Halfway through the ride, we visited the border and inspected the relatively new vehicle barrier fence. It is made up of cut and welded railroad ties and rolls across the undulating valley like a row of carefully placed pick-up jacks.

I like that it stops vehicles, capable of carrying large loads of drugs or illegals, without hindering the free flow of wildlife.

The route is on Forest Service roads, very well maintained, but a challenge for some with skinnier tires. A road bike would not survive the trip, but two cross bikes did fine. There was one tire casualty. We rode Zippy, our touring tandem without difficulty.

This ride gives the workout of a longer ride on paved roads, with the upper body workout of a non-technical mountain bike ride, the best of both worlds. There is almost no traffic and the silence is a welcome change from city riding. The San Rafael Valley is surrounded by mountain ranges: Patagonia Mountains on the west, Canelo Hills on the northwest, and the Santa Rita Mountains to the north.

This is the West  of imagination, the Marlboro Man leaning on his saddle horn surveying his herd. The valley is a favorite movie location.

The route climbs steadily into the Patagonia mountains in the Coronado National Forest.

The graded dirt road passes through or near the ghost towns (not all are abandoned) of Hershaw, Washington Camp, Duquesne and descends to the valley at Lochiel, where much of the land is in large ranch holdings.

Ranches in this part of Arizona are commonly in the thousands of acres.

The valley is a wide expanse of treeless grass with a few cattle and ranch houses in the distance. The riding is sublime and in spring and fall, cold in winter, hot in summer. Plan accordingly. Note that there is no water along the route.

This is a republication, with changes, of an earlier post.

It appears the volcano in Iceland is not going to go back to sleep without causing mankind to take notice of the disruption possible. Thousands of flights have been canceled by the the ash cloud ejected from the eruption under a glacier. The ash is even more destructive to air traffic because some of it may be turned to glass by the ice before being ejected high into the air.We’ll just have to wait and see if this will last for weeks and cause major economic disruption in North Atlantic and European transportation, or fade away quietly. I wouldn’t bet on either.

We rode mountain bikes across Iceland one spring and learned just how unstable a place it can be. No, not the banking system, that might be another post, but the land itself. Iceland is part of the Atlantic Ridge, where Earth’s crust is being ripped apart as the tectonic plates slide on the molten mantle. In the first picture, Claire is straddling the North American plate and the European plate.

All this volcanic activity so close to the surface has been both a blessing and curse to Icelanders since settlement times. Steam from vents warms homes, produces electricity and draws tourists for their short summer. But where there is steam, there is fire, and water. With lots of precipitation, and just bussing the Arctic Circle, Iceland is and land of fire and ice, and roaring powerful rivers. Iceland has the third forth and fifth largest ice sheets on Earth, quite a distinction for such a small island nation.

Powerful rivers with thundering waterfalls carry the rain and glacier melt to the sea, along the away, often harnessed for electricity to smelt aluminum from ore shipped from all over the world. In recent years this has been a major contributor to the Iceland’s economy, replacing the fishing industry facing increased competition in the North Atlantic fishery. The harnessing of their rivers is a contentious issue with Icelanders; they like the money, but aren’t so sure about the environmental consequences. The also fear the consequences for the unprecedented purity of their gene pool, from the importation of foreign smelter workers.

This beautiful lady we met at a national park in the far north. She is pure Icelandic, lovely and nice too. She is studying to be an opera singer in Europe, and works summers as a park ranger. For years, scientists have been using Iceland as a place to study the genetic makeup of humans; their line goes back to the 9th century, and they are isolated halfway between continents and far north. With new gene sequencing methods, it won’t matter so much if science looses that pure strain, but it seems to be still important to the people of Iceland. I wouldn’t call it racism in this case, more cultural pride.

Should you be concerned with a small volcano on a tiny island nation far away? Possibly.  Activity in the current location has always been a  precursor to large eruptions under the Eyjafjallajokull glacier in southern Iceland. In 1783 an eruption killed a fifth of the population by famine, and created severe climate disruptions in Europe. A large, ash producing eruption, could cause rapid climate change in many parts of the northern hemisphere. Geologic evidence points to many such events in human history.

So, are you ready for a winter all summer next year? You might want to watch tiny Iceland for the foreseeable future.

Claire and her mountain bike in the center of Iceland.

For more photos and story about our tour across Iceland, click here

Bob and Claire's motorhome Turtle's campsite at Monument Valley, AZ

Three photo panorama from our campsite.

May 18. Monument Valley is a tribal park, and more reasonable with a $5 per person entry and $5 to dry camp in a spectacular spot. Late today we hiked the one trail open to unguided hikes, 3.5 miles around one of the Mitten buttes and arrived back at Turtle just before sunset. Took much of a 512 card of photos, and will probably do it again tomorrow when we bike the 18 mile loop tomorrow. With this park, it at least is fully within the control of the Dine; at least we are allowed to bike the same loop the guided tourists take.

We got a fantastic place to park Turtle (check the photo) though I had to make him/her act like a 4 wheel drive to get there and out, the sunset view was worth it. Had one of us been prone to sleepwalking, it would have been about a dozen steps to the edge.

May 19 Bicycling Monument Valley. We had a great mountain bike ride on a good dirt road today through some wonderful scenery. We left at sunrise and managed to do the loop at an easy pace, with lots of photo stops, and finish just as the loads of tourists began the loop, so we had no dust and we could hear the birds and smell the vegetation.