20170827 - Grand Junction Colorado to Redlands California

I'm doing this out of order.  Yesterday was a long day, and today was going to be even longer.  We arrived in Grand Junction before dark.  The last 30 miles were hard as we were riding through the desert.  Desert heat takes away so much energy.
 
Jim had Marriot points and used them to get us two rooms.  We were staying at a Residence Inn, so it was a shame that such a nice room was only used for one quick evening.

While eating dinner with Jim, I discovered that the ride home was going to be 750 miles, not 500 miles.  That was a game changer.  I was expecting 500 because when I looked a map a couple days ago, I thought I was going to make it past Grand Junction and get 250 miles closer to my destination before turning in.  That didn' happen.

750 miles of mostly super-slab will take about 10 hours, plus traffic.  Temperatures were expected to be over 100 for a large part of the ride.  As above, this is very hard riding.  I planned to be up at 4 am and start riding to get as many miles out of the way as possible before the temperature got into the 90's.

Surprisingly, when the alarm went off at 4am, I was able to jump out of bed, get ready very quickly and had the kickstand up at 4:20 am.  It was dark, and I-70 doesn' have street lights.  It does have an 80mph speed limit though.  The good news was that at that hour, there aren't many vehicles on the road, so I was able to make extensive use of the high-beams.  I don't think I saw anything except the road from Grand Junction until I was half-way to I-15.  When the sun came up behind me, it illuminated some fantastic landscape.  The elevation was no more than about 7,000' at the highest, but the temperature dropped down to 43 degrees.

I was on I-15 by 7:45.  The temperature was climbing into the 80's already, and I was headed into the desert.  I was quite aware that it was going to be a hot day.  As it worked out, I managed to go get into Las Vegas while the temperature was just barely making it to 100 degrees, but temps greater than 100 degrees would last all the way home.  The high temperature was 111 degrees.  I only stopped for fuel and had breakfast bars to eat.  The one thing that was quite clear on this ride is that a breakdown in the desert would be very bad.  At those temperatures, it would be miserable waiting for help.  Hydration would clearly be an issue.

I arrived home just before 1:30 pm PST.  Here are the customary maps.  I didn't take any video today.  This is the whole 6500-mile trip.