Arizona: March 14, 2009

Got up really early, about 5:30 (which was still 9:30 ADT). Finished making the required changes and had breakfast at Waffle House again before taking Marisa to class. Then I drove to a couple of flag places, where I picked up some items, and then it was off for the day’s big adventure. I drove through Mesa worked my way up into the hills. The wonderful thing about the GPS system is that you can pick a random point on a map and the GPS will get you there. In this case the choice was a town called Payson, for no other reason than it was a drivable distance into the Tonto National Forest. The road went up through the White Mountains. Some of them still had snow on the northern tops. Payson was at about 5000 ft ASL (Phoenix is at 1045ft), so there was a lot of uphilling.
Just for a change, I decided to take a slightly different route back. This involved passing by the Roosevelt Reservoir and Dam. The first part followed the lake side and ended up at the gorge were the dam had been built. There was a bridge crossing just upstream. I got out to take some pictures. I then set the GPS to take me down Route 88 which told me I would be back in Phoenix by 4:30 – so I was already half hour late. About two or three miles down the road a sign appeared which stated that there was “Mountain terrain 22 miles”. So I figured I might as well proceed as it probably meant a few tight bends with not a lot stopping you from falling off a cliff. Well, that was only half the story. The other part was that it turned out that the road was unpaved for 22 miles and you could travel a maximum of 20 mph. This was not going to get me to Phoenix in any short time, but to go back was much longer. I was committed. So I drove 22 miles on a dirt road up and down and around for what seemed like forever. The scenery made up for it, or at least what little I saw, because the driving was rather nerve racking. I finally got to Phoenix by 5pm. Fortunately the day had gone much better for Marisa and I only received mild chastisement for being an hour late. In the evening we drove to Scottsdale to meet with Mandy and Bryan and their daughter Annalise for dinner at a place called Olive & Ivy. It was very nice. Afterwards we took a bit of a detour to Barnes & Noble bookstore in Tempe before heading back and calling it quits.