Dear Eric…

Thursday was “off road” day. We spent several hours traveling a whopping 15 miles playing in the hills of Arizona. Wishing you were here with us Eric, enjoying the off road fun. There is so much more of it than in PA.

We knew we were in for a fun time when after 200 yards the road went from a nice 2 lane dirt road to a narrow pass through vegetation.

There is a lot of mining in the area. At the top of our first hill we saw this old mine encampment.

Here we are all lined up and ready to start the real off road stuff.

The guys were looking ahead at the canyon, working out our plan of attack. Very few roads are marked, most being used by local miners so it can be tricky to know which ones to take.

Off we went with Mike, Sherry and Pete going first. Me, John, Sue and Phil went next with John and Sharon bringing up the rear….

….up and up and up. For those of you who do not off road this may not look bad but we all had our jeeps in 4 low to creep up theses hills. It is worse than it looks.

Once one of us made it to the top, the next Jeep would start. Yee Haw!!! It is our turn now.

Once we made it to the top the guys discussed the next leg of the adventure.

Hmm. When you see a sign like this you take a real close look at where you are going.

I wish I could have taken more pictures of “Oh Shit Run” but I was too busy hanging on and yelling “Oh Shit!!” When we could finally stop I did manage to get a picture of John and Sharon coming up through an opening that the Jeeps barely fit through.

All had a good time. It was Phil and Sue’s first off road trip and luckily we didn’t scare them too badly. They said they had fun.

The saguaro in this picture is well over 200 years old. Not sure about the fuzzy cholla. We hit one of these and the cactus stuck to the sidewalls of our tires. Attempts to remove the cactus were entertaining since it stuck to everyone’s shoes while trying to kick the cactus off of the tires.