Tempe To Tempe to Superior

From Chris's place, we went approximately 1 mile to Terry and Heather's place. It was our plan to drop our stuff off and head to a place called Rawhide Western Park.

Warmshower Host: Terry and Heather.

We arrived at Terry's place around 9:00am. He greeted us with a big smile and showed us all the amenities: Garage to park the bikes, kitchen, bathroom laundry facilities etc. As it turns out, Terry had recently done the northern tier bicycle trip and is an avid cyclist. Also, he and his wife spent a number of months traversing the country in a car looking for mountains to climb. The attempted to reach the highest point in every state. Some of them they couldn't because of weather and other circumstances, but they did amazingly well. Terry does Geocaching, but not as much as Jack in Imperial Beach.

We hung around for a while before heading to Rawhide. I had checked on Google for interesting things to do in Phoenix and Rawhide popped up as one of the top 10 (Rawhide.com). We rode about 10 miles to the site. It was somewhat interesting but also somewhat lame. I think it was geared to a much younger crowd or for groups. They did have a mechanical bull (neither of went on though) and two live shows that we attended. We learned the history of the Lone Ranger and got a healthy dose of "Do good to your fellow man". We spent about 4 hours at Rawhide before heading back to Terry and Heather's place.

We did a bit of shopping on the way back arriving at around 5pm. Terry had already started dinner...spaghetti...and he invited us to join them. It was very good. Heather had thought she had burned the Garlic Toast, but it was exactly how I like it...I'm guessing most people like it slightly warmed but I like it toasted.

That evening Terry and Heather took us out to see the sights of Phoenix. Unfortunately South Mountain Park had changed their hours of operation and closed at 9pm...apparently it has the best views of the city. They then took us to another viewpoint near a restaurant called Rustler's Roost. This place was very interesting. It had a very large and live Bull (horns and all) in a cage outside its front door.

The next morning we took our sweet time getting ready to go cause it was fun just yakking with Terry and Heather. When we were finally ready to go, Terry volunteered to ride with us for a ways. I always like it when a host takes the lead and shows us the way to go. I quite enjoyed his company for the time he rode with us...about 25 miles I would guess. It was our plan to make it to Superior for the night which was 60+ miles from Terry's place.

From about the time Terry left us to Superior, the ride became more difficult. It was mostly uphill and the wind no longer is our friend. We fought a headwind most of the way. We did have a brand new highway that we had all to ourselves for about 10 miles. It had now been opened yet and being the weekend, they were not working on it. It was very nice to have the whole road to ourselves. We did not arrive in Superior until 5:30pm. The RV Park was right on the highway and we were allowed to camp on the lawn out front (beside the highway of course). The facilities were good, but no rec room. We ate dinner, showered and went to bed. At around 12:30 the wind started blowing...and I mean blow! After half an hour of wondering whether the tent was going to be ripped to shreds, we took it down and slept under the stars. Not the greatest sleep I've ever had, but it was better than being in the tent.

We're now in the "High Desert". There is actually more plants and greenery than in the "low Desert". The hills are quite interesting.