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For more information on Ryves Youth Center: https://ccthin.org/ryves-youth-center
Today I got an early start again and crossed over into Arizona by crossing the Colorado River. I crossed it very early in the morning so I didn’t get any good pictures of the river. So I took a picture of Cherry Chicken, me, and my bicycle at one of the first Arizona highway signs instead:
I also crossed through Parker, AZ which is on the land of the Colorado River Indian Tribes. This is reservation land that belongs to people whose great great great grandfathers lived in the area a long time ago, before anyone else came to the area. Here is a picture I took before leaving the reservation:
Have you ever seen the great big cactuses that are in cartoons and some TV shows, that are green and spiky and stand very tall, looking like they have arms sticking up out of them? Those kind of cactuses are called saguaro (pronounced “suh-WAR-uh”) and they grow wild here. These kind of cactuses grow mostly only in Arizona and Mexico, and just a little bit into California. Coming southeast out of Bouse, AZ I started seeing them growing wild, and as I got closer to Salome I saw a lot more of them. Saguaro are very heavy because they hold a lot of water inside of them to help them stay alive. The ones that look like they have arms growing off of them are actually very old; they grow for more than 50 years before they even start to branch out like that! They can grow up to 40 feet—as big as some other kinds of trees, and they’re very heavy. They also have special flowers on them sometimes and there is a special fruit that grows on them that can be made into other kinds of food. Saguaros are such a special plant to the people of Arizona that they’ve made special rules, called laws, that say nobody is allowed to chop them down or hurt them unless they have a good reason. Here is a picture of me and Cherry Chicken near a saguaro:
Here is how big the thorns on a saguaro are. Would you want to touch this? I wouldn’t! Doesn’t look safe to me!
As I was finishing the 80+ mile ride today, riding up the hill into Salome, AZ, a very nice man named Todd stopped to talk to me. He said that I could stay in the fifth wheel (a little trailer home) that is on his land near his house. I got to take a shower and a nap, buy some supplies at the store for tomorrow (food and things), and then Todd and his wife Cheryl were very nice to have me over for dinner. They gave me lots of food to give me energy to ride tomorrow. It’s a good feeling to know that there are people everywhere who are nice and want to help us. Who is someone nice who has helped you? Can you think of a time that a friend or someone in your family helped you out or gave you something? How did that make you feel? I felt very relieved when I met Todd. That means I felt like I would be happier soon. And this evening when I had dinner with Todd and Cheryl I felt a little less lonely, talking to such good friends.
There are a lot of pictures today, I apologize if some of them aren’t very good but I don’t have a lot of time to sort through them and take out the mediocre ones. Here is a challenge, though, if you want to try: Look at some of the pictures below and try to find one of them that has a lot of saguaros (you might have to zoom in!), and see how many saguaro you can count! There are a lot of them in a few of the pictures!
Tomorrow I’m riding into Sun City West (near Phoenix, Arizona) where I have someone whom I’ll be staying with. I hope you all enjoy these pictures!
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