Saguaro National Park

November 12, 2016

Todaay's was a pretty dumb ride. In fact, the whole day was pretty dumb from dawn to dusk. Definitely the least satisfying of the tour. So, I'm not going to honor it with much of a writeup. Two things that made it dumb in particular:

- The highlight of the day was meant to be the eight mil loop through the eastern section of Saguaro National Park, just a few miles east of town and about fifteen miles from our motel. Our plan was to start from there, so we drove the car. However, through a bonehead navigation error (a team effort!), we went to the western portion instead, in the hills west of the city. The west side is pretty awful for road cyclists - the roads in the park are all unpaved, and the ones outside of it are all shoulderless, busy, and dangerous. So, nothing to do but drive to the east section, wasting an hour and a half.
- we had meant to bike the loop through the park twice, once in each direction - one way at the start of the ride, and the other direction at the end. With our late start though, we didn't have time for both. We decided to ride through it at the end of the ride only. Unfortunately, due to a wardrobe malfunction I don't care to elaborate on, we barely made it back to the car and skipped riding through the park at all.

So, even though the main point of the ride was t bike through the national park, we didn't do this after all. Most of our day's ride was spent within the city limits, biking at times on busy arterials, and at times on pleasant bike paths. Dumb.

Saguaro forest in the western (that is, the wrong) branch of the national park.

Stick-Em-up! Bank robbery scene, Saguaro National Park.

The view northwest from Old Spanish Trail Road

The view north across Tucson to Mount Lemmon

Today's ride: 42 miles (68 km)
Total: 778 miles (1,252 km)

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