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One of the things we have been thinking about this summer is determining where we would spend the winter. Originally we figured we would stay somewhere in Arizona - the Tucson or Phoenix area. We have done Arizona winters 3 of our 4 years of full timing. With Covid still going and possibly getting worse over the winter months, we still were thinking that staying at a fixed spot for several months would be the preferred option. We started to look for a some scenario like where we have been here in Show Low. A private ownership park with someone wanting to rent their site. Since it’s looking like the Canadian snowbirds might not be able to come to the US this coming winter, we figure there may be lots of options.
But after a bit more thought, we decided heading back to our “home” state of Florida would work out better. I have a sister that spends the winters a bit north of Tampa so it would be nice to stay somewhere in that area. We had stayed in Hudson Florida at the Word of Life campground in the winter of 2019. It is an okay place, but we wanted a different vibe this time. We found a completely renovated private campground in Brooksville that sounded nice and we even found a couple YouTube videos showing what it looks like. So we booked a site for 5 months starting in November.
This gives us 5 weeks from when we leave Show Low to get to Brooksville. Most people going from Arizona to Florida would take the more direct route along Interstate 10. We’ve been there and done that and wanted something different. So we pull out the maps and do a bit of route planning and will take the scenic route to Florida through Kansas. More on that in future posts.
There were still some hikes we’ve been wanting to do so we head out to do part of the Blue Ridge Mountain Loop Trail back near Pinetop-Lakeside. This is over a 9 mile loop and don’t really feel that ambitious. The normal main parking and trailhead for this is a quarter mile from the Country Club Trail. There are also several other trails that connect to the Blue Ridge. We pick one called the Billy Creek Connector for a couple reasons. It is a shorter drive to this starting point and the connector is just under a mile long. There is limited parking on East Pinecrest at the trailhead but one spot was available so it worked for us. There is a small ravine along some of this trail which I assume to be Billy Creek. It was dry so I’m not 100% sure.
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Purple Star Thistle (unfortunately its invasive)
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Just before intersecting with the Blue Ridge, we see there is a another geocache down some unmarked trail. We decide to give it a try even though it is named “Eastern Yuma Micro”. We generally don’t enjoy micros - usually containers smaller than a 35mm film canister - especially micros in the woods. We were more than 50 feet from ground zero and I had already seen the container. I had to chuckle at the size of this “micro”. It was a metal tube container unlike any we have ever come across before.
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Not Your Typical Geocache
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We backtracked to the trail and was at the junction with the Blue Ridge in a short time. We opted to head right (east along the southern portion of the trail) simply because there were more geocaches in that direction. It was a pretty hike and a trail in good condition. Along the way we spotted a prickly pear cactus growing on top of a large rock. It definitely did not look like a good spot for the cactus but there it was. Another geocache took us a tenth of a mile off the trail and we discovered a very interesting collection of large boulders in a small gully. It was neat checking out as we looked for the cache container.
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Intersection with Blue Ridge
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Cactus on Rock
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Rocky Location Near Geocache
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Chris Below While I Sign Cache
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A little while later we saw the next geocache was closer to Forest Road 187. The woods were wide open so making the detour of several hundred feet wasn’t a big deal. We figured it was just as easy to walk the fire road for just under a mile to the point where it intersects the Blue Ridge Trail. This got us to the main parking area I had mentioned earlier. From here we follow the trail back to the southeast. At one point it intersects with the Springs Trail which we had hiked several weeks earlier. Back then, we had skipped a geocache because it was showing up as being on the Blue Ridge Trail. Of course when we went to find it today, we discovered that the cache owner had not put in the coordinates correctly and the cache was actually back in the Springs Trail. We felt obligated to go out of the way to find this one. Surprisingly it took us quite a long time to spot this well hidden cache. The container was not too large but here was a cute scene setup with a couple of fairies sitting next to a table. Some geocachers get quite creative. We cut back over to the Blue Ridge and continued back to the car. Our circuitous route came in at just about 9 miles and was a fun hike.
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Forest Road 187
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Fairies Guarding Cache Location
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Even in early September we were getting some pretty hot days so we head back towards Greer to cool down and explore another area. The Pole Knoll Trailhead is just off SR 260 well before getting to Greer proper which will spare us 8 miles of driving each way. The trail starts at nearly 9000 feet in elevation and depending on your route may get as high 9600. There are numerous trails here to chose from. The Pole Knoll Loop is 7 miles and basically goes around the two hills in the middle. As we were heading out we spoke with a guy just getting back from a mountain bike ride and he gave us a few suggestions. It is definitely a pretty area with some large trees to give reasonable shade. The huge snow fences along the main road are visible from the trail. From the looks of them, I suspect this area sees a bunch of snow.
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Pretty View at Start of Hike
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Large Snow Fencing in Fields
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We start out heading west on the Pole Knoll Trail then take a left onto Grouse Trail. We start to gain some elevation but it isn’t until we take another left onto Viewpoint Trail where were really start to climb. A series of switchbacks makes it slightly less challenging but is still a good workout especially at this elevation. Once near the top, a geocache gets us to take a small spur trail to the west of Pole Knoll (elevation 9787 ft). Boy were we glad we went this little bit out of the way. This side of the hill was covered in thousands of yellow flowers and the view over the couple of lakes was quite remarkable.
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Even Pole Knoll Loop has "Most Difficult" Sections
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Unique Laser Cut Metal Found in Geocache
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Overlooking Lake
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Many Campers in Valley Below
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Back to Viewpoint Trail until we hit Summit Trail. Either direction would get us back to parking but now that we are at the top, we feel like going some more. So we head south on Summit to Elk Trail. This turn is harder to spot because the trail is definitely just a small single track in the woods. As we lose elevation and things flatten out, we take the easy Osprey Trail before hitting Pole Knoll and back to the car.
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Along the Elk Trail
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Our Pole Knoll Tracks
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We had wanted to make a day trip to the town of Globe for some time but it is at lower elevation than where we are in Show Low so the heat there was much worse. We watched the forecast and finally had a cooler spell so we went for it. We had actually gone thru the town of Globe back in 2017 and it probably wasn’t a place that required a return visit. But there was a specific geocache along the route that we wanted to try.
Every geocache is given both a difficulty and terrain rating. Difficulty relates to how well hidden or how hard a puzzle is to solve in order to find the cache. Terrain is how strenuous it might be to get to. Both ratings go from 1 to 5 stars with half star increments. This leads to 9 difficulty ratings and 9 terrain ratings for a total of 81 unique combinations. Why is this important? Well after over 10 years of caching and well over 13,000 finds, there is one remaining combination that we have not found yet. The biggest reason for this is that a 4.5D/4.0T is not a very common combination. I usually will check to see if one is in the area we are camping. Most of the time there isn’t one, or if there is, it may be further away than we want to deal with. I happened to notice there was one along the drive to Globe and it sounded promising. So off to Globe we go one day.
It turned out that the 90 mile drive down US Route 60 was much more interesting than we were anticipating. Roughly halfway along the route we start a rather large descent towards the Salt River. There are multiple pullouts on the way down and the views were very dramatic. After dropping more than 1500 feet, we cross the bridge over the river. There is a rest stop just across the river so we pull over to check things out. We notice a bunch of vehicles parked on a dirt access road underneath the bridge and a group of people were carrying a raft to a point where they could enter the river. At first we assumed it was simply a recreational trip, but they we saw how all the rafters were dressed and it didn’t look like any normal rafting trip we have done. Plus they had a dog along! Who in their right mind would bring a dog on a whitewater rafting trip? Included is a composite picture of the same raft as it came down the river.
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Rocks Tower over US 60
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Salt River is Muddy Looking
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Four Shots of Raft Composited into One
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It was then that we realized this was actually the county sheriff department. I subsequently looked online to determine if they were searching for a missing person but found no reports so hopefully they were only out on a training run. There were also a couple tandem kayaks that also had dogs aboard. The dog in the raft had its paws over the side of the boat and whenever it got close to the edge of the river, it seemed to be intently sniffing. Perfect timing on our part because they were out of sight fairly quickly. The visitor center at the rest stop was closed but is a unique looking building.
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Sheriff's Raft with Dog Hanging Over
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Closed Visitor Center
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The lighting was much better on our drive back in the late afternoon so we stopped at many of the pullouts again to take in the scenery.
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US 60 Snaking Up from River
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We eventually got to Globe and the Besh-Ba-Gowah Community Center. Covid has the visitor center/museum closed but they still allow visitors to wander the grounds. The main attraction is the 200 room, 800 year old ruins of the ancient Salado people. Much of the place no longer has walls, but the group that takes care of the place has done a good job of stabilizing some elements while rebuilding others. With all the interpretive signs, we found ourselves spending over an hour walking around the grounds.
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Entrance Sign at Besh-Ba-Gowah
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Ancient Pueblo Walls
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Peeking Inside Restored Room
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Right next door is a garden area that covers a lot of ground. We spend a half hour checking out all the plants - many of which are in bloom. Quite pretty for such a desert environment.
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Cactus in Bloom
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Another day trip was for a hike just south of Show Low off of Rim Road. We weren’t 100% sure the trail was open. Some reports on AllTrails reported it as being closed but we couldn’t find anything about a closure there on the National Forest website. Plus there were a few geocaches along the various trails and several cachers had done the hike recently. So we headed out to give it a try. We had read that the two miles along Rim Road from US 60 were rather rough but we have a Jeep. It was slow going but nothing too challenging to get to the trailhead. There were no signs along the way about the area being closed and we did see a couple other people so we figured it would be okay. There are a lot of trails in the area. The main one being the Buena Vista Trail. But we needed to be careful about which turns to take because our goal was to try to do a 3.1 mile loop. We did have a few times we continued down one trail when were were supposed to have turned a quarter mile back.
As we were getting close to the car, I convinced Chris to go for “just one more cache”. It looked like the trail to the cache would simply take us back to the Rim Road a quarter mile or so beyond the car. Of course the trail was extremely hilly and when we got to the intersection with the road, we found ourselves on the wrong side of what appeared to be a very new barb wire fence. There was no easy way over so we had to back track on the hills before we finally made it back to the car. Our 3.1 mile hike had turned into a 5 miler. It was a pretty but not exceptional hike. For the drive out, we decided to go the shorter route along Rim Road to the east. While shorter, about a half mile of it goes thru Indian reservation land and the “road” was in much worse shape than the way we came in. Fortunately it has been dry so the mud had solidified and the only obstacle was to stay out of the 2 foot deep ruts!
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Trail Winds Thru Woods
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View Over Show Low
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One place between Juniper Ridge and Show Low was called Pintail Lake. We had driven by the turnoff for the lake many dozens of times in our months here but had never bothered to make it a destination. One day on our way to town for some supplies, we made the turn to see what was there. It’s about a quarter mile dirt road back to a parking area. Pintail Lake is part of a waste water recycling project for Show Low. The surprising part is the path from the parking lot to either of the two viewing stations is a concrete walkway. At first we take the path to the left and find a covered bird watching shelter. It’s very nice however there is NO water in the lake.
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Concrete Pathway to Pintail Lake
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Dried Up Side of Lake
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Next we head toward a geocache that is well off the concrete path by about a quarter mile. During this walk we discover that there are really two holding ponds and right now only one of them is full. There were lots of ducks and other waterfowl in and around the water. After finding the cache we headed to the other viewing station. This one is just an open deck but does overlook the pond with water in it.
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| The Side with Water |
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From Viewing Deck
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I had been wanting to do one more hike down in the mountains south of Greer but had never gotten around to it. We set aside one day towards the end of our stay to go to the Mount Baldy Wilderness. There are several options for a hike. The Mount Baldy Loop Trail is over 16 mile long and has nearly 2600 feet of elevation change! Most people that do this are backpacking and camp along the route. From the descriptions, it looked like East Baldy Trail #95 might be the prettier section. Even so, doing this whole section as an out and back would be almost 12 miles with 1900 feet gained. Our plan was to go as far as we could and turn back well before we ran out of energy. It was a pretty drive to the trailhead at the Gabaldon Horse Camp. It’s not at all clear why one leg of the full loop is called East Baldy and the other is called West Baldy. Each trail generally runs east to west with one of them north of the other. A mystery we may never understand.
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East Baldy Trailhead at Horse Camp
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Our trail out of Gabaldon connects up with the trail from the main parking after about half a mile. It was a very pretty hike with sections of open meadows and thicker woods. For the most part the trail is all uphill which should help us decide how far to go before turning back. A mile in to the hike, we start to see some very large rock formations. A geocache hidden by one of them gets us off the trail to go check it out.
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Rock Spires
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More Outcroppings on Climb Up East Baldy Trail
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The hike back down was much easier. Stopping again at the rock outcroppings. There were some trees already starting to change to their fall colors although the vast majority of the trees in this area are evergreens. Some of these trees are quite large - not Pacific Northwest large - but still impressive for Arizona. One fallen tree was 4.5 feet in diameter and had a bark layer that was 6 inches thick!
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View of Big Lake
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We came up with two more woodworking projects in the final week at Juniper Ridge. Somebody had posted on a Facebook group how they created shelves in a dead area next to their pull out pantry drawers. The area is only 3” wide and 15” long so doesn’t provide for a ton of storage but it can hold some of the extra supplies or seldom used items. Making the cleats and the five shelves was a pretty easy task. But since the pantry opening is only 7” wide, I discovered I almost needed to be a contortionist to install them. Chris also wanted something she had seen another RVer have for their rig. Many campgrounds either have rules about putting ropes on their trees or don’t have any trees to put ropes on. But there are times when we have very wet rain jackets or towels and want to have a place to dry them out. A simple stick with a couple notches and a few holes will easily attach to the ladder on the back of the rig and hold clothes hangers or a rope to put out wet items to dry.
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Extra Pantry Shelving
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Drying Rack on Ladder
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Drying Rack Layout
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We ended up spending 123 nights at Juniper Ridge. I had mentioned in an earlier post about a dirt road next to the resort that I turned into my 10 mile mountain bike route for days we weren’t really doing much. The day before we left, I rode the route one more time making it the 55th time I did so. That works out to 45% of the days and 550 miles of mountain biking during our stay.
We head out of Arizona after spending 256 nights in the state. It will be good to be back on the road. We have a five week trip to reposition for the upcoming winter months in Florida. We are hoping that Covid restrictions won’t dampen the normal joy we get from seeing new places. New Mexico, Colorado, Kansas, Missouri, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Alabama - here we come!
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Sunset at Juniper Ridge
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