Today we rode from a dispersed campsite north of Young to the Sunrise Resort RV park. We had blue skies starting the day, some clouds during the day, and again a clear sky in the evening. The road surface was mainly gravel, some double-track, and very little pavement.
Riding statistics: on Friday May 17, 2024, the 9th day on the Western Wildlands Route route, it took 11:40h (08:40h moving time), between 07:14 and 18:55, to cover 117 km (73 miles), including 1502 m (4928 ft) elevation gain, with an average speed of 14 km/h (8 mph). During today's ride the average temperature was 23 °C (76 °F) with a minimum of 8 °C (46 °F) and a maximum of 33 °C (96 °F).
Totals: So far, it took 2 days, 19 hours, 14 minutes and 53 seconds of cycling time to cover 902 km (560 miles), including 12199 m (40025 ft) elevation gain, with an average speed of 13.8 km/h (8.5 mph).
Around 6am we left our dispersed campsite. We continued the same gravel road on which we ended de day yesterday. It was not as busy on this road as yesterday afternoon. Mainly local workers, especially for logging activities. The gravel road in the morning was a though one. Again many washboarding all over the road. You start to feel everything.
Around 10 we arrived at an recreation area at a lake. We visited the general store to get some food, snacks, and water. The 45 minutes, and the next two hours we continued a gravel road, and it had a lot of primitive camping sites, already used but quite some people since the weekend is coming. We heard the locals like to spend their spare time at a higher elevation in the mountains because of the lower temperature. The many primitive campsite all were in National Forests, we passed three or four different National Forests today.
In the early afternoon there were less campsites and we saw fewer people. We rode the Rim Road for hours. We rode along a gigantic rim of the Mogollon mountains. Sometimes we were in the Pine First, sometimes the forest was on one side, and a spectacular view on the other. we have ridden through Pine Forests all day. One person told us these Pine forests start around Flagstaff and run all the way to New Mexico. So we will see more forest in the coming days. Today we also saw several dozen bike-packers. They were riding the Pines and Pinions event. For today, we tried to get to a gas station and campground at Happy Jack for our destination today, a little over 100km from where we started the day. In the comments section of our Western Wildlands Route navigation app, I saw two comments about an RV park near our destination, Sunrise Resort. It offers tent sites (especially for bikers), showers, laundry, and Wifi. The RV park is run by Peggy and Claith (if I write that correctly), a very nice couple. They encourage cyclists to stop there. That evening they organized a campfire and showed Toy Story (for the few kids on the park, but we all watched with hot choco, popcorn, and a cupcake).
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