Railway Memories

Visiting a little slice of my childhood while visiting family for Christmas. 

Jeepin' in Butcher Jones

It's been entirely too long since we used the Jeep as it was intended.  Our bud Lance invited us out to Jeep, and after other plans fell through, we scrambled out of bed, made sandwiches to go, loaded up the girls, and headed north.

The plan, meet up with Lance and other random Jeepers at Butcher Jones in my beloved Tonto National Forest.  13 Jeeps (yes entirely too many), headed out on the trail that circled Saguaro Lake.

We took several breaks in between obstacles, which gave the girls a chance to stretch their legs.

We spent several hours, flexing, stretching and smacking the skid plates around.

By this point, there were two casualties.  One JK broke it's aftermarket sway bar, and another JK broke it's Dana 30.  OUCH!  He called a 4x4 tow.  The remainder of us split up and our group made our way back out.

We finished our day at pavement, aired up, had some good laughs, and said our goodbyes to old friends and new Jeep pals.  It felt damn good to get out today, get in 4 low and go.  

Vacation Mode Deactivated

The last day of a long trip is always a rough one.  We packed up, made coffee to go and slogged up Old Lime Creek.

We stopped just before pavement to air the Jeep back up and allow the girls one final time to enjoy Colorado.

A quick stop to Honeyville for wine, sandwiches in Durango, fuel in Cortez and into Arizona we went.

It is quite amazing how quickly the pines and aspens turn into Juniper.  And how much faster the Juniper's disappear into the tan vast and empty valleys of the Ute Lands.  I read off and on, we lamented about our trip and soon we crested into Flagstaff.  For a brief second we thought about camping the night, but the winds had been raging all day and we just wanted a long shower and a large, dogless bed.  More miles, less trees, more brown desert and the reappearance of saguaros.

We left Colorado at 9:30AM and 45*.  We were greeted home with a killer sunset around 8:00 PM and 105*.

Back to reality.  Back to work on Monday.  Until we meet again, wilderness.

Avalanches Part 2

We fell for this tiny lake in the bottom of a bowl on a dead end road a few years back.  At the time, we had the place too ourselves.  And because of uncleared avalanche damage we again had the place to ourselves.

We parked the Jeep, put Hope's coat on and hiked our way up several different avalanche obstructions until we reached our lake.  It is nameless on the map, but it is special to us.

"There's a marmot down there"

Spending time there was one of the best days of our trip a few years back, and I can honestly say that even though the damage made us sad, it was again one of the best days of our trip this year.  (Click here to see the lake with less snow pack and no avalanche damage circa 2017.)

Hope had a blast running through the snow and being so fortunate to have solitude in this area again is magic.  Silverton's trails are notoriously packed, but loads of travelers are lazy if they can't drive to something.

As a reward, we stopped and got a pizza from the Golden Block Brewery (amazing, must try), downloaded more episodes of Lavagabonde and made our way to camp.

After horsing down our pizza, we put as much camp gear away as possible, showered, and tucked inside to avoid the mosquitos.

Avalanches

We woke late.  Well, I did anyway.  Sleeping in a teardrop with two adults and two uncooperative dogs isn't ideal.  But after a bit of coffee, we made our way into Silverton, with the intention of hitting Cinnamon Pass.  But after passing a Cherokee full of Tucsonions, we discovered that Corkscrew offered up the opportunity to see some incredible avalanche damage.

Potato Lake

And incredible it was.  Neither of us could believe how much damage was caused this season.  No other season since we've started visiting here has been so bad.

This should've been a clue as to what we were about to see....

The continual damage along Corkscrew was stunning.  It looked like it flowed down the road for a while.  It must've been a chore to clear it all.

We finally cleared the worst of it and made our way to the pass.

At the top of Corkscrew, we decided we wanted to see what our little lake looked like......