[strken]

Hey, I've lived in the US, and it's big enough that you need to specify where you're talking about. If for some reason your bicycle tour is going to take you around all of Arizona, that's a problem. If you're Californian and you don't live in the Sierras, what you've said doesn't hold as much, nor if you live in the Great Plains or New England.

This is vaguely similar to Australia, which has gigantic deserts with terrible roads through them as most of the landmass, but geographically bikeable population centres where everyone actually lives.