Bicycles, Backpacks, Thumbs, Mountains and Canyons

Summer is great. I feel like I am taking a gap year given that I haven't been in school for five months, and I won't return for another two and a half...
As Brian mentioned in his previous post, I took a large group of people camping up in the Pineleno mountains a few weeks ago which was a lot of fun. We played horseshoes, sat around campfires, and had some awesome jam sessions.

When it was time to go, I got dropped off in Safford where I started my next journey: hitchhiking to Canyon de Chelly just below the four corners. I had my bicycle, but it was more of a secondary form of transportation given that I had three days to get to the canyon (I was meeting some friends from California there). The first day was really hard, which was my fault. I decided I wanted to take route 191 all the way north to canyon, which proved to be a poor decision, given that I only saw maybe 8 cars on my first day. This made getting a ride really tough, and I only made 30 of the 370 miles I had to go. Luckily, the next two days, my luck turned around and I made some awesome time. On top of that I got to ride up the part of hwy 191 that I was supposed to come down on my last bicycle journey. This was an exceptionally beautiful area packed so tightly with aspen you could hardly see the sky. Day three I made it to the canyon by 10 in the morning. I met up with my friends that afternoon and through a series of really lucky events I ended up backpacking into the canyon that night. A few days later my friends left and I headed home, taking a different route, that took me through Flagstaff. It took me two days to get home.

Over the 4th of July Sean C., Sean S., and myself decided to climb Mount Wrightson where we could watch the fireworks from the summit. Being the tallest mountain in southern Arizona, it was awesome. We watched fireworks from Tucson, Sierra Vista, Nogalas, Saughrita, and Sonoita (among others) at the same time. We then spent the night on the mountain drinking coco around the fire before we passed out like little babies.

Thats all I got for now, I'll be camping this weekend, and next week I leave for Colorado. The fun never stops....
Enjoy the pictures!