Day 40 - June 25 - Benton, CA

I got to bed around 9pm the night before and woke up around 8am. I took it slow in the morning, got some breakfast and packed up to head off for California. I had an 85 mile day ahead of men and wanted to be done with Nevada. Riding out of Tonopah was nice, I didn’t have to pedal for the first 13 miles to the first rest stop. It was going to be a good day, there was even a town half way to Benton, CA where I could get fill up on water. I got riding and it was still fairly cool, clouds were starting to form but there was no rain. It was slightly downhill after that so I was making good time. I got to the town 43 miles after Tonopah and there was nothing there, it was a ghost town. I wasn’t surprised, but I hadn’t used up that much water getting there so I wasn’t too worried. There was a decent summit right before California and figured I would be fine. Once I got to the base of the summit I realized how shitty I felt. I was sore and definitely not ready to be climbing again. The clouds had left me and it got hot quickly and I was making slow time climbing the summit. Once again I was running out of water in the Nevada desert and climbing up a summit. I got to the top and there was a trucker who was broke down and he gave me some Gatorade. After that I was pretty happy, it was downhill into California and even more importantly, I was going to be out of Nevada.

I made it through Nevada so quickly that I hadn’t even looked at my California maps. I got into the first town of Benton and got some dinner at the café in town. There really wasn’t much there so I was nervous about finding a place to camp for the night. They told me there was a campground a few miles away but it was closed for the day. I started wandering around town and passed by a church with a few people that had tents set up. Then I realized they were bike tourists so I stopped and started talking. The two other tourists, Chance and Kelly were headed the same way I was and had started in New York. We talked about our experiences then went to sleep.