Stepped out into warm sunshine this morning…no need for a sweatshirt. And no heater during the night either. Maybe we’ve turned a corner with night time temps staying in the high 50s…much better than mid-40s. The long range forecast has the temps up in the 80s for the next 10 days. People around here have been saying that the cooler weather of late (60s and 70s) has been enjoyable because they know what’s coming. Today my bike said the high was 91o…a marquee proclaimed it to be 95o at noon. I’ve heard that’s just a taste of what the summer holds in store.
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According to the office, the snowbirds are on the move…I think this park is a winter home for some RVers and a transition stop for others who are making their way back home. This KOA closes sometime in April. Summer is the season of shutdown around here whereas in Michigan it’s the time to get out and enjoy.
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Since we arrived here the evenings have been considerably cooler than the day. It wouldn’t take long for the sun to warm the day but we usually waited until noon or so to take a bike ride which sometimes affected how long of a ride we’d take. Today started out on a warmer note so we got on the bikes a bit earlier than usual and therefore could take a longer ride. Got back well before dark so that was a bonus, too!
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There is an enormous amount of road construction going on between here and Eloy. It seems to involve reconfiguring the frontage road on the other side of the highway and building another overpass for the train tracks plus other changes I haven’t quite figured out yet, but there is a lot of construction activity…and the changes are visible on a daily basis. Signs indicate that the work is expected to be complete January 2019. Just going by what I’m seeing in the beginning stages of this project, it’s going to be a massive change/upgrade. Lots and lots of orange cones and detour signs.
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| Can't see traffic coming from left... |
The frontage road on our side of the highway has become the detour route, for both east and west traffic. As such there has been an increase in the amount of the traffic on our side of the highway. Going to Eloy, Casa Grande, and Coolidge all require us to take the detour…going to Tucson doesn’t. There is a three-way stop intersection that I’ve never liked and now traffic in the area has increased markedly due to the detour. As we head east toward camp, we don’t have to stop…all other traffic coming into the intersection has to stop. Any traffic coming from the right and the front is visible but an underpass hides all traffic coming from the left. There are pillars in the underpass and the stop sign is located just on the other side of the pillars….difficult to see. I always do a ‘stop n go’ because I simply don’t trust the traffic from the left to see the stop sign. Last night I was maybe 50 feet behind Kim…I was approaching the intersection, he had just entered it and a vehicle came blowing through that stop sign. Kim swerved and accelerated, the driver hit the brakes and I screamed. Instant adrenaline for all of us, I’m sure. The vehicle came to a stop near some other cars pulled off to the right…I wanted to stop and say something but I figured that the driver was as scared at what almost happened as I was. Besides I was shaking and figured I’d never get my bike restarted. 😐 My heart rate had returned to normal by the time I parked my bike at camp, but my legs took a bit longer to stop shaking. I debated whether to include this episode in the journal but writing is how I process things and maybe by writing it down I can stop the replay in my head.
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| Today's route |
Today’s ride was about mixing old with new. Rode in a big loop…cut through Saguaro Nat’l Park on Sandario Rd, which intersects with AZ 86…at that point turning left leads to Tucson, turning right leads into the Tohono O’odham Reservation. We opted for right on AZ 86 and eventually came to the Gu-Achi Trading Post, which is one of our favorite places to take a break. And from there we headed north on Indian Route 15 to return to Picacho. Turns out AZ 86 is the route we took out of Tucson last year on a ride up to Kitt Peak National Observatory. On today’s ride, Sandario Rd beyond the Nat’l Park Visitors Center and AZ 86 from Kitt Peak to the Trading Post was all new to us.
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| Taking a break from the road... |
Two other bikers pulled into the Trading Post the same time as us...we all went in to get a cold drink and sat out on the picnic table together. They’re from Germany, attending a conference in Phoenix on nuclear waste. They had given a presentation in the morning and decided to skip the rest of the day in favor of hitting the road on their rented Harleys. One rides a Harley and the other rides a BMW back home. When I was younger and thinking about my future, I never envisioned that at some point in life I’d have a conversation about motorcycles, good routes to ride and nuclear waste with two complete strangers from Germany while seated at a picnic table on an Indian reservation. I simply didn’t see that one coming… 😉
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No bicycle ride today…and we didn’t find any scorpions but we did find a lizard.
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