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.
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