We've been the whole afternoon in a small place city Amboy waiting temperatures to drop to move foward.
We already rode 80 miles but there is still 38 more before we arrive in the next hotel. This small cafe is the only one between our origin and our destination, so when temperatures approached the 101 F / 39 C we stopped here.
We will eat the frozen food we have now and resume our ride at 8:00 pm when temperatures should drop to 37 C.
We've been on the road since 1:00am so at this point we are very tired... These last 5 hours riding will be tough but we'll make it.
This day ended with us riding 79 very hard miles during a freezing cold night and being awake for 29 hours straight. But don’t worry about that now, we’ll get there.
We had camped in the previous night and, in an attempt to make our two tents look like one and therefore pay for just one tent, I had clipped just one side of my tent’s upper cover. As the night progressed the winds blew part of it away and the cold air started flowing in. I woke up with the intense cold, but thought it was easier to just cover myself better instead of going out to fix the tent in the middle of the night, and so I did. That way I finally fell asleep again.
Next thing I know I am sweating in my sleeping bag like if I had been running for a long time under the sun. When I opened my eyes I saw the whole cover had been blown away and I was now sleeping under the hot morning sun. Already awake I decided to just get out of the tent and start disassembling and packing everything. My uncle was awake too, so we both started preparing for a great day in the Grand Canyon. The whole campground was filled with very thin red dirt that stuck into all our stuff, but even with the few hours of sleep we managed to pack relatively quickly.
After riding out we found a nice coffee house where we had breakfast and finally had a Wi-Fi connection. We spent about two hours there updating the site, answering emails and messages. The coffee was good and so were the sandwiches we had.
We then rode to the next building, the National Geographic Visitor Center. There we watched a very nice IMAX movie about the Grand Canyon’s history and learned a lot about its past and the first explorers to enter that area.
This whole area was still far away from the canyon itself, so we got into our bikes and moved towards the rim. It took us another area to reach the Grand Canyon Village where we looked for a place to have lunch. Without cheap options we settled for sandwiches one more time, but instead of buying them ready we got the ingredients and prepared them ourselves.
It was almost 4:00 pm when we finally moved towards the canyon’s rim. It took us another forty minutes to get there. As expected, it was amazing. I wish there was a way to communicate its size and how one feels when faced with such a unique place, but there isn't. No words can extend Grand Canyon’s beauty beyond itself.
We found a nice viewing area and spent a few minutes there. Then we rode to the Yaki point, a famous viewing area about three miles ahead. We spent the remainder of our time there appreciating the view and trying to soak in as much as we could. And then the sunset started. A thin haze originating from wildfires far away had being carried by the winds and set over the canyon creating a uncommon view. The sun acquired an intense red color, allowing for great pictures.
As the sun started to set the temperatures started to drop immediately. We then called a few hotels in Williams, our destination for the night and started our ride towards that city. Our plan was to ride from 8:30 pm until 2:30 am. According to our plan we would be sleeping by 3:30 am, but as you’ll see in the next day’s summary we would soon discover we were very wrong about that.
