Pretty Arizona Mountains 4-2-07

We were up early this morning. Satan dog next to us was barking most of the night, for the second night in a row. We got on the road before we decided to go next door and choke some inconsiderate dog owners. We were on the road by 8:25.

We followed 191 north and it was an incredible drive. It took us over a half hour just to get through the Phelps-Dodge Copper Mine. It is HUGE. These pictures don’t even do it justice. You have to look really hard at the background mountains to see the mine terraces. We drove under a huge belt moving rock into a pile and then through a tunnel that said 12’ 6” which is what our height is, but fortunately it was actually at least another foot taller than that and didn’t give us any trouble. We kept climbing and switch-backing before we finally cleared the mine.

The road continued climbing and switching and curving but the scenery was gorgeous. We would go through desert combined with forest to high grasslands and when we thought we would start descending we kept climbing. We kept climbing into the Apache National Forest and it became a forest like we are used to in the mountains of California and we kept climbing into the snowline. When we stopped at the top we were at 9,230 feet, but it was in the mid 60’s and quite comfortable. The views were awesome. We ended up in the desert plains and came out on I-40 by the Petrified Forest.

The wind was cranking when we started west on I-40, actually before that even. We burned more fuel in the 70 miles we drove west into the wind then the rest of the 192 miles we did going up the mountains.

We ended our drive today at the Meteor Crater RV Park about 20 miles west of Winslow, Arizona. We got in around quarter after four and put on 262 slow miles. We are staying here two nights, gotta do some laundry tomorrow.