Day Eleven

We started out the day today in Oro Valley AZ - just south of our only waypoint for yesterday - Catalina.
It cooled off to 82 degrees overnight for our 7:15 AM start, but the temp rose quickly and it was in to 90's by 8:30 AM. This will be a short day today and the first where we don't plan to capture any or our required waypoints. The reason for the short day has to do with our plans to stop at the south rim of the Grand Canyon and we wanted to time that so that it's early in the day when we are there.

So, for today its primarily a scenic travel day. We backtrack northbound on AZ-77 for 11 miles to where we then split of on AZ-79. On the map you can see that this road goes through a large "blank"area between the Coronado National Forest and Valley Farms, and that pretty much describes this leg. Its a long straight flat two lane road with almost nothing but cactus on either side of the road. It's also at just 2000 ft elevation so it is HOT, even at the early hour we are traversing it.

Day 11 Track

We continue on AZ-79 up through Florence AZ until it joins US-60 which will take us up through Gold Canyon and Apache Junction out on the eastern edge of Mesa AZ. From there take N Usery Pass Rd and Bush Hwy to get us up into the Tonto National Forest and a scheduled break stop at the Saguaro Lake. We scheduled this stop in order to meet up with a fellow rider friend we knew who used to live in Bradenton FL and rode with us a few times but he's since moved out here to AZ.  We told Mike that we would meet him at 9:00 AM and we rolled in at 9:08 AM. We had coffee overlooking the Saguaro Lake and chatted about our current trip, Mike's latest motorcycle adventures and life in general, and we still managed to only stay there for an hour before moving on up the road. I should add that Mike donated a set of foot pegs for my bike that really help on long rides like this one. Thanks Mike!

So, its 10:10 AM, we've covered 108 miles so far and we are at just under 1500 ft elevation so the temp is 95 degrees as we head north on Bush Hwy. However, we are just starting a climb in altitude that will take us up to 7114 ft over the next 80 miles. When we hit the 4000 ft mark the temp drops 5 degrees and is noticeably instantly. The road is fun riding with plenty of sweeping turns and light traffic so we are enjoying that, especially when the temps drop to 90, and eventually all the way back down into the mid 80's at the peak which is about 20 miles north of Payson AZ. From there we will descend back down to about 3000 ft and that means back up into the 90's again. This heat and elevation will last from Camp Verde on up through Sedona until we climb back up at the end of Oak Creek Canyon. So from a riding perspective today was pretty much a totally awesome enjoyable ride.

So, by now you've figured out that we went up through Sedona AZ. While we didn't stop in town, I did take quite a few pictures from my helmet cam so here are a couple of the better ones.

Road coming into Sedona AZ

Road coming into Sedona AZ

Downtown Sedona

Downtown Sedona

We ended our day on the south side of Flagstaff, AZ.

Today's stats: 277 miles in 7:29 elapsed time, 5:08 saddle time.