I slept like a baby last night. The winds were oddly comforting and my tent stood rigid against their attempts to move it and me. However, when I woke up the winds were still howling. And after packing up camp and beginning my ride I knew my original plan for today was not going to work. I set out to get to Marble Canyon from Cameron, a 77 mile ride. Instead, I was met with headwinds pushing into the 25 mph range with gusts topping 30 mph. I knew I needed to bring in my emergency plan, something I hoped I could abandon back in Florida.
Illegal camping.
I want to state for the record that it's not just the illegality of this camping that deters me from doing it. It's the fact that you can't really get a good night's rest as you worry about people or animals coming into your site. Waking up to the police, a bear, a coyote, or an angry land owner are not good ways to wake up at four in the morning. However, this is a matter of necessity and out in the desert there's a few points that lean in my favor.
The thing to remember about the desert is how utterly empty and huge it is. In between towns, no one owns the property really. Most of it is Bureau of Land Management (BLM) property. It's not owned by any one person, but is in the hands of the federal government for public use. People use BLM land for camping, thru hiking, off-roading, shooting, hunting, photography, climbing, research, and tons of other reasons. I knew that BLM land rules for camping could be boiled down to "you can stay here for two weeks then you gotta go." Secondly, out West there are a lot washes. These are river and creek beds that are only flooded from snow melt and rain on the handful of days during the year that those events happen. Neither of those have happened recently so they are very, very dry and open for camping. A significant amount of these washes also have concrete drainage ditches, and a number of these are about six-and-a-half feet tall by eight feet wide. Meaning, a tent and a bike will easily fit in them.
Home for the night.
After watching the sun descend further and further in the sky, I decided to finally get off the road and head into a concrete sanctuary. After carefully lugging my bags and bike down the steep slope and into the wash, I set up camp. Despite the day being long and painfully slow, it ended with a good view.
These days cycling through the desert are so remote, red, and difficult that I feel as if I might as well be on Mars. Isolated and alone like Matt Damon in "Saving Private Martian."