I enjoy traveling with my family so much that sometimes I forget how much I also love traveling alone. It’s such a decadent treat.
Lately I’ve been craving silence and solitude in a huge way. The way I craved liverwurst when I was pregnant. (I know, right?) So I hopped into my car and headed up into the Tonto National Forest near the Mogollon Rim. In an hour and a half, I can go from beige desert spiked with saguaro cacti to lush pine forests.
Rim country is amazing. The Mogollon (pronounced “mo-guh-yon”) Rim is an escarpment (a big word for a big cliff) that stretches across the state of Arizona. The land at the bottom of the rim is about 4,000-5,000 feet, and it rises in an instant to about 7,000 feet. It’s an understatement to say that the views of the Rim and from the Rim are spectacular.
There is a hike just outside of Payson called Horton Springs Trail. At the top of the trail (about 3.5 miles with a 1,000-foot climb) there is a spring that feeds Horton Creek. I have hiked along this trail many times, but never, over the course of about 16 years, reached the springs. This was due to various reasons—weather, young child in tow, whatever. I decided that this weekend I would finish the hike already and see the springs.
.JPG)
Posts
