Day 7 (Mon, 18 Feb)

Day 7 (Mon, 18 Feb)

I rode from Mesa, AZ to Globe, AZ today.  The ride was 73 miles with 4,400 ft of climbing – my second big mountain day.  I felt pretty strong, which is encouraging given that I definitely didn’t feel that way a couple of days ago…  The ride started out flat as I worked my way out of Phoenix.  Then most of my ride was on Hwy 60 all the way up to Globe.  I passed many cars for the first 5-10 miles on Hwy 60 (it seemed to be a parking lot) and then eventually figured out what was going on – they were all going to a Renaissance Festival.  Then I hit the mountains and climbed away (stopping numerous times for pictures!). 

I saw a lot of the famous Arizona Saguaro cactus today, which was awesome (there were not many west of Phoenix).  The climb was a bit challenging in a few spots but overall was quite pleasant and the scenery in this part of Arizona is spectacular.   I ended the day by climbing up into Globe, AZ.  This area is famous for all of the mining that is done here – primarily copper is mined today from what I’ve read this evening but there are numerous other minerals that have been mined in the area including gold and silver.  The mining appears to mainly be surface mining on the tops of the mountains.

Again, super good weather – 40s up to 60s in the mountains at mid-day and plenty of sun to continue baking my face and continuing to build my raccoon look around my sunglasses…

In the pictures below:

a.     Views of the mountains east of Phoenix as I was riding towards them
b.     The sign for the Renaissance Festival (the cars were going slow enough that I even had a chance to “hi five” a couple of folks that seemed to be interested in what the heck I was doing, as they were waiting in line).
c.      Saguaro cactus
d.     The ravine that I rode up through (I didn’t get a picture of it, but for the first time while in AZ I actually saw natural running water – dry down here to say the least).
e.     Random cyclist taking pictures of himself as cars whiz by…
f.      The mining on mountains southwest of Globe (if you go to Google Earth you can see this in the area – its all of the white areas in the satellite views).
g.     A copper smelting plant (one of only a few that still operate in the US)
h.     Beautiful sunset in Globe
i.       Still no rattle snakes to be seen – maybe tomorrow.

Some interesting history on the area:

1.     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Globe,_Arizona2.     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_Kid3.     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geronimo