USA - Day 8 - Crab Flats campground - Big Bear Lake

This is the route we cycled today:

I woke up a bit before 06:00 and was happy to see that my tent was still standing. I had to ‘mummify’ my sleeping bag because it got pretty cold during the night. It wasn’t the best sleep I got in the tent but it was ok.

We got back on the road again around 07:40 and not soon after I noticed my rear tire was losing pressure. We noticed a small leak in the sidewall, pumped it up again and all seemed to be ok.

But after a short distance I noticed I was still losing pressure. I got out the plug kit but while cleaning the area around the hole it seemed so small to me that it should heal itself. I decided to pump up the tire once more and hope for the best. And it worked!

But the road we were in hadn’t changed. There where still huge boulders where we had to push our bikes over.

This part of the route also had new challenges such as river crossings. Most of them were pretty ok although we had to get creative with some of them.

It took us from 07:40 until 11:15 to tackle this section and I have to confess: it stopped being fun pretty soon 😂 We always seemed to go up and then down again but we didn’t seem to be gaining any elevation. We needed to go to 2200m (starting from 1850m) but the major climbing only happened at the end (on a normal fire road).

We arrived in Big Bear Lake at 12:15 and went straight to Denny’s to get a double burger. We checked in and took a long shower. Showering after 7 days felt amazing 🤫

We got some coffee, drank a couple of good (but expensive!) beers and now it’s time to go to sleep in a real bed!

Tomorrow will be a rest day to do some laundry and get some supplies and after that we’ll tackle the Socal Desert Ramble.

See you later!