Mission Ride

Mission Ride

March 28-31, 2019

A quick decision was made on Monday for a Thursday thru Sunday trip. Who needs more time than that to plan a ride, make a route, and get a motel room…packing only takes a few minutes since you can’t take much with anyways? Time to go see the Arizona desert country while it’s still cool.

Thursday morning, we headed to Tucson; we’ll ride straight through and stay two nights at the luxurious Red Roof Inn… Well it didn’t happen without a little excitement. We filled up in Boulder City, NV, and headed for the next stop at Wickenburg. Just over two-hundred miles, no problem, except for the wind. I knew it would be close, then I knew we were in trouble when I saw the sign for Wickenburg 15 miles, and the gas gauge showed 10 miles left on reserve. Maybe it was wrong, maybe not as the engine stalled twenty feet from the pump. Laurie had to push. About 540 miles for the day.

The next two days were sightseeing days. Day one. Mission San Xavier del Bac was first up, pretty cool old mission from the 1700’s which has been restored and is still in operation as a church and mission. Then we saw the Titan Missile site and thanks to an individual in the parking lot we got two free tickets.

Then on down I-19 to the Tumacácori National Historical Park and toured another mission that has not been restored and is now run by the National Park. It was very interesting to see how different the condition of the two buildings were. Tumacácori was abandon early on and it is surprising how much of it was still there really.

We then rode out to Arivaca, Az. Not much there but it was nice to ride a twisty for an hour over all the freeway we have been on. Back to the hotel and another tasty meal at Denny’s next door.

Day two, would be a little longer. We headed southwest to Bisbee, Az down I-10 to Hwy 80.  Bisbee is an old mining town that was a pretty big place, it still has a lot of old buildings built in some steep narrow canyons. There is a very large open pit mine, Lavender Pit, that is very impressive. We then headed back and stopped in Tombstone. Most of the original buildings are gone, but it been rebuilt and caters to tourists. It was still fun. We had lunch in the Crystal Palace Saloon which has a beautiful old wood bar.

We then headed to Phoenix to see some of Laurie’s friends, then we saw the Gilbert LDS Temple, and then over to the far northeast side to stay with our friends in their humble mansion, overlooking the Phoenix valley, awesome!

Sunday, we headed home and made it safe and sound with no excitement. 

It sure is fun to jump on the bike and see some new country occasionally.