After an awesome week in Tucson, we headed up the road to Usery Mountain Park in Phoenix. This park is located east of Phoenix, near Mesa/Apache Junction.
We stayed at the Buckhorn campground at Usery for 2 weeks, our first 2 week stay. It was awesome, and the stay really flew by. Thinking back now, it feels like just a few days. Time flies when you’re having fun!
The campground was very nice, and our site (D12) was one of the best. We had a great sunset view and plenty of privacy – the sites were very spaced out. The showers were also very nice – sometimes we prefer to use the campground showers since we rarely have a “sewer” hookup in the campgrounds we go to. We only have a 41-gal “grey” tank for the shower/bathroom sink. This easily lasts us a week doing a “navy” shower, but sometimes you just want to soak!
Our first ride in Phoenix was at South Mountain Preserve, basically an out-and-back on the National Trail. Andrea wasn’t a fan – it was pretty technical up and down. I enjoy tech, so I had a pretty good time. This was a ~10mi ride with 1040ft elevation gain.
Our next ride (and a few times after) was at the Hawes trail system. We ended up liking this much better – still some tech, but it was more manageable overall.
The first ride we did at Hawes was a loop on the west side, around 8.5mi.
Our next few rides at Hawes were on the north/east side, and they varied in length – from 8 to 10 miles. We also threw in a ride on some horse trails over near Lost Dutchman State Park – these were pretty terrible, though. Here’s a smattering of photos from these other rides.
There weren’t a lot of good hiking opportunities around us, but we did walk the trails around camp a fair amount with Moz.
After Usery, we went to McDowell Mountain Regional Park for 2 weeks in northeast Phoenix/Scottsdale area. That will be our next post.
-Kyle