With detailed listings and useful tips, this guide for equestrians profiles 262 riding trails in Arizona's six national forests--a practical guide to the high country.
Now, for the first time, Arizona visitors and residents can set out on any part of the Arizona National Scenic Trail with a 'bible' of the trail's twists and turns, its flora and fauna, and its geology. In an easy-to-use format, Your Complete Guide to the Arizona National Scenic Trail serves up the 800-mile trail, section by section (43 altogether) so that day-hikers as well as thru-hikers can feel confident about the route. Inspired by the magnificence of the scenery, wildlife, and diversity of terrain, this new book is an irreplaceable source for any hiker, mountain biker, or equestrian heading for the Arizona National Scenic Trail.
Riding 2,000 miles on horseback from Montana to New Mexico sounds like a crazy but thrilling dream or pure hardship and exhaustion. According to Bernice Ende, the trip was all that and more. Since swinging her leg over the saddle for that first long ride in 2005 (at the age of 50), Ende has logged more than 29,000 miles in the saddle, crisscrossing North America on horseback - alone. More than once she has traversed the Great Plains, the Southwest deserts, the Cascade Range, and the Rocky Mountains. Along the way, she discovered a sense of community and love of place that unites people wherever they live. From 2014-2016, she was the first person to ride coast to coast and back again in one trek, winning acclaim from the international Long Riders' Guild and awe from the people she met along the way. Bernice Ende's memoirs are illuminated by accompanying maps of her routes and photos from her journeys, capturing the instant friends she meets along the way, and her ongoing encounters with harsh weather, wildlife, hard work, mosquitoes, tricky route-finding, and the occasional worn out horseshoe. Ende reveals her inner struggles and triumphs - testing the limits of physical and mental stamina, coping with inescapable solitude, and the rewards of living life her own way, as she says, "in her own skin." Saddle up and come along for the journey of a lifetime.
In this newest edition in the popular series, the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy presents the best of the West. With 70 rural, suburban, and urban trails threading through 1,050 miles, Rail-Trails West covers 60 trails in California, eight in Arizona, and two in Nevada. Many rail-trails offer escapes from city life, like the Mount Lowe Railway Trail, high above the buzzing Los Angeles basin on a rail line vacationers once took to a mountaintop resort. Others offer the pure sensory thrill of sweeping terrain, like Arizona's 7-mile Prescott Peavine Trail. Still more juxtapose the natural world with the railroad's industrial past, like Nevada's Historic Railroad Hiking Trail, which passes through five massive tunnels to reach Hoover Dam. Every trip has a detailed map, directions to the trailhead, and information about parking, restroom facilities, and other amenities. Many of the level rail-trails are suitable for walking, jogging, bicycling, inline skating, wheelchairs, and horses.
The complete and authoritative guide to Arizona's Superstition Wilderness (Western Half). Along with trail guides for hikers and horseman, each trip includes the history of that trail--prehistoric people and places, U.S. Army marches, Apache stories, pioneer ranchers and homesteaders, mining claims and mines, and present-day treasure and gold seekers.Up-to-date trailhead and trail maps with GPS coordinates are provided for trailheads and key locations.Winner of several awards including the 2013 IBPA Benjamin Franklin Silver Award for Best History Book.
In this remarkable one-year journal, skilled horsewoman and adventurer Laura Chester brings us into her world, where we deeply connect with the earth and its seasons, with beauty and sometimes danger. While riding in places as far-reaching as Mexico, Australia, and India, Chester is always grateful to come home to the comforts of her familiar horse. As they cover the borderland of Arizona and the hills of Massachusetts, we get to know Barranca as intimate companion, mediator between soul and nature, whether entering the wilds of Cochise Stronghold or picking Berkshire apples from the saddle. Carried along on waves of memory, released by the gaits of her smooth-moving fox trotter, this literary memoir takes us on a personal exploration as well—where family relationships are fractured by anger, jealousy, illness, and death. With the help of her big-hearted animal, Chester is able to retrieve the past and find forgiveness. For as she says—"Riding Barranca puts me in the moment, which is where I want to live."