On the bike again - finally!

 It's hard to believe that this is the first time we've gone on an overnight BMW ride since June of 2021. It's been a busy year, and we decided to finally go on a trip we've planned a couple of times - to Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument in southern Arizona. As usual, we took the less-traveled road - and boy, was this less traveled!

through Skull Valley

cattle in Peeple's Valley

We started off on familiar roads, heading out of Prescott through the ranching communities of Skull Valley and Peeple's Valley and then enjoying the twisty descent from Yarnell toward Wickenburg. 

In Wickenburg we turned south on Vulture Mine Road. Mike had been here with a friend recently, but all of this was new to me. Vulture Mine Road twists and turns through the Sonoran Desert and over the course of the next couple of hours we saw only a handful of cars.

There were plenty of saguaro cactus and we were glad for the overcast skies that kept the temperature in the low 90's. 

We turned onto Aguila Road, and while we had passed plenty of low areas warning of flash floods, this was the only time the road was still covered in mud from recent rains.

We turned west onto Old US 80, which while it now is a twisty 2-lane paved road that winds through irrigated farmland and solar panel farms, historically it was originally a wagon road between Santa Fe, NM and San Diego, and then part of the southern highway route from Georgia to San Diego developed in the early 1900's and completely paved by 1939.

We crossed over the Gillespie Dam bridge built over the Gila River in 1925-1927 and restored in 2012.

We hadn't gone through a town since we left Yarnell early in our trip, and were happy to stop for lunch at Little Italy in Gila Bend. Prince Harry actually ate here when he was at Luke Air Force Base for helicopter training. The pizza was great! 

We continued south on US 85 which runs straight through the desert on the way to Mexico.

Storm clouds were building which kept the temperature hovering just under 90 - a cool day here in the Sonoran desert. We rode into Ajo, our stop for the night, just before it started raining. Like so many places in Arizona, Ajo was a former copper mining hub. 

We rode about 200 miles today - a short day for us but through a part of Arizona where we haven't been before. Tomorrow we continue south to Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument.