Mogollon Rim trip

Hubby and I just returned from 8 days in Arizona, 6 of them up on the Mogollon Rim.  It is such a different world up there than our desert.  First, we were in a cabin at 8,000 feet.  Second, there were thunderstorms nearly every afternoon.  Third, there were squirrels, crows, COWS, rabbits, and even coyotes nearby. I have to report for school tomorrow and hubby has to go back to work today, so it was a nice break from our desert heat, although we returned to a German shepherd with very bad ears, so I'm working to clean those up.  Our son stopped by a few times to feed the dogs, but he didn't check her ears and now she has an infection.  I do have stuff to clean them, from her last bout of this...sigh...

Anyway, I thought I'd start with our first view of the rim.  We stayed two nights down in Phoenix before heading up there as it is another two hours' drive from Phoenix.  There was a Whole Foods two blocks from our hotel, so we stopped there and stocked up before driving up to the mountains.

Once through Payson, we always feel like we are there.  There's a spot along the road (Highway 260) where there is a stand of aspen trees and it's fenced off so that the deer don't wander out into the road.  A sign says, "aspen ice cream"  because they like eating the aspen so much, it is like ice cream for deer!    Here are some pics from our drive up Highway 260 last week.  We didn't get up to the Rim last summer.  Instead, we spent a week in June and a week in August up in the eastern Sierra, so it's been a couple of years since we were last there.