Due to the car problems we had during the previous weekend (during our road trip to Lake Havasu City), John and I were forced to cancel our plans to go camping on July 1, so that we could get the air-conditioning fixed in the Oldsmobile. (It was simply more important to have A/C than to let it go another week.) As a result, we spent all day Saturday at home, working on various projects. Then, on Sunday, July 2, we decided to go on a short road trip to do a little exploring in a part of the state that we had never seen before.

Actually, that was only half-true, because we decided to go to a place where John had done some exploring several years before he met me, where he had had an incredible adventure: the Pinal Mountain Recreation Area, about forty-five minutes from Globe.

The story went something like this. One Sunday afternoon, about ten years ago, John found himself bored, so he decided to go on a road trip and do a little exploring. (This was still a few years before he became a skydiver, so obviously he couldn't just go to the Drop Zone to make a few jumps!) At the time, he had a beat up old car that had once been his grandfather's car. He had recently flown to Chicago and driven this car all the way back to Arizona. Although it ran, there was a big hole in the floorboards, which earned it the nickname "The Flintstones Car".

On this particular day, around February 1990, John had taken his Flintstones Car to the Pinal Mountain Recreation Area to go exploring. Since it was wintertime, there was snow on top of the mountain, and as he reached the recreation area, he managed to get stuck in a snow bank. After being towed out by a friendly stranger, John started back down the mountain, following this kind stranger all the way. Slightly drunk and driving a bit too fast to handle the curves on the road, John ended up taking one corner too fast, and he almost drove off of the mountain. The only thing that stopped him from careening over the side was a tree. With its drive tires hanging off of the cliff, the car was completely stuck, and there wasn't another soul around for miles to help him out. His only option was to start walking in hopes that he could reach one of the ranches to call for help. Maybe he could reach the first ranch, which was several miles away, by nightfall.

Now it is a well-known fact that John is a very lucky guy. Although he somehow manages to find himself in the worst of situations, by some miracle he has always managed to pull through...and this was no exception. After walking a few miles, a Mormon couple out on a Sunday picnic stopped and offered him a ride. Grateful, he asked if they would kindly drive him into Globe so that he could get a motel for the night, but they insisted on driving him all the way back to his apartment in Tempe, since they were on their way home anyway (they lived in Mesa). They saved John from spending a cold night alone on the mountain, and to this day he is still grateful for their help.

After he arrived at home that evening, he called his father to tell him what happened, and the very next day the two of them return to the Pinal Mountains to retrieve the Flintstones Car. And that was the end of John's amazing adventure on the Pinal Mountains.

Although John had told me this story several times throughout our relationship, I was now about to see the actual spot where he had had this adventure. He assured me that it was very pretty up there and that I would really enjoy it...and since it was at 7,000 feet in elevation, the air would be much cooler, so we would have a chance to escape the heat for a few hours. I liked that idea, so I said okay.

We left Sunday morning at 7:00 a.m., stopping, of course, at Einstein's for breakfast before we hit the road. To get there, we took US 60 east through Superior to Globe, then turned right at the junction with SR 188 and followed the signs to the Pinal Mountain Recreation Area, which was about twenty miles away. At first, we got lost and ended up in a residential area in Globe. After realizing that we were on the wrong path, we backtracked and eventually found the right road to take. A few miles later, the pavement ended and the fun began.

Our drive took us from an elevation of 4,000 feet, through grasslands and high desert foliage and shrubs, to ponderosa pine trees and cool, mountain air at an elevation of 7,000 feet, along a windy-twisty, graded light-duty road. The road passed by several ranches at the base of the mountain. As we drove by the last one, John indicated that, when he got stuck on the mountain, he had been planning to walk to that ranch to get help, despite the fact that it was about twenty miles away from the point where he had driven off of the cliff.

As we continued on, John pointed out to me the reason why he had chosen to take me there. At certain points along the road, there were some incredible views of the Superstition Mountains, shadowed by the gray monsoon clouds, which lingered overhead. Another thing that he pointed out was that, despite the fact that it was Fourth of July weekend, there weren't any other cars on the road. Even after we arrived at the recreation area, we found that the picnic area was empty and that most of the campsites were empty. I guess this area isn't very popular; that would make it an ideal site for us to go camping.

We decided to go all the way to the top of the mountain, where we not only found a series of microwave towers but another spectacular view of the Superstitions. After taking a few pictures and enjoying the scenery for a bit, we climbed back into the car and headed back down to one of the picnic areas to have lunch.

We spent a nice, relaxing lunch at a picnic area across the road from the campground. There, we sat under the shade of the pine trees and watched the hummingbirds fly by as we ate our sandwiches and drank a little wine to toast the holiday weekend. Since we weren't able to do any hiking, we decided to pass away the afternoon sitting and chatting about the pending birth of our child and about our upcoming anniversary. In just a couple of weeks, we would be celebrating our one-year wedding anniversary. Tentatively, we were planning to go camping, and we were now considering camping out in the Pinal Mountains, because it was so pretty there.

After spending a little more than an hour there, we decided to head slowly back down the mountain - "slowly", because we wanted to check out some of the trailheads up there as well as some of the side roads. At one point, I heard John say his famous line - "Look, honey, a road!" - and the next thing I knew we were taking the Oldsmobile down a narrow, rocky road, with a mountain on one side, a steep cliff on the other, and nowhere to turn around. Several times, since we couldn't turn around, John had to stop the car to remove large rocks from our path just so that we could keep going. Fortunately, the road dead-ended after a half a mile; at the dead-end, there was a trailhead and a place for us to turn around. That was good, because I really didn't want John to repeat history by driving another car off of a cliff in the Pinal Mountains. (I'm sure he didn't want to do that, either!)

Around 3:00 that afternoon, we arrived back in Globe, and with that we began our long journey home, with a promise that we'd be back in the Pinal Mountains someday.

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