Heading Home…

Our flight wasn’t until 3:30, so we had plenty of time to pack up the bikes and gear. This time, I moved Billy and the bag out to the hallway near a window for more space and better light. It was a smooth pack up. Everyone else also seemed to have no problems packing their bikes. Once we were all packed, we moved our stuff down to where the hotel had stored our cases while we were gone. Then we went for a final meal in Tucson at Turmerico. 

We returned to the hotel, dragged out our cases and bags, and loaded it all into the shuttle. It was quite the game of Tetris getting four bikes boxes/cases and 4 duffle/backpack bags, but we managed.

Good thing the van was a tall one! Billy is sitting on top of Jana’s bike box!

Now I am sitting on the plane, once again, in the very last seat. Back in Seattle in about 3 hours. 

Goodbye Arizona!

Jana, Catherine, Makaela, and I all agreed this was a good trip. It was challenging, but not too challenging. Our concerns about heat didn’t really materialize. We managed food and water pretty well. Mostly, it didn’t feel like we were rushed each day. I think the itinerary worked out, and we only changed a couple of things. We communicated pretty good (which is often a hard thing to do). I did discover that no matter how much singletrack I do, I do not become a mountain biker. But that’s okay, I still got through it. We ended up riding a bit over 300 miles total over 9 days. The Garmin initiated 41 climbs, but we counted 6 where, as Jana said, we saw something different from the top. 

All in all, a great trip! I’d be happy to bikepack with these awesome women again!

Day 9-The Good Thing About the Last Day Being the Hardest…

…You are ready to be done with your trip. But, I’m getting ahead of myself. 

Fortunately, this morning was one of those days we got going at 8:00. We needed every bit of the day. First we had to continue on the rough double track. I was walking a fair amount, of course. Makaela and Jana were ahead of me. My Garmin started beeping. I stopped, and saw that the route went back to singletrack…yay (not).

One lone saguaro sentinel. 

Well…I’ll be walking. 

Nice view though. 

It took me over two hours to go less than 4 miles! I was able to ride bits, but after awhile it was just faster to keep walking, instead of continuously getting on and off the bike. At least I didn’t get attacked by any cactus!!!

While Makaela made the turn onto the singletrack, and I did, both Jana and Catherine missed the turn. Jana ended up doing an extra 5 miles. Both Jana and Catherine passed me. 

Even after finishing the singletrack, there was still another few miles of gravel before the glorious downhill on the pavement from Madera Canyon. 

Ah, finally…blessed pavement!

I got to where we camped the first night, and would start a new route back to Tucson, but no one was there. I texted, and they said they were close. They had pulled off at the entrance station for the canyon. I didn’t see them when I went by. 

Once we were all back together, we started the route back to the hotel. We had met a guy at our first night’s camping spot who said we could ride a different way back to Tucson that had us going through the University of Arizona research area. I created a route on RWGPS. It appealed to us because it was gravel. And it was, but it also ended up being a whole bunch of deep deep sand. The original route I had created to get us back to the hotel was just the reverse of the route we took to get out of Tucson. 

Powerline road. 

Deep sand…unrideable. 

So, back to walking and pushing. I was having trouble getting the route onto my Garmin, but Catherine, Jana, and Makaela had it (and it was on my phone). We were following the route, but it wasn’t working. It brought us to a barbed wire fence with no way to continue. After trying a couple of ideas, we ended up going back part way. Finally, we found a road that would take us to the paved road. Once we were on pavement, we were able to do the original route I had created. 

Finally, a road (photo by Makaela)!

We retraced our route from Sahaurita, through the park (where there was a wedding shower, and prom photos happening. Lots of fancy dresses and tuxedos), along the Nogales Hwy, through “Dog Alley”, and around the airport. 

We made it by about 6:00. We had been riding for almost 7 1/2 hours of ride time. That was a very long day!

Once checked into our rooms (dirty bikes and all), first order of business was a shower. It was the best shower ever!!!

We Ubered to dinner at a place called Boca, and had a celebratory dinner of lots of food (because we were starving).

It was a long hard day, but it’s okay because now we are ready to go home, instead of wishing for more time. I’ll doa final post sometime tomorrow. 

Day 8-And Now For An Elephant Head…Trail

We came to Arizona to get away from the rain! However, I will admit that it doesn’t last long. It’s like at home we say if you don’t like the weather, wait 5 minutes…here it is more like 2 minutes. It rained off and on a bit into the night. When I got up in the middle of the night, there were some stars. It wasn’t as clear as some nights have been, though. 

We planned to skip the next black section when we saw there was an easy short cut. Jana likes the black sections, but she did it last night, so we were good to do the short cut. 

See the shortcut?


The shortcut went through an abandoned ranch. 


We popped back to the route after the black part a few more miles of gravel road to W. Arivaca Rd, which brought us into Arivaca Junction. 

A little shrine to Guadalupe. 

We needed a bit of resupply (Dollar General), then went to the Longhorn for lunch. 

Some serious horns at the Longhorn. 

Bike parking at the Longhorn. 

After stuffing ourselves, we headed back out in sprinkling rain. Again, it stopped after a few minutes. I got started ahead of the others as we had an 8.45 mile climb of which some would be singletrack (turns out only .64 was singletrack, but more on that in a moment).

We had planned 16 more miles after lunch. Fortunately, there were a number of paved miles (even though it was climbing), then some decent gravel, and back to some pavement, before going to gravel again. 

That’s Elephant Head Mountain to the left. We were headed there. 

Once we hit the final gravel, the climb got a whole lot steeper. I had to walk some because I just ran out of steam. I did think to myself that this wasn’t even the singletrack yet!

The first section of singletrack was the Quantrell Mine Trail. I was walking after just a very short bit (I am not a mountain biker!). Occasionally, I had brief moments where I could ride. 

This was one of those moments. 

There were some REALLY difficult spots. Once I got to the top, then I had the idea to lower my seat post as a sort of a dropper post. I was then able to ride some of the parts of the descent. But…mostly…I walked. At least I could walk a little faster going down then pushing Billy up. 

We finally came out to more of a double track, but I still had to walk large portions. It was just too scary with all the rocks. And then there was deep pockets of sand. 

We didn’t get quite as far as we had hoped, but found a decent enough campsite, and called it home. 

Okay, I’m kind of camped in the road intersection…but it’s mostly flat. 

Tonight is our last night camping. Tomorrow we will make it back to Tucson, and the end of our adventure. Today was one of the tougher days as far as hike-a-bike goes, but we knew this was not going to be an easy section. We have a few more miles of this tomorrow, but then it should be smooth sailing downhill back to our hotel. 

Day 7-A Good Amount of Miles in a Short Time

It was a chilly one last night! So cold, that our water in our various containers was frozen! I stayed warm last night, but Makaela was cold, and didn’t sleep well because of that. She had all of her clothes on, but she needs a warmer bag. 

We were a little slower getting going because it was so cold, but we still were moving by 8:30. We had one short climb, then the next climb on the climb profile wasn’t for 36 miles! It was a little rollercoaster-like, but trending down. 

And good gravel too!

Catherine rode with me most of the distance to the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge. The dry and dusty air has been wreaking havoc with my lungs, making me cough a lot. Once I was warmed up, my lungs settled down. It was also helpful that we didn’t have as much wind. 

The Wildlife Refuge was just 6 miles into today’s ride. We were there in under an hour. Yesterday, there was some concern that we might not be able to get water there, but it was no problem (the Visitor Center was closed). There were even restrooms with hot running water! Some did some laundry, I did a sink bath. 

Billy holding up the sign. 

The Visitor Center. 

I’ll not be venturing off the path!

There were numerous varieties of cactuses. 

I really like the purple!

We spent about an hour there. We finally tore ourselves away. After all, we still had around 32 miles to do. 

The next section was very fast. It was still trending down, and with the exception of a few sandy spots, it was an excellent road. 

We’ve been seeing this mountain for a few days now. 

Pano shot. 

We popped out to a brief section of pavement, then quickly found ourselves back on gravel. We took this opportunity to eat some lunch. Then we took a “family” photo with a Yucca plant. We used my little credit card tripod. 

The Fam. 

Catherine has been struggling to keep sunscreen on. She has still been getting burned. I think she has it figured out now!

We’ve had a good laugh over this photo!

The road became more sandy and rocky after lunch. It was slower going, and much harder on the butts and hands. 

This part was okay…it didn’t last. 

Makaela thought this looked like a saguaro cholla!

We were planning to get to Route Mile 125 today, but that would be at 4000 feet, and we didn’t want another cold cold night. We came to a flat spot, and decided to call it a day. 

It was only 3:00, our earliest stopping time yet. Just as we were setting up our tents, it started to rain. It rained for all of maybe 3 minutes, then the sine came back out. It’s been doing that off and on. Of course it’s so dry that the ground doesn’t even get wet!

Jana got her tent set up, then took the bags off her bike, and decided to go for a Mountain Bike ride! She was going to check out the next black section of the route. We have realized we can skip it by just cutting across to the other part of the route. 

Jana, off to do some more riding because she didn’t get quite enough. Amazing! 

We ended our day with 32 miles, one of our longer days, mileage wise, but the shortest time wise. It’s good, though, because we have been riding for 7 straight days. 

Day 6-A Day of Mosts

Today was our longest distance day, so far. It was also the most elevation (over 4000). Then, to top off a day of mosts, it was the coldest day (the sun was shining, but the wind was fierce, and made it quite chilly). Oh, and we got our earliest start at 8:00am (good thing, because we needed it).

Entering the land of lots of border patrol. 

This was just after starting. 

Right out of the campground we started a 5.1 mile climb. 

There were great views. 



If you look in the center of the photo, you can see border patrol vehicles. They had gone by us in the campground. They all had motorcycles in the back of their trucks. We rode right by them. 

Off in the distance is the road we were going on. 

Summit success!

Also at the summit. 

The rest of the way to Arivaca was more ups and downs.

Jana and Catherine. Makaela was ahead. 

Ruby Ghost Town. We would have checked it out, but it was closed. 

A handful of miles before Arivaca we returned to pavement. It was very nice, and easy rollercoaster hills all trending down to the town. 

My favorite sign…Whoa Nelly!

We met up with Makaela and Jana at the Cantina. We all stuffed ourselves (and got water), then headed over to the Mercantile to get some resupply. I only needed a couple of breakfasts, but they didn’t have individual packets of oatmeal. I got some Mexican pastries instead. I also have a few Pro Meal bars. I won’t starve. 

We’ve seen a few of these little red birds. We don’t know what they are called. 

From Arivaca we still had 13 miles to go to where we were planning to camp. We left Arivaca at 3:40, and arrived at our camp spot at 6:00. There were a lot of shortish climbs, and the road was much rougher than before Arivaca. 

There were a number of sandy spots, rocky spots, and generally rough patches. I had to walk a few. 

Our campsite is just off the road under a big tree. We rode just over 39 miles today.