The Apache Trail in Arizona

Hi all we're back from our trip out to Arizona.  I'll be talking about our trip in different posts as there's so much to tell.  One of the most memorable parts of this trip was our little trip along the Apache Trail.  It was really an after thought, Gary's procedure had been pretty tough he was tired, the weather was extremely hot and we thought ... we'll take this drive.  We'll be in an air conditioned car and get to look at pretty scenery, how much more relaxing can it be?  Well ... LOL ... first of all.  It's a six hour drive if you do the whole drive from Phoenix but it was worth every minute.  You drive through the Superstition Mountains, the majority of the Apache Trail remains unpaved.  I think the whole trail is about 40 miles but the first part of the trip is paved and two lanes.  It's actually a fairly relaxing drive, lots of places to pull over and take pictures and oh my gosh ... breath taking scenery.  Mountains and gorges so colorful you feel you are looking through a kaleidoscope!  We passed beautiful lakes that I later learned were the Canyon Lake and the Apache Lake.  Water so blue and at times the mountains reflected in them they were so clear and mirror like.  Just beautiful.  I kept complaining about the electrical lines that were ruining my pictures (lol) because it was as if modernism was invading nature.  It was so wild, so majestic and so wonderful. Then we arrived to this tiny little trading post area that again I later learned they called a town called Tortilla Flat.  It had a small store and a pub/restaurant and I think that was it.  I'm sure there were houses somewhere but they were no where near that road.  Now ... this is where things get interesting ... most people have enough sense to turn around and head back the way they came because at this point the paved road ends ... now if you continue on it is only dirt road and a very narrow dirt road at that.  But, being as the road we had traveled thus far was so easy to travel we figured the dirt road couldn't be all that bad and we really hadn't seen the map so we didn't know about all the curves (extremely sharp hair pin curves ... one after the other ) one after the other on about 25 miles of dirt road.  We kept seeing these signs that would caution us for these one lane bridges and it was like ... really .. like this is a two lane road???? It was a very interesting drive and although there were many places I wanted pictures, there was no place to get out of the car to take them.  There were places where the mountain hung over the road and I would catch myself holding my breath as we drove under it.  Would I do it again?  In a heartbeat!  With a much better camera and in a jeep with the top down so I can take pictures standing in the seat.  I have never seen anything so beautiful in my life!   Here are the pictures I took ... they really don't do the mountains justice but I'm still going to share them.  I would like to share the  Apache Trail Website

This is a map of the trail we took ... the brown was the dirt road we took.