Our Trip in Review

We finished our 7th map, but forgot to post it.

We have heard from our over 300 faithful followers in 31 states and 22 countries. It was their prayers, thoughts, encouraging emails, facebook comments, text messaging that kept us going. We took over 1,560 photos....about 500 went on Facebook & some went on this blog.

We received over $1000 in donations for Outreach International & World Service Corps and have people who pledged per mile that still need to get the money to us.

Thanks for your part in the journey, following us on the blog.

We have enjoyed our time with our California Cadman family, and the warm sunshine. Kathleen is headed for Seattle, WA & Portland, OR...Doris & Bob are headed back to Utah.

The Pacific Ocean looked great...the journey is over

After a few more climbs up a mountain, then it was downhill into San Diego and Ocean Beach on the Pacific Coast. We met 2 sets of riders who were climbing, and only a few days from their start in San Diego, who envied us being at the end of the trip. One even asked Doris if she wanted to turn around and sag them across the other direction.
Here is the official ending....dipping the front tires in the Pacific Ocean. The water was a bit cool, but so much warmer than our start in the Atlantic at St Augustine so many miles and weeks ago.

This is another tradition, lifting your bikes in the air at the end of a ride.

Here are the 3 of us after dipping the front tires in the Pacific, in our Outreach International shirts (one of the 2 organizations we raised some money for along the way). Thanks to all of you who followed us on an incredible journey. A lot more pictures should be posted soon to the Facebook album. We will visit family in Glendora, then head back to Utah.

Are you following us? Our last day!!

We are leaving Pine Valley on our last day of the bike ride. Kathleen will be posting lots of photos on the facebook album this afternoon of the official dipping of the tires, and we will also post photos here.

If you have been following our journey, and are not on our facebook accounts to tell us, please leave a comment here, or if that does not work, please email peddling4pennies@hotmail.com. We are trying to get a count of how many fantastic followers we have had, and in how many states and countries.

Mountains on the Map :( But near the End!!

This is the map showing where we are leaving, below sea level, on the right. It also shows the mountains to be tackled in the middle, before arriving in San Diego on the left. Not only will the bikers have to grind gears, but the VW will have to go into lower gears.

Chocolate Mountains & White Sand Dunes

Left Joshua Tree in the dark, to get back nearly 3 hrs east to where we quit yesterday. This is what the first 50 miles looked like from the VW van, but the bikers & Van were never together for photos on the steeper hills of the Chocolate Mountains.

Rode up & down more hills into the Mojave Desert, and Imperial Sand Dunes where it was in the upper 90*, but beautiful white sands in contrast to the dark chocolate brown mountains we had just left.

On a break with the van, Kathleen checked up on her college roomie who is in the hospital 5 weeks early to deliver a daughter. We went 29 miles farther than originally planned to be in Brawley, so we could be sure we had cell phone & internet as we are waiting for news of the safe arrival of Katelyn Amanda, born in the wee hours of the morning.

Joshua Tree National Park

After breakfast, we found the grave of Hi Jolly, who was the Syrian in charge of the camels, mentioned in yesterday's blog. His favorite camel's ashes are in the tube on the front of the pyramid.

They biked 22 miles, with Kathleen having her 5th flat tire, into Blythe, California. To celebrate being in our LAST STATE!!!!! and having nice weather, they put the bikes on the Van, and we drove west to Joshua Tree National Park, kind of where the I-10 symbol is on the map above. It was interesting to see the Sonoran Desert terrain & lots of Cholla Cacti and Joshua Trees.

We spent the night in the small town of Joshua Tree & will get up very early in the am to drive back to Blythe, to get back on the bike route, which heads down toward the Chocolate Mountains and some sand dunes.

Spent last night in the small town of Tonopah. It had a hot springs, 3 gas stations, 1 restaurant/bar, 6 room motel, post office. We met several guys who live in their vans, wintering in AZ, then heading N to the Dakotas for summer. One even had an old VW bus. We joined all the semis at the Shell station for the night.

We made it another 75 miles today, on I-10 (the bikers say they are given great space from the cars & trucks passing by) in fantastic weather to the next town, Quartzsite. It is known for the US Army having used camels here, before the Civil War. If you want to read about it, check out : (http://www.outwestnewspaper.com/camels.html)

We found the pasta meal Bob & Kathleen have been craving, even had salad, cheesecake and free wi fi. We are not too far from the CA border, but there are only small towns for a few days. Of course, we have found wi fi in the most unusual places, and have had cellphone service more than we expected.