Biking Day 20: Oak Creek Canyon
On Saturday we left Seligman on Route 66, which is now mostly under interstate 40, on a bright clear morning. Around 30 miles later Route 66 branches off I-40 for Williams. We could see snow on the mountains at Flagstaff in the distance, but were amazed to see unmelted snow in the shadows at the roadside all the way through Williams itself. We celebrated the completion of our Route 66 road trip with a late breakfast at the Route 66 Diner in Willams, then continued into Flagstaff where the patches of snow on the ground grew ever larger as the temperature got lower. It was pretty weird to leave one place on a clear sunny morning and after only a couple of hours riding be travelling through snow and worrying about ice on the roads!
No sooner had we passed through the outskirts of snow spattered Flagstaff, we made the glorious journey through Oak Creek Canyon again (it was one of the highlights at the end of our first leg last year), descending 2000 feet into Sedona. This is another amazing bike ride with almost 10 miles of fast twisties through a pine forested red rock canyon that is one long scenic view to die for.
We spent an hour or two looking around the Sedona, which was even more beautiful without the roadworks we saw last year, and then gunned through the last 20 miles to Cottonwood where we’ve spent the last few days. Again, if you’re ever within a days journey on a bike, Oak Creek Canyon is not to be missed! (Except when it’s so cold that there’s ice on the road!) We’d would have liked to ride back the same route, only there is a scheduled road closure over the days we could have traveled.
So, that’s it… 20 days of riding to cover the length of Route 66, in a rather uncoventional “from both ends to a point nowhere near the middle” fashion.
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