Barry and I are really enjoying the cycling infrastructure here in Tucson.  This city repeatedly wins awards for being bike friendly.  The Travel Channel said: “This desert oasis has more bicycle infrastructure than any other city in the US, boasting more than 700 miles of designated bikeways. You can ride year-round without bundling up, and the mountain bike trails outside of town, as in the Santa Catalina Mountains, are top-notch—just don’t crash into a cactus!”

For riding on pavement, there are some fantastic bike paths, like the one along the Pantano Wash that we ride frequently (see my post including photos of this park and path here).  Additionally, nearly all major roads (and many minor ones too) have bike lanes.  These make getting around -- especially in a city as bustling as Tucson -- much less intimidating.  There are so many cyclists here too, from pros to daily commuters, to folks like us riding around for fun and fitness, that drivers seem to expect to see us on the roads.  We've been pleasantly surprised with how much respect we've gotten from motorists as we pedal about.

For our Sunday ride, we mapped out a route that would take us north into the Tucson foothills, then quite a ways west, then back.  This route promised some nice climbs, gorgeous views, and, our favorite, adventure!  It appeared that we were looking at a total of about 40 miles, per google maps.

So, come on along and see what we saw -- it was indeed a beautiful ride!

After some fast and fun descending as we left the foothills behind, we got onto the bike path at Rillito River Park.  By now, it was afternoon, and everyone else had the same idea.  The bike path was pretty busy!  We went from car traffic to bike and pedestrian traffic.

After leaving the bike path, we still had quite a few miles to go on mostly somewhat busy to very busy roads to get back to the condo.  I was pretty tired and realized afterwards that I just didn't eat enough. We only took one snack break, and the ride ended up longer than we expected.  There were times we had to backtrack a bit, or turn right to go around a block when a left turn was too difficult because of traffic, so I ended up with over 48 miles -- my longest ride in quite awhile.  Barry got over 50 as he did a little extra here and there, but he's been riding so many miles lately it wasn't as much of a "stretch" for him as for me.

Although I was exhausted at the end, looking back now, it was a lot of fun, and we got to see some really beautiful scenery.  Tucson is a great place to be a cyclist.  Anywhere we can wear shorts in February gets my thumbs up, and the excellent infrastructure for bicycling makes it even better!

With the excellent cycling here in Tucson, Barry has been putting in mega miles, so I am doing some solo riding on days he wants to go long miles at a faster pace than I can manage.  We mapped out a nice loop that takes in some lower-traffic roads and the very nice paved bike path along the Pantano Wash and comes in at around 16 miles total. There are places where adding on a few miles here and there can increase that total when desired as well.  When riding solo, I can stop to take a lot more photos, so this blog post is a bit of a photo essay of this sunny Saturday's ride.  

Here's the breathtaking view to the north as I leave the condo complex where we're staying.  I started pedaling to the east to start the loop.

After riding on a few lightly-traveled residential roads, I arrived at the start of the bike path running alongside the Pantano Wash.  The park along here is quite interesting. 

 All along the trail are separate gardens labeled with different signs.  

Here are the various gardens along the trail.  Each one has its own sign logo, so it's easy to know which garden you're in.

For example:

Each garden has its own sign as well with maps identifying the plants in the garden.  Since I was cycling, I didn't really stop to look at individual plants, but it would be fun if you were taking a walk.

From the research I did, I think this is a Palo Verde tree, the state tree of Arizona.  It's distinguished by its green trunk and branches.  Trees are just leafing out here now that it's "spring" (a little earlier than we're used to!)  Pretty, huh?

After riding roughly 3.5 miles south on the bike path, it turns east onto a short divided "bike highway", for lack of a better name.  This is some fun riding, and bikes rule!  Just wish it went on for miles.

Here are views  towards the north from along the "bike highway".  I just can't get enough of the glorious Catalina mountains.

At the end of the "bike highway", I turned to the south again along another paved trail running right beside Harrison.  Views to the east were wonderful -- too bad about the power lines.  The trail starts to climb a bit along here.

When I reached Irvington Road and the end of the trail, I took a right and started heading west along the road with bike lane.  I'm still climbing at this point and am at the southernmost part of my loop. When I then turned right again onto Camino Seco, I could see just how high up I was, and the views were great.  I could see all the way back down to some new homes I'd seen alongside the park and bike path earlier.

Next I took a little side trip down Escalante Rd. to check out a popular RV park.  Not much traffic here!

I couldn't see too much of the RV park as it's gated, but it looks pretty nice.  Lots of snowbirds here this time of year, and who can blame 'em?!  I guess we're officially snowbirds now ourselves!

After a fast and fun descent, I pedaled back to the the bike path and had a look at these new homes being built just off Michael Perry park. These are the ones I could see from way up high on Camino Seco, a couple of photos above.  Not much in the way of yards but definitely low maintenance and perfect Tucson colors.  I got a little bit of extra mileage just riding around the streets of this cute new community.

Then it was back onto the bike path heading north and checking out some more scenery along the way. I was surprised how uncrowded it was on a beautiful Saturday afternoon.

I mentioned that the park and bike path runs along the Pantano Wash.  This area is dry right now, but I found some amazing photos and Youtube videos of how it can get during monsoon season.  Serious flash flooding can occur, so you certainly wouldn't want to get caught down there in a heavy rain.  This time of year, however, is a different story.

This is a bit of a cheat as Barry took the photo of me riding on the bike path below on a different day, but I thought I'd slip it in here since there was no way to get an action shot on this solo ride!

Here was my view north today...ahhhhhhhh....

Today I rode my mountain bike.  She looks right at home out here!

As I turned back on the residential road on the northern terminus of the trail, I noticed this adorable group of Gambel's Quail by the side of the road so had to stop to take a photo. My little camera only has a 3x zoom, so it's not great, but you should be able to make them out at the bottom of the photo. 

While I was stopped taking the quails' photo, I noticed that the school right next to me had a couple of gorgeous arrays of solar panels.  The southwest, with its abundant sunshine, is certainly the place for these.  Bet they were churning out some power today!

The last bit of the loop took me on busy Pantano Road, which fortunately has a bike lane but is not a good place for picture taking.  You have to be on your toes!  But I made it back just fine.  An enjoyable 18-mile solo ride on a beautiful Saturday.

After a fun-filled month on North Padre Island, Texas, it was time to move on to our next "snowbird" destination (VRBO condo) in Tucson, Arizona.  Neither of us had ever been to Tucson before and were happy we were finally going to get to check it out.

We had a long but good two-day drive from the Corpus Christi area to Tucson.  We had no idea west Texas would be so pretty, but it was.  Once we got into Texas Hill Country northwest of San Antonio, the scenery was really attractive.  We found the speed limit attractive as well; and it's a good thing too, as we had a long first day with over eight hours of driving, even at these speeds!

The sunsets in the southwest are often exceptional, and we certainly had one of those on this night. Stunning!  I did not retouch these photos in any way; this is what the camera saw.  Made me gasp when I stepped outside of the restaurant!

The next morning, Barry got a few more shots of this funky little town before we hit the road.

Today we would quickly enter New Mexico before eventually crossing the Arizona state line.  A good chunk of the time in NM, we had views of Mexico right out the driver's side window, we were that close to the border.  We even had to go through a US Customs and Border Protection stop there (as did everyone), but once we stated that we were both US citizens, we were quickly sent on our merry way -- no check of license and registration required.  I hate to think what a mess it would have made if we'd been chosen for a full vehicle search with all we had packed into our CR-V!

New Mexico provided beautiful desert and mountain scenery as always.

And before we knew it, we were in Arizona!

We were somewhat intrigued by the many billboards touting this roadside attraction (tourist trap?) but did not stop to see what it was.  Reading Wikipedia, sounds like we could have gotten in for only a buck -- might have been worth it to see "The Thing"!

I-10 also winds through the gorgeous "Texas Canyon", which is known for giant granite boulders.  We didn't even know it was coming so barely had time to snap a couple of photos as we drove through.

Now we're here in Tucson and loving escaping winter.  Although the weather has been a bit cool by Tucson standards, it's so much better than most of the rest of the US, we'll take it!  Starting this weekend, highs are supposed to be 70+ with the full sunshine the desert is famous for.  Stay tuned for more blog posts from Tucson!