Tales from the Road: MACH.19 - Saguaro Country, Day 14: Saguaro Day

Saguaro Country, Day 14
Saguaro Day
Saturday, May 11, 2019

At 5:00 AM I'm wide awake. Because my body thinks it's 7:00 AM. There's no help for it: I am done sleeping. So I get up in stealth mode, pack up what I can, walk outside and uncover the bike and trailer.

It's a crisp 46F, a gorgeous bright morning here in Bisbee. It makes me want to be on the road right now. But better judgment prevails and I head back across the street to the hotel where by now the staff is starting to prepare breakfast. I get a cup of coffee and sit outside on the patio, chatting with a few other guests. They always seem to have a great deal of amazement that we'd ride a motorcycle over 3000 miles from Virginia to Arizona.

I take the time to reevaluate today's route and make some changes. Saguaro National Park is split into two, one east and one west of Tucson AZ. I decide to go to the east because there's a short driving loop through the desert.

After breakfast and after breaking free of all the people who want to chat this morning, we bid our quaint and quirky hotel a fond farewell and ride northward to the park. Saguaros really are amazing. Kitty takes a picture of the 34-foot high, 100-year-old saguaro in front of the visitor's center with me posing for perspective. Side note: "Saguaro" is pronounced "sahuaro" and in fact, in the visitor's center, it's spelled with that way.

Presenting our Senior National Park Pass (unlimited access to all National parks and any venue operated by the Bureau of Land Management), the park ranger warns us the road is steep and winding, and is concerned whether I have any qualms of pulling my trailer in that environment. I assure her I have no qualms, and we are off to the 8-mile scenic loop. It is indeed steep and winding, mostly a first-gear affair.

The desert is bursting with yellow colored flowering bushes, millions and millions of them. The palo verde are just in peak bloom, and the desert is spectacular with the magnificent saguaros amidst the blaze of yellow. Interspersed are ocotillo cacti, whose blooms are bright red at the top of long spindly stalks. There's a rich showing of cholla (pronounced "cho-ya") cacti, also in bloom, but their new growth is a fuzzy-looking light green and reminds us of lambs ready to be shorn. But make no mistake: This is no cuddly cactus! Like every other desert plant, it has extremely sharp strong spines. We take a close look at some of those spines and they are true weapons!

Many of the saguaros have holes in the trunk. I confirm with the ranger that these are mostly created by birds, especially woodpeckers, and especially flickers. He said they will work for days creating a hole in the cactus, then let it dry and nest there for one year. Then the nest is abandoned for some other bird or animal, and the next year they do it all over again for a new nest.

Finishing the 15-mph scenic loop, which really is a beautiful diversion, we head west to catch Arizona 86 through the Tohono O'odham Indian Reservation, an remote route that rivals yesterday's ride through New Mexico.

The desert is always changing, but the overwhelminig impression is one of a desert ablaze in yellow from the palo verde tree blooms. Millions of saguaros stand tall among the shorter growth and work their way up the steep mountainsides. It's just an amazing ride on a brilliantly clear and pleasant afternoon. Sometimes the saguaros disappear and we seem to be in a creosote desert (my term, not an official designation). The creosote bush is the most drought-tolerant plant in North America, and it's been estimated that there are more creosote plants in the southwest deserts than all the other plants combined. They have a unique method of securing water for themselves: Their leaves drop poison into the ground that prevents any other plants from growing there. Indeed, in the "creosote desert", there are few other plants, just olive-green creosote bushes in all directions for miles.

And suddenly the classic Sonoran desert saguaros reappear and we ride for miles among a virtual saguaro forest. I love the desert but know so little about what makes these dramatic changes that to the untrained eye, appear random and radical.

This whole afternoon we've been riding in the Tohono O'odham Indian Nation. We stop for fuel at Sells (which, along with Ajo, seem to be the only sources for fuel except for one or two wayside gas pumps), and shortly afterwards pass by the Tohono O'odham Indian Nation headquarters.

There's ample evidence of US Border patrol activity, with a lot more patrol vehicles than we saw yesterday in New Mexico. There are several Border Patrol checkpoints, and we are waved through without question, except one officer asks if we are both US citizens.

At Ajo we catch Arizona 85 north to Gila Bend and finish the day trying to guess how far it is to certain landmarks. Kitty is spot on with her estimate of 12 miles for a particular mountain, where we could see the road, still discernible as a road even at that distance.

This has been a wonderful day. I'm glad we reconfigured our day at the last minute and the ride through the desert in bloom was rewarding beyond measure.

I'm feeling a little wistful when I realize we're less than a 400-mile ride to the Pacific Coast. It just seems we should complete the cross-country trip to make it our third. We actually talk about and flirt with the idea of last-minute trip changes to accommodate that; we could do it, but it would involve some really hot-weather desert riding in Southern California and numerous 500-600 miles days riding home; in the end, since we've explored those western deserts and mountains before, we decide to keep the trip as planned and explore some areas we haven't seen before. We plan to work our way roughly northward through Sedona AZ, the Grand Canyon South Rim (third visit) and Monument Valley before slowly starting the turn toward home after the next several days.

Still, after days of riding in the vast deserts I love so much, my heart is full.