Remember the magazine called Arizona Highways? Those beautiful pictures of distant mountains, cactus, and sandscapes. We are seeing all those beautiful things and more. When you drive along the highway at 60+ miles an hour you can only focus on the far view, like cactus with special lighting or an Ocotillo turning yellow with the Fall season, maybe the morning alpenglow or Saguaro Cactus sentinels guarding their slope. Unfortunately the “more” mentioned above is even more visible riding a bicycle at 12 to 15 miles an hour. That “more” is the bar ditch and usually detritus that comes from the convenience store a couple of miles back. What occurred to me today while riding along seeing all the Adopt a Highway signs “in loving memory of [someone]”, was that they pay tribute to the memory of someone by throwing trash along their section of Highway. I guess the more trash in their section the higher you regard that person. Highway 70 south of Globe, Arizona has more trash per square foot than any other road I’ve seen. If Greenpeace rode bicycles there would be a major movement somewhere in that neighborhood. The ride is great, but I did spend some 80 plus miles thinking about why littering was okay in this section of America and few other places. It could be that almost every vehicle here is a pick-up and every bit of trash blows out of the bed. It could be that the locals are primarily miners from the open pit copper mine. And it could be that these foothills are home to a large Apache tribe that appears to be less affluent and environmentally aware than those in Colorado. BTW you should be checking Ivan’s Blog at jgicblog.com as he’s doing a blow by blow rendition of this Southern Tier ride. ; ;