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Southwest Spring Desert Tour
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Arizona, California and Nevada
March 18 - 27, 2005
Saturday, March 26 Wickenburg, AZ to Holbrook, AZ 278 miles
Day 7: High in the mountains of Arizona
The complimentary breakfast consisting of orange Tang-like drink and donuts were not even edible at the Super 8. We started out on 93 at 8: 30AM, turning on 89 North towards Prescott. The morning was cool, only in the mid 40’s in Wickenburg, but as we approached 6100 feet it was getting colder and colder. The road started out somewhat straight, then it started twisting around the mountain. Northbound lanes separate from the southbound lanes. The Northbound two lanes had turns posted at 30MPH, but the lanes were wide, nicely paved and there was no traffic here this early in the morning. Brian suggested that we turn around and ride this section again, but the cold and the wind was slowing me down this morning, not allowing me to fully enjoy the curves. It was just too early in the day to be riding in the mountains. As I looked down I could see we were climbing quickly, the scenery improving, we were amid the largest stand of ponderosa pines in the world, riding though Prescott National Forest. At some point the northbound and southbound lanes came together and the road narrowed to one lane in each direction, now the turns were posted at 20MPH. The road was narrow here and the curves were tight. The road was still wet in places. My tires felt cold and hard as I pushed against the wind up the mountain, stiff and cold myself. It felt like mid to upper 30 degrees up here. I was colder now than at any point on this trip. Reaching as high as 6100 feet on this road we arrived in Prescott at 5,300 feet frozen. There is a temperature where the heated grips and the heated vest, although cranking tons of heat, can not compensate for the fact that the rest of the body is cold. I think that is somewhere around low to mid 30’s. We got gas and I sat at a picnic table in the warm sun trying to warm up. It wasn’t cold in the sun, but once we started moving it would be chilly again. After a long break of trying to warm up in the sun, we started back up.
Soon we turned off on 89A heading toward Sedona, where I was hoping to stop for lunch. I’ve been here a few times before but never on a bike. I still wear the silver bracelet made by Navajo Indians which I bought here in 1997. It had to be custom fitted to for my small wrist and I have not taken it off since the day I bought it. 89A was very much like 89, but only better. The scenery of mountains and Ponderosa Pines persisted, and even though we were still at about the same elevation of 6000 feet, there was some snow on the side of the road in places. You could see the snow covered tops of the mountains in the distance around Flagstaff and further down you could see the red rocks of Sedona too. The day had warmed up a bit, I was no longer freezing, but it was still in the low to mid 40’s. The road still wet in places and also some gravel. The road still narrow, still very twisty, but somehow these turns felt better to me than the ones on 89. It was also less windy here and there was less traffic. Some turns posted at 15MPH, majority posted at 20-25MPH. With a big grin on our faces we carved around the red and brown rocks; until we reached the town of Jerome also knows as "America's Most Vertical City”. Jerome was once the fourth largest city in the Arizona Territory. Located high on top of Cleopatra Hill at 5,200 feet, is a historic copper mining town. Once known as the wickedest town in the west, Jerome used to be a copper mining camp, growing from a settlement of tents to a roaring mining community. As we make it though the switchbacks marked at 15MPH it’s hard to believe this is Jerome’s main street. Just an amazing sight to see, the buildings look like they are fused to the mountain somehow. In a short few minutes we were on the other side of town, now half way to Sedona. The road now mellowed out and after a while we were approaching the red rocks of Sedona.
There are places to eat on 89A but the better ones are on 179 South. It being a Saturday, the town was busy, full of tourist activity. The traffic moved slow and as I looked around for a place to pull over, I noticed a place on the right and pulled in to Tlaquepaque arts & crafts village, Tlaquepaque is an Indian name, meaning "the best of everything." www.tlaq.com. Named for a picturesque suburb of Mexico's Queen City, Guadalajara, Tlaquepaque's construction began in 1971 with the creation of the wall along the highway. Soon artists and artisans, craftsmen and chefs were plying their art within its confines. Today, its boundaries enclose more than 40 shops featuring one-of-a-kind items. Within this Spanish colonial style arts and crafts complex, nestled beneath shade sycamores on the banks of beautiful Oak Creek, you can spend the whole day walking around, before you are done seeing the whole complex. I just wished there were more places like this around, something that’s built just for the purpose of beauty. The place was packed and there was hardy any parking spots, so we parked on the sidewalk again. Since I wanted to keep an eye on the bikes, not so much worried about something getting stolen, more worried about them getting towed or ticketed, we walked for a few minutes and decided to have lunch at the first restaurant from the parking lot called Secret Garden Cafe. We sat down outside where we could see the bikes. The sun was shining though the branches of the tree down on me and it was warm again, in the upper 60’s. Sedona is a high desert community of 4,500 feet in elevation and it’s famous for the thousand foot formations surrounding this unique town, and some of the oldest exposed rocks on earth. Early Native Americans considered the Red Rocks sacred and traveled from afar to perform ceremonies among the sublime formations.
This lunch did not come cheap, this kind of ambiance cost money, but it was worth it since the food was also great. This being the last day of our trip, we decided to splurge a little. For an appetizer Brian ordered salmon bruchetta, which I only looked it since I don’t do raw fish. I ordered a turkey, cranberry sourdough sandwich and Brian ordered a frittata. Half way though lunch I ended up finishing the frittata and he finished my sandwich. Sometimes it just works out that way. We split a piece of strawberry daiquiri cheesecake. The bill was over $50, but I highly recommend this place. I’m just hoping you don’t get our waitress, she dumped Brian’s creamy feta cheese salad dressing all over his Gerbing heated liner and our boots. After lunch I just couldn’t leave yet, there was so much to see, we wandered around for a while. All the sudden we realized we’ve been here two and a half hours. We needed to get going fast. The parking lot had heavy traffic coming and in out the whole day, backed from the entrance all the way half down the parking lot. I didn’t really want to sit in this traffic for 10-15 minutes to get out of here, Brian asked and found out there was another entrance on the other side of the resort. As we rode through, the guy at the gate looked like he was assuming we were going to stop, but we kept going and a few minutes later we were again on 89A making a right on 179 South. 179 was full of traffic and as much as I wanted to pull over and take more pictures of the red rocks, we just had no time for that and I didn’t want to lose my spot in this line of cars, some of which we worked so hard to pass.
The road had some nice medium turns in it, and the further we went the fewer cars we had to deal with. We arrived at I-17 and continued South to 260 East in Camp Verde. We stopped for gas here as I realized, I really didn’t know much about these roads ahead. Were they tight, were they high up in elevation, all those things could really slow us down and I really wanted to arrive in Holbrook before sunset, we only had approximately three hours till then. The road started out mostly straight heading out of town, we passed a police car sitting at an intersection and apparently he followed Brian for a few miles. I was trying to figure out why he was going so slow, I was only going 5-10MPH over speed limit since we were still in the city limits. Soon the road started curving and climbing. Super sweet 45MPH turns one after another, wide lanes, smooth pavement with the occasional passing lanes every few miles. This road was bliss and traffic was light. I highly recommend this road if you are into high speed corners, as we are.
What a wonderful area this is. Coconino National Forest in the North with 1.8 million acres which vary from semiarid desert through ponderosa pine forests to alpine tundra. Elevation ranges from 2,600 feet in canyon bottoms to 12,643 feet at the top of the San Francisco Peaks. Tonto National Forest in the South, which is the largest Forest in the State, at over 2,873, 300 acres, the caution Elk crossing signs popped up again along the road. We kept climbing and climbing, the temperature kept getting colder and colder, I finally succumbed to the chill and pulled over to get the plug for my electric Widder west, slipped on the balaclava and cranked on the heated grips. There was noticeably more snow on the side of the road here than on 89A and with each mile the snow kept getting deeper, how high were we and how much higher where we going to go?
We arrived at the intersection of 260 and 87, making a left on 87 and heading northeast, still the snow kept getting deeper on the shoulder of the road and it kept getting colder. The road was clear but I could tell by my tires, it was cold. A few tighter turns and I spotted a sign that said we were 7400+ feet in elevation. Just when I started to worry, I noticed the road dipping down, we were starting our slow descent. It was really cool to ride among all this snow but I must say, I’m just glad it wasn’t raining today, since it would be snowing up here for sure.
87 straightened out after a while and we continued to Winslow, the land was flat and red here, the grass and shrub yellow and dry. This was like the only part in Arizona where it looked like it hadn’t rained in months. The view of Winslow from the road didn’t make a good impression on me, a few minutes later we were traveling on I-40 East. The sun low on the horizon behind us - taunting us, saying I’m out of here guys, you better speed up if you want to make it to Holbrook before it gets dark. Just before arriving in Holbrook, we got the largest pucker moment of the whole trip. We kept passing cars, trucks and semis, I was leading. There was a bus in the left lane that just didn’t look like it was going to move any time soon, so I go in the right lane and I’m about to pass it, I’m almost 1/3 way though my pass when all the sudden, it’s coming at me. I squeeze my brake just to slow down a little, I fall back behind the bus, wait for a car in the left lane to pass it and I follow, dispatching both vehicles. Brian saw my brake lights and didn’t know how much I was going to slow down and since he was right behind me and had a car to his left, he had to make a quick move to the shoulder for a bit.
At 6:30PM, we were in the Holiday Inn Express parking lot packing up ready to leave. Brian wanted to warm up the truck, he cranked the key but there was nothing. The battery was completely dead. The motel gave Brian a phone number to call for help and in 15 minutes a pickup truck showed up and jumped our Cherokee. The truck started right up and we kept the engine running for 15 minutes as we finished loading the bikes in to the trailer. With everything on board, Brian got in and started to pull out on to the road – then – the Cherokee died. We were stuck in the entranceway to the motel. Another phone call later and the guy came back to jump us again. He asked how long the truck sat there with a dead battery, we told him a week. He was convinced that the battery was garbage since there was a few nights last week where the temperatures dropped to below freezing. The battery would possibly not be able to keep a charge. Did we want to chance it driving back 1330 miles with a defective battery? The guy had a shop on the other side of the interstate and he followed us there. He had a few batteries in stock and maybe one would fit the Cherokee. Once did and he installed it. Brian turned the key and still nothing, apparently this battery was brand new but also dead. The guy tested the rest of his batteries and chose one that would work, it wasn’t as nice of a fit as the previous one but it had to do. $163 and 2 hours later, we were rolling on I-40 Eastbound. Taking turns driving we spend all Easter on the interstate, arriving home just before midnight Sunday night.
Lowlights of the trip: This was our most expensive trip so far. Nowhere did we find cheap gas. We towed the bikes 2,660 miles and we rode 2,230 miles plus the extra money I had to spend on a new back tire for me and a Brian had to spend on a new car battery. We also lost some riding time the day I had to get my new tire, missing some really nice roads near San Diego. Since I’m not a fan of traffic and populated places, I would have to say that as much as I enjoyed the roads around San Diego, there was just too much traffic sometimes. There was more traffic on the So Cal roads during a work week then up near Sedona, AZ on a Saturday.
Highlights of the trip: We got lucky with the weather, we were supposed to have two storm systems pass though but only got one. About 5 hours of rain on day one, an hour of rain on day three and maybe 4 hours or rain on day four. I really enjoyed riding though the desert, and seeing the many parks like Anzo-Borrego State Park, Joshua Tree National Park, Mojave National Preserve and the best was of course was Death Valley. I would not have skipped any of them. I also really like Amboy Rd and Bristol Lake. And for the best wild flowers category on this trip…. Drum roll please….definitely the flowers that were growing by the side of the road on 60 from Globe to Florence Junction, second best flowers along I-8 heading towards Yuma, AZ. Third would be Anza-Borrego and Death Valley and along Historic US 66, but there were flowers pretty much everywhere if you looked hard enough, which to me is just amazing.
And if you are wondering what caused our car battery to go dead. We figured out that mystery pretty quick. Brian threw an air mattress in the back of the Cherokee so we could take naps in comfort in the back of the truck while the other was driving. When he locked the back of the truck he pulled on the door checking to see if it was locked, it was locked but that’s not what the dash indicated and I would imagine the dome light stayed on, but it was Sunday morning and the light wasn’t noticed. So the light must have been on for until the battery was completely drained. The car sat there like that for a week.
Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4 | Day 5 | Day 6 | Day 7