After yesterday's big miles and elevation gain, I awoke today to find (rather unsurprisingly) that my hip was in some pain.  Little did I know that a few days later I would find out I had a pelvic fracture.  But for moment, all I knew was that it was throbbing.  I had two days left on the route, but given the pain, I decided to do one last day shortly looped through the woods to retrieve my car in Tusayan. 

I didn't start riding until nearly noon and took Rowe Well down along the wash.  Oaks thickly were burnt crimson on a sunny and breezy day.  Today, there was indeed no storm.  Heading out to Pasture Wash, the road was baked silt in the dry sun and the rabbitbrush had already lost its luster on the sage-plains.  Alternatively, the floor of dirt below sage limbs was thickly carpeted with white petals of numerous blooming flowers.  All the water sources I road by were copiously full and relatively clear of algal growth in the tilting sun of autumn.  The doubletrack out to Coconino Wash was just as rutted as earlier in monsoon season, but someone had taken the time to fill in some particularly bad ruts with rock and gravel.  

​Somehow the night was warmer than the evening.  Whether it was the storm passing and taking its gale or a warm front slightly moved in, but the dawn broke even and comfortable.  Today was planned to be a big day.  My pelvis was doing well, so I planned to make up some distance/time by hitting up all the capes and making it to the South Rim Village for the night.  No rain was forecast, so I didn't feel compelled to hurry my morning too quickly.  Instead, I used the latrines over by Grandview Tower, enjoyed a long breakfast, and then got comfortably going for a big descent off the Coconino Rim down to the Upper Basin.  

The bugling elk persisted into the early hours of the morning, whereby I got some sleep when I finally put earplugs in.  Usually, October mornings have a bite of cold that gets chased by sun in the middle of the day.  But as soon as the sun crested the horizon, it felt like a warm summer morning.  I exited my shelter into dawn light calm and smooth.  I packed up quickly knowing that today was forecast to have even more storms than yesterday.  I wanted to make sure I didn't get caught in caliche substrate when the rain came.  As I was eating breakfast, a bunch of USFS Hot Shot vehicles and fire trucks flew down the road I was camped next to.  I noted that possibility of a fresh fire after last night's lightning show.  

The monsoon season this year proved to be above average.  Notably, Tusayan (as a sample of the region) received an afternoon storm in mid-August that dumped more than 3 inches of rain around the washes of the town perimeter in about 45 minutes.  A subsequent flood gushed into town permeating buildings/businesses.  That surge of water also ended up being a harbinger of erosion; many parts of the South Rim region's lesser-used dirt roads were infiltrated with debris flows, flash flooding, and deep rocky ruts.  I spent late-August through September riding portions of the COTC that I suspected were deeply impacted by the above-average moisture.  And man, the roads were destroyed.  I rode out to several remote areas on the route that had miles of debris overlaying the route or were rideable but completely jolting from the major rock beds now making the majority of the surfaces.  I poured over maps, rode out to new areas, and ultimately ended up completely regrafting big chunks of the southwest and southeast passages of the COTC onto more suitable roads for riders.  The result had some trade-offs, exchanging quality road for loss of unique scenery.