Mesa, AZ - Arizona's Other Grand Canyon and the Apple Pie

You know you’re in Arizona when the best parking spot is determined by shade - not distance.

I know you all know about the Grand Canyon and I know several who have actually hiked it and a friend of mine, Joan, has actually hiked it twice. Then there was the blind group who hiked it Rim to Rim. I am in awe. But the big problem with that big canyon is that you’ve got to hike down into it. Well, you can take a mule (big pause) but I hear that this is pretty eerie being 8’ above the trail looking down when the mule makes a minor misstep. The mule knows that it is sure-footed but you don’t. You can also take a raft through the canyon but that’s another adventure. But, you can’t drive down, nor bike down nor motorcycle down. Nope, you’ve got to hike. My favorite sign on the way down into the canyon is one that says: ‘Going Down is Optional, Going Back Up is Mandatory.’ 1 mile straight down, 7 miles by trail.

Well, there’s another canyon in Arizona, fondly know by the locals as the 'Little Grand Canyon' and the neat thing about this canyon is that you can drive down into it and back up the other side. Rim to rim and you don’t have to leave your car, if you don’t want to. But, guaranteed, you’re not going to want to stay in your car when you’ve got those magnificent views engulfing you. You get to weave through the switchbacks, you actually get down to the river level and you start in the cactus deserts of Phoenix and end in the piney woods hills of the Mogollon Rim. And, the climb out is not nearly as physically exhausting as climbing out of the Grand Canyon. It’s a great trip and it’s only an hour from Phoenix.

Then - drum roll here - the turn-around spot for this trip is America’s Pie where we found homemade apple pie and homemade ice cream. It was a two-fer: a great trip and a great ‘meal.’ Actually, it was a three-fer - we had great traveling companions, Shirley and Jerry, two great friends from - of all places - Iowa. I worked with Shirley at Wells Fargo and we both not only retired the same summer but we also both bought RV’s and began traveling. Last year Jerry had cancer and they were not able to get out in their RV but they fought back hard and are out this year, staying in the resort we stayed in last year (one that Shirley found for us 2 years ago).

We drove over to their resort and we all started out on our Little Grand Canyon adventure. The trip goes through some mining territory and you get views off to each side of working mines. You also sashay through a pretty spectacular smaller slot canyon, weaving through it until you get to a little town called the ‘Top of the World.’ There’s even a tunnel along this road.

Then you come to the edge of a fantastic canyon and you have to exit your car to take in the views. It’s craggy, it’s rocky, its colorful, its steep, and it’s hard to imagine that it was all carved by the tiny river at the bottom, the Salt River. My words can’t convey the immensity of this canyon and its beauty. So - I’ve sprinkled some pictures through the blog. But, if you think that my pictures can convey what your own eyes see, you’d be wrong. Here’s my favorite scenic view of the day.

We found several turn-offs along the way down into the canyon and at each of these, we found a different view and a different way to look at the sun playing on the canyon walls. At the bottom there is a bridge you can walk over though the visitor center and the trading post which both used to be there are now derelict. Though there is still an old still-standing building which is a one-cell jail with a bed. I must have been arrested for back-seat driving.

After you cross the canyon, you wend back up the cliffs where the views are equally spectacular.

Not only that, but as you continue on to Show Low, you get to see another side of AZ: the piney woods hills side of Arizona where the ponderosa pines rule.

When you hear of forest fires in Arizona and we’ve all heard a lot over the last two years, this is one of the areas where they occur.

Our goal for the turn-around point in the trip was America’s Pie in Show Low. Couldn’t think of a better place to relax before turning the car around for the trip back through the canyon. But, before we dig into the pie, I had to find out about why the town is called Show Low, not your usual name. And why the main street is named the Deuce of Clubs. Of course, as with all legends, there are several versions both involving the same 2 men, C.E Cooley and Marion Clark.

In one story they began a marathon poker game to determine who was going to stay in the small town. They played and played with out a winner. Finally Clark told Cooley that who ever drew the lowest card would win. ’Show Low’ he said. Cooley turned up the deuce of clubs and won.

In the second story, they were tied for the office of mayor. The solution was to open a fresh deck of cards, shuffle and draw. Whoever could ‘Show Low’ would win.

And there you have it: the story (ies) of how Show Low and the Deuce of Clubs street got their names. We entered Show Low on the Deuce of Clubs street looking for America’s Pie. We were looking for a commercial building and drove past a small unassuming yellow house behind a large leafy tree. We turned back, missed it again and finally Shirley and I went into the City Hall to ask. Right over there, the woman said. Sure enough, we had all missed it. Must have been time for lunch.

The owners are a husband wife team: she is the chef and he seems to do most of the rest. She was a real estate agent but during the recent slowdown returned to her first love: baking. She turned her office into a small shop when she opened it to bake pies, scones, cakes cookies, etc. A few years later she expanded to limited breakfasts and lunches. Were we ever lucky to find this spot after a long drive. The lunch special was $4.95 for homemade lasagna, a mixed greens salad with the sweetest raspberry vinaigrette dressing and homemake garlic toast. Can you beat that? A gourmet lunch.

Here we are in our own room, enjoying the meal. This looks as if I was standing on a chair. Nope, next time I’ll sit rather than stand.

Then, the piece-de-resistance: apple pie ala mode - all homemade. Do I have a picture of this? Nope, it didn’t stay around long enough to pose.

The road home was back through the ponderosa pines, down into the canyon, back up and off towards Mesa.

Couldn’t have asked for a better day.

358.2 18,832’ (luckily we were in a truck for all of this.

Mesa, AZ - Earning the Strawberry Shake

Sometimes strawberry shakes cost a lot and today was one of those days. We started out with 2 missions: the Alzheimer’s Walk and retrieving our silver/turquoise bracelets both of which we could do in Phoenix. Then there was the inevitable mission creep.

THE ALZHEIMER’S WALK

We used to do a lot of charity walks in Des Moines. Since we were going to walk and donate anyway, why not combine these two and do a charity walk? However, since we had done so many in Des Moines we were on the e-mail lists and generally knew when they were. However, we aren’t as aware of them in the places where we travel. We have been able to get in on some that we’ve heard about but it is more difficult on the road to be in tune with what is going on .

Fortunately, we got an e-mail about the Alzheimer’s Walk in Des Moines before we left. Now, we have done this walk for years and many of you know that my mother died of Alzheimer’s. Unfortunately, we were going to be on the road when the walk was held. Fortunately, I looked online and found out when the Phoenix walk was, signed up, made our donation online and we were in like Flynn.

And today was the day. We arose early to get there early enough to get our shirts and get a bit to eat before we started out. In in the charity walks in Iowa, it is extremely common to find fruit, yogurt and bagels to eat before and after the walk. One of the local grocery stores, Hy-Vee, sponsors many of the walks (one reason why we shop there) and provides most of the food. Because we didn’t know the rhythms of the walks in Phoenix, we had eaten a bit before we left: I had some fresh blackberries and yogurt while Gary had a small bowl of cereal and a plum. Just enough to take the edge off before we walked.

Luckily we did have a bite to eat because there was not much to eat at this walk today. A local sub shop was giving out slices of a sub but they ran out after about 50 people. Someone had a table loaded with small packages of cookies, crackers and fruit bites. The woman who owned My Mama’s Tortillas was passing out samples but all 3 of these were really introducing their products not giving us sustenance for the race. Thus, you can see we hadn’t had much to eat.

We checked in, got our t-shirt and a neat purple flower pinwheel, purple because we had a relative who had died of Alzheimer’s. Here’s Gary kneeling in a bouquet of flower pinwheels at the end of the race, holding our two purple pinwheels.

Neat mementos and I’ll find somewhere in the RV to keep them.

The walk had lots more people than the walks in Des Moines - well, of course, Phoenix and its environs are considerably larger. There was even a band playing live music. And it was an energetic crowd, enthusiastic crowd and there were quite a few teams walking. There were even some cheerleaders from a local school to cheer us at the beginning and high-five us at the end.

Again, we love the enthusiasm of the charity walks where everyone has united for a cause, many because they have relatives or friends who have suffered with whatever illness is represented here but many because they have a desire to see this illness ended and are generous with their time and money. Families, teams, individuals, and couples like Gary and I - it’s a lot of fun.

At 9:00 we all took off for the 3 mile walk in a huge bunch which spreads out as the distance lengthens. 

We followed the path marked off and thanked the police who were guarding the cross streets. Finally it was done, I got one final picture and we were off for our second event of the day.

THE TURQUOISE BRACELETS

Last year we had bought 2 sterling silver and turquoise bracelets from a Navajo artist in Sedona. Over the summer, I lost a stone from mine and Gary found a stone in his that was loose. We stowed them for our trip south this winter, speculating that we’d have an easier time getting them fixed in Arizona than in Iowa. As we crossed into AZ from New Mexico we stopped at a rug shop which was recommended and, because they also dealt in silver jewelry, asked how we might get these fixed. The owner said she and her husband did silver work and could fix them for us and - how to get them back to us? Well, they specialize in Navajo rugs, hold auctions all over the US and were going to be in Phoenix on Nov 3 to hold an auction there. Perfect.

Kind of scanty but we e-mailed them a few weeks ago for confirmation and they assured us that they were fixed and would be at the auction. Sure enough, there they were and, for $18, we’ve got repaired bracelets. I think they didn’t charge us enough but that’s what they said. Meanwhile we perused the rugs and were amazed at the quality. I wish we knew more about them so we could have bid on one or two.

THE HIKE

Here’s where mission creep crept in. As we were heading back to Mesa, we looked off to the left and saw Camelback Mountain, just sitting there calling our names. ‘Nancy, Gary, you haven’t hiked here yet, how can you say you’ve hiked in Phoenix if you haven’t done the iconic hike?’ To Phoenicians, it’s like the Eiffel Tower to the French, Big Ben to the British, corn to Iowans. iconic. Here’s a picture of it, it looks like a camel resting with its head to the left, its hump in the middle and its rear - in the rear.

Don’t believe me? Well, look below - a resting camel. Ha, ha.

I’ll have to admit, this is not my picture - I got it online.

Darn mountain. Why did it have to get so personal? And, lucky us, we have our hiking gear with us in the back of the Jeep. A hard right, a drive through Scottsdale and we were at the Echo Canyon trailhead - along with several hundred others. No place to park here and there were other cars circling the parked cars, waiting like vultures to capture any spot just being emptied.

I find it amazing that there are these mountain parks right in the center of the city open to the public. However, it took effort to get them out of private hands and reserved for the public. There are homes right up to the base and several homes further up the cliff. Given enough time, the whole area would have been developed and fenced off. Originally, the federal government reserved the space for an Indian Reservation by by the 1940’s, it had fallen in to private hands. Efforts on the county, state and federal level to restrict development above the 1,600-feet level largely were unsuccessful and homes were built moving up the cliff face.

In 1965, the Preservation of Camelback Mountain Foundation led by Barry Goldwater, spearheaded community efforts to save as much of the summit as possible and today, it is open to the public. And does the public ever love this space.

Let me backtrack a bit here. Hiking is a great sport and we enjoy the challenges and the sense of accomplishment we get when we hike. However, it is not always a safe sport and involves some risk. Last weekend 3 young men, Marine recruits, were hiking off the trails in the Echo Canyon area and were attacked by a colony of ‘killer’ Africanized bees. One of the young men climbed higher, trying to escape, and fell to his death. The other two were rescued by a expert in a bee suit being lowered from a helicopter. They had multiple stings and the rescuer, encased in a bee suit, was also stung multiple times. A terrible terrible accident.

I was surprised to see so many ready to hike this trail where tragedy had occurred just 7 days ago but, again, the 3 were hiking off the trails and the crowds usually on the trail would keep the bees away.

However, we couldn’t find a parking spot and followed the signs which read: ‘Hiker parking, 2 miles.’ 2 more miles? both out and back? But we decided to scout this out and, sure enough, we found parking right on the street about 3 blocks from the alternative, easier, trailhead. In the picture above, the Echo Cyn Trail in on the left and the Cholla Trail is on the right. You look at the picture, which side would you ascend? Actually, so many make the ‘thru-hike’ that there is a shuttle running back and forth between the two trailheads to get people back to their cars.

We parked, shared a protein bar, donned our hats and our hiking boots and were off - in our dark purple Alzheimer’s t-shirts. (Here’s a hint - don’t wear a dark color in the hot sun. But we hadn’t brought our wicking hiking shirts so wore what we had.) What a hike. Challenging, yes, but it was a Saturday, it was the iconic Phoenix hike and we were 2 among hundreds.

Some spots on the trail were narrow, some required climbs over boulders and we were not alone on the trail. There were young kids, dogs of all sizes, runners and lots of young people with tats, almost all faster than I am. It was a line-up to get up the trail.

IT’S THE TATS. Yep, everyone who passed us had tattoos - I’ll bet that if I had tattoos, I’d be faster too. I’m thinking a butterfly on my back at my waist. Hmm. Gary’s getting barbed wire on his bicep. We’ll show those young people.

(Just an aside here: what will happen to all those tattoos when the tattoed age and skin starts sagging? Will that butterfly look as if it has become a caterpillar? Will that barbed wire look as limp as a coiled rope? Just wondering.)

The last 1/8 of a mile is a boulder scramble over some large boulders along a hard-to-follow trail. Luckily, there were so many on the trail, that we just followed them. And, there we were, at the top. Look at the crowd. But, just like the Alzheimer's crowd, it was happy, it was enthusiastic and we were all united in our quest of the mountain. We took pictures of others who had conquered the trail and they took pictures of us.

Then the helicopter circled. On the way up we had noticed a heli-pad, obviously used for rescues. The helicopter circled a few times, probably looking for anyone in trouble and then took off. To another hiking area to look for trouble there? Who knows? I do remember that on October 13, on another weekend hike, we also heard a helicopter though that time we think they actually did rescue someone.

Then down the hill. 3/4 of the way down I pulled aside to let a faster hiker get by me (a common occurrence today) but she said no, that she would rather stay behind us. OK and we talked a bit as we went down the hill. Then we heard her story. She had had a double mastectomy two months ago and this was her first major hike. She was on a business trip and her husband was at home in Ohio, worrying about her. She wanted to stick with us and we enjoyed her company.

On the way down, we met a Park Ranger heading up with a guy with a large container with bee spray. Heading up to take care of a hive of bees that someone had spotted earlier in the day. At the bottom of the mountain, we walked to the car, said our good-byes and good wishes and took off.

STRAWBERRY SHAKE

If you thought we’d never get to the strawberry shake, imagine what we were thinking. It was 3:30 and, since we awoke we had eaten a bit of fruit, 2 donut holes and a bite of a sub at the walk and 1/2 a protein bar at the bottom of Camelback. Were we hungry? Would I eat a sheepskin? Almost. Time for the Very Berry Sundae at Costco and I had been thinking about this all the way up and down. But, actually, we decided we needed a bit more. So it was IN-N-OUT and a strawberry shake. Whoo-eee.

Back to the RV at 4:30, showers, and - breakfast: a bowl of cereal. Time to write and then to bed.

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