A Day Trip in the White Mountains...

Our Labor Day trekking didn’t end with the trip to the lavender farm.  The following day we decided to take one of our favorite trips through the beautiful land that is known as the White Mountains of Eastern Arizona.    We’ve had a wonderfully wet monsoon season this year and everything is so green it’s amazing.  This is great for our drought-ridden state.   All along the way, we were blessed by carpets of blooming yellow wildflowers. 

We went first to Greer, one of our favorite places to go.    We have eaten at other good places in Greer but our favorite is Greer Lodge.  They have delicious food on a fabulous outdoor deck with views that are to die for!! 

The weather was perfect and we watched from the deck as the fly fishermen cast, caught, threw back and cast again…and probably caught the same fish over and over.  We watched children and adults get lessons in kayaking and steer the kayaks around the little pond.  And we watched a gaggle of geese strut their stuff around one pond, cross the lawn, play in the stream and then head off to another pond, all the while enjoying the sound of the stream gurgling just below the deck we were on. 

Before leaving we decided we should try (AGAIN) to get some photos of the “sisters” that were a little newer than the late 1950s!!!  This will most likely be the one and only blog post where you'll see us on the other side of the lens...and it's only because we had the guys there to snap the shutter.  Tell us which one you like as we need help figuring out which one to put on our website with the vintage ones of us as little girls!

We left Greer and didn’t even make it a mile before we were asking to stop and take photos.   There is a lovely little set of 3 ponds with a windmill that had the most awesome field of yellow flowers in front of them.  The sky was so blue and the clouds so puffy that they completed the whole scene.  This is my favorite photo from that day.  I love it so much that I intend to enlarge it and hang it in my cabin.  I love to hang beautiful nature photos there.

Once back on the road, we headed back toward Pinetop on a winding and approximately 20-mile long dirt road.  You can well imagine all the beautiful spots we saw along the way.  The guys were extremely patient and stopped every time we asked them to!  We shot lots of photos trying to capture the beautiful light we were seeing in the aspen trees or the old abandoned wooden barn or whatever else it was that we saw.  Sometimes we realize the real thing is so much more beautiful than the photos but every now and then we end up with a real prize as a reward for our persistence.

When we were almost home, we made one final stop to take more pictures of the sisters and at least one of the four of us!  It was a wonderful day where we were able to enjoy good weather, good company, lots of beautiful sights and best of all, the awesome-ness of God’s creation!

'Til next time,

Karen



"Photography records the gamut of feelings written on the human face, the beauty of the earth and skies that man has inherited, and the wealth and confusion man has created.  It is a major force in explaining man to man."
~Edward Steichen