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<\/a><\/p>\nDay 1 was spent taking care of business in Norfolk before heading off to my folks place in\u00a0North Carolina.\u00a0\u00a0 Along with a\u00a0great visit, my Dad cooked up some of the best pulled pork BBQ I have ever had.\u00a0 On the evening of Day 2 we pulled into Asheville NC.\u00a0 We spent the evening enjoying some of the\u00a0tasty microbrew scene along the Asheville Ale Trail that included Burial Beer and Wicked Weed Brewing.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Not that we had much of a plan to ride here but any thoughts of that\u00a0were pretty much washed away with all of the thunderstorms they were having with more planned for the following day.\u00a0\u00a0 Day 3 we made our way to Little Rock Arkansas where we enjoyed some more tasty beers at Lost Forty Brewing\u00a0before\u00a0hopping into a hotel for the evening.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The next day\u00a0we made our way Albuquerque NM for tastings from Ponderosa Brewing.\u00a0 Yes, why yes we were making exceptional time! Don\u2019t worry we left no contrails.<\/p>\n
The following day we made a rather quick jaunt over to Flagstaff.\u00a0\u00a0 We had made arrangements for some rentals bikes from Cosmic Cycles<\/a>.\u00a0 I must stay they some\u00a0really good rentals\u00a0at a very reasonable rate for what we got.\u00a0 If we would have been super on our game we could have gotten out for late afternoon ride, but we somehow managed to find ourselves enjoying some tasty grub and beer\u00a0at Flagstaff Brewing Co while we planned out what the ride was going to be the following day.<\/p>\n The route we were going to do\u00a0was\u00a0a sampling of the Arizona National Scenic Trail.\u00a0\u00a0 I had ridden this section of trail back in summer of 2010<\/a>\u00a0and figured this would be a great intro to the countryside of Flagstaff for Nichol.\u00a0 We parked at the trailhead along Forest Service Road 418 and took the forest service roads back south along the bottom of Hart Prairie before catching trail that took us up near Aspens Corner and the junction with the Arizona Trail.<\/p>\n Working our way up to Aspens Corner<\/p>\n The connector trail up to Aspens Corner passes by a\u00a0nice little pond.\u00a0\u00a0This views did not suck<\/p>\n Once on the AZT we were treated to a mix of single track goodness through stands of Aspens<\/p>\n Views from Hart Prairie<\/p>\n Stands of Pines<\/p>\n A ferns that were sometimes head high.\u00a0 The last few miles along this route were just \u201cLa La La La La\u201d singletrack awesomeness that required very little pedaling and very little breaking as you swooped through pines, aspens, ferns, wildflowers etc\u2026. all the way back to the trailhead.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n