Last week as a great little adventure to Eager Arizona to visit with some friends and get up to the snow for some winter trails on new gear. It was quite the driving adventure and a new part of Arizona I had never been to, so I was excited to get on the road for an almost nine our drive across the state. Having planned my route and packed up my rented VW Golf I was off.
I had started a little later than I hoped but was trucking along and made I to the 10 and into Phoenix pretty quick, I’m sitting there pretty confident this will probably be a quick trip. It was until I hit the mountains and the small towns with their incrementally decreasing and increasing traffic zones, ha-ha. The best part is how dark it got out there and as I gained altitude the snow started appearing, then falling and falling well. What a joy it was a winter wonderland…
Well until it became semi white out conditions and while I had the winter gear to survive the cold and set up a really cool camp, I recalled the fact this was a rental and my chains and all that fun stuff was in my truck, time to slow down. Lucky for me the traffic was light and the snowplows where out in force. The only really sketch part was one summit where the road was covered in snow, so I had to use best judgment and keep enough speed to keep going but not too much to lose control while trying to keep a safe distance from the car Infront of me. This made me pay a lot more attention and drive a lot slower which payed off as I came down a hill before entering one of the small towns and in the black all I could initially see was two glowing green eyes. I slowed down more and as my headlights illuminated it was a Cow Elk, she was massive and if I had not been driving slow, I would have hit her and she would have won.
That experience kept me a little more vigil and slower for the rest of the trip, I got in about nine-ish and it was good to see my good friends Lance and Jennifer who we had been camping and hiking with for a while until Lances work took him to Eager. Sunday, we made it out for an area familiarization and Lance brought me up to speed on the history and some of the neat stuff we could plan on checking out. It was amazing and an outdoors persons paradise, with the parks, National Forrest and small towns I was in for an adventure.
Ironically while I was out there having driven across the State of Arizona to see some snow and cold front came through SoCal and we got dumped on back here. Mt Laguna and Palomar Mountains where super busy with visitors and we even got snow down to Ramona! While my first instinct was “darn I’m missing this” I also heard about the traffic, ha-ha. I think driving nine hours to Eager was actually easier than going to Mt Laguna for an afternoon, ha-ha.
This was a great stepping off point and stay tuned for upcoming blog posts about winter camping and breaking in my hot tent teepee in the snow!
