Sunday, June 28, 2009

Camping With The Caldwells

This weekend we continued the camping theme and went on a weekend trip with Greg, Nico, & Abby (AKA "Abbers The Biz"). Greg recommended an absolutely amazing place. Just north of Tonto National Forest is a lesser known forest called Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest. It's amazing to think that while it was 110°F this last weekend in Phoenix, we were camping & hiking in 85°F weather! The area we camped within the forest was called Bear Canyon, northeast of Payson, AZ. From the link you can see, it's in the middle of Nowhere! The reason it wasn't as warm as Phoenix is because we were more than a mile higher than Phoenix; 7700 feet verses 1500 feet! It felt more like hiking & camping in Colorado than Arizona.
The drive up to Bear Canyon was something else. The climb to 7700 feet was breathtaking at times. We left a little earlier than Greg & Nico so we found a nice campground for us. The area is a no fee area, meaning there are no fees or reservations and first come, first serve. We horded a nice little area all to ourselves. The site is a little hard to get to considering we turned off the paved road about 15 miles before our site. Rustic doesn't even begin to describe the area. There were others from all over AZ beating the heat, but for the most part we didn't see anyone else.
We got camp set up when The Caldwell's showed up, and caught up around a nice fire since it dipped into the 50's at night. The stars were amazing as well since there is little to no light pollution there.
Saturday we first hiked on the Drew Canyon Trail which took us to the Mogollon Rim. That is site that is not even close to what the pictures show. The valley below is green, lush, and a thousand feet below. After refueling (AKA lunch) we headed to Bear Canyon Lake to hike around. It's only 3/4 of a mile from our site so we walked to it. We then walked down to the lake then preceded to weave our way all the way around the lake (almost 5 miles of tough rock trails). Just about half way around though, we found a little meadow that could have been used in a movie. It was absolutely gorgeous. We continued back to the campsite to find it had been raided! Turns out (we think), birds ransacked our campsite paying particular attention to the jalapeƱo/cheddar Cheetos, coffee and dirty diapers. They trashed our campsite! Mara was relieved to see they couldn't figure out the lid on the peanut butter container...:) We cleaned up everything, made some pudgy pies and played games the rest of the night. Greg & I found a nice piece of tree to keep us warm (see the pics)
We did have one injury on the trip. Rohan took a hot ember from the fire right onto his head. Nothing serious, just a little burn. He cried for a minute or so, but was back to his smiley self pretty quick. It looks really good now, but the pictures are just afterwards.
We got back to Phoenix and it was still 109°F. The low tonight is supposed to be 85°F, but right now (~9:30) it's 104°F still. It's really nice to know that only 3 short hours away we can be back to the perfect weather we had.
Hope you enjoy the pictures & videos!:


Mogollon Rim Panorama:


Mike & Greg's Giant Fire:


Tiny Snake Almost Takes On Greg:

2 comments:

Calds and Nico said...

We had a blast camping! I cant say there was ever a dull moment!Sun spray and Bug screen (poor Greg):)
We are looking forward to the next weekend of fun!

Gatfly said...

I already commented on Facebook, but I wanted to tell you that Lucy had a MUCH larger snake than Greg's at bay in our yard the other day. Kept her busy for about an hour before I called her off and let the snake escape.....probably under my weavery!