Two for one

There's a road that goes from near the Boyce Thompson Arboretum up to the Rogers Trough trailhead. I drove a few miles along it last August. It was pretty rough in places and I got a late start, so I didn't go real far. We went back with the Ranger this past weekend. I took a wrong turn so we never got to the trailhead, but that's OK. We saw plenty of interesting stuff.

I thought this was a side road, but it was the road I wanted to be on.

Peachville Mountain. It looks much more impressive in person. Didn't see any peaches.

My PN-40 kept showing that we were passing through evergreen forest. I was looking around for pine trees but finally realized that the evergreens were junipers.

An evergreen forest southern Arizona style.

The mountains in that area are kind of smooth and blah looking. I don't recommend that road for the scenery. We saw a fair amount of traffic, which wasn't surprising considering the perfect weather.

Near where we turned around to head back, I saw a couple of ATVs tucked away out of site. I guess people do ride up there to go hiking. I was thinking about hiking myself. I walked to the top of a small hill and all the breathing made my throat burn. I guess I need to wait until I get over this cold to do much hiking.

The next day we headed out to the so-called box canyon at the end of Price Road, near Florence. I wanted to check out one of the side roads and maybe find the coke ovens (used around 1850 to smelt ore).

The last time we were out there, it seemed that the scenery wasn't as spectacular once we got out of the canyon. On this trip, the road we took went through some beautiful areas. I've looked at a lot of pictures of this area on Google Earth but none showed the great scenery. The vast majority of them are of people in their Jeeps trying to get into or out of impossible situations. I think the program that selects photos for Google Earth must not have been very selective when those pictures were uploaded to Panoramio. Anyway, I took a few pictures to improve coverage of the area.

This is the kind of scenery I like.

Several people had stopped here to enjoy the view. The guys with the dog were looking for the coke ovens, too.

A couple of guys passed us that were looking for the coke ovens, too. We caught up with them a little later. They had given up and turned back. We talked briefly and they decided to follow us, even though I told them that I wasn't sure we were on the right road. Just a little further along the road we came to a great view of the desert to the south. They were glad they went a little further, but they gave up again and turned back.

It was the wrong time of day to get pictures of this.

That pointy peak is called Grayback.

We turned back soon after that, too. The road was rough so progress was slow and it was getting late. We didn't make it to the coke ovens but it was a worthwhile trip.

This section of road is very rough in spots.

I think somebody spun their tires until their Jeep caught on fire here.

Click the two links below to see all of the pictures.

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