My Bad

Although we have been back in our Mesa house for quite a while, I have yet to finish blogging about the remainder of our travels.  I figure I’m about four posts behind, so here goes.

After leaving Show Low, we parked for a while in the national forest outside of Payson.  We checked out RV parks in the area with the thought that we might want to summer there sometime.  We didn’t see anywhere that tempted us to stay, although it is a very pretty area.

We rarely go to museums, but we made an exception for the Rim Country Museum in Payson.  Surprisingly, a docent takes you through the museum rather than wandering on your own, but she was very knowledgeable.  There is also a reproduction of Zane Grey’s cabin which he inhabited while writing some of his famous western novels.  The docent for that part of the tour was a rabid Zane Grey fan from England.  Very interesting.

We also took a couple of hikes.  The first was Horton Creek Trail which is a lovely walk through the woods along the creek.  It seems to be a dangerous place for kids’ shoes.

I was surprised to see what I thought was a Kaibab squirrel, which is only supposed to be in the Kaibab Forest along the north rim of the Grand Canyon.  Upon further study, I think it’s not, but it still is very pretty.

It does have big ears like the Kaibab, though.  Maybe it’s a mutant.

If you go far enough on the trail, I believe there is a nice waterfall, but after a couple of miles, I turned around at this pretty spot.  (Ron had given up a little earlier.)

We also did the Monument Peak Trail, which loops around Monument Peak.

It used to be a nice trail, but now that ATVs are using it, it is really rutted.

After Payson, we moved to another National Forest spot above the Camp Verde/Cottonwood/Sedona area.  It was still hot, so we stayed at altitude.

Here’s the view out our dinette window. 

Wandering around the area, we found a lot of grinding holes that the natives had used long ago.  Here’s Ron demonstrating.

It’s hard to imagine finding enough seeds and grinding them.

Scary story.  One evening we were driving back up hill from Camp Verde and passed a fifth wheel RV on the other side of the road that was on fire!  The driver was very smart and stopped right on the road, instead of pulling over to the side which would be the instinctive thing to do.  With the dry grass, that would have set the whole forest on fire.  Since several people had already stopped, we continued uphill.  I feel we did our part by stopping twice to put out little fires in the road about a half mile back.  Luckily, we had water in the truck.