Payson, AZ Surrounding areas

Our first full week here is already over. We have accomplished a lot. Paul and the guys are renovating a cabin by adding a kitchen area and redoing the bathroom. The director of the camp wanted the sinks and toilet moved, which involved a lot of extra work demolishing and reinstalling plumbing and electrical, and patching the wall and floor. Changes always take longer than just going in and doing something. So Paul worked mostly on electrical, added ceiling lights, reinstalled the water heater and worked on adding a door to the water heater closet.

We ladies continued to paint in another location, and completed two coats of painting on the walls in the bedrooms, hall and living room plus one coat in each of the two bathrooms. Fortunately, the kitchen and dining room and all of the ceilings were done by MMAP group last month. So next we will start on the wood trim after the second coat in the bathrooms.

Thursday was our 38th wedding anniversary and it was really low key. We are now proud owners of a new toilet for the RV.... can't beat that for romantic! LOL! We just need the time to install it now! We made a video for fun, but could not get it to download after an hour and a half, so I gave up on it.

But we had our real fun Friday.
We took a dirt road, and according to the GPS, we went in a big circle, even as it tried to get us off of the road at a couple of places!! But the views were fantastic!

We even drove through some snow!

We could not follow the GPS where it wanted to lead us in order to get from the dirt road to a scenic, gravel highway (Yes, it was a numbered highway: 288, the Desert to Tall Pines Scenic Road), so we finally got on the main road, Highway 260, and GPS directed us to the road we wanted. What beautiful, diverse scenery!!


Along the way we found the grave of the first victim of the war in Pleasant Valley in 1887 over sheep herding and cattle rustling (click on the Desert to Tall Pines Scenic Road for the information)

And came across beautiful bright red canyon, with the Dutchwoman Butte as the wall.


Toward the end of the trail, we could see Roosevelt Lake below on the desert floor between the buttes.


The Jeep was pink from the red mud we went through (You do know the gauge of how much fun you have is the amount of mud you acquire!!!) and it matches the Dutchwoman Butte!

At the bottom of the mountains, the Salt River feeds into Roosevelt Lake.

A few miles along the main highway, we saw a sign for Tonto National Monument. (by the way, National Park Week is coming up April 17-25, and all parks are offering free entrance!!) Anyway, thinking it would be a quick stop to see "A" monument, we were surprised to find out it was actually Indian ruins! We got our exercise, and hiked a half mile up to see the Lower Cliff Dwellings of Tonto Basin people.


Fabulous views of where we had come from!

We did not gauge the miles, but we think we went about 200 miles all together and were gone for 10 hours. What a blast!! And, as usual, the pictures do not do the area justice!!