One of the highlights of our route is that we were going to pass through 3 National Parks or National Preserves. On our second day we climbed out of Palm Desert and up towards Joshua Tree National Park. On the climb out of town on a narrow road with no bike lane I remember Taylor telling me that he was going to put his headphones in because he was afraid he was going to die with all the cars passing us. I decided this was a good idea and did the same. A solid 45 minutes later the climb was over. When I asked Taylor what he had been listening to he replied, "Taylor Swift." "Me too" I said.
After the climb into the town of Joshua Tree, we headed towards Joshua Tree National Park. Had we kept riding straight, our destination of Twenty-nine Palms would have only been a few miles down the road. However Taylor and I were stoked to ride the 20+ mile loop through the park. I have fond memories of camping and climbing in Tree early in my 20's and was excited to revisit. After almost 6k ft of climbing and a beautiful ride through Joshua Tree NP, we descended into 29 Palms. Taylor discovered that super tucking on a backpacking bike was crazy fast since the bags cut the wind and the extra weight carried speed. We blasted the descent out of the National Park and into Twentynine Palms. This would be the first of many super tucking events on our trip.
Although our day was short on mileage the climbing, cold weather, and rain storm we were running from all day made it a pretty tiring one.
Our Motel 6 was right next to a Pizza Hut, which is a good thing because we were both smashed. We got beers from the gas station and ate a pizza each.
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