I’ve Had Enough Wind

We arrived Sunday afternoon at Lyman Lake State Park in eastern Arizona just as the wind started blowing. It has been blowing relentlessly ever since.

This is another pretty park…

and must be very popular in the summer with a huge beach,

boat ramps, and at 6,000 feet above sea level, summer temperatures in the eighties and nineties.

We are enjoying the wide open spaces but with the wind we’ve done very little exploring so far.

There are very well made trails…

and even petroglyphs and the ruins of a pueblo, but we have only been on part of two trails so far. We walked a bit Monday morning but the wind made it hard.

We’re trying out a new app for off-roading. We found this road that seemed appropriate for our four wheel drive pickup. It was about an hour away. Unfortunately, as the app says, the best times for this trail are spring, summer and fall.

That’s because it’s up in the White Mountains. In fact, Escudilla is Arizona’s third highest peak. There’s snow in those mountains, and though there was no snow on the road when we started, the melting snow had made the road solid mud. Fifteen or twenty miles through mud did not appeal. We tried a second road back down on the high desert. That was supposed to be on Bureau of Land Management land. After a mile or two we came to a fence and a cattle guard and a sign saying “Private Road, Written Permission Required”. So that was a bust.