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The Mogollon Rim Road
April 22, 2026 — Day 29 Houston Mesa Optional Horse Campground, Tonto National Forest, Payson, AZ Today we’re going to drive FR300 along the Mogollon Rim. Supposedly there are some pretty good views here. The road will not be technical at all, just a dirt road. Expect a lot of pictures with a little commentary. Oh wait, 2 things first. Paul had been working on the AGS, Auto Generator Start. He had replaced the “remote” with a lithium battery ready one, we should charge much faster, the generator worked the previous day, and it was running on our way out to lunch. Except the batteries weren’t charging. He was working with…
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Pyeatte Draw Road & the Grey Hairstreak
April 20, 2026 — Day 27 Houston Mesa Optional Horse Campground, Tonto National Forest, Payson, AZ Today was to be an adventure. We were going to drive the Pyeatta Draw road, before you start googling nobody knows who Pyeatta was and a Draw is just a narrow rocky ravine. Googling will show you immense wet rocks, like this. SO much can wrong in that picture. This is not the trail we were on. We were on the parallel fire roads which shares the same name that the off-road community calls the Cheater Road. We don’t care, we had fun. But first we had to get there, it was 5 scenic…
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Mountain Biking, Police Helicopters & Awesome Dad
April 16, 2026 — Day 23 White Tank Mountain Regional Park, Waddell, AZ We got up early for the sunrise, of course, and no we won’t bore you with the details of yet another glorious sunrise in Arizona. Paul really wanted to get a mountain bike ride in but it was too cold this morning. So we lazed around the RV until the temperature came up a bit. Susan stayed behind because this terrain was more than she’s comfortable with. Of course by the time he got out there it was getting hot! Oh well, he had fun. He saw a Sheriff’s helicopter heading into mountains. “That’s odd.” he thought.…
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Goodbye Phoenix
April 17, 2026 — Day 24 White Tank Mountain Regional Park, Waddell, AZ — Houston Mesa, optional Horse, Camp, Payson AZ Yes, these got out of order… And we missed a lot of things. Like photos. Paul’s excuse is that he’s had horrible insomnia for the last two nights. We said our goodbyes on the 16th because the 17th was a travel day. We were heading up to Payson to visit a good friend. Curiously, no photos. Strike that, photos! How did the savvy travelers prepare for a travel day? They stayed up late playing Playstation, or was it Nintendo Switch, Paul bought Susan one of those, and we had…
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Balloons and Playstation
April 12, 2026 — Day 18 White Tank Mountain Regional Park, Waddell, AZ We woke up to balloons! We see balloons at lot a White Tank. It is a Phoenix thing to do, ride around in balloons at sunrise. I guess I-10, “the 10” to the locals is just so bad people take to the skies. But we had never seen so many. Lots of them. Curiously, Paul took pictures of balloons, Susan took pictures of the sky. (susan here; nothing curious about that. I love big sky and the southwest delivers that everywhere I look!) In this shot you can see one just taking off. And Susan shot the…
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Sunset, Sunrise, Cheese Curds, & Taxes
April 6 & 7, 2026 — Days 12 & 13 White Tank Mountain Regional Park, Waddell, AZ Fiddler on the Roof got it wrong, it is Sunset, Sunrise. April 9, 2026 — Day 15 We really try to avoid chain restaurants, both at home and on the road. But there are two out here that we really like to grab at least once. Culver’s and Pollo Loco. Here’s there’s a chain called Culvers. It’s fast food in the sense that you get in and out quickly. But it’s made to order and they bring it to the table. We both got the spicy chicken sandwich. Paul liked his a lot. Susan…
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The 15 Minute Fix
April 5, 2026 — Day 12 White Tank Mountain Regional Park, Waddell, AZ Like all our trips, we don’t blog family stuff, but we’ll drop a few photos here now and then. The water pump has been giving us fits for a while. Paul tried to fix the minor leak with teflon tape but the compartment is so tight his huge hands just don’t work in there. So this morning it overheated and shut off from constant running and it was Susan’s turn to do the 15 minute fix. The fix took about 2 hours! Near the end of it we realized had enough slack in the water line we could…
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Early and Cold then Hot
April 3, 2025 — Day 10 Grand Canyon Camper Village, Tusayan, AZ — White Tank Mountain Regional Park, Waddell AZ We got up early this morning. We remember how bad the road was coming in with the bumps and the wind. Now we had to drive that road again, south, and the forecast was for bumps and wind. Well, the forecast was for wind but we seriously doubted that they had fixed mile upon mile of bumpy road. It’s not a time zone trick. The time in the upper left corner, 4:38 am, is correct. We leave early on windy days because the winds out here always pick up as…
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Big Gash — Photos April 2
Just 5 photos each today and tomorrow, but since we’re typing this tomorrow, it is 5 photos each from yesterday and today. Got it? It is fun, at least for us, to see how differently we shoot, standing next to each other with similar, but not identical equipment, but certainly not similar perspectives. (susan here: Since we wanted to see the sunrise we were up early. Last night we agreed the one who woke up first would get up and wake the other one up. I woke at 4am and prodded Paul to get up. It sounds fiendishly early but we crashed last night about 8pm. We are not yet…
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Big Gash — Photos April 1
Just 5 photos each, today and tomorrow, but since we’re typing this tomorrow, it is 5 photos each from yesterday and today. Got it? It is fun, at least for us, to see how differently we shoot, standing next to each other with similar, but not identical equipment, but certainly not similar perspectives. Susan Paul