Tres Rios Loop - Day 2 - Joshua Trees and Alamo Lake State Park

Last night was the cold call of winter desert.  The wash, rich with atmospheric moisture along the Santa Maria River, saturated our shelters with condensation that iced a quarter thick both interiorly and exteriorly.  I wake up to pee in the night and feel my the top of my head scrape crystals from the inner walls.  With dawn's cusp, we stagger into the diffuse light.  Janna and I's bikes are caked in a quarter inch layer of soup frost - probably the thickest I've ever seen outside the Sierra Nevada.  The frost is copious.  It's probably somewhere in the mid-teens temperature-wise so we're all moving around slowly trying to keep fingers warm while simultaneously performing camp tasks.  No one is too excited for the prospect of morning water crossings down the wash in these conditions...(Keep Reading)