Memorial Day Weekend Ride - Wickenburg/Prescott/Jerome/Payson Loop

Saturday's ride was a long time in the making!  It's been quite a while since I've taken an all day ride on the motorcycle.  Today's loop started with meeting up with friends from the local RAT Pack at the Cracker Barrel in my home town of Buckeye, home of the Helzapoppin' Rodeo (I don't know why I like saying that).  We then headed west on the interstate briefly to set ourselves up for the first tasty bit of twisty pavement on today's menu:  



Vulture Mine Road leads into Wickenburg, AZ through some mountains and passes by the historic, abandoned Vulture Mine.  The pavement is usually kept very fresh and smooth but it was dirty today due to recent rainfalls that cause the washes to fill up and spill onto the road.  After our early morning sampling of the VMR, we stopped at Avi's Screamer's Drive In on Wickenburg Road (US 60) just outside of downtown Wickenburg.  From eating there fairly often in the past, I knew the burgers were great, but at 9:AM we were more in the mood for more suitable for the time of day.  For breakfast, you can have anything you want as long as it's a breakfast burrito.  At least you had choices on what to put in it.  I did the egg, sausage, bacon, cheese, pepper and jalapeño burrito.  Needless to say, it lives up to Screamer's excellent burgers.  Highly recommended!  After shooting the breeze for a while, we realized that we had some riding to do, so off we went towards Prescott.

After Prescott, we then turned onto AZ 89-A towards Jerome.  The pass through the Mingus Mountains is a very entertaining piece of pavement.  Because of the recent winter, the road was still pretty bumpy, but fairly clean, perfect for the skinny tires and soft suspension of my Bonneville.  This road features lots of switchbacks and elevation changes though you are mostly heading up!

Jerome is a strange little town located on the side of a mountain.  It's full of shops, bead & breakfast motels, restaurants and pubs.  It's the perfect weekend getaway for the couple that "antique" is a verb!

Going through town, the smell emanating from the Haunted Hamburger had the taste buds going, but unfortunately, the line outside to get in kept us moving on to another spot for lunch.  Having been to Belgian Jennie's on a family four-wheeled day trip in the past, I knew this was a good back up plan for some much needed nourishment.   Originally from New Jersey, the owners of Belgian Jennie's know how pizza is supposed to taste like.  The pizza here doesn't disappoint for being from Arizona.  It's not Naples Pizza in Toms River, but it's pretty good!

After lunch, we head east towards Payson.  AZ 89-A after Jerome is fairly boring until you cross over I-17 in the Cottonwood area.  Here, we connect with AZ 260 to loop back towards Phoenix through the town of Strawberry (which deserves a return trip) and Payson.  After going through town, we hook up with AZ 87 which is also known as the Beeline Highway.  This one is pretty much a wide four lane freeway type of deal that winds through some very scenic areas.  It's not very challenging on the motorcycle but is fairly relaxing after all of the tight roads from earlier in the day.  As we start hitting civilization in the Ft. McDowell area, I then pick up AZ Loop 202 for the long freeway drone back home.  All in all, what a great day!  Excellent weather (sunny of course and not too hot), great conversation and excellent roads!  This is what it's all about!

Run the route in Google Earth.  Click here to get Google Earth.

Download a Garmin GPS file of the route.

Download a PDF route sheet.  Click here to get Adobe Acrobat Reader.

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