Day Trip to Black Canyon

Today we took a Day Trip north of Phoenix on Highway 17. Basically, we took the back roads that went to Cordes before the freeway came. As we headed up 17, we were impressed by the incredible number of saguaros on the hillsides.

With all of the rain the past few weeks, the countryside is quite green

This was the view from the Black Canyon Rest Area on 17. Those dirt roads along the bottom of the hills are what we would be traveling on when we left the highway at Exit 259.

This is where we turned off and headed about three and a half miles up Bloody Basin Road (gruesome name) to Cordes.

We had been climbing into the more mountainous area. These are the kind of rock formations we were seeing along the dirt road.

And this is Cordes. Settled in 1883 by German immigrant John Henry Cordes and his wife Lizzie. They had moved from New York City to buy a stage station named  Antelope Station for $769.43. The sign on the door said that it was open on Saturdays and Sundays and the proprietor was Carrie Cordes.

Although the roads we traveled were mostly dirt, they seemed to be in pretty good shape. We actually passed a grader that was clearing out the barrow pit along the road.

These horses were in a small pen behind the Cordes store. I'm not sure what they were eating, but they looked in not too bad a shape.

A pretty good road...

It wasn't even too dusty until three of these rental rigs came tearing past us!

We went left at this fork toward Bumble Bee. The trailers must have gone right as, thankfully, we never saw them or their dust again.

I put up the rest of the pictures tomorrow...