California City to Big Bear City

Will try and add some photos soon

After our adventure in Sequoia National Forest Tom and I cycled towards Apple Valley through lots of desert. We stayed the first night outside California City after treating ourlselves to some great burritos from the Burrito van. I'm normally get nervous when camping by the road even though I do it a lot. When setting up camp on that particular night I mentioned to Tom that most people are probably pretty scared of two guys in the middle of the desert with headlamps on, so I probably don't have much to be scared about. One advantage of cycling in the desert is that once your out of a town you can basically camp anywhere and it's legal in a lot of places because its government land. From California City we headed down 58 and past the no cyclists sign(there was no other road to take) until we had a chance to get off it, just before the town of Boron, a town built next to one of only two Boron mines in the world! Tom treated me to a great icecream(thanks) and we popped into the Boron Museum which was run by a well meaning lady who told us the best way to get to Apple Valley and lots of other interesting facts about the area until we were about ready to cry. Tom knew a girl who lived in Apple Valley and my leg was hurting a little so we decided to try and hitch so we would get there before dark. After about half an hour a guy picked us up and dropped us 30 miles closer and so we managed to do the last 15 as the sun set arriving in the dark. We stayed the next three night at Ambers house and had a blast.

The first night we were pretty tired and stinking so we showered and slept! The next day we had a little tour of Apple Valley and went to see an interesting college, CalEarth, that built buildings from earth and sandbags.  The guy who ran the college was from Sunderland, a town not far from my home town, it was quite a surprise to hear my local accent.   We planned to go to some local hot springs that night but ended up drinking lots of sangria and dressing up using Ambers extenisive collection of fancy dress outfits.  Tom looked fabulous as Wonderwoman and I made a great nurse.   The next day Amber drove us to some local hot springs which were a blast.   I think they were the New Jack City hot springs.   After a short hike through some desert scenery we came to a river with 4 different pools of different temperatures. On arrival Tom and Amber stripped naked, I didn't want to seem like a prude so followed suite. The atmosphere at the hot springs was very friendly and we met some interesting people.  

Amber was a great host and it was a shame to leave the next day, we finally set off at around two and headed towards Joshua Tree National Park on the 18 and camped just after Lucerne Valley. The next morning we changed our plans and headed up a pretty big 4000 feet climb to Big Bear City to meet up with some of Tom friends to do some rock climbing. The climb didn't seem too bad and we camped a few miles up a dirt road where we stashed our bikes and were picked up the next morning for a great day of rock climbing. The rock climbing was really a lot of fun, it was great watching Tom and Nick climbing as they were pretty good and it was good to get a chance to do some myself. We woke early the next morning as Toms friends had to head back to San Diago for work. I was feeling a little rough from the beer the night before but this feeling was remedied pretty quickly with some breakfast burritos. Tom and I head down to Big Bear city and found out about a dirt road that headed down to Yucca Valley and then headed a little ways down that road before setting up camp.