Road Trips

We don’t just sit around all of the time, twice this week we actually went for a couple of drives.  On Black Friday we went sightseeing around the city, and even stopped into one shopping center (but left without buying anything).  On Saturday we got out of town for a longer trip: back to Show Low (just the opposite direction of our arrival) for lunch, then back to Phoenix by way of US60.  Two weeks ago I asked a local person at the RV park which route might be best to get us into Phoenix and she suggested we might prefer the northern route, along the Mogollon Rim and through Payson, if we were towing the car with the motorhome.  The southen route, via US60 through Globe, would be twistier.  

She was right. 

Saturday’s first stop was at a small Visitor’s Center, run by the US Forest Service, just east of Payson.  Thank goodness I had seen its location on a map and was watching for it, because it can be really easy to miss – the visitor’s center that is.  The Rim is really easy to spot: a wall over 2000 ft high x 200 miles long.

We both remembered a lot of the scenes from 2 weeks ago, but it was slightly different going in the opposite direction. 

After lunch we took the southern route, dropping off the rim soon after leaving Show Low, down into the Fort Apache Indian Reservation on our way to the Salt River Canyon.  We had heard that this was similar to the Grand Canyon, but that might be stretching things a bit.

What do you think:

We would recommend that other tourists coming through here should try both of these roads.  Since we have a diesel with an exhaust brake neither road is difficult, but US 60  is twistier, for sure (at least 4 tight switchbacks by the Salt River bridge).

 Today, Sunday, was a quiet day putting up Christmas decorations, both in our motorhome and starting in Paula’s house.