Fair warning. This a mostly text/talky post. I edited a lot out. I divided it into smallish segments. It’s still longer than I’ve written in a while.
Countdown
Today marks exactly one month from the start of my mini-cation. I’m scheduled for five consecutive days off.
We have plans. Our “base camp” for the first couple of nights will be a motel in Safford, a small town some 10-15 miles from the New Mexico border. Nothing especially interesting in Safford. It’s just close to other places we want to go.
Into the Box
Possibly our first stop: Gila Box Riparian Area (picture at left swiped from online, not my photo). Any year-round waterway in Arizona is a gold-mine for pictures.
We’re hoping for wildlife photography.
Even if there are no critters brave enough to show themselves, though, just getting water & reflection shots will be worth it.
Rock and (Hopefully) Roll
A short distance south of the Riparian area is a no-fee rockhounding spot known for fire agates. You know I’m all over any chance at finding cool rocks. So is G. If you’re unfamiliar, a top-quality fire agate resembles opal. We’re talking about the good stuff, the kind with inner colors shifting in the light. I’d dearly love to find a beautiful fire agate!
G’s also taking along his metal detector, which he rarely gets to use. We’ll be well out in the boonies for most of the day. Even better, photos I’ve seen suggest it’s relatively flat terrain. Anything Native American in origin is strictly off limits, but old Spanish artifacts are fair game. Besides old coins, people have found pieces of early Spanish armor, helmets, swords, etc., out in the Arizona desert.
My spousal unit is bouncing around like Tigger, talking about this trip. I haven’t seen him this excited in a long, long time.
But Wait! There’s More!
Those aren’t the only sites we’ve circled on the digital map.
It’s a Flesh Wound
We’re gonna hit one or two old mining towns in the vicinity.
Morenci is a maybe, since the mine there is not only active, it’s THE biggest copper mine in the USA. The mine butts up against several miles of Highway 191.
(Put a pin in Highway 191. We’ll come back to it.)
Because the mine is so active, everything we could find about Morenci suggests it’s gone modern. No cool old-west buildings, no spectacular natural vistas, nothing to make it attractive for camera buffs. We’ll drive through, just not holding our collective breath.
Clifton, also near Safford, is another story. Its main street was built for horses: crazy-narrow pavement, old-west storefronts, and most of the buildings along the main drag over 100 years old.
Other ghost towns dot the map of the area, though it’s doubtful there’s enough left of them to be worth the trouble. A lot of the ghost towns in the state are nothing more than building foundations. You could walk within a few feet of them and never see a thing. And if there’s nothing to see, there’s nothing to photograph.
The Devil’s Highway
Remember when I told you to put a pin in Highway 191?
Highway 191 is penciled in as the next-to-the-last leg of our trip. The road is technically an interstate, continuing all the way from the Mexican border, north to the Canadian border. The section we’ll be driving is obviously a lot shorter, and is indeed called The Devil’s Highway. It was originally Highway 666, only renamed in 2003. The nickname also refers to the most twisty, winding, crazy highway you can imagine. It’s also supposed to be one of the most scenic drives.
Google Maps says it’s 90.5 miles from Morenci to Alpine, and cites a driving time of 2 hours 22 minutes. People who have driven the road say if you don’t make a single stop along the way, count on more than five hours. We’ll be taking pictures whenever we can safely do so, so it’ll likely be closer to seven for us. We’ll pack a lunch and picnic wherever we can find a suitable spot, even if it means eating in the car.
There are over four hundred curves along the stretch from Morenci to Alpine – more than two per mile. We’re not talking about gentle, slow-down-to-fifty mph curves, either. A lot of them are hairpins requiring you to crawl around them at ten or fifteen mph. We’ve seen enough videos to tell while it’s two lanes, they’re narrow lanes. There are no guardrails and several sections have a sheer dropoff along one side. Between the near-zero traffic volume and low speed limits, we’re game for driving it anyway.
We’ll take 191 north, making the majority of dropoffs on the opposite side. I imagine we’ll spend the night in either Springerville or maybe Show Low, before the last leg Friday, coming home by a different route.
I’ve Got a Secret
This trip, if at all possible, we’re planning another surprise for those of us who follow us here, on FB, etc. Fingers crossed we can pull it off.
I hope your vacation is great. I remember somewhere in the US that my husband drove around all sorts of curves. I was in the back of our station wagon sliding from one side to another. Not fun!
The speed limit for the twistiest areas is MAXIMUM of 25mph. Plus we’re religious about wearing seat belts, so not likely to slide around much.
We’re both excited at the prospect of this trip. Hopefully we’ll come home with a LOT of photos, and maybe a bunch of fire agate, too 🙂
Wow that sounds like an awesome trip! Although hairpin turns scare the heck out of me. How can I connect to you on FB? Thanks!
As long as you take them slowly and carefully, hairpin curves are fine. We’ll be driving safely the whole trip, trust me.
Are you a friend of a friend on Facebook? If so, let me know here and I’ll figure out how to get you my information. I have a private profile on FB, thanks to an unfortunate avalanche of trolls on the platform.