Rye Creek, first shot

I seem to be making a habit of going to all of these places at least twice. Well, that's a good thing. They're nice places. If I had to take pictures in a bar along Main in Apache Junction, I'd be sure to get all I needed on my first visit there. I suppose the bars could be very nice places, too, if you like that sort of thing. I guess I'm judging a book by it's cover, so to speak. But I'm getting way off track here.

The Last Roundup.

I used to visit cemeteries years ago. I was looking at the plants, and specifically rose bushes. I used to have some rose bushes and really enjoyed them, and I hear that you can find some really nice old rose bushes in cemeteries from which you can take cuttings, though I never did. I only raised hybrid teas. Anyway, I would always find myself reading headstones, and I would come across one for a child that died when just a few days or a few weeks old and that would make me very sad, so I quit visiting cemeteries.

Two of four.

"The Last Roundup" caught my eye as I drove by. "There's a bit of Arizona history", I thought. I stopped to look around. It seems to be used primarily by the Haught family. There were 4 similar tombstones close together. The Haught family lost 4 children in August of 1892. What a downer.

The upper part of Rye Creek was dry. I went to check out the lower part since I was out there and to scope out the road. There was water in the lower part, and evidence of lots of water recently. I wanted to see if I could find the stream gauge and had got to hike the last quarter mile or so.

This is a peaceful looking area.

I followed a side channel down to the creek. The stream gauge was right where the map showed it. It was obvious I was going to have to cross the creek if I was going to get more than two or three pictures.

Rye Creek stream gauge.

There was a wide, shallow part of the creek that was easy to cross. It wasn't long before I decided I needed to cross it again, but now is was narrow and deep, but not narrow enough to jump across (not with a backpack and camera, anyway). It wouldn't be fun hiking back to the truck with water in my boots, so I didn't want to step in deep water. Conveniently, there was a large pile of large rocks nearby. (That's funny, but unless you've spent some time in Arizona creeks you wouldn't know that that's like being in the Pacific Ocean and saying, "Conveniently, there was some salt water nearby". Which reminds me of one of the funniest things I ever heard but I don't want to get side-tracked again.) I selected a round, flattish rock and tossed it in the water on the far side of the channel to make a nice, stable landing spot. The near side was deeper, so I selected a large, rectangular rock. It was too heavy to toss. In fact, I felt myself sinking into the mud when I got close to the water with it, so as soon as I was close enough I dropped it. Mud and water splashed almost up to my waist. Well, I needed some hilarity and my feet were still dry so I was happy.

This made the soaking worthwhile.

I'm going to try to get back to Rye Creek when there's more water in it. In the mean time, click below to see all of the pictures.

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