Five Shots: The Creek at the Top of the Mountain

With a free day to explore, Jim and I drove to the Mogollon Rim outside of Payson, Arizona. Our mission was to find Workman Creek where we read in a magazine how beautiful the maples turn this time of the year. Here’s five + five shots of our day.

The GPS girl on the phone was not our friend, for she had us going up to the top of a mountain.

“How can this road lead us to a creek?”

I’m not a fan of precipices. No turnaround. Nowhere to go but up to the creek. All the while, the GPS lady chirped, “Turn left in 600 feet.”

Here’s the view looking back. The road is narrower than it looks here. Really.

“Turn left. Turn left.”

We realized this was a fire tower road. Finally, we were able to turn right and head back down. Did we make it to Workman Creek?

Yes. The maples were just beginning to turn, but the sign that warned us not to touch the rocks because they contained uranium hastened our trip even though the mule deer were cute.

We ended up going around Theodore Roosevelt Lake. Then back up past Payson and west to home, the Verde Valley. Our circular loop traversing routes 260, 87, 288, and 188 took us 300 miles.

We thought we’d spend a few hours visiting the Mogollon Rim and a nearby creek. Ha! The Mogollon Rim extends 200 miles across the state of Arizona. To say one is going to “The Rim” is like saying “I’m going to the Pacific Ocean”.  You could spend weeks in this area. We saw at least four different ecosystems and only saw a quarter of Arizona. It’s big out here!