Monday April 6, 2015

It was a chilly night in Arizona. I woke up a couple of times and thought I really should be warmer the high for today was about 28 degrees C. I hadn’t realized that the temperature could change so much from day time to night time.

The sun was up at 6:00, but didn’t really warm up until 7:00 so that is what time we got out of the tent.

At the Rangers Station there was a notice telling us that the sprinklers may come on at 6:00 am and 6:00 pm. They didn’t come on at 6:00 pm, however, we found where the sprinkler heads were and Ralf put a plastic water jug over the two closest to the tent and a rock over the third sprinkler.

At 7:00 am the sprinklers came on. It looked as though the water was going to push the jugs of the heads and we had to race around to put rocks over the plastic water jugs to make sure the tent didn’t get wet. It must have looked quite comical.

Fortunately, the tent didn’t get wet and we were able to pack it away dry. We were on the road by 8:15 am.

My legs hardly had time to warm up before we were heading up the hill out of Three Way!

We climbed 393 metres in 30 minutes. I just kept spinning away, slow but sure and we crested the hill and we were heading downhill all the way towards Safford.

We chatted to a touring cyclist who had started in California and was heading to New Mexico (Las Cruces). His wife didn’t want him to cycle all the way across for the first trip. They compromised and agreed that he could cycle to his daughters in Las Cruces. What a novel way to visit your daughter.

We arrived at our warmshowers host at just after noon. Mons is our warmshowers host, he was working but his Mom (Joy) was home she gave us some fixings for sandwiches and then left to go in to Safford. We showered and did a load of laundry. After Joy returned we chatted to her for a while. Then she had to go back to Safford, Ralf went with her and I got the blog updated.

I chatted to Gene Robert (Mons’ father) whose expertise is in finding water. He has worked all over the world building wells in poor countries. He volunteered his time as a missionary for the Mormon church. He was a lovely man to talk to. Joy and Gene-Robert have been married for 65 years, they met at high school. Gene-Robert is 85 years old and sits on the local Energy Board, he was working up the mountain when we arrived. There was still snow on the top, we thought it was some type of mining activity.

I hope Ralf and I are that active and sharp as this couple are when we are 85.

Stinky the dog, decided that my clean cycling shorts that were hanging on the washing line were a fun thing to play with. He managed to get them of the line and was pouncing on them and tossing them around the back yard. At first, we didn’t know what he was playing with, then I realized it was my clean shorts. I had to wash them again, big daft dog.

Mons arrived home from work, we helped make dinner together and had a nice meal and a chat about hosting. Ralf helped Mons load some computers for a race that Mons is the director of and dropped them off at his work. Mons\’ then treated us to a nice DQ blizzard. We had an early night.

Trying to decide whether to make the big push to Globe or stop halfway at Bylas.