Holbrook to Phoenix to Atlanta
June 1-2, 2011
On Wednesday, June 1, Mark left early from Holbrook for the drive to Phoenix via I-40 and I-17 because he had an early afternoon flight to Atlanta. The rest of us were going to spend the night in Phoenix, so we had a little more time. We decided to take the cross-country route through the Tonto National Forest since we had not seen tha route before. We left Holbrook heading southwest on Arizona 377 and entered open, semi-desert rangeland like that shown above. |  |
From seeing the old type of small windmill for pumping water on a farm, we went to a view of a large wind farm of large modern wind generators.   |  As we turned onto Hwy 260 we encountered more forested mountains and had some distant mountain views. We reached Payson and turned south on Hwy 87, which is called the Beeline Highway. It was a wide open four-lane highway and we got views of the hills like that at left. |
  |  We rolled across the hills on the wide open Beeline Highway. We got one view of a large corral with horses, but otherwise didn't get much indication that we were in major rodeo country. I had read that some of the longest running rodeos in the country were in this area. |
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We came down the long slopes from the mountains of the Tonto National Forest and suddenly we were seeing saguaro cacti. Then the whole hillsides were forested with them.
 | It was time to make the trip back to Phoenix to stage for our flights out to Atlanta and New Orleans on June 2. We traveled from Holbrook, Arizona down 377, 277, 260, and 87 to Phoenix. Highway 87 is called the Beeline Highway. Above, Ashleigh, Jordan and Elyse are shown along that Highway about 50 miles from Phoenix. The desert there was dotted with the giant saguaro cacti. At left, Jeff and family pose in front of a saguaro which must be 30 feet tall.  |
The sight of so many saguaros just along the side of the higway was a new experience for us.
The views across the desert with the saguaros and toward the distant jagged mountains were almost magical at times.
We made it into Phoenix in the late afternoon and made our preparations for departure in the morning. On Wednesday, June 2 we dropped Jeff and family off to catch their mid-morning flight to New Orleans. We circled around and dropped off the rental car and made our way over to catch our later flight to Atlanta. Mark met us at the airport and brought us home. We praised the Lord for a safe and wonderfully varied trip with the whole family. It was a great blessing.
| Awana Boys to Bent Tree |
2011