ilanarama | spring 2024 vacation part 1: Arizona

We like to get down to southern Arizona in the spring and fall (some previous trips), and while we've most frequently gone to the Scottsdale area, this year we decided to get a VRBO a little further south - in the Gold Canyon area east of Phoenix - and explore some new-to-us trails with our friends Frank and June. We went down in late March, so yeah, I'm a little late in posting, but I've been busy! It was a good time to go, not too hot for riding, and it was nice to escape winter for a little while.

Our first day of riding we rode to the Gold Canyon trailhead just down the road from our rental house. The Gold Canyon trail system had a lot of easy-ish riding, which was exactly what we were looking for, considering we hadn't been riding since fall - heck, we'd been skiing only a few days before! We still managed to find some stupid rocky trails, and enough elevation change to make us work on or 13-mile ride, along with plenty of classic Arizona scenery.

The next day, the men played golf, while June and I went to the Hawes trail system to do a little riding. We got a little ambitious and took a fairly challenging trail, which meant we went really slowly because we had to stop and catch our breath (or walk) multiple times, but it was scenic and fun.

We even found some shade under a huge saguaro for lunchtime!

The next area we went to ride was a trail system near the Hackamore OHV trails, but it was a little rockier and steeper than any of us enjoyed. (Plus there were jeeps and ATVs driving around.) So after a short ride and some lunch on a high point, we coasted back down an OHV trail, got back to our vehicles, and drove to the Usery Mountain regional park trail system instead, which was awesome - trails that were easy yet scenic and interesting. My favorite trail here was the Chain Fruit trail, which at first I thought was a play on bicycle chains, but actually refers to the way long chained segments of cactus fruit hang from the "jumping cholla" cactus.

This trail system had a lot of signs, which was nice even though we had the trail maps on our phones. Plus, it had a very big sign helpfully telling us where Phoenix was:

Our last day in the area was rainy, so instead of mountain biking we went hiking. The trail we took was in the same area we rode the first day, the Gold Canyon system, but the Hieroglyphic trail was for hiking only, no bikes. Good thing, because even with the rain there were a lot of people! But at the top of the climb (nearly 700 feet in 2 miles) we saw the "hieroglyphics" - that is, petroglyphs!

All in all, it was a lovely minivacation and a nice way to ease from ski season into biking season. And fun to be in a different place with very different scenery!