Day 12 - Globe to Safford

For me, the best day so far. 85 miles over rolling hills and flat lands in the high desert. The first fifteen miles heading east from Peridot on the San Carlos Apache Indian Reservation were spectacular rollers, not too long, not to steep, just a ton of fun to ride.

We left the El Rey in Globe around 7:30 and headed for Peridot. We warmed up with a short climb. The next 20 miles alternated between climbs of medium difficulty and their accompany descents. Nothing to hard.

Once in Peridot we stopped at the Bashas Grocery Store for a break. I had a maple donut, it's a shame that a grocery store donut would be better than dunkin' donuts, but what are you going to do. The interesting thing about this Bashas is that the department signs are in both English and Apache.

After the next, glorious 15 miles of rollers, we settled in for 45 miles of flat terrain. Luckily we had a pretty nice tailwind for most of that.

We past through Geronimo, now a ghost town, Fort Thomas, birth place of Melvin Jones the founder of Lions Clubs International, Pima and Safford.

Pima, apparently, is where Pima Cotton was developed, but it is no longer grown here in large amounts because the gins can't handle the Pima cotton fibers, which are longer than those of standard cotton (I knew we'd hit all of the "c's". Cotton was the last one, we even picked some up off of the side of the road.)

We are staying in Safford at the home of Mons Larsen and family. Jerry found them on warmshowers.com and the entire family (3 generations) has been extremely welcoming and friendly.

Grants brother Craig also lives here in Safford. Unfortunately we did have time to visit Craig as well.

Time to sleep, tomorrow will be a very long day with two mountain passes. I'm not sure, but I think we cross the continental divide tomorrow. We definitely leave Arizona tomorrow.