Day 10: Catalina to Somewhere in Arizona

The first picture is of the dirt that blew in and collected on my sheet in the night.  It was not only on the sheet, of course but permeated into every nook and cranny of every bag, piece of clothing, and etc.  Very weird.  While I was sitting there contemplating inner tent chaos I looked at the gym bag given to us at the beginning of the ride-- it said "San Diego to St. Augustine - the Pampered Way".  I could not help a semi-hysterical cackle-- one of the many times I have broken down in giggles at the ridiculous nature of this ride.

The other picture, in which I don't look terrifically cheerful, is me setting off in 40 degree weather wearing nearly every top I had.  The weather was very fickle-- sometimes it looked like it would clear-- a few minutes later it would rain.  We went through five hail storms during the ride and by lucky timing John and I were in a nice Italian restaurant on the outskirts of Tucson when the worst one happened.  Despite the weather, today was a really nice ride-- I think the best so far.   We rode from somewhere northwest of Tucson to somewhere southeast of Tucson-- only forty miles in all.  There were ups, downs, curves, mountains, vistas, cacti, attractive adobe housing complexes-- in general things of interest.

The cooking on this trip is not the gourmet experience we were promised-- our cook does well but he has no stove (it was left behind in Florida due to the vehicle problem I may have mentioned before) so he is doing everything in giant slow cookers and it is not a success.  John and I have decided to make more eating stops-- we were lucky today as we made our way around Tucson that there were lots of "food choices" as Bubba puts it.  We stopped three times to eat and get warm and the miles in between stops were painless.