Exploring Arizona Series

Series Overview

Arizona has a way of hiding its best roads in plain sight. They appear on the map as thin lines between the places you are trying to reach, easy to pass over in favor of something faster, more familiar, or better known. But those thin lines are often where the state reveals itself: old wagon routes that still carry the shape of the land they crossed, turns that open into landscapes most riders never see, connectors that become the ride rather than just the way between rides. A road can move you through several ecological zones in an afternoon, drop into canyon country that feels untouched, or follow a path that miners, ranchers, and native peoples traveled long before the pavement arrived. The map gives you the line. It does not tell you what the road actually feels like from the saddle, or what you will find when you take it.

This five-part series is for the rider already in motion across Arizona, who has seen a road branching off and wondered whether it was worth the risk of the unknown. Whether that turn leads somewhere worth taking, whether the surface holds, whether the route actually goes through. 

Not every road between is technical or remote, but not knowing which is which keeps most of us on the main line. These routes are approachable on street-oriented adventure tires, each one works as a legitimate through route, and each one gives you more of Arizona than the road you would have taken instead. Some follow old wagon roads still visible in the landscape. Some pass through places that shaped the state in ways the highway never will. The hardest part is usually just knowing the turn is there.