Adventure Cycling Association

We’ll meet up in the early afternoon in Tucson, then catch a shuttle to our tour start at Patagonia Lake State Park. Located just outside of Patagonia, home to the Nature Conservancy’s Patagonia-Sonoita Creek Preserve, the state park is a great destination for birding complete with lakeside trails and a beach. Here we’ll have a lip-smackin’ dinner from our wonderful caterer and have our first map meeting. When it’s time to hit the tent, we’ll doze off in the delightfully cool, dry Arizona air.

We'll leave Patagonia, riding northeast to Elgin, which joins Patagonia and Sonoita as the third town making up the "Mountain Empire" of southern Arizona. The vast, mountain-ringed grasslands support high-desert vineyards that supply grapes for wines made locally and have served as backdrops for movies ranging from Oklahoma to Kevin Costner's Tin Cup. From Elgin we'll push on to Tombstone, where we'll enjoy an evening of indoor lodging.

From Tombstone, we'll bicycle through empty, broad-shouldered country that unfolds against the distant mountains. Following roads with names like "Frontier" and "Double Adobe," we'll make the approach to the mile-high town of Bisbee, founded in 1880. Mines in the Mule Mountains surrounding this former boomtown produced some three million ounces of gold and more than eight billion pounds of copper, making it one of the world's richest turn-of-the-20th-century mineral camps. We'll camp for two nights in Bisbee at the centrally located Higgins Park, a fine base camp for exploring all of this historic town's features and attractions.

Layover day. By the early 20th century, Bisbee, with a population of 20,000, was the largest city in the Southwest. Though the population has shrunk to around 6,000, Bisbee has grown into a thriving center of the arts with plenty to see and do. You might take a walking tour of the historic downtown and beautifully restored Victorian homes that seem to hang from the hillsides, go underground and visit an inactive copper mine, or clunk along the dusty roads of the surrounding mountains on a commercial jeep tour. If you'd rather bicycle, you can do the 45-mile round trip ride to the Whitewater Draw Wildlife Area, where a multitude of birds, mammals, and amphibians thrive in the Chihuahuan Desert grasslands.

A short but scenic route through the San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area highlights our day as we eat our lunch along the banks of the river. Designated in 1988, the San Pedro Riparian NCA was designated to protect and enhance the desert riparian ecosystem, which is now a rare remnant of what was once a much more extensive network of similar riparian systems throughout the Southwest. We'll take a break from setting up our tents again tonight in lue of indoor accommodations.

On our last day, a short ride will take us into Kartchner Caverns State Park, where you'll have an opportunity to hike or take a tour of the Rotunda/Throne Room or Big Cave Room, home to the world's most extensive formation of brushite moonmilk. After our visit, we'll shuttle back to Tucson at tour's end, where stout saguaro cacti, standing with arms extended, will bid us farewell.