Komoot Women's Arizona Rally Pt 3: Patagonia Mountain Cabins

Duquesne take it with you

Riding out of TerraSol, the Cottonwoods and Junipers were twisted, thick, and full. By now, parts of this trip are starting to fade from memory (the repercussions of my neglect in writing this all down at once) but some feelings are ingrained: The cool, almost damp air of the valley sending a chill as the sun was slow to make its mark, how it cut through the trees to striations of hot and cold, intensified by the climb out. It felt like another country, someplace disconnected from my reality.

Soon enough, though, we were along an exposed cut of road climbing out of the valley. Despite the freezing morning with frost on the saddle and my Nalgene full of hot water turned cool, and seemingly endless tossing and turning, I felt strong this first half of the day. The feeling soon passed but for the moment, I was an athlete.

photo by Ashley Gruber

Cresting a large hill, tiny bouncing stick figures came into focus. Thin, bent arms reached upwards and pumped in silhouette along to the music of girlvoice hooting and cheering: Lael's family had set up a secret aid station in a pull-out, and cyclists were lounging in the dirt eating sandwiches and drinking seltzer while others were sugar-charged on cookies and soda and adrenaline cheering on the incoming cyclists.

photo by Ashley Gruber

At this point in the ride, stopping feels as bad as it feels good. A body in motion can stay in motion, especially at the top of a hill. Body a. body that has stopped and cooled itself in the shade with an ice cold seltzer, grapes, and a cheese sandwich has a much harder time getting back in motion. But as was the chorus of the rally, we can do hard things including getting back on our bikes when our backs and knees hurt.

Around 4 PM, we reached a lake where some other cyclists were beginning to congregate. After a bit of fussing and debating, Kristen, Melinda, and I decide to head another 15 or 20 miles to Patagonia Mountain Cabins, where Kristen stayed at last year's rally. I was hesitant, because it was going to get dark soon, the lake seemed fun and I wanted to camp, and I was tired. But Kristen talked up the cabins a lot and while I don't suffer from FOMO, I did feel that a stay at the lake probably included experiences I could replicate in my imagination but the cabins were intangible, the hosts were mercurial and hard to bring to mind in a real way. So I had to see for myself.

The ride to the cabins was a dream. Long shadows stretched over the tall grass that grew beside us, Shetlands and Longhorns gnawed on grass casually. The sun dipped low behind us as the moon rose, pregnant and illuminated. The sand under our wheels was deep and we shifted from one side of the road to another, trying to find a good line. We added layers, then took them off, the air cold but the sand working up our bodies into tiny infernos until it stopped us in our tracks.

Hours went by. We picked at our snacks, checked our maps in the bright moonlight, wondered if we had made any progress at all. Eventually, truck headlight lumbered down a side road and met us. It was Jeff, co-owner of the cabins.

"Kristen?" he said as he got out of the truck, "is that you? Listen I know you are tough and are capable of making it on your own, but if you want to throw your bikes in the back of the truck I won't tell anyone. I understand if you don't want to though." I may have been the first to unstraddle my bike and line up to hoist it into the back of Jeff's pickup,

"Drop us off at the entrance and we can ride in, then you can come in and say, 'Look who I found at the gate!'" I joked. Jeff was chuffed by the idea and would have gone through with it if we'd let him. But we poured out at the front door, unloaded our bikes, and stepped inside the house of Jeff and Elle Lockwood, owners of Patagonia Mountain Cabins. The "anyone" he mentioned earlier were the eight or so other cyclists, drinking wine and chatting over snacks while one of them — Poppy, perhaps — cooked dinner with Elle. Katie showed up and sidled over to me, a kindled spirit who seemed to recognize when I wanted to converse but impuissant to socializing. The paradox of bicycle travelers.

The night stretched on with good food and friendship and conversation around the kitchen. We had the chance to shower the dust and sand off in the Lockwoods' personal bathroom while the rest of the gang chatted, finished dinner, sipped on wine. Eventually, the rest of the group retired to their respective cabins and Kristen, Melinda, and I sat by the wood stove with Jeff and Elle, drinking tea and learning the history of the area, of their family. The US presidential election results had just been posted before this trip, and we were all on edge. Talking with the Lockwoods was a reminder of good people in the world of all generations, that there is sanity and reason and compassion, and people paying attention. None of us knew at the time what was to come, despite being told what to expect. By the time they went to bed and left us to sleep in their living room, I felt like a well-loved house cat curled up by the fireplace for the evening.

In the morning, we packed up early and took a tour of the property. Patagonia Mountain Cabins is technically located in the ghost town of Duquesne, and many of the cabins were built by hand by Jeff using reclaimed materials from the mine and the homes that used to bring life t the area. Today, they bring a new form of life in the form of travelers' respite, mountain bikers and dirt bikers/overlanders enjoying the area, and bird watchers.

We headed back into the sand and grit of the day, with short spikes of climbs into a big climb out of the valley and into the bright sun. While we had big patches of deep sand on the way to the cabins, the ride today was even sandier, all while descending the mountain we'd just crested. The thing about sand on sandy dirt roads is that it's hard to tell when it becomes a pit, and with weighted bikes some of us were digging right into it while others were able to float a bit more successfully with wider tires. Poppy was not so lucky, and had a major crash in the deep sand that took her out for the remainder of the ride. Luckily, she's so tough and so experienced, that it wasn't the last we saw of her.

Finally in the late afternoon, we hit pavement and the heat resonated more like a vibration, a tuning fork that was bonked upon the sun and enhancing its rays. Finally, we carved our way downhill onto a "highway" intersection with a gas station-Wendy's combo, a true taste of America for our international friends. There was a small gathering already there when we arrived, and as others showed up, largely those who had stayed the night before at the lake, we had endless reasons to sit in the air conditioning slugging down Slurpees and Frostees.

Soon, though, hours had passed without us realizing and it was time to leave, yet our bodies were shocked from the caloric intake and the sudden burst of oven heat from the outside. A Spanish-speaking man chatted in a chopped scatter of vocabulary with some of the riders, intrigued with what we were doing and excited for his daughters to see us. We rode away and while we hadn't made up the mileage we were hoping to cover for the day to make the next day manageable, many of our riding mates were stopping at another lake. Well, it was the parking lot of a lake, though the lake itself wasn't visible. It was also the coldest possible point of the area, due to the almost constant shade. It felt good in the moment but as the sun set it made for a bitter chill.

Before the sun set, though, a few riders were still feeling the vibration of the day and all the recently consumed sugar and calories and were curious to check out the lake. Andy, one of the bike races from New York, caught up in the moment, put some frill on her ride for a moment and didn't realize in the dimming light that there was a patch of sand there. She showed up back at camp covered in road rash from her face to her feet. Luckily, Kristen is a nurse and between our collective headlamps and first aid kits, she was able to clean her wounds and patch her up. We spent the rest of the evening chattering and staying warm with tea and shared snacks, little cloisters of riders gathered around card games and headlamps.