Day 22 - US191 and a whole lot more!

So, today was kind of an odd day. We were starting out in Springerville, AZ which was the northern point of our Top 15 Road assignment for today, but because Arizona doesn't observe daylight savings time, we were an hour "behind". The good part of that was that when we started the sun was a bit higher in the sky, but it also meant that later in the day when we crossed back into New Mexico we would lose an hour again.

So we started out on US-191 for a planned 121 mile trip to Clifton AZ which the GPS said should take us 4 Hrs 22 minutes. That seemed kinda long to us, but we just went ahead and ran it. The road travels through the San Francisco Mountain range in the Sitgreaves National Forest. It would take us up and over one 8,550 ft mountain pass and then wind us up and around, but not over any other passes, two other mountains - Rose Peak and Mitchell Peak. Well, this road just twists and turns and pitches up and down and it almost never ends! Most of it was posted 55 MPH more or less, which was fine even for the turns, but the later sections the posted speed limit was 30 in many places and even 15 to 20 in some, due to the tightness of the turns. That's why "Jill" (our affectionate name for the GPS voice) said it would take so long. We didn't stick so closely to the posted limits  and managed to complete it in 3:12 - but it was a HARD 3:12! There is just so much concentration and physical exercise required to run that many miles on such a continuously twisty road and also have to watch out for deer, cattle, people (hikers and cyclists), other traffic, sand and gravel in the corners... The list just goes on. So by the time we got to the copper mine near the end, I was ready for some "easier" roads. Well with Larry doing the routing I should have known better!

After we finished 191, we turned eastward on Highway 78 which would cover some 35 miles or so across the state border into New Mexico. Well this road was nearly as twisty as 191! We then turned south onto US-180 and did get a bit of a break there for a while with straighter road, but even that would take us up over an unnamed summit pass of 6,230 ft just as we pulled into Silver City NM. We stopped there briefly for lunch and then headed out on NM-152 which would take us up over Emory Pass (8,228 ft) in the Mimbres mountains, also part of the Gila National Forest. Here again, another road well worthy of "Top 15" status. But, to make it even more exciting, there were more than several places on this road where previous heavy rains had washed out sand across the road making for one more hazard to be ever vigilant of. By the time we got to I-25 we had covered 300 miles of extremely challenging roads and I was ready for a break. We had only 60 miles to make Las Cruces where we had a hotel reservation, but even that would be work since the temperature had climbed steadily all day from the 54 degrees on the early sections of US-191 to now reaching 100 degrees on I-25! Needless to say, when we got to the hotel we were two hot and weary riders, but ever so happy to have had the thrill of riding these wonderful roads!

Stats: 351.9 miles in 6:54 running time, 8:06 elapsed time