USA - Day 6 - Applewhite campground - Silverwood lake

This is the route we biked today

We started the day going uphill through a desert canyon. Although we got started at 08:00 it was already pretty hot while going up. When we descended we came into some kind of desert plane. The road was long and exhausting and we had a couple of 4x4s going past us. While riding this part I was wondering if this is how we’re going to spend our days after Big Bear.

And now we saw Cajon junction popping up at the horizon! We knew there was going to be a store and a Subways so we were looking forward to that.

But the women in the Subways told us that it was closed because there was no electricity (but we saw lights on?!) so we had to go elsewhere. We decided to go over the freeway bridge to the McDonalds to get some breakfast there.

We didn’t find any outlets so we had no possibility to charge (my battery pack is getting low) but we did saw an opportunity to get back to the route with a shortcut. We saw that the Pacific Crest Trail also went that way so it should be fine and should save us a serious roundtrip.

We had to go under the freeway with some kind of tunnel where a river was also flowing and on the other side things got worse and worse.

At a certain point we could not continue so we had to turn around. I climbed up an incline on the side of the ‘road’ and saw that there was a real road up there.

So we carried our bikes up (I unloaded some bags to make it easier) and we were underway.

And then we had to stop because the trail we wanted to take was closed. Damn it, what now? We talked about still continuing or not and in the end we called the number on the sign to check if we could continue (one sign indicated no motor vehicles and another no foot traffic so it was confusing). They told us the road was severely damaged so we decided to backtrack.

So we had to cycle the whole way back to Cajon junction but this time we took the ‘official’ route. On the way back we were seriously pissed as we just lost 2 hours of our time for nothing. We also had to wait for a passing freight train in the middle of nowhere 😂

Back at Cajon junction we got a Powerade to drink and we decided to continue to Silverlake on the interstate. It would take us 15km and 400m elevation and doing that on an interstate is not ideal but we had no choice.

We took a rest at a gas station / convenience store (another Powerade!) and were at Silverlake around 14:00. Some parts of the interstate had no space left on the side of the road and those parts were sketchy. But on most parts we had some room on the side of the road to stay safe.

We went to the state campground and had to pay 20$ for a spot. First we came across a gate with a closed sign so we had to get our bikes across that. Then it took some time to discover our spot. We then discovered there were no restrooms open (all doors locked) so we were not happy.

In the end we decided to stay as it is a quiet place. As it was only 15:00 I decided to wash a t-shirt, one pair of socks and my gloves. There should be enough sun to get everything pretty dry. It seems my items were pretty dirty as this was how the soapy water looked in the end 🙃

So here we are after a day filled with disappointments and setbacks. I’m still happy that we got to the point that we planned. So it’s all good 😊

See you tomorrow!