An Outing with Framma and Poppa

This post is for my dad, who yesterday tried to kill us all by taking on us on a very scary car ride.

It actually started out as a nice trip, with my parents, to see the almost empty Canyon Lake. They have drained Canyon Lake to work on a dam and yesterday was the last day before they were going to start filling it with water again. The boys had fun running around and throwing rocks into the little bit of water still left in the lake. I had fun seeing all the old pop/soda cans laying around on what should have been the bottom of the lake. Some of the cans looked like they could have been from the 70's.

Some pictures of the boys. They are walking where water would normally be over their heads.

After about 30-40 minutes of walking around we got back into the van. My dad decided we would all like to take a nice drive further down the road. A drive into Fish Creek Canyon. A 22 mile drive on a dirt road that most of the time is only one lane. We made it 4 miles and had to have him turn around and take us back to the "real" road. Of course for 2 of those miles we were headed down a winding and curvey road into the canyon. I was sitting in the front with my dad and my knuckles were definitely white. My mom, who is terribly afraid of heights, was not having fun either. Even Eric was feeling a little leary of the whole thing. But he chalked that up to the fact that he wasn't driving. The 3 boys didn't seem to mind so much. Matthew did, however, wonder where the road went and was glad when we finally got back on the pavement.



For any of you interested, here is a little blurb I found about the road we were on and a few pictures.




Apache Trail
Arizona 88 (known as Apache Trail) is one of the oldest routes in the state highway system. The route was also part of the original Ocean to Ocean Highway until 1922.
The original route was constructed in 1904 as a wagon road, to provide access to Roosevelt Dam during construction of the dam. In the 1920s, the road was widened to handle automobiles, with a final reroute completed by 1936 to take the road around Canyon Lake and Apache Lake.
The road remains in the same condition as it was in 1936. Due to the steep grades, the road was never eligible for the federal aid system, so it has always remained a state highway. While portions of the road are paved, the majority is covered either by decaying asphalt or is a dirt road.
Apache Trail is a favorite weekend getaway of Phoenix residents. The road, however, is very windy, narrow, has steep grades, and sheer dropoffs. While it is a safe road, it is very challenging to drivers. Several sections of Fish Creek Hill have barely enough room for two cars to pass. The section from the Fish Creek overlook to Apache Dam is restricted to trailers of less than 40 feet, and RVs are not recommended on the route.

This didn't seem so bad.

But this did. I wish I could have found a picture of the drop off you could see the whole time you were in the car. My mom wanted to know if those flimsy rails would really keep a car from going over. My dad said "No, but it would wake you up in time so you could watch yourself go over."

Here is a small one lane bridge you had to drive over when you got to the bottom of the canyon.