Actually drove it for weeks before I saw the tiny little sign saying that Hwy 96 is actually 66...
CK5
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The Story Of A Cummins Suburban (Lots Of Pics)
- Thread starter mosesburb
- Start date
Actually drove it for weeks before I saw the tiny little sign saying that Hwy 96 is actually 66...
So we packed up the next morning and headed on down the trail. We continued west to Cherry Creek Road where we turned north. This is a narrow shelf road for almost its entire length. Along the way we spotted some cliff dwellings across the canyon:
This gigantic pebble conglomerate was literally hanging by the side of the road. Neat looking rock:
This trail was really neat in that the acute switchbacks were often formed by spring water flowing down the mountain eroding the mountain back over eons and creating a micro-climate/environment in each one. We would go from dry scrub brush to lush green leaves with trees and grass in these switchbacks. It was really cool to see how these micro climates form and survive in an otherwise inhospitable area.
As of now, this is my favorite picture of the truck:
We rolled up Cherry Creek Rd until it intersected the Young Highway. At this point we were turning south to find a place to explore/camp. Bill and his dad decided to head back to CO from here rather than head back south and make the trip back even longer. So we stopped for a while. Bill borrowed some air from my truck to air up in exchange for an ice cream bar. Excellent trade I thought.
We all turned south onto the Young Highway (some of it is actually paved now!!) and Bill and his dad set off for home. We traveled down to the trail that goes up past Workman's Creek. It is actually a nice thing that this trail is still open as there was a uranium mining operation in the area and some areas are still radioactive. There are signs in some areas saying day use only at this site (because of radioactivity). Uh, yeah, I think I'll pass, thanks. We went up past that area to the falls. I don't recall how tall this thing is but it is pretty impressive.
We checked that out and then headed up to a fire lookout tower at the top of the mountain. On our way up there I snapped this pic which shows how far we came today. In about the center of the pic is a horizontal white/light colored stripe. That is about where we camped the night before and we got to where we are by travelling way to the left of where the pic ends and coming several miles back in to where this pic was taken. We covered some distance that's for sure:
The Abbey fire tower:
By the base of the tower, there was a Flintstone's living room set up with these monoliths as chairs and tables:
So we went back down the hill a little ways and set up camp for the night. In the am everybody kind of split out on their own and took their own way home. We stopped along the way down to check out a little canyon off the side of the road:
A couple in a Honda car came out of the road we were going in on and said there was a guy up there whose truck wouldn't start. I get a bit nervous and my spidey senses kind of kick in in a situation like this, but I figured if he didn't kill and eat those two, he might be legit. We rolled down the trial toward where the guy should be and did find him. Young kid with an extraordinarily clean late squarebody Chevy. Very clean. Talked to the kid for a few minutes and determined he left his lights on after he shut off the truck and drained the battery so the truck wouldn't start. Threw the cables on it and had him running in no time (three batteries and a 130A alternator has that effect). I told him to just leave it run while he scouted for whatever he was going to hunt. Good deed for the day behind us, we continued on.
Where the trail comes out and hits 188, a choice must be made. Hang a left and go down to Globe/Miami or pull a right and go up past Roosevelt Lake and take the Apache Trail down into Apache Junction. The route through Globe is quicker. It is all paved and fast. It is longer though. The other route is much more scenic. It passes three lakes and some other nice scenery and is mostly dirt road. I asked my boy which way he wanted to go and of course he chose the scenic dirt direction.
Now, years ago (actually the last time I was out here), to follow the shore of Roosevelt Lake you would cross the top of the dam. When I was last here, they were building he bridge in the background:
In this picture, because the lake level is so low, you can see the top of the original dam:
In this pic, you can see the original road over the dam and see the blue line is where we traveled across the bridge:
The Apache Trail takes us along a canyon back down into civilization. About thirty miles I think. It used to be barely more than one lane wide and sketchy at best in places. Now it is wide and well graded. We actually made some time on the road. That was not really possible not that long ago. Along the way on one of the bridges I noticed this:
Sweet!! Just wait in the truck boy. Well, we never found it. That is probably a good thing as any locals would probably best be viewed when they are fully clothed.
We saw these vermillion cliffs on the way out. really neat looking. They didn't photograph too well, but looked neat in real time.
So that pretty much concludes our adventure here that ended up being 412 miles from door to door. It was a great time with some great friends albeit in an odd grouping of vehicles.
This gigantic pebble conglomerate was literally hanging by the side of the road. Neat looking rock:
This trail was really neat in that the acute switchbacks were often formed by spring water flowing down the mountain eroding the mountain back over eons and creating a micro-climate/environment in each one. We would go from dry scrub brush to lush green leaves with trees and grass in these switchbacks. It was really cool to see how these micro climates form and survive in an otherwise inhospitable area.
As of now, this is my favorite picture of the truck:
We rolled up Cherry Creek Rd until it intersected the Young Highway. At this point we were turning south to find a place to explore/camp. Bill and his dad decided to head back to CO from here rather than head back south and make the trip back even longer. So we stopped for a while. Bill borrowed some air from my truck to air up in exchange for an ice cream bar. Excellent trade I thought.
We all turned south onto the Young Highway (some of it is actually paved now!!) and Bill and his dad set off for home. We traveled down to the trail that goes up past Workman's Creek. It is actually a nice thing that this trail is still open as there was a uranium mining operation in the area and some areas are still radioactive. There are signs in some areas saying day use only at this site (because of radioactivity). Uh, yeah, I think I'll pass, thanks. We went up past that area to the falls. I don't recall how tall this thing is but it is pretty impressive.
We checked that out and then headed up to a fire lookout tower at the top of the mountain. On our way up there I snapped this pic which shows how far we came today. In about the center of the pic is a horizontal white/light colored stripe. That is about where we camped the night before and we got to where we are by travelling way to the left of where the pic ends and coming several miles back in to where this pic was taken. We covered some distance that's for sure:
The Abbey fire tower:
By the base of the tower, there was a Flintstone's living room set up with these monoliths as chairs and tables:
So we went back down the hill a little ways and set up camp for the night. In the am everybody kind of split out on their own and took their own way home. We stopped along the way down to check out a little canyon off the side of the road:
A couple in a Honda car came out of the road we were going in on and said there was a guy up there whose truck wouldn't start. I get a bit nervous and my spidey senses kind of kick in in a situation like this, but I figured if he didn't kill and eat those two, he might be legit. We rolled down the trial toward where the guy should be and did find him. Young kid with an extraordinarily clean late squarebody Chevy. Very clean. Talked to the kid for a few minutes and determined he left his lights on after he shut off the truck and drained the battery so the truck wouldn't start. Threw the cables on it and had him running in no time (three batteries and a 130A alternator has that effect). I told him to just leave it run while he scouted for whatever he was going to hunt. Good deed for the day behind us, we continued on.
Where the trail comes out and hits 188, a choice must be made. Hang a left and go down to Globe/Miami or pull a right and go up past Roosevelt Lake and take the Apache Trail down into Apache Junction. The route through Globe is quicker. It is all paved and fast. It is longer though. The other route is much more scenic. It passes three lakes and some other nice scenery and is mostly dirt road. I asked my boy which way he wanted to go and of course he chose the scenic dirt direction.
Now, years ago (actually the last time I was out here), to follow the shore of Roosevelt Lake you would cross the top of the dam. When I was last here, they were building he bridge in the background:
In this picture, because the lake level is so low, you can see the top of the original dam:
In this pic, you can see the original road over the dam and see the blue line is where we traveled across the bridge:
The Apache Trail takes us along a canyon back down into civilization. About thirty miles I think. It used to be barely more than one lane wide and sketchy at best in places. Now it is wide and well graded. We actually made some time on the road. That was not really possible not that long ago. Along the way on one of the bridges I noticed this:
Sweet!! Just wait in the truck boy. Well, we never found it. That is probably a good thing as any locals would probably best be viewed when they are fully clothed.
We saw these vermillion cliffs on the way out. really neat looking. They didn't photograph too well, but looked neat in real time.
So that pretty much concludes our adventure here that ended up being 412 miles from door to door. It was a great time with some great friends albeit in an odd grouping of vehicles.
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So cool! Love it when you update.
Beautiful places you go see. Great pictures!
How do you like the BFG`s? I`ve seen them chunk the treads off pretty bad after driving on a lot of gravel.
Beautiful places you go see. Great pictures!
How do you like the BFG`s? I`ve seen them chunk the treads off pretty bad after driving on a lot of gravel.
y5mgisi
1 ton status
Great update! That looks like so much fun!
Is that last set of pictures a continuation of the trail I was asking you about before? Looks/sounds like it is. I need to hit that trail sometime, time to buy some good maps...
Thanks!! Yeah, not so impressed with the BFG's. I have a little over 20k on them and I'm not impressed at all with how little tread remains for an E rated tire. I don't think I'm buying any more of them.
Thanks!! It was a great time.
Sort of. The trail we were on loosely parallels the Salt River. Somewhere along the way we turned onto another trail and that led us over to Cherry Creek Rd. That is the shelf road we took up to Young Hwy.
y5mgisi
1 ton status
What do you think will be your next set of tires?
So at the end of 2012, I had a day or two of PTO that I had to use or lose. We set up a run to an area south of Payson to run an old trail. Unfortunately when we got there we found the trail was closed due to a fire earlier in the year or in the prior year. Drat. We quickly formulated another less spectacular plan.
On the way out of town we passed the old Beeline Dragway. It was a dragway from 1963 to 1974 or 1975. It sits on Pima/Maricopa Indian tribal land. The only visible clue to its existence is the old timing tower:
Further up the road we found Four Peaks to be socked in with weather:
We pulled off the highway to head down to the trail we were going to run and found it was closed due to aforementioned reasons. We decided to head up to a nearby peak and take a look around. Heading up the trail to the top:
The upper end of Roosevelt Lake is visible off to the east:
The view off to the west:
We got down into Payson and got some lunch and formulated another plan. Lanve had heard that Zane Grey's cabin had been rebuilt in town and was open for viewing. A little history on that. Zane Grey had a cabin out on the Mogollon Rim where he wrote some of his cowboy novels. In 1990, there was a massive fire in the area and it burned down. Some enterprising historians decided to replicate the cabin in town to "preserve" its history. We traveled down old main street until we came to the new cabin:
We did a little wandering around in the area and then decided to head for home. We didn't feel like retracing our tracks back the way we came in, so we decided to head north and cut across west on 260 instead. Not too far out of town it started snowing on us:
Getting a little accumulation further up the road:
Coming down the hill we witnessed a pretty neat cloud formation. The stripe through the middle was rather impressive:
So all in all, I guess it is a whole lot of not too much. It was a day spent out somewhere other than where we planned on being, but was a whole lot more fun than being at work. I'll call it a win.
On the way out of town we passed the old Beeline Dragway. It was a dragway from 1963 to 1974 or 1975. It sits on Pima/Maricopa Indian tribal land. The only visible clue to its existence is the old timing tower:
Further up the road we found Four Peaks to be socked in with weather:
We pulled off the highway to head down to the trail we were going to run and found it was closed due to aforementioned reasons. We decided to head up to a nearby peak and take a look around. Heading up the trail to the top:
The upper end of Roosevelt Lake is visible off to the east:
The view off to the west:
We got down into Payson and got some lunch and formulated another plan. Lanve had heard that Zane Grey's cabin had been rebuilt in town and was open for viewing. A little history on that. Zane Grey had a cabin out on the Mogollon Rim where he wrote some of his cowboy novels. In 1990, there was a massive fire in the area and it burned down. Some enterprising historians decided to replicate the cabin in town to "preserve" its history. We traveled down old main street until we came to the new cabin:
We did a little wandering around in the area and then decided to head for home. We didn't feel like retracing our tracks back the way we came in, so we decided to head north and cut across west on 260 instead. Not too far out of town it started snowing on us:
Getting a little accumulation further up the road:
Coming down the hill we witnessed a pretty neat cloud formation. The stripe through the middle was rather impressive:
So all in all, I guess it is a whole lot of not too much. It was a day spent out somewhere other than where we planned on being, but was a whole lot more fun than being at work. I'll call it a win.
You take the best trips man, and it sounds like you're out and about quite a bit,how have I not seen your burb around before?
Thanks. We get out as often as we can, but not as often as we'd like. I actually haven't been out since the beginning of November. All of the recent postings have been past runs that I neglected to post up. As to how you haven't seen my Sub around, I have no idea. It's big, it's orange and sounds like a dumptruck. It's fairly difficult to miss.
Some days I really miss AZ.
As to how you haven't seen my Sub around, I have no idea. It's big, it's orange and sounds like a dumptruck. It's fairly difficult to miss.
And I second the tire question.
Back in early September, Overland Journal put on an open house up at their secret lair in Prescott complete with product displays, slide shows, food and best of all, trail rides. By now you have probably figured out that when it comes to trail rides, we're an easy sell. We traveled up to the lair and promptly lined up in groups to hit the road. There was a "scenic" easy ride that promised no trail pinstriping and an advanced "technical" trail that promised everything short of body damage. Well, it's probably pretty obvious which one we signed up for. The "easy" trail was the most popular (no surprise there) what with all of the fancy, pretty, well outfitted "overland vehicles" in attendance. You sure don't want to scratch up that 70k+ vehicle driving it on unpaved roads. Then there are those of us who have vehicles to use as designed.
While gathering all of the vehicles I was asked by the trail leader (whom I have traveled with before) to be tail sweep for the run. One thing that bringing a group on a run like this is the ability of each driver is an unknown, so having someone at the back who knows the area and can deal with situations that arise is a must. I gladly agreed as I like being able to stop and take pictures without holding up the group to do so. We aired down right there and headed off to the trail. It was a very nice day, slightly overcast, but not raining, so a real nice day to travel. We hit the trail and we were on our way.
Now the trail was nothing that required much in the way of driver skill, but not too far down the trail, one driver was calling the leader on the radio asking for spotting help. I thought this to be odd as the trail has no real obstacles on it and the trail leader had already passed the point this driver was at. We stopped and were waiting. While we were waiting, I took a gratuitous truck pic:
After waiting for several minutes, I decided to wander up the parked parade of vehicles and see what was up. There was a Land Rover pickup truck parked in an odd fashion on an uphill part of the trail:
I'm no fan of Land Rovers, but this thing was pretty cool. It had a diesel engine of some sort in it and appeared to be fairly well equipped. I'm still not sure exactly what happened, if it was a mechanical issue or if the driver just peed down is leg, but it turned into a situation that required the trail leader to turn around and winch the truck up the hill. The whole scene was kind of an eye-opener to me as I never expected any kind of a situation to arise on a vanilla trail such as this. The pic doesn't show it, but the hill drops off pretty steep behind the vehicle in the direction it is pointing. The trail leader had the situation completely under control so no damage was incurred by any people or vehicles, but it did illustrate the need to be prepared for anything when traveling in the backcountry--especially with unknown drivers.
After we unceremoniously crested the hill, we parked at the top and had lunch. A little further down the trail we came upon what I *think* was the Bannie Mine:
Some nice scenery to the south:
From here we were heading over to Mt Trittle. Along the way we passed an old mine that I believe was the Davis-Dunkirk Mine:
A little further up the hill we came upon a really nice little switchback. It was engineered for something with legs or something at least a little bit shorter than a Suburban:
Up top, we got a nice view of Peeples Valley off to the west:
We also got a nice view of Granite Mountain to the north:
We splashed through some puddles on the way and I'm not sure what was in the puddles, but whatever it was, it could be marketed as some super adhesive. There are still remnants of this stuff on the truck. It is pressure washer resistant stuff.
An old ore chute off the side of the trail:
A mine up the hill:
A neat looking iron-filled rock on the trail:
So we headed back to the Overland Journal secret lair and partook of the festivities. A bunch of us had planned on camping up there, but everyone split out that night. Well, we were planning on camping and my boy wanted to stay, so we set up camp in the parking lot. I used it as some "stealth camping" practice. It worked out well and we looked like just another orange Suburban parked in the lot there. The black window coverings worked perfect for that.
So what to do now?? My boy suggested a route back to the house that involved a nice amount of dirt road. Works for me. We headed out of town on dirt and eventually hooked up with Poland Road. It was raining, but not too hard yet. While rolling down the road, I spotted a fork that went uphill. I've wanted to investigate this fork for some time, but never seemed to have the time available when we were in the area. It's not hard to talk the boy into doing some exploration and he's no stranger to the phrase "we better get out of here before the cops show up", so we parked and scurried up the hill. I sure wasn't prepared to see what we found at the top.
This place, in and of itself, is no great find, other than I have never found it before. I knew it was in the area, but never knew what the last step to find it was. This tunnel is just down the road from the train tunnel that is shown in an earlier trip posting. If you don't remember, or never saw it, I'll save you the time of hunting it down:
That is a nice tunnel. Very solid and very dry. This one is not so dry:
Yep, full of water. I knew it was from research I had done on it, but I'd love to be able to walk the length of it. We wandered around up top and found some stuff here and there.
Neat old stone masonry wall:
I would have liked to keep wandering up there, but it was raining pretty good and my boy only had tennis shoes on. His feet were soaked and we were getting more wet every second we were up there. I figured we should get back to a warm vehicle and some dry clothes for the boy. We dried off and headed down the trail:
All in all, it was a great trip. We learned to always be prepared when running with people outside our normal group and got some practice some stealth camping so if the need ever arises it won't be such a learning experience in a situation where we are trying to not attract attention.
While gathering all of the vehicles I was asked by the trail leader (whom I have traveled with before) to be tail sweep for the run. One thing that bringing a group on a run like this is the ability of each driver is an unknown, so having someone at the back who knows the area and can deal with situations that arise is a must. I gladly agreed as I like being able to stop and take pictures without holding up the group to do so. We aired down right there and headed off to the trail. It was a very nice day, slightly overcast, but not raining, so a real nice day to travel. We hit the trail and we were on our way.
Now the trail was nothing that required much in the way of driver skill, but not too far down the trail, one driver was calling the leader on the radio asking for spotting help. I thought this to be odd as the trail has no real obstacles on it and the trail leader had already passed the point this driver was at. We stopped and were waiting. While we were waiting, I took a gratuitous truck pic:
After waiting for several minutes, I decided to wander up the parked parade of vehicles and see what was up. There was a Land Rover pickup truck parked in an odd fashion on an uphill part of the trail:
I'm no fan of Land Rovers, but this thing was pretty cool. It had a diesel engine of some sort in it and appeared to be fairly well equipped. I'm still not sure exactly what happened, if it was a mechanical issue or if the driver just peed down is leg, but it turned into a situation that required the trail leader to turn around and winch the truck up the hill. The whole scene was kind of an eye-opener to me as I never expected any kind of a situation to arise on a vanilla trail such as this. The pic doesn't show it, but the hill drops off pretty steep behind the vehicle in the direction it is pointing. The trail leader had the situation completely under control so no damage was incurred by any people or vehicles, but it did illustrate the need to be prepared for anything when traveling in the backcountry--especially with unknown drivers.
After we unceremoniously crested the hill, we parked at the top and had lunch. A little further down the trail we came upon what I *think* was the Bannie Mine:
Some nice scenery to the south:
From here we were heading over to Mt Trittle. Along the way we passed an old mine that I believe was the Davis-Dunkirk Mine:
A little further up the hill we came upon a really nice little switchback. It was engineered for something with legs or something at least a little bit shorter than a Suburban:
Up top, we got a nice view of Peeples Valley off to the west:
We also got a nice view of Granite Mountain to the north:
We splashed through some puddles on the way and I'm not sure what was in the puddles, but whatever it was, it could be marketed as some super adhesive. There are still remnants of this stuff on the truck. It is pressure washer resistant stuff.
An old ore chute off the side of the trail:
A mine up the hill:
A neat looking iron-filled rock on the trail:
So we headed back to the Overland Journal secret lair and partook of the festivities. A bunch of us had planned on camping up there, but everyone split out that night. Well, we were planning on camping and my boy wanted to stay, so we set up camp in the parking lot. I used it as some "stealth camping" practice. It worked out well and we looked like just another orange Suburban parked in the lot there. The black window coverings worked perfect for that.
So what to do now?? My boy suggested a route back to the house that involved a nice amount of dirt road. Works for me. We headed out of town on dirt and eventually hooked up with Poland Road. It was raining, but not too hard yet. While rolling down the road, I spotted a fork that went uphill. I've wanted to investigate this fork for some time, but never seemed to have the time available when we were in the area. It's not hard to talk the boy into doing some exploration and he's no stranger to the phrase "we better get out of here before the cops show up", so we parked and scurried up the hill. I sure wasn't prepared to see what we found at the top.
This place, in and of itself, is no great find, other than I have never found it before. I knew it was in the area, but never knew what the last step to find it was. This tunnel is just down the road from the train tunnel that is shown in an earlier trip posting. If you don't remember, or never saw it, I'll save you the time of hunting it down:
That is a nice tunnel. Very solid and very dry. This one is not so dry:
Yep, full of water. I knew it was from research I had done on it, but I'd love to be able to walk the length of it. We wandered around up top and found some stuff here and there.
Neat old stone masonry wall:
I would have liked to keep wandering up there, but it was raining pretty good and my boy only had tennis shoes on. His feet were soaked and we were getting more wet every second we were up there. I figured we should get back to a warm vehicle and some dry clothes for the boy. We dried off and headed down the trail:
All in all, it was a great trip. We learned to always be prepared when running with people outside our normal group and got some practice some stealth camping so if the need ever arises it won't be such a learning experience in a situation where we are trying to not attract attention.
And I second the tire question.
I missed that earlier. I'll cover it in an upcoming post here.
How old is your boy? Thats cool you get to out exploring with him! 
We are always with our kids "12 year old twins boy and girl" but we work so much it is hard to get away.
We are always with our kids "12 year old twins boy and girl" but we work so much it is hard to get away.
How old is your boy? Thats cool you get to out exploring with him!
We are always with our kids "12 year old twins boy and girl" but we work so much it is hard to get away.
He is ten now. I understand your situation. I spent my early life in farm country and know how there is always a list of things to do--and that's not counting the milking. The cows don't milk themselves.
These days I get to see him quite a bit, but when I started this thread I was working any shift I could get. A couple years it was start on nights, move to days and end the week on swing. Working swing steadily was the worst. Everybody is gone when I got up and they were sleeping when I got home. Only saw them awake on weekends. That sucked. That was a lot of the motivation to get out and do things/go places with him (and my wife too). She usually goes with, but sometimes she has appointments or commitments that prevent her from traveling with us.
neat trip, thanks for the pics/write up... 
Yup! Nailed it! Good for you for being able to do what you guys can.
And thanks for the trips!
I see you managed to hide a winch up front. Nice.
DW
DW
Hey Nick what a cool trip(s)....I was in awe when I rode around in AZ and NV a couple years ago...so much different than MI. any issues at all with the Cummins and or swap, or is it performing flawlessly as we all dream!
