We had the whole Payson house to ourselves because Susie was house-sitting. We got to town too late to start camping, so we stayed there for the night. The next morning, we hit Rim Road, and found an amazing spot to camp right on the edge of the rim. There was this crazy cavern in the ground, like a sink hole. We kept looking in from all different vantages with flashlights to ensure nothing scary lived in there.
We set up camp and enjoyed the scenery and the quiet for awhile. It was so beautiful!
That afternoon we headed into Pine so that we could meet Mike and Edie and lead them back to camp. We stopped in the market for drinks and firewood. We were super impressed with the selection from such a teensy small-town market. They had such fancy beers too!
We were waiting in the truck and saw a little elk family across the street. The baby was SO cute! Then they just decided to cross the road and come toward the market. It was funny how the locals just reacted like this was just a totally normal thing to have elk hanging out in the parking lot.
When M&E got there, we hit the road. When we pulled onto the forest road, a deer darted out right in front of our truck! That was really a close one. Edie was laughing about how a deer almost took us out! Haha!
We made some stops on the way to the campsite. There was a specific lookout M&E wanted to see. The views are just breathtaking on that road.
When we got to the campsite, they loved it! They set up their pop-up right next to the spooky cavern though, so Edie was a little nervous about creatures crawling out during the night.
The four of us had a wonderful time. The landscape was just amazing, and clouds kept rolling through changing the light. Gorgeous!
We had been watching the weather forcast and it was supposed to rain a little on our last day, but it was becoming clear that it was going to rain that night. We weren't worried though. We played games and hung out until the weather started to change. At that point, we decided to call it a night and head in for the night.
Chris started a campfire near the edge, and it was so windy that we burned through almost all of the firewood we bought. Chris and I were telling stories about the Mogollon Monster, and we blamed every noise that came out of the forest on him. The Mogollon Monster is Big Foot, essentially. It's a big local lore. I guess the show Finding Bigfoot even came to the Rim area to look into the Mogollon Monster. Just scary enough to help scare our friends that decided to camp next to a cave in the ground. Haha!
The next morning, me and Chris had to run into Payson to help Susie with something. We saw some more nifty wildlife driving into town.
Driving back to camp, we were able to spy our little camp spot from way far away-
AND THEN THE STORM CAME. Holy moly! It got freezing cold, and insane wing was blowing through. Chris barely slept at all. I would wake up, and he'd be all sweet and tell me everything was fine and to go back to sleep, but I finally figured out by his tone of voice that things were NOT fine. We went out and took the canvas off our easy up, and threw the generator in the back of the truck. The rain turned into snow. And more snow. And MORE snow.
We kept having to get up and shake the snow off the canvas of the pop-up because it was packing up and weighing it down. We were so exhausted, we tried to get a little sleep, but cold water started dripping on us from the snow above our bed.
We gave up on sleep, and just started packing up instead. Chris had to help M&E get out of their popup because their awning had blown down and was holding the door closed.
Packing up the aftermath of the destroyed easy ups was hard work! We were all soaking wet and miserable. But once everything was packed, we could take a second and let it soak in how beautiful the forest looked.
The road was a muddy mess, but the snow was so pretty. The clouds were touching the tops of the trees. It was a winter wonderland!
Chris was so tired, so once got out of the mud, I drove. We stopped just beyond Mount Ord, to give the dogs a little pit stop and found and interesting overpass with tons of graffiti on it. It was nice to just take a breather and count our blessing that we didn't blow off the side of a mountain.
No comments:
Post a Comment