Written by: Mark Smith
Hello everyone! My name is Mark Smith and today I’ll be writing the daily blog for the Fuller Center Bike Adventure. Today we rode 69.4 miles from Kayenta, AZ to Bluff, UT. At roughly mile 21 we crossed over from Arizona into Utah. Most everyone stopped at the large Welcome To Utah sign and got their picture taken. That marks the third state we have biked through so far in the trip. Once we entered Utah we were able to weave our way through the beautiful Monument Valley along highway 191N. Monument Valley is a valley where there are huge rock formations that jut out of the relatively flat Earth. The rock formations ranged from 100 to 1000 feet wide and from 50 feet to a few hundred feet high. A fun fact about Monument Valley is that this is where a scene from the movie Forest Gump was shot. The scene is where Forest is running across America and as he jogs down the Monument Valley highway he stops and says something about how he’s getting tired and then just stops running. It’s kind of comical because he had a huge crowd of followers with him and they were all dumbfounded when he decided to suddenly stop running. There is a sign on the side of the road that indicates where the scene was shot.
One other landmark we passed on our trek today was the Mexican Hat. This rock formation is made up of a large, flat rock maybe 50 feet across and 20 feet tall that is teetering on a few smaller rocks below it. The whole rock formation is a few hundred feet high. I recall seeing the Mexican Hat rock formation on several episodes of the cartoon Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner. One of the girls I was riding with was really excited to see the Mexican Hat formation. Once we rode passed it she was a little bummed out. In all honesty it wasn’t that special, especially after being in the Grand Canyon a few days ago. She was one of the people along with myself that embarked on a 16 mile high all the way down and back up the Grand Canyon, so you could say we’ve seen some pretty amazing rock formations there!
Overall the ride today was wonderful. Only one person in our group had flat tire issues which is practically unheard of. Our first two weeks were definitely a flat tire nightmare. But today everyone was in good spirits and arrived at our destination safely which is St. Christopher’s Mission Church. The church is one big triangle but it has the feeling of an oversized Yurt hut with its open space and 40 foot high ceiling. As long as a few people don’t snore too loud tonight we should all have a nice time here. Tonight the church is providing us with dinner and then we get to give a little presentation about the Fuller Center to the local community. Our group video extraordinaire “Iron” Will Peterson put together a video that we will show tonight as well about the last week or so of our trip. This trip has been quite the adventure. It has been a wonderful experience meeting everyone and now going into our third week it feels like one big family. I look forward to the next several weeks together with all these amazing people!
