Day 37 - June 22 - Rachel, NV

From Caliente, there was 45 miles to a rest area and then 40 miles to Rachel. I didn’t really know how big the town was or what was there. I figured I would fill up on water at the rest are and be good to go. As soon as I left Caliente there was a summit to climb. So for the first 12 miles I was climbing then went down into this dry lake bed. There was another small summit but it wasn’t very noticeable coming from the east. After that it went down to the intersection for the Extraterrestrial highway leading to Rachel. That is where the rest area was. I was expecting at least something to be there. There was nothing but a few park benches and no water. I was already pretty low on water, only 2 liters left of the 6 I had left with and it was already 1pm. I sat in the shade and was starting to worry about being able to make the next 40 miles in the heat, especially since there were two more fairly large summits to climb. I rested up in the shade and just decided to head out before I ran out of water just sitting around.

There was about a 10 mile gradual climb to the top of the first summit and I was already pretty tired and drank most of the water I had on the way up. It took a while to get up because I was trying to take it slow and not overheat. In Nevada I could see pretty far because there’s nothing around so as soon as I was on top of the summit I could see the next summit I would have to go over about 20 miles down the road. That just sucks. I continued on, slowly approaching the next summit. I was out of water and it was clear skies in the Nevada desert. I was feeling pretty miserable and finally flagged down a truck 20 miles from Rachel to ask for water. They gave me some sodas and offered me a ride so I took it. They strapped down my bike on a trailer they were carrying behind the truck. As soon as we headed out to Rachel I had a bad feeling about taking the ride. They sped up to 90 mph and hitting pot holes like crazy. I was just picturing my bike flying off of the back. We finally got to Rachel and went to get the bike down and it had tipped over and most of my stuff was scattered on the trailer. Everything was there but my sleeping mat which someone who was riding behind us said flew off about 4 miles back. I guess I got pretty lucky that my mat was the only thing I lost or broke.

The town of Rachel was just a few trailers and the motel/café called the Little A’le’inn. There was really no where to camp and I had to ride 110 miles the next day so I just decided to get a room at the motel which was just a room in a trailer. I thought it was weird that I had a big TV in the room with no cable, just an antenna that got no channels because it’s in the middle of nowhere. I got everything unpacked and went back to the café and talked to a few people about my trip. Someone offered to help me go and look for my mat so we drove off to look for it. We drove 10 miles back but didn’t find it. He worked for the government and told me that the air force was doing some flight simulation that night so there would be a lot of noise, jets flying low and dropping bombs and such.

I went back to my room and rested up and set out later that night when it was cool to look for my mat again. I biked back 10 miles and was looking in the ditches and everything but once again no luck. On my way back it started to rain and since I was looking off the road I almost ran over a snake that hissed at me so I just gave up and went back. Later that night I could hear a lot of jets flying overhead and there was an explosion that shook my trailer around midnight.