up the hill…I was on my own…but I got there…look how steep…

We rode for awhile across hard packed trail.

This worked for a long time…and then we got a little stuck. The rushing New River was to our left and the edge of the riverbank next to the highway with a fence was on our right…should we turn around and go back…or keep moving forward. Normally, there would be no water flowing in the New River and we could have just walked right across to the bike path on the other side. We could see where we needed to be. It seemed silly to go all the way back and around…I voted to move forward. We had to walk on the top of the embankment with our bikes for a long way.

I could see ahead what looked like a large opening in the fence. Tim went to check it out…no go! It was a steep 8 foot drop-off. Our only option was to backtrack to where we had seen a hole in the fence.

I crawled through first and Tim and I fished the bikes through the hole. Now we were along the highway. Which way should we go??? We looked at GPS and we could see that further ahead was an on-ramp from Bell Road. We were hoping that there might be a bike lane along the bridge across the water. I really didn’t want to turn around until we were forced to!

We made it! Lunchtime!

This is the view from across the river. On the left you can see the drop-off that made the embankment impassable. The hole in the fence is on the far right.

We had expected a fairly flat, tame bike ride and instead we got an adventure!! It was never unsafe, though sometimes challenging! We could always turn around and go back the way we had come…but we needed to see what was at the end! Thank goodness there was a hole in the fence!

We spent the rest of the afternoon waiting for the RV to be ready. It needed a new gasket and that took additional time. The people at Cummins have been very accommodating and the service has been amazing! We sat in the customer lounge updating the blog and our phones and lounging.

We didn’t get the RV back until 5:30. Tim took it next door to the RV wash and baby got a bath. By then it was 6:30. We had the option to stay at Camp Cummins another night and we decided to say put. It was going to be dark and we were not sure where we would stay tonight if we started driving late. Tomorrow we plan to head north and west toward Death Valley.