December 1-15, 2024
My first stop in Arizona was at White Tank Regional Park, not far from Surprise, Arizona, one of many suburb towns of that comprise the Greater Phoenix Region. Years ago, I had thought of Phoenix as being a singular town. Then I heard of Tempe, because that is where Arizona State University is located, and one of my best friends in high school went to school there. In reality, there are about twenty other cities (Mesa, Glendale, Scottsdale, etc.) that comprise Greater Phoenix Region.
Phoenix has a population of about 1.6 million, while the Greater Phoenix Region has a population of around five million. Maricopa County is huge, 9,224 square miles. If it were a square shape, it would be 96 miles long on each side. It’s bigger than four states, including Connecticut at 5,543 square miles.
White Tank Regional is on the northwest outskirts of this area, situated on the ‘border” between residential areas and undeveloped land and wilderness. I stayed five nights at White Tank. I also stayed at Cave Creek Regional (north central) and Usery Mountain Regional (northeast) three nights each. Each of these three parks had good hiking and biking (off-road, dirt) trails, but the first two were limited in terms of good road cycling. The parks themselves had roads that could be utilized as short circuits of about 3-4 miles, but the road surfaces were not in very good shape. They were very bumpy. I made it work. The exception was Usery Mountain, which had good roads with wide bike lanes for many miles that were accessible from the park. I did not realize it at the time, but one of these roads heads north right past Butcher Jones Recreation Area! I had no idea, when Ruth and I hiked a few days ago, that we were so close to Usery Mountain.
Here at White Tank, there is a county library branch right at the entrance. In terms of online access, it’s like a carnival, all fun and games. The previous three parks I have stayed at, totaling 24 days, had limited cell phone coverage. These were at Joshua Tree, Death Valley, and Red Rock Canyon. I find that I am looking at or looking for a cell signal far too often. I say that because it can become a distraction from just enjoying nature and whatever it has to offer. I don’t think I am the only person with this issue😊.
After White Tank, I drove north about 120 miles to Dead Horse Ranch State Park in the city of Cottonwood. Cottonwood is about 20 miles south of Sedona. I stayed at Dead Horse four nights. On my first day there I rode my bike to Sedona on Route 89A. It is a four-lane road with a wide (8’) shoulder and a rumble strip between the road and the shoulder. It was twenty-one miles from the campground to downtown Sedona and its little shops and restaurants. There are some good hills on the route, though nothing longer than two miles. The road rolls up and down all the way, but it does gain about 1000’ elevation overall going north.
On my first ride to town, I had a day of unexpected encounters. Just a couple miles outside the campground, Main Street was closed to traffic. There was Christmas Parade! The road was lined with people standing or sitting in chairs they had brought. It was really something, entertaining, bringing joy to many, many people. A police officer on the route told me I could walk my bike across the street and ride it on the side of the road. This would be in the opposite direction from which the parade was coming. There is actually a bike lane, too. Instead of riding, I slowly made my way, seated but not pedaling. I just kind of walked my way along, one foot on the ground, the other on a pedal. I stopped to talk briefly with a few people. Kids were telling me “Merry Christmas” and waving to me.
I was conflicted. I wanted to just ride, but the floats and marchers were entertaining in a way, and so were the people watching the parade. It took me about 30 minutes to negotiate my way through it about a half mile to Mingus Avenue, my turnoff, where I started riding.
It was as good ride. I reached Sedona in about ninety minutes. I rode all the way into the town on the north end, where there are a million shops and restaurants. I stopped and looked around some. It’s a thing, downtown Sedona. On one hand it’s just another commercial enterprise capitalizing on the natural environment in which it sits. On another, it’s a metaphysical, mental-emotional wonderland of opportunities for personal growth. It’s also a huge area for outdoor recreation, hiking and biking. I think there is some overlap between these areas.
I walked my bike a little around the downtown. Then I started riding again, heading to a free parking lot in the event I want to come here to park another day and browse some shops. Leaving the parking lot, I checked to see how far I was from the visitor center. I was only three-tenths of a mile away. I headed in that direction. I had only gone about halfway when I felt that funny feeling that you have when you know a tire has lost some air. I pulled over at the next intersection, right in front of the visitor center. My rear tire was nearly flat. I used my pump to move it inflate it to a decent pressure. I’m not sure why I did this, whether there was something visual that happened or if I just sensed something internally, but I checked the front tire, and it had lost substantial air, too. Two flats in three-tenths of a mile. Never before.
I looked online and saw that Thunder Bike Shop was only a couple miles away. I pumped up the tires and began riding, hoping I could make it there before the tires went flat again. I only went a short distance and had to stop. They had gone flat again.
My mind began contemplating the situation, looking for solutions. I looked for a bus stop. There are free buses run regularly up and down the main road through Sedona, a distance of about five miles. If there was a bus stop, I could take it to one closest to Thunder Bike. None in sight. I call Uber. I was lucky to connect with a driver, Pam, who has a Toyota Highlander, room for a bike. Pam picked me up in ten minutes and drove me to the shop.
Inside the shop, they were great. They removed tiny pieces of metal, like small snippets of wire, in each tire. They put in new tubes, and I was back riding in about thirty minutes.
Oddly enough, two days later on another to Sedona, I had another flat tire. This time it was only the front tire, and I was just four miles away from the campground on the return ride. I examined the tire and pulled two cactus thorns from the tire. I pumped up the tire, hoping it would hold air long enough to ride back to the campground. It did! It seemed crazy, but when I arrived, I thought to myself, it has not lost any air at all. I put the bike on the rack and would fix it in the morning.
In the morning, the tire still had air in it. I was stymied. Then I thought to myself, did they put on some “slime” self-fixing tubes? I looked at my receipt, and sure enough it said Bontrager Slime tubes. These are tubes that have a substance on the inside that fills in leaks of small sizes. When I pulled the thorns, this substance patched the leaks!
I had one day of hiking in Sedona. I did a combination of Mescal Trail and Boynton Canyon, going up to a rock structure called “The Subway.” It was about eleven miles round-trip. The trail was open to hikers and bicyclists, and I was surprised to see as many bikers as I did, because the trail was kind of rough in some areas. But many mountain bikers seem to like that. Some parts of the trail were on dirt, some on rock, and although there were no longish hills, there were plenty of short steep sections. I would not ride a bike in this terrain for fear of falling.
That said, there were not many people, either hiking or biking, on Mescal Trail. There were quite a few people on the Boynton Canyon Trail, with The Subway being a major attraction. There is a parking area for this trail. There is also a large resort area built here. It’s called Enchantment. It has high end accommodations and services, restaurants and spas, etc. Nightly rates start at $500-600 and go over $1000. It’s an odd situation because on one side of the resort fence is this luxury, while on the other side is national forest with wilderness designation.
I left Dead horse Ranch on Tuesday, December 10, and headed to Payson, AZ to see a friend, Ruth, with who I worked at my first library job. It was at Fort Lewis College in Durango. Ruth is from Long Island. She obtained her library degree from SCSU in the same time frame as me. I think we even had classes together occasionally. All our classes were online. But I did not know her at the time. I only learned of this when I interviewed for the job. She had moved out west long ago and somehow landed a job in the library as the main office assistant. I have not seen her since leaving Durango in 2008.
Ruth and I took a walk around a small lake (pond?) near her home. It was on the cool side with a breeze. There were several bird species utilizing the lake, including a Blue Heron who flew right past us while holding a fish in its mouth!
After having some Minestrone soup Ruth had made for our lunch, we drove about an hour south to Butcher Jones Recreation Area. We did a nice hike there, about five miles long. It took us over two hours. The view at the end of the trail was quite spectacular. The trail goes along the shores of Lake Saguaro for much of the hike. It is a large reservoir that fills land surrounded by rough looking, rugged mountains. It’s dramatic. There are several types of cacti all along the trail and landscape. It’s not a difficult trail though, having very little elevation change. I can see why she wanted to go to the very end. The view was spectacular with the lake and a mountain called Four Peaks in the distance.
We parted after the hike, Ruth heading back to Payson, while I drove to Cave Creek, a little over an hour away to the west. I did only one short day of biking here. The roads are very bumpy in the park, and outside the park there is high density traffic. I did a nice hike in Go John Trail. It is about six miles of hilly, rugged trails through mountains that rise 1000-1500’ above the campground elevation. The landscape is populated with Saguaro, Cholla, and Prickly Pear among other types of cacti. The hike was great. The mountains here, though desert, are robustly vegetated. They have a very different look to them than much of the desert terrain I have thus far visited. I think it is the presence of so many cacti, both in variety and number, very different than places like Valley of Fire, Red Rock Canyon, and Death Valley, where there was so little growing. It is also starkly different from the moist areas of mountains in the Rockies and from the environment in Connecticut, each covered in trees.
From Cave Creek, next stop was Usery Mountain Regional Park. The drive here was through high density highway traffic. There is a loop road that encircles the Greater Phoenix Region. In this area, it is Highway 101, five lanes in either direction, cares cruising well above the speed limit. Fortunately the drive was short, under and hour, and once again I am in a campground on that border between highly developed areas and park lands that stretch for miles away from the cities.
The road for bike riding here is good. The park is located on Usery Mountain Road. There is a wide bike lane on it. It goes over a pass at 2100’, then descends 3.5 miles to 1450’. I took a right turn off at that point, onto Bush Road. This is the same road, coming from the other end, that Ruth and I took to go to Butcher Jones Recreation Area just a few days ago, I had not realized how close to Usery Mountain we were that day. I rode out ten miles, passing Butcher Jones, and turned around. My ride totaled 42 miles by the time I returned. It felt great to have a good three-hour ride with a nice climb in it.
I have been on the road for 116 days now. It is interesting on many levels. There are the visual stimulations that inspire, notably the landscapes and the sky. There are the physical activities enjoying the landscapes through riding, hiking, or simply sitting and being there. There are the interpersonal interactions, conversations with fellow travelers or residents of the places I visit.
On most days, I engage in some kind of activity I would characterize as social or interpersonal in nature. I meet a lot of people, talking with them and asking questions, finding things they like, especially about the places they have traveled. I do this at campgrounds and parks as well as other places, such as at grocery stores. I’ll strike up conversations with people in line at the checkout or other environments. They are filled with opportunities for short discussions.
Although I meet and talk with many people, it’s not like being in a normal community setting where there is a sense of “home.” That is something I will want to eventually have back in my day-to-day life. But I am still planning to be away on this trip until around the second week of February. And I am thinking about where to go after that.
The ideas that I have in a preliminary sense are (1) do a long bike tour, utilizing hotels, camping, or some combination of the two. This might be doing a cross-country trip, or it might be something regional. It is also dependent on time of year due to weather considerations. (2) Go to Portugal and Spain. I’d have to research this. I don’t know if I’d just bring my backpack and utilize train travel or if I would travel by bicycle. Also, if I went in March, as time passes areas to the north would be entering warmer seasons, so I could end up in other countries. One can travel through much of Europe for ninety days without a visa. (3) Do another van trip in the southeast similar to last year. (4) Rent an Airbnb for a month or so. I don’t know where! (5) “Other,” whatever that might mean, I am not sure, but there are always other options.
Spectacular inspirational photos and narrative about your adventure. You mentioned next step… let’s chat about the Camino de Santiago. I think you would really enjoy that!