Arizona Backcountry Discovery Route

October 10, 2014

Well, not only is it our oldest child Christopher's 31st birthday it is also our last day in Arizona. We've had such a great time here. Grand Canyon twice, local dirt rides, met the man standing on the corner in Winslow, Arizona and also visited the meteor crater but the funnest of all was today on the AZBDR. We wanted to ride as much of section 5 that we could and we started it at Rd. 417 a little bit south of Valle, AZ. off of Hwy 180.

RD 417

We followed this road for quite some time. Beautiful!!

One of the many cattle guards we crossed.

The road here gradually turned to gravel from the red dirt. We rode along in beautiful surroundings, just us the cattle and the horses.

We had already been lost and a couple of Native women stopped and helped us figure out the way. I wish I had gotten their picture, they were so sweet. We still managed to get turned around at some point and went straight instead of turning on a road that said Arizona Trails and ended up coming out on Hwy 89 north of the Wapatki National Monument. If we had gone the correct way we would have come out just across from where we would start the next section on Rd. 546. We finally found that road and continued on.

Stopped here for water and jerky break.

Once we got started on this road it quickly turned into volcanic cinder. At first it was solid but as we continued on it became soft, deep and a lot like what I figured sand must feel like. I kept saying three things...soft hands - when in doubt throttle out - I hope to hell we don't meet a car along this road! The first two definitely got me through the deep stuff and luckily we never met another vehicle.

Rd. 546

We got back up into the pine trees and it smelled so good! Like sweet vanilla and cinnamon. There were even flowers blooming!

As the road went on it was getting softer and softer. Jay came back to me with the map and it looked like it was going to be going straight up and down so we thought we might want to turn around. But....as usual the farther you go the less you want to turn around so we continued on.

Almost to the top. We had come about 2 miles up a fairly steep hill squirreling around in that soft cinder.

From here it was a gradual downhill grade back to Rd. 545 where we then hit Hwy 89 to Flagstaff and then back to Williams where we are staying. What a great ride!! We would have loved to continue on the route down to Winona but that will have to happen another day.