Tuesday, June 7th:

Today we woke up bright and early at 4:10 am (which, due to the hour that we lost, felt like 3:10- or in the boys words, “living hell”). Nonetheless, we were on the road not much after 5:30 back on Highway 89- Northbound. Today we are expecting to go 118 miles- not because we’re feeling ambitious… just because it is the nearest place with a hotel to stay in! We are still on a bunch of Indian Reservation land, and the scenery is beautiful. As you can tell from the pictures, we were already out biking before the sun rose- which made for some beautiful pictures along the North Eastern Arizona border. For any of you that have heard about the wildfires in North Eastern Arizona- I would like to console you with the fact that we are riding AWAY from the fires, and hopefully we’ll ride fast enough to avoid them altogether. Once again, we checked our odometers at noon, and we had already gone 72 miles! And today we didn’t even have a tailwind! We stopped for lunch right around noon, and ate some snacks that we had purchased at the last trading post we had passed by. Jerry’s knee has been killing him, and he’s even managed to ride with only one foot for a few miles! The boys are all talking about getting their hair cut tonight- and I guess you’ll have to wait till the pictures to come out to find out what their plan is... We crossed the border into New Mexico another 5 miles down the road, and then we went to 4 corners (Arizona, Utah, New Mexico, Colorado) and got some pictures. Just a few minutes later, we followed Highway 160 up into Colorado, and into a construction zone. Ironically, they were fixing the rough shoulder of the Highway, but because of the construction, there was a 2 mile strip where the road was only one lane. Luckily, the workers were really nice and made sure we made it across safely before any cross traffic could come through. We finished the last 20 miles of our journey into Cortez, CO- ending a 119 mile day. Once we got into the hotel, we got some food, cut out hair (check out the pictures in a few days), and went to bed- ready for another day on the road.