Ending our trip with a familiar ride through the high desert in Arizona

The last day of a motorcycle trip is always a bit sad. We've been gone for 17 days, and on the BMW for 12 of those days yet we both would happily continue our trip. We both have work waiting for us, so we're doing the responsible thing and heading home.

We spent last night in Kingman, AZ, at a hotel near this one on the original Route 66. Kingman was founded in 1882 as a railroad siding for the newly constructed Atlantic and Pacific Railroad. There are many museums, historic buildings, and signs promoting Route 66 in Kingman, and it's fun to spot as many of them as possible.

We headed south on Route 93, a continuation of our southern ride yesterday from Las Vegas. We took the scenic route to our home in Prescott by turning onto Route 97 north, a winding 2-lane paved road with roller coaster sections that dip down into washes that flood during heavy rains. It's monsoon season now, but the skies are clear and sunny today with no threat of flooding.

We turned right onto the Bagdad Road into Kirkland, watching the saguaro cactus cover the hills and reach toward the sky. It's too cold for saguaro to grow in Prescott, and we like to spot the last northernmost saguaro on each trip, knowing that we're close to home.

We continued winding our way north, turning onto Iron Springs Road in Kirkland that takes us into Prescott. The past 2 weeks we've traveled on unfamiliar highways, looking for unexpected sights and learning about the areas we're traveling through. Today we're enjoying riding a familiar route, not needing a map or GPS to guide us home.

Over the past 17 days we've traveled 4,100 miles through 10 western states. The only western state we missed was Utah, and only because we broke down in the Nevada desert yesterday and had to change our travel plans. We're already planning a shorter trip to Utah, just because we can.

Connecting with friends on the motorcycle

Spending time with people riding a motorcycle is a wonderful way to make lasting friends. Today we reconnected with Barb and Jay, people we met on the 5 country tour in Europe in 2011. Barb and Jay live about 1 hour south of us in Phoenix, and they brought along three friends for a ride into Bagdad, a copper mining town where the houses and commercial buildings are owned by the mining company.

The trip to Bagdad is a motorcycle rider's dream: 2-line paved road with very little traffic, winding sweepers, tight turns, and open countryside in all directions.

 

Mike and I headed out from Prescott at 9:45am, planning to meet Barb, Jay, and their friends Patty, Steve and Doug in Kirkland. We rode southwest on Iron Springs Road through Skull Valley and met up with everyone at the intersection of Route 96 across from the Kirkland Bar. Iron Springs is a popular road for people on two wheels:  motorcycles and bicycles, but today we had the road almost to ourselves.

The temperature was in the low 60's when we left Prescott, but when we reached Kirkland I was ready to shed one of my jacket layers and switch to lighter-weight gloves. By the time we rode into Bagdad the temperature was over 70 and the light clouds over Prescott gave way to clear and sunny blue skies.

Saguaro cactus are found only in the Sonoran Desert. They don't grow in Prescott due to the elevation and colder temperature, but we see them as we head south into Phoenix or west into Bagdad. Saguaros live to be 150-200 years old, and it's amazing that these 40-60' tall cactus thrive for so long in the desert.

Route 96 is the only paved road into Bagdad, although periodically a dirt road snaked off to the side. It's about 30 miles from Kirland to Bagdad, and along the way we saw isolated ranches, dry streams, piles of huge granite rocks, and a rolling countryside backed by mountain peaks and mesas.

We ate lunch at the Bagdad Diner where the hamburgers come with two meat patties and a huge pile of French fries. It's a favorite stop for motorcycle riders who always seem to plan their rides around places to eat.

 

 

 

The Diner is the kind of place where the waitress jokes around with the customers and everyone immediately feels at home. Today is Jay's birthday, and everyone in the Diner joined in as we sang Happy Birthday.

 

 

We sat and told motorcycle stories after finishing our meal, and then continued the conversation outside talking about future motorcycle trips, the twistiest roads in Arizona, past bikes we've owned, and bikes we dream about owning in the future.

 

We retraced our route back home, enjoying the twisting, climbing roads and the warm February day. We'll stay in touch with everyone and look forward to more days spent riding our BMW through Arizona.

 

 



Ride to Bagdad - Arizona

Every time we talk with motorcylists, they run through a list of places to ride in Arizona and ask us if we've been there. We probably haven't been there - yet. I count the places we've ridden in Arizona on one hand, and today thanks to the friendly and fun Prescott Star 511 touring group we added two more amazing locations to our list:  Skull Valley and Bagdad.

We met George who rides a BMW K1300S and Brad on a Yamaha FJR1300 at Starbucks and pulled out of the parking lot onto Iron Springs Road heading toward Skull Valley at about 9:30am. The sky was what I've started to call "Arizona blue", an intense bright, cloudless blue color that varies from a deep to a lighter hue depending on the angle of the sun.

I love learning about Arizona and the history behind the names of the towns and roads. Skull Valley, according to the Sharlot Hall Museum archives of the oral history project conducted by the WPA in the 1930's, was originally named by the Yavapai and Pima native Americans who fought a battle in this area. The dead were left unburied, which resulted in skulls and bones left in the valley for the white settlers to discover when they arrived in the mid-1800's.

I didn't see any skulls on our 15-mile ride down Iron Springs Road to Skull Valley (population around 743), but we did enjoy a large and spicy Mexican-inspired breakfast at the Skull Valley Diner.

We sat outside in the warm sunshine and told stories about motorcycle travels that involved riding through the Alps, Badlands, and New England; and breaking down in the brutally hot Arizona summer.

I was glad for temperatures in the 70's as we continued to our next destination:  Bagdad, about 60 miles west of Prescott. Like so many Arizona towns, Bagdad was founded by miners looking for gold and silver. Today the townsite and the Bagdad copper/molybdenum mine are owned by Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold which continues its mining operations.

We climbed up and down through the rocky countryside, rarely seeing cars or motorcycles, or even houses. As we descended closer to Bagdad and the temperature climbed into the high 80's, I saw tall saguaro cactus covering the landscape. Saguaro are found primarily in the Sonoran desert, and Prescott is at too high elevation for this type of cactus.

The paved county road ends in Bagdad, where we stopped for an ice-cold drink (the bottle of water from the convenience store refrigerator actually had chunks of ice in it) before we headed back toward home.

palm trees in Bagdad, Arizona

Even though there's only one road in and out of Bagdad, everything looks a bit different going in the other direction. We ended our ride heading north on Route 89, riding through the Pondersa pines in the Prescott National Forest. This road is made for motorcycles, and we twisted our way through the hairpin turns and switchbacks, stopping a few times to look back at the pavement across the valley.

I want to go back to Skull Valley, stop in the train museum and eat another meal at the diner. Bagdad offers tours of the mine, and I'd like to explore some of the smaller roads that wind through the mountains north of Prescott. We've heard October is a beautiful month for motorcycle travel in the southwest, and we're ready to go.