Day 311 June 5, 2017 Senoita to Green Valley, AZ

Looking down from the open second story into the common lounge area.

Senoita Inn in Senoita, AZ was built by the co-owner of the famous racehorse, Secretariat. It is reminiscent of a barn in the most elegant and beautiful sense of the term.

John and I arrived around noon and had to wait 2 hours for staff to check us in.







The rooms are each named after a local ranch. Outside each room was an essay about the ranch, pictures of the owners and family and the branding symbol each ranch uses.

It is a lovely place to stay and I would highly recommend it. This is the slow travel season in Arizona which may be the reason that we were the only customers in the hotel that night, I hope so, as it would be a shame to see it go under.










As I mentioned earlier, June is the off-season for tourism in Arizona. The reason is simple; it's the hottest month of the year. The temperature is commonly well above 100 degrees. While temperatures in the 90's can be comfortable in this dry climate, temps over 100 are hot no matter the humidity. In fact the dry air may exasperate the need for water and the danger of running out of it.

It was particularly important to leave early on this leg of the journey, because we were dropping over 2,000 feet in altitude and the temp was predicated to be 111 degrees in our destination, Green Valley, just outside of  Tuscon, AZ.

We began the 50 miles with 7 or 8 miles of climbing followed by a long descent. A very long, lovely, winding decent.

Throughout our trip, we have been using Google Bike Maps extensively, but we take a trust, but verify stance. Nowhere is that more important than in the west. We've been given routes that travel non-existent or more often barley existent roads. This matters in the West because there are not many roads and they do not run parallel. If we chose to follow a road of dubious quality and had to backtrack it would be many miles out of our way in a hostle environment with few support systems.

Hwy 62, a dirt road. 

With that in mind, Google instructed us to take Hwy 62 toward Box Canyon. Hwy 62 sounded good to us especially since the alternate route added 20 miles to our day, but we were dubious to the wisdom once we looked at the map. The road and its connector appeared to go through the Santa Rita mountains and nothing, but a few ranches in the distance and acres and acres of open land.

Upon seeing it, we opted for the longer route.

It turns out that each cow needs 15 acres of grazing land to thrive.

After a stop at 28 miles, the road continued to fall. The scenery became more vegetative and green. This is open range territory. Cattle are allowed to roam freely to graze as they see fit. Since there was a sign warning us, we saw no cattle.



 Once we were within 10 miles of our friends, Tim and Julie's home,
Saguaro cactus began to appear. Saguaro National Park has two sections, one on either side of Tuscon, so that makes sense. Saguaro cactus can grow to a height of 75 feet, with arms branching out and large sharp thorns throughout.




In addition to the greening of the landscape and the addition of different species of cactus, the temperature rose as we lost altitude.  Our last 10 miles became more hilly and our struggles began. It is amazing how much the temperature saps energy. With temps over 100 degrees, it is not possible to drink enough to be adequately hydrated during vigorous exercise. In other words, only mad dogs and Englishmen are out in the midday sun. I'll leave it to you to decide which we were.

Green Valley is a lovely spot in Arizona. The scenery is beautiful and there are an amazing number of activities to participate in. We will be here until the 14th of July when we head out to scuba dive in Belize. More later.

I know this doesn't add to the narrative, but it is a nice shot, don't you think?