Thursday 4 July 2013

Day 11

Thursday - The town of St. Johns, Arizona has a 4th of July tradition where they fire two cannons thirteen times throughout the town starting at 5:00 am.  Needless to say, nobody slept in this morning.  Last night a group of us when to a local pizzeria for ice cream and donuts and talked with the owner for a while who warned of us this tradition.  We were going to keep this to ourselves, but somebody must have spilled the beans since everyone was warned at our evening meeting.  Even warned, there's nothing like cannon fire first thing in the morning.  Happy birthday, America -- let's go blow something up!

We passed from Arizona to New Mexico today.  Although, they're technically in the same time zone, Arizona doesn't observe daylight saving time, so we had to move our clocks an hour ahead.  We may have lost an hour, but it was a short ride, so I was still able to get in before noon local time.


Today's route.
Distance: 90 km
Elevation: +2242 / -1614 ft

8 comments:

  1. You're doing really well. What did you do the rest of the day?

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  2. Thanks, mom. We're currently staying at a CRC mission school on a native reservation. The principal gave us a small tour of the town, which was very interesting. Typically people nap, check email/facebook, do laundry, or go into town for ice cream.

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  3. Are things cooling off a bit now?

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    1. Yes, it's much better now that we're at a higher elevation.

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  4. Sounds like there's been no shortage of adventures since you landed! Keep up the hard work... and the posts...

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  5. "Happy birthday, America... let's go blow something up" :)

    When you get to your destination on Saturday (or Sunday) you should consider a short trip over to the Four Corners monument - where the borders of Arizona, NM, Utah, and Colorado all meet. It's only about 50 km from where you're staying - not that you'd want to bike that on your day off, but if you can get a ride over with a group somehow, it's kind of a neat experience. Melinda and I did it when we drove out.

    https://maps.google.ca/maps?saddr=Shiprock,+NM,+United+States&daddr=Four+Corners+Monument,+US+Highway+160,+Teec+Nos+Pos,+UT,+United+States&hl=en&ll=36.927939,-108.873825&spn=0.310677,0.676346&sll=37.0658,-108.359512&sspn=1.24044,2.705383&geocode=FZJNMQIdSJGF-Sm_w5cuOrY7hzFpd8m-jcfVzg%3BFbOPNAIdExqA-SG7G6Wa2NLIECnX0WzY0iU6hzG7G6Wa2NLIEA&oq=four&mra=ls&t=m&z=11

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  6. We visited Four Corners today (Sunday). I'll say a little more about it in my Sunday blog post.

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