Road Trip: Superstitions, Apache Trail to Roosevelt Lake and back.
We took advantage of a fairly clear day to head out to Roosevelt Lake that was formed in 1902 when a rock dam was constructed on the Salt River in the Superstition Mountains. A road, Apache Trail, was constructed to facilitate the dam's construction. The town of Roosevelt was constructed as a way to house workers and was destroyed by the resulting lake. Today Roosevelt is a small trailer/RV site and a marina uphill from the original town site.
The desert was in bloom. Rock faces along the way were fuzzy and green from lichens. It's still cool enough in the evening to provide enough dew to keep it growing, for now. Give it a few weeks of dry weather and it will turn brown. The occotillo and teddy bear cacti are blooming orange and purple and the yellow of the desert daisies is everywhere. Apache Trail is paved a few miles past Totilla Flats, a bar/cafe a few miles in from Apache Junction. After that its a dirt/gravel road, heavily washboarded and one lane down into Fish Creek canyon. Actually its about 1 1/2 lanes but who's counting. The speed limit is restricted on the one lane section to 15 mph. Most of the way it is 35 mph but it's hard to keep that speed, especially on the curves because the washboard makes it hard to keep traction.
When we got to the bottom of the canyon and had crossed the bridge over the creek we hadn't driven very far when, rounding a curve, there was a nanny mountain sheep and her kid in the road. The nanny jumped uphill and the calf was left on the road, not knowing why to follow. It did shortly after I was able to stop and get a quick photo. A hundred yard further there were a lot of rocks on the road. Looking up we saw an entire herd of sheep on a rock outcrop right above the road. The rocks on the road were obviously knocked down by the herd as they went up the hill. I was saying that they were throwing rocks at the cars. We stopped just past the outcrop and got out to see if we could get photos of the herd. I walked back around the outcrop and the sheep were really interested that someone was on foot. They kept looking at me. They were curious at first and then, after a few minutes, they headed on up the hill. They had been down to water at the creek when we came along.
You don't hit paved road again till you get to Apache Lake marina, where the road down is paved. It's still gravel washboard till you near the dam at Roosevelt. There are several places where you can pull off to the side to get photos of Apache lake. It's a long narrow canyon lake so there are about 10 miles of various viewpoints.
The changes in flora as you move into and through the mountains is readily evident. You find the saguaro cactus prominent in the southern part of the drive out to Totilla Flats. They are everywhere and we saw more density in those mountains and gorges than we saw in the Saguaro National Park near Tucson. As you near Roosevelt Lake there are more scrub pines. The elevations are similar so it must be microclimate and terroir caused. Just like with wine grapes. We drove north to Payson, AZ and as we did the mountains became greener and greener with trees. Zane Grey's cabin is in Payson so we drove to the Rim Country Museum to see it. We arrived too late to tour either the cabin or the museum since they close at 4 PM. At least we got some photos. We drove back down to Phoenix via AZ 87 through Fountain Hills. The route south through the mountains NE of the valley led through mountains with real pine trees as you neard the Valley of the Sun. We chose that routh in order to catch dinner at Tutti Santi, an Italian restaurant we found out about at the Italian Festival. The food was a bit more expensive than we had expected, but then we did not recall the menu prices from the festival. There's still another one over there that we want to try, D'Amico's. We do have a menu from there and the entrees are more reasonably priced. We expect to hit it next week after the Final Four.
We pick up Rae and Miles tonight at midnight and the weekend starts. We have tickets to the exhibition game tomorrow night between the Mariners and the Rockies. Spring Training is officially over but there are some exhibition games before these teams start their seasons. I doubt I'll find time to do any posts while they are here. And we still have to find a time to celebrate our 36th anniversary. Not sure when, where or how right now. Gotta work on it I guess since the semi's are on the 1st.
Ciao for now.