Thursday May 4, 2023 - Cave Creek (Portal) to Lyman Lake AZ

Lyman Lake

Cave Creek was great last night. The temperature was perfect so no heat and we left the Max-Airs open along with  the screened side windows (so we could hear the brook babble). Made coffee/tea and while sipping we noticed water running from under the chemical toilet (hopefully it was water!!.) It was just water, and the problem was Milo overfilled the water reservoir yesterday and every time you pushed the pump thingie some water leaked around the top of the push thingie. All is good.

We left around 7:00 and stopped in Portal to see if the store was open but the bums don’t open until 10:00. The Research Center had a sign yesterday saying coffee was served at 7am but it was too far up the mountain, so we decided to suffer it out and head north.

Lyman Lake pictographs

There was a big truck crash on I-10 yesterday where a driver died when he crashed his truck into a bridge (we think it was the RT 191 bridge, which we were going to need to take this morning). Yesterday they diverted all the I-10 traffic down RT 80. This morning as we pulled out of the Portal road onto RT 80 we did not see any trucks and once Deb got cell service she learned that traffic had been diverted around an exit so no more trucks on RT 80. But within a couple of miles we saw flashing lights, and two trucks had gotten into an accident of some kind so the police had to direct us around the wrecks. RT 80 was closed heading our way until they cleared the trucks. We got by on the shoulder and proceeded north to I-10. Google Maps said the only way to get back to RT 191 was to go east on I-10 to Lordsburg, NM and then the back way to Morenci on RT 70. We stopped for breakfast at Kranberry Chatterbox diner in Lordsburg, a good old diner!

RT 70 was another nice Arizona road (ok, partly New Mexico) but you can already see the landscape change from the Sonoran Desert to some desert but more grassland.

At Clifton we drove through the newly paved historic street. We had been here the first time before they fixed it up, and the second time when they closed it for repairs, but now they are finished. Lots of empty store fronts but with a little more work it could be a cute historic tourist street.

Twisties above Morenci

Then we climbed through Morenci, that is the town and then the mine. You actually drive through the middle of the mine. It’s huge and the trucks are huge. Kind of weird they did not move the road around the mine somehow, but it is cool to drive through an active mining operation.

Now the twisty parts of 191. Man is this a twisty road. You end up averaging 30 mph if that, since turns are all 15 mph. And they saved a lot of money by skipping the guard rails. One wrong turn and over the bank you go.

Almost no traffic the entire way. We saw a caravan of Forest Service folks probably doing fire training, and three guys on motorcycles we talked to that were going to Bisbee!

A few hours later we pulled into Springerville and uploaded the blog at McDonalds (free wifi), stopped at the grocery store and then pumped gas. We will be heading into Navajo territory so not sure what the gas situation will be. The wind was blowing pretty hard and the man at the gas station told me his ancestors were driving their teams through here in the late 1800’s and just stopped to wait for the wind to die down before continuing. Still waiting..

Lyman Lake campsite

Deb looked up the Lyman Lake State Park reservation and it looked like they have less than ¼ occupancy tonight. We stopped at the Lyman Lake store where the ranger works on the off season and he had tons of sites ($25). He said just pick anywhere on the beach (no hookups) and we had the beach to ourselves until someone pulled in tonight.

We hiked to see the petroglyhs (300 to 700 AD) which are everywhere once you find them. It was very windy but the ranger said the wind dies down every night.

Little nap, some reading then a late supper. Nice moon tonight parked right on the beach at Lyman Lake.

Odo = 5329