203A

I was talking to a forest ranger last week who told me that I ought to check out 203A. It's on the east side of Roosevelt Lake (where I've been spending a lot of time lately) and goes to the southern border of the Sierra Ancha Wilderness. I was just planning to drive out there. I've been putting some medicine on my face that makes it sensitive to the sun, so I can't be out in the sun much. I tried wearing my hat, but that doesn't provide enough shade, and it hurts my forehead. A lot of the pictures I took out there were very crooked because it hurts my nose to take pictures. I was in a bad mood all day because the medicine makes me irritable. I'm so glad I'm done with that medicine now. But I digress.

As I got on the freeway leaving the house, I could see what looked like smoke near Picketpost Mountain. As I got closer, I could see that there was definitely a fire. There was a dry 20 mph wind from the south, so it was going to spread. It was on the south side of the highway so I was a little concerned about thick smoke over the road. The smoke was not very thick, though. The fire was not very far from from the road. It didn't look like it could get bad enough to force the road to be closed later. Turns out I'm not very good at guessing what fires are going to do.

Smoke from the Picket fire. I couldn't take pictures from the freeway, so I didn't get the actual fire.

203A is in pretty good shape and is not very steep; I never had to lock the axle. There's one narrow stretch with rock on one side and a vertical drop on the other that made me a little nervous, but I didn't encounter any traffic. It looked like I was the only person on that road yesterday.

A narrow stretch of road up ahead. The downhill side doesn't look as steep from back here.

The views were great from up there. That green strip is Coon Creek.

The road ends at the Sierra Ancha Wilderness boundary.

I thought about hanging around until the sun got lower and maybe going for a short hike, but I wasn't feeling too good. Another round of an intestinal virus was going through everybody in the house and it was probably my turn to get it. I thought it might be nice to get to the house before I started having ... well, I won't go into details.

This look fantastic when you're standing there, but the pictures are ho-hum.

Somebody put several piles of rocks here.

There was a line of cars where US 60 leaves the Globe/Miami area. The road was closed near Superior because of the fire. I couldn't go home that way. In Arizona, if a major road is closed, the alternate routes involve a lot of driving. It took me about an hour longer than it should have to get home. I got there just in time, too. Click below to see all of the pictures.

2011_05_08