Fishing, Rodeo and Parade, Oh My!

We’re just back from a weekend in a relatively unpopulated mountain town a couple of hours northeast of Phoenix. There is no cable TV, no Internet, no  cell phone service available in that part of the state.I have to admit I was not aware that parts of the country  were still this rural. 

The drive north is a hint that you left the big city. Beautiful desert countryside.  Mountains, cactus, sagebrush, and not much else. There are only three buildings along the highway for the next 90 minutes.The first is an Pima Indian casino just outside of town. The second sign of civilisation is about an hour up the road. Yes, you guessed it- a combo topless bar and towing business, right in the middle of nowhere. Not a house for 40 miles in any direction. I can understand the towing business on a highway truck route but the topless bar thing is a bit of a mystery to me. 

Which leaves us with the last business on the highway before you reach the Payson, the county seat. Picture this. You’ve been driving for more than an hour north of Phoenix  without seeing any buildings.Then you hit Rye, Arizona (which according to their community profile has a population of 0 and a land area of 1/2 a mile). Rye consists of one business-  a very popular motorcycle graveyard with a couple of acres of motorcycles, bicycles and other related parts.  In a ‘town’ with virtually no people. I don’t get this any better than I get the topless bar. Since both business have been there for years presumably there is a large enough clientele for both businesses to thrive. 

By the way, I live in Scottsdale Ranch, a subdivision of 5000 people, and we don’t even rate a blip on the map. But Rye, Arizona, a 1/2 mile square business with virtually no population at all managed to get a dot on the map. 

Well, we managed to resist these two shopping opportunities and continue on our way. We were staying in a borrowed home located in the tiny town of Strawberry along the Mongollon Rim at 7300 feet. The rim extends 200 miles across the state with majestic cliffs of extraordinary beauty. This portion of the rim is steep sandstone cliffs overlooking pine forests with great vistas, both looking up and looking down. 

The house was easy to find. It was located half way between the oldest one room schoolhouse in Arizona and a ranch decorated with a 30 foot tall Alaskan style totem pole.  I’ve been to this part of the state on horse rides through the years but never came as a tourist before. I missed something; it was great. We headed up this way to watch the rodeo and parade in Payson, a few miles down the road.

This parade may be a little different than those you’ve seen elsewhere. Light on bands (only one) and heavy on livestock (hundreds of horses, and a few goats). Even some Shriners were riding horses. Horses, motorcycles and their usual tiny cars. Every rodeo has a rodeo queen and every rodeo queen in the state was there which makes for a LOT of teenager girls with long hair and a banner doing the pageant wave. Most floats has a cowboy theme. Or Indian theme. We were near the Apache reservation and there were several Native American floats as well. 

The town’s claim to fame is hosting the oldest continuing rodeo in the country. We’ve been to this rodeo a number of times and once even brought my sister’s family to watch.     This time the arena had a lot of mud which slowed things down some but it was still fun. 

Other than that we hiked through the Tonto National Forest, the fifth largest in the US. Lots of huge Ponderosa pines and oak trees in this section. Wish I’d had my horse. And Franklin went fishing. Now that can be a little tricky in Arizona. If you’ve been here you may have noticed that a lot of our rivers and lakes are really dry places where once upon a time water had flowed. This was no exception. The pond across the street from our house was about the size of Walmart and inaccessible as well. It took a few tries to find a pond with water and fish but Franklin caught some trout which went from the pond into the frying pan within an hour. Yum. 

Something that you don’t know about us is that Franklin and I have spoken (kidded? pardon the pun) about having an Angora goat farm and making goat cheese. When I am in Flagstaff I often go to the local farmer’s market and buy goat cheese that comes from Strawberry. The farm was about a mile away from our cabin in the woods so we took the opportunity to pet the goats and llamas and revisit our fantasy of retirement on our own goat farm. We’ve set that dream aside so please don’t buy us any goats. 

The thing that struck me the most about this weeend was not the cowboy events. That is not so uncommon in Arizona. It was the quiet little towns built before zoning. We could have been anywhere in America. The Pacific Northwest comes to mind with the huge pine forests and old wooden homes. No tract housing, no internet, no cable tv, no cell phone service. Plenty of tattoos but no nose rings. It was more than a visit to another place. It was a visit to another time. We may not get back there this summer but we liked it enough to look forward to our next visit and may try to make this our new summer go-to spot. 

BTW I have a lot of really interesting parade photos from Arizona, Oregon, Mexico and Thailand. I'm making up an album of some of the best shots and posting them on Picasa. I'm probably calling it Amy's Parade Pics but I am not sure if you can access them by name or not. Let me know if you need the link.