The last Stretch in the US: Las Vegas to San Diego

10 cycling days

688 km

6390 m ascent

3 wonderful hosts

It was a tough week of riding from Las Vegas into Palm Springs. Not necessarily because the route was hard (it was quite beautiful to be honest), but because of bad weather and a leaking tire on Sebis bike. It was a steady uphill with headwind out of Las Vegas. At some point, a cut in Sebis tire that has previously been sealed by the tubeless sealant, started leaking ever so slightly. Rain was approaching and we stopped at a gas station to wait it out and use the time to properly fix the tire. The cut in the tire was so big that Sebi needed to sew it with a needle. That was a first! (For those unfamiliar with tubeless tires, stitching bigger cuts is actually a common practice, although one that everybody hopes to never have to do! A bit of superglue or a patch and the tubeless sealant take care of sealing the stitches – in theory). In the end, it hadn’t rained and the “fixed” tire wasn’t leak tight either. It got dark and with a couple of stops to pump the tire we made it to a wild camping spot about 15 km away.

The tire kept bothering us throughout the entire next day, until Sebi finally used our shoe glue to seal the back of the stitches (the holy shoe glue, there’s nothing it hasn’t fixed so far) and let it dry overnight. The area was beautiful though, we cycled through uninhabited desert-like landscape with cacti and Joshua trees. We woke up the following morning to low temperatures and rain on our tent and didn’t find the motivation to pack up the tent and leave. We kept sitting in the tent for an hour or two, until we heard thunder rolling in the distance. It only took a quick look on the weather radar and the movement of the clouds and we decided to pack up everything fast and hurry to the gas station 20 km from here.
We sat inside to warm up and after a big plate of French fries the rain had stopped as well. Before leaving, a group of young men from Utah overheard that we had started in Alaska and curiously interrogated us. They were genuinely impressed and couldn’t stop telling us that “we were nuts”!

We cycled through the Mojave National Preserve and had a wonderful downhill to the Kelso depot, where we wanted to stay for the night. Train tracks run through here, nowadays only used for freight trains. The Kelso depot used to be a train station, but had been repurposed as a visitor center. It was unfortunately closed for renovations when we stopped here, but the restrooms and water fountains on the parking lot were accessible. We decided to sleep under the roof of the closed building and to not pitch the tent. In theory a good plan, the only thing we didn’t consider were the trains (to be honest we didn’t have a lot of other options). We slept only about seven meters away from the tracks, which was already incredibly loud, and with a railroad crossing nearby, every passing train would sound its horn right next to us… Luckily, only one train went through during the night and the ear plugs made it bearable.

The day started with light rain which stopped us from making the detour to the Kelso sand dunes. It was cool to see them from the distance though! For a few kilometers we found ourselves on the old Route 66 and had lunch at Roy’s Motel & Café. Once a popular roadside stop, it later got obsolete when the bigger freeway was built. Some years ago it was reopened as a gas station and souvenir shop. A long and steady uphill in the dusk and some abdominal cramps kept the spirit low that evening. But we wild camped that night and saw a stick insect for the first time, just hanging out on our tent. That didn’t fail to cheer me up!

I was so pleased by the desert around me. All ground apart from the paved road was sand, and all day long I tried really hard to spot a desert tortoise, unfortunately without success. In what felt like the middle of nowhere, there was a small community, called Wonder Valley. They had a free food box next to the road and finally I could trade the horribly-seasoned peanuts I’ve been carrying around for ages now with something way better: canned veggies and dried fruits. It was hot and we stopped in Twentynine Palms for some desperately-needed slush ice and refilling our water bottles. Sebi overheard a conversation about upcoming rain the next day which we didn’t have on the radar at all. Unfortunately, our weather app said the same and we made the decision to replan the following day. We said goodbye to our planned loop through the Joshua tree national park, as we didn’t see the point of cycling it in pouring rain.

The next day would have been a real cool one had we had good weather. We had nearly 1000 meter of continuous elevation loss ahead of us to get to Palm Springs. Unfortunately, the forecast had been true and it rained the whole day. We stopped for lunch at a supermarket and continuing was tough. The rain made the epic descent rather unpleasant and way more dangerous. For the first time, we encountered flash floods. Nothing too deep, but not being able to see the ground, potholes and any debris the water carried was extremely scary! It was afternoon when we arrived in Palm Springs. The city had a strong vacation-vibe, with palm trees lining the streets. We were warmly greeted by Roberto, our warm showers host for our time in Palm Springs. Funnily enough, he had previously hosted a cyclist that Sebi and I had met back in 2024 while cycling through Chile! The world feels small sometimes.

We spent a few days in Palm Springs, relaxing from the partly wet and troublesome last week on the road. We quickly fell into our usual routine – Sebi doing maintenance on the bikes and me writing my journal and blog posts. Most of our packages had already arrived and we upgraded and/or exchanged a few things on our bikes and setups. We would have run into the annoying, logistical problem of “how to get the exchanged things back home without having to deal with international shipments and custom declarations” if it wasn’t for our good friends Manu and Thiago, who selflessly offered to take our things with them when they’d fly to Switzerland the next time. We’ll be forever grateful!

Sebi and I left our bikes in Palm Springs and took a train to Los Angeles for a few days. We had a few things ordered to Los Angeles, back when we were still planning to cycle through Death Valley and Los Angeles. Cycling through LA never felt like a good plan though and we were quite relieved to be able to see the city without our bikes. Did you know that LA has a fully autonomous taxi service and semi-autonomous food delivery robots? We didn’t and seeing it for the first time in real life was quite impressive! We tried to have some not-too-exhausting days of sightseeing in the big city. The science center was interesting with a few cool exhibits, but I was particularly upset about the “touch tank” they had set up with live sea animals in tiny tanks simply for people to touch them… We caught a sunset at the Griffith Observatory with a beautiful view over the city and all the way to the ocean! Zootopia 2 was being released during our time in LA and we went to the TCL Chinese theatre to watch it on the release day. We paid the tickets for the show with our casino profits, hehe. One other stop was the Santa Monica Pier. It looked close on the map but getting there with the metro took forever! Before leaving, we went to “the BROAD”, a museum for contemporary art with free admission and super interesting architecture. After three days we were back in Palm Springs and prepared everything for hitting the road again the following day.

We said goodbye to our wonderful host and stocked up at the local supermarket, before leaving the city. Sebi didn’t feel so well and we quickly replanned to cycle the section from Palm Springs to San Diego in four days instead of three. We didn’t have many options for wild camping that evening and ended up pitching our tent underneath an electricity tower. Scarier than first thought, as we could feel our tent poles slightly vibrating when touching them! We triple-checked the weather and survived the night, but silently decided to never do that again in the future. Sebis low energy and the surprisingly hot weather resulted in yet another extended lunch break at a supermarket. That night we camped at a campsite, as wild camping got harder and harder as we cycled into more inhabited areas. We were woken up by a noise in the middle of the night and what did we see? A raccoon in the tree next to our tent! We must have been really tired though as we both fell asleep again pretty fast and never saw that raccoon again.

Our entire trip, we haven’t really been to the ocean. Stewart in Canada was the first time at sea level since we left in Deadhorse, but that was at the Portland Canal and not directly on the coast. But one day before reaching San Diego, we finally made it to the coast! 9000 km and five months after setting off. The roads along the coast were incredibly busy though and we were kind of glad that we had been away from the coast for the entire time. It didn’t take long and a running person jumped right in front of my bike without even looking over their shoulder once, that was a real close call! We stayed at the only campground that had a hiker/biker site and only charged us 30 USD instead of the 50+ USD at all the other places.

The remaining ride into San Diego wasn’t too far, but so much hillier than expected. We stopped at a supermarket and an outdoor shop and it was afternoon until we arrived at our Warmshowers place. Our hosts Kevin and Lucky were the sweetest and we immediately got along with them. Their place was beautiful as well and we took mental notes for later – bikes and plants and so cozy! Even the usually shy cat warmed up to us after a few days. We kept extending our stay, we felt so comfortable and welcome and could work on everything we needed to do. My bike got a major upgrade, with some ordered parts and a little bit of DIY it now had two cargo cages on each side of the fork – meaning I could carry two more water bottles without having to wear a backpack! The tent got stronger tent poles, which should prepare us for literally any weather we have yet to encounter. I spent some time working on the blog and on a creative project for my grandmother for Christmas. On our last night in San Diego, our two hosts took us out to a Christmas event. We spent the evening in the Balboa Park, where all the museums had free admission that night and a lot of Christmas themed things were going on. The botanical building was particularly impressive, as the upper walls and ceiling consist of an open wooden structure (apparently called lath structure). A ceiling this open would never work at home, it rains way too often! We talked until late into the night before we all finally went to sleep.

_{Published on January 30, 2026
Experienced from 16.11. – 05.12.2025}