USA - Day 27 - Borrego Springs - Oakzanita campground

This is the route we cycled (and hitchhiked) today

We got up early because we wanted to try and avoid the busy traffic on the highway. We learned yesterday that a lot of RVs with offroad jeeps hitched behind would be using this highway to ride back home. As these are big and wide vehicles we were hoping to avoid them as much as possible.

We first started on a road with a bicycle lane which wasn’t busy at all.

And then we came on to the highway. We looked at the traffic and we saw there was no room for bicycles at all on the road. We talked about it and decided that it would be too dangerous to ride this road today. Tomorrow the traffic would be less busy and then we could try.

But if we would have to wait all day (it was 9:00 in the morning) we could as well and try to hitch a ride. Most of them were big pickup trucks so maybe somebody would be crazy enough.

We weren’t feeling confident this could work but we tried anyway. After 20 minutes a guy with a pickup truck stopped and he asked what was the matter. We explained that we were afraid of cycling on the highway and he said: just put your bikes on my truck.

We tried doing that but our bikes wouldn’t fit at all. We tried working with straps but it was no use. The guy told us that after 11 kilometres almost all traffic would continue on another road and that from there on we could continue on. If we were up for it we could hold our bikes while sitting in the bed of the pickup truck while the tailgate was open.

We said ok, got on the truck and off we went. It wasn’t the safest solution but it was a lot safer then cycling on the highway. And it was also cool to do ;-)

After the junction he dropped us off (he wanted to take us all the way to Julian but we saw that traffic was much better and wanted to cycle) and he rode on. That guy saved our day! Thank you man.

We continued and climbed up to Julian. It was a highway as well but traffic was really ok.

At 12 we were in Julian (which was our original endgoal). We stopped to get some pie (the town’s specialty ) and decided to ride on to Oakzanita campground.

We rode on to Oakzanita but it was real windy and we got pretty cold. At around 13:45 we were at Lake Cuyamaca and we got something warm to eat there.

From here on it was mostly downhill and we were really happy when we arrived at 15:30 at Oakzanita. We stayed here before and we knew that we would have a warm shower.

Today was a reminder to never to give up and keep on trying. We got really lucky with our lift and even managed to get ahead of schedule. Amazing!

See you tomorrow.