The Next Adventure

Hello friends and family! This Panda Blog is about to change its course. Previously I have vaguely recounted some adventures--this summer in Alaska, traveling down the west coast this fall, and in Bolivia and Argentina this "winter." The next three months, my sister Cate and I are going to try something entirely different. Starting tomorrow, we are getting dropped off in Mimbres, New Mexico, where we intersect the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route! We will get dropped off with two mountain bikes and begin biking north, following the Continental Divide through to Canada (hopefully).

We say this is something entirely different even though three years go we went on a bike trip of similar length with our other sister, Liz. The three of us set out from Seattle and biked for two and a half months across the northern United States. That trip brought us through small towns every day, and gave us a sense of how people lived outside of the cities and in between the coasts. This trip, on the other hand, is a bikepacking trip that, according to our book, will bring us to roads that are "so remote, so lacking in traffic, that it's hard to imagine why they were built in the first place." In other words, we will get a sense of how bears live outside of the cities and in between the east and west coasts.

Reading this was not scary at all until we realized, yesterday, that the first segment of the route has no towns or services for five days (and limited access to water). After five days, we arrive at Pie Town, New Mexico, a small town with no groceries, but a post office. We are mailing ourselves a resupply.

Nevertheless, Cate and I are very excited, though we will miss our by-far-the-most-responsible-sister, Liz pants. We have prepared by buying a lot of food and some brightly colored articles of clothing, to fight boredom of course.

Anyways, the past week my parents have been driving us from California to southern New Mexico. In between panicky trips to various REI's and grocery stores to get ready for our trip, we have found some pretty crazy sights that we definitely would never have found otherwise. I will let our pictures speak for themselves!

Putting our bikes together in Topanga, CA with my expert bicyclist and bike mechanic uncle.

Family unites for wedding in Laguna Beach, California.

Camping in Hidden Valley, Joshua Tree National Park.

Hike to Lost Palm Oasis through the hot desert was...hot. Lizards abounded and we even saw a tortoise. We welcomed the shade of the palm trees, and had a very pleasant lunch here.

We managed to make it to Joshua tree during the few weeks a year when the Mojave desert is in bloom. It was beautiful, and completely foreign.

Chiricahua--one of the craziest places in the southwest.

Climbing the fanciful rock spires was lots of fun.

In the rock spires at sunset.

Finally, we went to the Gila Cliff Dwellings near Silver City, New Mexico.

Native Americans built over fifty buildings in these cliffs 700 years ago! They only lived in them between 1270 and 1300, a pretty short time for all the effort they put into it. No one knows why they left, but it's possible they were scared of heights.

In the caves.

Thanks Mom and Dad!