Day 1 - Desert Winds

Before we started on our Desert Camp adventure, we had some time to visit with Joel's Aunt Chris and Cousin Anna. We had a great dinner with Anna at El Charro in Tucson - one of the oldest restaurants in town started almost 100 years ago. Great food and a really fun atmosphere. (Anna is going to come visit us in May - yay!!)

Joel and Anna

The next morning we loaded our bags onto the truck, got our bikes and headed from Tucson to Tombstone Arizona - home of the OK Corral, Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday. We rode out of town in an easterly direction, but as soon as we headed south, we hit strong headwinds - for the next 50 miles! 

What a nice introduction to PacTour ;). 

Most of our riding was on 2 lane highways with little to no traffic. It was great to meet all the other riders along the way. We encountered some interesting hills as well. We would climb a bit, then it would level off, then we'd climb again, level, climb again... you get the picture. We then turned east onto Rt. 82 and suddenly, the wind was to our back. Wow - what a difference! We were going mostly downhill with a tailwind for the next 30 miles - which we covered in just over an hour.

We arrived in Tombstone and had an ice cream before taking in the historical sites complete with wooden sidewalks, old time saloons and many town folk walking around in costumes from the second half of the 1800's.

It was a tough day. 90 miles with 4500 ft of climbing. The headwinds really made it much more difficult than the numbers show. Still, we had a great time.