night in the desert

from apache junction to tucson was too far to ride in one day, and neither of the people i had contacted for couchsurfing had replied, so the idea was to sleep somewhere out in the desert. i wasn't excited about it, but open and curious.

before florence i zig zagged through big farm land, where i saw my first cotton fields. i probably could have picked up enough cotton off the side of the road to insulate a small house! but i just gathered a little to send to my brother's kids. there were some dairy opperations and crops in different stages of cultivation. some hay fields. all was fairly dreary and unappealing to look at. the state of conventional, modern agriculture...

in florence the highlights were a bowl of butter bean soup at Florence Fudge Company and picking very ripe black olives from a beautiful tree nobody else seemed to notice. there were shrivelled olives in perfect condition all over the ground! i would later brine them at my host's in tucson to render them edible.
i filled water at a rancho sonora. the water there, from a well i was told, tasted wonderful compared to what was available in florence.

while riding this straight and level road i felt very tired and unmotivated, but i just pushed on. i passed wash after wash, and saw they might make good places to camp (not in the monsoon season!). there were fences about twenty yards back from the road though so one would have to tolerate the noise of the cars. i decided i would seek a road to turn off and camp back a ways. the one i found, as it was getting towards dusk, was called anya rd. it was a private dirt road. i could see signs of cattle in the ditch next to the road where i decided to sleep. i hoped they would not step on my head in the night.
i saw the sun set and the moon rise as i ate my dinner, sitting on my mat, wrapped up in the sleeping bag. as the sun rose in the morning the moon was getting close to setting. there was frost on my bag, but the day looked like it would be a warm one. i had been cozy enough with my sweater around my feet in the bag and the extra blanket that i had found in L.A. on top.

i stopped at all three 'roadside table's' along this stretch of highway. they were funny little rest areas where i stretched, sat, and at the last one dried my bedding in the sun.
the next time i stopped to fill water was at the office of an RV park a few miles from catalina. when i rolled through catalina i decided to stop for a break and bite to eat at Claire's Cafe. places like this really comfort me when riding through areas that are dominated by big box stores and gas stations. everything seems corporate, and i keep my eye out for places that have some funky, homey feeling to them. the food was not what i'd hoped (low quality ingredients), but it was served with kindness and the atmosphere was nourishing.

miles and miles of malls it seemed like as i entered tucson and followed the signs toward downtown, where i hoped to find a natural food coop and library.