We mountain biked along a forest road that followed the Mogollon Rim. This section has been heavily cindered with red volcanic gravel, probably quarried just a few miles away. Northern Arizona is dotted with volcanic cinder cones that are like big zits on the skin of the Colorado Plateau. It certainly made it an all-weather road, but it was no fun for the bike or the dogs.
The little poodle's footwear is as worn as a ballet dancer's practice toe-shoes. But we have a backup pair.
It was no fun biking today, but I kept pushing until we got a view of the charred aftermath of the infamous Rodeo Fire, of a few years ago. It was Arizona's largest fire. Finally the view from the ridge took it in.
What a sad and ghastly testament to theocratic control of national forests.
We turned around and went home to enjoy the cumulus clouds. When a visual sybarite thinks of Northern Arizona he probably thinks of the Grand Canyon, the Meteor Crater, Petrified Forest, etc. And for good reason.
Perhaps you have seen the classic photograph of Route 66 in northern Arizona, with puffy, cumulus clouds over a retro-looking town. Recently the weather has changed and we've had skies like that, even though they are more typical of the monsoon season, which doesn't start for seven weeks. Normally, at this time of year, the southwestern sky is cloudless and oppressively boring...a blue-white glare that belongs on a planet with a thin atmosphere that can't even sustain life.
I could sit in the chair on this open ridge at our boondocking campsite and watch the show. It was a regatta in the sky...the enskyment of spume, floating on a cerulean sea.
(How's that for my first attempt at serial word-larceny from other RV blogs. grin)
