Life in the green and snowy desert

From The Crawfords in AZ Blog Photos

I bought a new bike on Thursday so I can commute to work after I get started at ASU. I picked up a GT Nomad that is built as a hybrid road/off-road bike. It might not be able to handle big tough trails, but then again neither can I right now.

The plan on Friday was to tweak the bike’s settings and ride some of the nearby canal trails. Instead, it rained most of the day, so I just ran errands instead.

That rain in our area was snow up along the rim and the storm dropped 9 to 13 inches in some areas. Chip and Laurie invited me to join them to take their kids to play in the snow. We drove up AZ 87 past Payson and we picked a beautiful spot to play off of AZ 260. As you can see in the photo album, the snow was up to my knee in some spots. Several snowmen were built among the flying snowballs, including this one that was at least six and a half feet tall.

We continued up AZ 260 to US 60 and looped back to Mesa. This route took as through the a bunch of canyons, including the Salt River canyon. The late afternoon sun really brought the colors of the canyon out. One thing of note is that these areas were very green (both AZ 87 on the way up and US 60). There is a lot of plant life here and I am looking forward to all of the wildflowers and cacti blooming in March.

We continued on to the mining town of Globe for dinner and made it back at about 9pm. It was a great day of fun, snow, and sun. I will definitely be heading up to this area again.