The Sequel October 24 Biking

 

Thursday, October 24  Nice bike trail

Humans, can I go outside?  MEOWT!

We readied the bikes and headed to the trail we found yesterday.  The canal apparently runs for miles, accompanied by power lines.  On one side of the canal is the paved bike trail.  On the other side is a dirt walking trail.  There are people enjoying both sides, but it isn’t crowded. 

The trail winds around, goes through a tunnel and past the botanical gardens.  We cross into Tempe.  We pedal around a local park with a lake with a few fishermen out enjoying themselves.  It really is very pretty.  We go roughly 5 miles in this direction, then doubled back, past our starting point for about another mile, past homes and neighborhoods.  This was such a pleasant surprise, but time to end it and hit the road.

Back at Artee, we were able to hook up, so we figured we don’t need to come home, yet…

We decide to head up to Flagstaff, up I17.  Then we decided to try going up hwy 180 towards the grand canyon.  This was kind of iffy, as it is high altitude passing ski areas.  Should we be towing?  We looked at some online chats and decided it was worth a try.  This is exactly why we don’t make reservations.  We rarely know what we want to do and where we want to go.

The ride up I17 is pretty.  Picking up 180 in Flagstaff is a bit tricky.  Oh, no way we can turn that corner while we are towing.  We could be towing a VW beetle, and wouldn’t be able to make the turn.  We figured out how to get on the highway and soldiered on.  It is a nice, easy highway through high elevation and lots of pines.  You can tell it rained recently as the dirt roads are quite wet.  We would love to explore some, but not in these conditions.  We did find a nice spot where we could turn out for the night.  We turned our chairs around to face a beautiful snow capped mountain.  Yes…

Our turnout is at the head of a dirt road.  The fragile gate is closed, but you can easily open it as long as you don’t mind wading through water.  We can navigate walking, but NO WAY would I risk taking the rig back there.  We walked down the dirt road in this crisp air.  We stumbled on folks in their rigs back here.  Brave in my book!  Great for walking tho.