Just got back from my first bike tour since moving to Arizona. Burly would be the best word to describe it, as well as a lost of fun. The landscape (obviously much different than what I'm used to having grown up in coastal northern California) on this tour was very new to me. Even after four days of riding I am still excited to see cactus and yucca. The Sedona area itself has an amazing and interesting geology. On day four we started in white chalky limestone and within 30 miles ended up in iron rich red rock. The climate is insanely dry (although we had a little rain our last day) and warm which allowed me to ride in a t-shirt for most of the trip. The whole time I had to keep telling myself that it was the middle of December and not July. Our focus on this trip was to explore the area but to try to avoid riding on paved roads, or busy roads at least. About one half of the miles were on dirt roads of varying conditions. The second day we rode Perkinsville Rd. which I would definitely rank as one of the top 3 roads I've ever pedaled. For having gone into it completely naive and for the most part relying on google maps (not recommended) we did pretty well. There were some hike-a-bike sections for sure, but only one instance when we abandoned our planned route for an alternative which was recommended to us by a USFS employee. Having only brought one forest service map (non-topo) I realize the usefullness of good maps and GPS units. But nevertheless we had no issues and had a blast. Here is a link to the route and below are some photos.
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| One of several rad canyons to rode through on Perkinsville Road |
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| This rock formation reminds me of Turkey Tail mushrooms |
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| one of the hike-a-bike sections |
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| Perkinsville Road carved out of the hillside |
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