The time had come again to pay our respects to William, our son, on the third anniversary of his birth.  It was hard to believe that it had already been three years...

As tradition dictates, on November 12 of each year, we take a drive up to Potato Lake to remember William.  This year, November 12 fell on a Sunday, so we decided to make a weekend out of it and stay at the Gaard-Chak  - the cabin owned by Erika and Lotte in Overgaard.  This would only be our second opportunity to stay at the "Chak" since Lotte bought the property; we had only stayed there one other time, on our way back from our cross-country road trip.  While it is true that we would have preferred to be out camping or backpacking, it was nice, every once in a while, to be able to sleep in a warm bed during our adventures, and the Gaard-Chak was the perfect place to do so.

On the morning of November 11 - Veteran's Day - John and Mary and I packed up the 4Runner and drove to Overgaard.  To get there, we took SR 87 - the Beeline Highway - north through Payson, then turned right (east) on SR 260.  From the edge of town, it was another 35 miles to the Heber town limits; and the cabin was just a few miles east of there, within the Overgaard town limits.

It was a cold and blustery day when we arrived in Overgaard that morning.  The skies were gray and threatened rain; it wasn't cold enough for snow, though that wind chill would fool you into thinking otherwise.  It looked like a good day to sit by a warm fire in the cabin...

...but not us.  After we dropped off our bags at the cabin and rested from the long drive, we decided to go out into the cold air and do something.

We didn't have plans to go hiking that day; instead, we opted to do something that Mary would enjoy: we took her to the playground in Overgaard.  Mary was ecstatic; as soon as we arrived, she dashed out of the 4Runner and went immediately to the monkey bars. She also played on the merry go-round and on the swings and on the see-saw...

...If only she had that much energy for hiking!

After she was done playing at the park, it was time for Mary to work some more on riding her bicycle.  We had tried to work with her at Washington Park during our last camping trip a few weeks before, but trying to ride a Disney Princess bicycle on that rocky road was next to impossible.  In Overgaard, however, there was a paved footpath next to SR 260; it was the perfect place for a little kid to ride a bicycle!  Mary rode for about a mile, with John and I following along behind her; then, when the wind got to be too much, she turned around and rode back.

As the day wore on, it just got colder and colder outside.  The temperature dropped to about forty-two degrees during the mid-afternoon, and the wind never let up.  Eventually, we gave up on trying to do anything outside and returned to the Gaard-Chak to warm up...

...And there we stayed for the rest of the evening, in front of the warm fireplace...

The next morning, after cleaning up the Gaard-Chak and locking up, we left Overgaard and started on the road to Potato Lake. 

We had two options for driving to Potato Lake: 1) we could return to Payson and connect to SR 87 and take that north to the Rim; or 2) we could take FR 300 - the Rim Road - across to SR 87.  The first option was the longest but the quickest, as we would be able to drive at highway speeds.  The second option was the most direct, but it would take us longer to get there.  It was also the most scenic...and, of course, it was a dirt road.  Guess which option we chose...

It took us about an hour to get to Potato Lake along FR 300.  Along the way, we told Mary stories about some of the adventures we had had on that road in years past - especially the story about changing the donut spare on the Oldsmobile after damaging it on a cattle guard while driving across the rim.  The cattle guard was at the dividing line between the Coconino and Apache-Sitgreaves National Forests, at about the half-way point along the Rim Road.  Ah, the memories...

At long last, we turned off onto FR 147 and continued on until we reached Potato Lake - the pretty little lake where we had scattered William's ashes.  We parked the 4Runner outside of the gate then went inside the fenced area and walked to the lake.

Potato Lake already had on its winter's dress that morning.  The aspens surrounding the lake were already leaf-bare, and the grass around the lake was brown.  In the shadowed areas, there was even frozen dew that looked like snow on the ground.  The lake, however, was still and beautiful - not even a ripple.  As always, it was the perfect place to pay our respects to our dear William.

We did a complete loop around the lake that morning.  Afterwards, we returned to the 4Runner and drove away.

It was still early in the day; lunchtime was still some time away, so we had some time to kill.  That said, John and I decided to take a little drive around the Rim to explore. 

"Hey," I suggested.  "Why don't we try to find that place where we got engaged?"

Ever since October 17, 1998, when John asked me to marry him, we have been unable to find that exact spot again.  Every now and then, while visiting the Mogollon Rim, if we happen to be on FR 218, we will attempt to look for that spot, but we have always come away empty-handed.  It's too bad that we didn't have a GPS back then, to pinpoint the exact location; but we didn't get our first GPS until July 1999, when we received one as a wedding gift.

Once again, we took a drive down FR 218 in search of our engagement spot.  At one point, we thought we had found it; but since someone was already camped there, we didn't go all the way down the road, because we didn't want to disturb them.  We did, however, find a deer grazing through the trees nearby; he didn't even run when he saw us, so we were able to get some beautiful pictures of him.

As soon as we reached the end of FR 218, we were convinced that we weren't going to find our engagement spot on this trip, so we called it a day.  With that, we returned to SR 87 and started down the Rim, towards home.  Another brief but nice adventure had come to a close...

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