Road Trip - Continued

A couple days ago, I posted the first half of our road trip last weekend (see it here). We were retracing the Arizona portion of Sam's truck route to pick up giant copper ingots (here's what they look like). He hauled them from Hayden Mine on his flatbed to a refinery in Amarillo, Texas.

In Kearny, a nearby mining town, we found this historic marker and mine engine. There was a ton of beautiful rock walls in this town, perhaps the legacy of a local rock mason or two. We could use him at our ranch!

From the Kearny, Hayden and Winkleman area, we headed north towards Globe.

I've always loved the way the rock plates dive into the earth at an angle along here. There must have been some major shifting and shaking of geology many years past!

The long descent into Globe and the valley.

It's fairly mountainous around here!

Near Globe, we turned east and were soon enjoying an early lunch at another favorite haunt of Sam's, Apache Burger in Peridot. A green chili burger with lots of flavor!

Sam found another historic marker telling about nearby Coolidge Dam, which we visited a number of years ago on a fun Memorial Day group camping trip to San Carlos Lake, on the San Carlos Apache reservation. A couple of helpful local residents directed us to a pow wow dance, but it was over by the time we got there.

On down the road, I attempted to use my knowledge of local geography by guessing this was Mount Graham, the location of one of our early motorcycle date trips. I was premature; it's Mt. Turnbull. I love learning new geographical facts about my beautiful Arizona! (I know, I'm weird and a mental dinosaur.)

We finally began to see the roadside signs Sam remembered for Taylor Freeze.

Peach ice cream, here we come!

But wait, why no mention of their homemade ice cream?

When we got there, Sam asked the young waitress, who set us straight. "It's much too hot to grow peaches here!" Oh, well, sometimes our brain cells cross and memory fails! We still enjoyed the ice cream and hometown atmosphere.

We stopped in Safford and had fun shopping at a thrift store, then continued down the road. THIS is Mount Graham! I believe it's the tallest mountain in southern Arizona at over 10,700 feet. (Don't you love looking up information on Google?!)

We completed our road trip by taking the freeway west through Willcox and Benson, arriving home over 12 hours after we left. It was a good day! Thanks for coming along with us!