Cycling Across America — Part 83

Arizona: Reservation

Eolaí the Artist
Nov 7 · 13 min read

Excerpts from the journal of my 1996 cycle across the US. Read the entire story from the introduction in Boston or see links to all segments of the trip.
(This section is from the audio tape parts of the journal)

Friday I think. No it’s not, it’s Thursday. The 7th of November. I’m not certain where I am. It’s not where I was supposed to be. I’m on the Reservation — at Apache Gold.

None of the place is finished. The hotel, the casino, the restaurants. But the ground floor of the hotel is open. 35 dollars for a room which should be about 70, because it’s enormous, in great condition, with a huge bathroom. The restaurants aren’t ready yet so I just had a chili dog in the casino. It’s actually open but they’re still building it. So I strolled around, had some free drinks and food, but didn’t go playing. Was tempted to go on the slot machines because there was that machine with the ‘7’s and the diamonds — the one we almost won it all on, myself and Jennifer, back in Arkansas-Mississippi on the river.

The way yesterday was laid out I decided to have breakfast before I left, then eat halfway at a town called Bylas which is in the reservation. There was no chance of me going a few miles and then having breakfast, so I’d a quick scance around for a Burger King which I prefer for breakfast but couldn’t see one so had to go to a McDonalds for the second morning on the trot.

It’s pretty built up from Safford, because you go through Thatcher, Central, and Pima — and they’re all within maybe 8, 10 miles of each other. All dominated by Mount Graham. It’s huge. The way the sun was it was a lot clearer, though still a bit hazy. When there was a bank across the road, and the car park went right up to the cotton I went over there, just at the cotton and the mountain, and took a photograph.

Mount Graham, Arizona

The road was a bit hairy, because there was no shoulder. A 4-lane with a turning centre lane, but there was little traffic so it wasn’t too bad.

When I got into Pima there was a sign which said “Last Motel for 70 miles” which struck me as a very threatening way of trying to get business. And it would’ve worked on me if it was the evening. There was a lot of roadworks between Safford and Pima, with just a single lane so if I had tried to go to Pima the night before — to get some extra distance in — it would’ve been quite dangerous being duskish. And also there was nothing else in Pima. Nowhere to eat. So I’d done the right thing.

Mount Graham is 10,713 ft. In that same section, because it’s almost free-standing this small range, is Red Peak which is also over 10,000, and you could see snow up on that one but not on the higher one for some reason.

The valley was quite fertile, obviously well irrigated from the river but I couldn’t see the river. It was off to my right a few hundred yards. There’s quite a lot of cotton around. It’d been taken in and was in those big brick formats sitting in the fields or in the backs of passing trucks. There wasn’t much else. I saw one tiny field of corn, which was a nice trip down memory lane.

There were small towns across the river on some back road which I should’ve turned off at Safford the previous day to get onto, but there was no point doing it at Pima. It wasn’t worth it for the sake of a couple of miles. So the next town I got to was Fort Thomas, where there was what looked like a couple of big government buildings with the town on one side of the road in behind a big country store. And then, five miles further along, I came to Geronimo — the town named after himself.

Had I gone south back at Safford, and then gone on to the interstate, there’s a small town down there by Willcox and Willcox Lake called Cochise. But you can’t really get to it without going on the interstate.

And then I said, here I am in Geronimo where I’d wanted to have a drink just for the sake of stopping and having some liquid. But I was carrying no liquid with me at all. It wasn’t that warm — I wasn’t wearing my jacket. But If you stop it’s warm in the sun — another blue sky day — but when you’re moving, that wind, there’s a coldness in it, against the face.

Just outside Geronimo there was another historical plaque saying the town is called after himself, a famous medicine man, a Chircahua Apache. It gave the year when he finally surrendered, and that he led his followers to forts in Oklahoma and Florida.

There was nothing in Geronimo. Two buildings, both not lived in for a long time and fallen down.

Geronimo, Arizona

Then I entered the San Carlos Apache Indian Reservation. It’s bordered by the Apache Sitgreaves National Forest to the east, and to the west by another National Forest -Tonto — that’s the big one with the Superstition Mountains in and the Apache Trail. To the north is another reservation, much the same size, Fort Apache Indian Reservation.

I have a leaflet, “Arizona Indian Reservations in brevity”: “14 actual Indian tribes representing 160,000 people are found within Arizona. Twenty reservations covering more than 19 million acres” . It says they all do tapestries, baskets, jewellery, pottery, beadwork. “San Carlos Apache Indian Reservation. 115 miles southeast of Phoenix, in Gila and Graham counties (I’m actually in Gila now). Attractions are the San Carlos lake which provides fishing, gaming and hunting; they mine, and manufacture Prairie Dog jewellery and jojoba bean oil; ceremonious rodeo and fair. The tribe is noted for basketry, beadwork and prairie dog jewellery”

Really all you see in there is a few huts where a trailer home is luxurious compared to the other houses. I was going to eat at Bylas, which is the biggest town according to the map. There was certainly a lot of houses around, but just a gas station, and a store — Apache Market. I bought a lot of baps — eight of them, some bologna, some strange cake biscuit things, a snickers, an apple pie, a litre of milk — which I knew was too much, it might make me sick but I wanted a pint — and I bought a can of iced tea.

I looked at the jewellery and t-shirts but I didn’t really have time as the wind was starting to pick up just as I came into Bylas and I’d slowed down to 10 miles an hour fighting the wind. So I sat outside eating my stuff. Everyone going around was an Apache talking whatever language they were talking. On the wall there was a list of people eligible to vote. All the names were pretty much English names — Livingstons, Prestons — but there were a couple of Irish names so I checked the ‘D’s and there was three ‘Daleys’.

From Bylas I had 42, 43 miles to go, to get to Globe having gone 33. But I had the wind to fight and was also suspicious, the road on the map goes dead straight and yet it’s beside a lake. So that means it doesn’t follow the edge — it must go up and down.

It was a serious roly-poly road. Fabulous scenery. It was at times white gravel, pure white. Other times it was red, other times it was orange, other times it was brown sand. There were lots of yuccas, lots of other plants. I finally got to see my first saguaro, the big cactus, the big huge one. I saw one this morning, then I saw two of them together, and finally I saw not far off a forest of them up the slope of this mountain which was squared off like a table — the top, like a perfect ridge around the top of it and then it was flat. You get a lot of those kind of shaped mountains around here, mesas. But as well as seeing a mountain like that, beside it you’ll see 3 mountains which are all pure rock, grey, whereas that mesa might’ve been deep red, and they’ll be pyramid shaped coming right up to a peak. And also in the same range you’ve got perfectly rounded ones. So you’ve got a lot of variety.

But to see those cacti, loads of them, on the slope of a barren mountain, there’s quite a presence about them, it’s almost like they’re crosses or something, like a graveyard. To me, the first day seeing them, it’s an event, it’s like crossing the Mississippi. Even though I’ve been in desert for hundreds of miles and I’ve seen tens of thousands of other cacti, this is a definite event.

There’s a lot of canyons and mountains. Since leaving Mount Graham, to my south you get the Santa Tereasa Mountains with Cottonwood Mountain which is seven and a half thousand, then there’s Mount Turnbull by Bylas which is over 8,000. There was another big prominent one too.

Any rivers that went across the road are usually called washes, and they’re usually dry. They’d be pure sand or maybe a kind of gravel. Like a trail. Winding its way through canyons. At times pure white, white stones and gravel. In this section, west of Bylas, going through and up and down in these canyons, it was great because you’d go across a wash and look at it thinking it’d be great out there on a horse on what was basically a trail winding through canyons. At times it was pure white, but not like the gypsum back in White Sands, just white stones and gravel.

San Carlos Apache Indian Reservation

The road is going up and down. At the top bits they’d be cut away, the hill, so it wouldn’t have to go so high — like a little pass. And the colour then was amazing because the road was brand new, pure black asphalt. You had on either side a white wall. On one side it would be a brilliant white because it’s reflecting the sun. On the other side it’s creamish, because it’s in the shade. At the bottom there’s yellow grass with a few bright green bushes. Then you’ve got this pure blue sky. I did think at times it reminded me of the Burren. A lot of the time the landscape just looked so unnatural — you’d have a big flat section and a big drop away — like man had interfered with it. But he hadn’t.

A sign with pictograms of people hiking, camping, hunting and fishing said you need a permit for them. I had passed an historical marker somewhere before the town of Geronimo, which said it was the original site of Camp Thomas, which was there to make sure that Geronimo’s men stayed in the Gila Valley farming. Historical Markers in Arizona so far aren’t very informative, but then they’re quite old — like the one about the Merrill family that were killed, that was put up in 1938.

So I’m going up and down these roads, constantly doing sums about average speeds I have to do if I’m to make it before nightfall, and I can see it’s close. I’m probably going to need to get on to a flat bit and push it up a bit. But there’s a wind as well that I wouldn’t get sheltered from like when going up and down in these canyons.

Finally I reached Peridot, a kind of centre. It’s where the San Carlos River runs into the San Carlos Reservoir. There was a big store. I could see ahead of me a road going right up a hill — which I thought was going to be downhill all the way. That turned out to be Bucket Mountain. It’s not on the map here but it was on a map in the store. I had a close look at the map of the reservation

There was a marker saying Peridot was the site of original San Carlos, or at least that Old San Carlos was on the lake and they flooded it in the reservoir. They moved all the houses a few miles north which is where San Carlos is now, they put a large concrete slab on the cemetery — presumably to stop corpses swimming to the surface, and they did something else before flooding it. Some great t-shirts in the shop, but it’s not so much the weight as I just didn’t have time to go shopping — I mean I was seriously fighting the sunset. So I bought some drinks, drank some and off I went.

The scenery around Peridot — and San Carlos because I think it’s built up all the way — you got lots of little huts and new houses and lots of dirt and beer bottles around. And bags. Indeed anywhere in the reservation where you hear the rustle of wildlife, chances are it was actually a plastic bag caught in a bush. Then there were a few horses kind of just wildly hanging around. The whole scene was incredibly close to home; it was very odd. So I did indeed grow up in the Wild West.

So up Bucket Mountain, a long long slope which seemed to go on and on for ever. Bucket Mountain itself, presumably is so called because the top of it is squared off like a bucket. I’m still doing these sums, thinking when I drop I’ll have to do whatever miles an hour, and changing it and changing it so finally when I did drop I realised I’d have to go 18 or 19 mph to have a chance. But I couldn’t.

I had to fight down the hill at 10mph. The wind got me once I got out into the open. The shoulder was 2 or 3 foot wide. At some points they had those ridges in it to warn cars not go on to it, that they were off the road. Unfortunately for a bicycle it renders it completely unusable. Traffic was getting heavier, as it does in the evenings and as you get nearer a town. So it finally drops right down, it levels out, I’ve about seven miles to go, and I can see a flashing light. I could see a building on the far side of the road from the light. Hoping that either one of them are indicative of a motel of any description. I thought it’d be just safe to stop even if I hadn’t made it to Globe. The good thing about stopping was that I would be this side of the Bash-Ba-Gowah Indian ruins, so it’ll give me a chance to look at them this morning. This is the morning. I’m so late now, though the latest forecast for the wind today is ‘calm’.

The building on the left hand side of the road was actually a small aerodrome. On the right hand side it was the Apache Gold, and then I saw a sign for Best Western. It wasn’t quite dusk but the sun had gone behind the mountain which is a double-edged sword in that it’s great to have it not shining in your eyes, horribly blinding, but of course it gets darker. I could see the road ahead was up and downy — if I kept going I’d be 20 minutes in pitch black so I’d no hesitation in pulling in.

Luckily I’d loads of food with me so I could eat all that then stroll to the casino and eat a bit there. They gave me a big bag of pretzels which I ate watching old episodes of ‘Seinfeld’ and ‘Mad About You’. I’m happy watching television at the end of a night when you’ve had what a day. The days are very much back in the epic frame. This landscape is impressive. Up on Bucket Mountain, the view backwards was stunning, and to the north. You’re looking over canyons and mountains. I could see mountains I’d cycled past. I’m now higher than some of those, but the structures are so varied, and the colours, it’s so impressive. Would I want to after that sit in a bar and have a drink and a laugh or conversation with somebody? No. I just want to take it in.

When I was checking in there was a man
-Whereabouts in Ireland are you from?
-Dublin
His wife’s from Donegal, he’s English. They live in Phoenix and have done since 1979. He asked me if I was going to Phoenix. I said yes, somebody was going to pick me up at whatever. I chatted with him for a bit and he said it was a tough seven miles into Globe so I did the right thing to stop here. The whole time we were talking I was wondering should I say something and maybe arrange to join them for some company but I didn’t want to. I wanted to be alone. I didn’t write any cards last night either. I’ve just got a desire to be alone at the moment.

I tried to ring home and give double rings — I think it gave about 20. It’s so hard to cut off phones in this country.

So I’ve about 65 miles to do today. I have to ring someone from Superior. I go northwest, southwest, west, and then northwest. Should be an interesting day. And hopefully it won’t be too dark by the time I get to the Superstition Mountains. It’s on a big road there, a four-laner. Hope it’s safe.

Read the next segment Part 84Tonto National Forest.
See:
links to all segments of the trip
Read from the beginning of the trip in Boston

Eolaí the Artist

Written by

Artist. FB: LiamDalyArt, cycles long distances; draws cartoons: http://t.co/b2bN3TuF0s; has a dog, a beard, an XtraCycle. A Dub. Drinks tea.

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