AZ-88 and the Road Thru Hell

The drive thru Hell.
Tortilla Flat to Roosevelt Dam

20Mar14 (Thursday)--- we slept really well beneath the covers of our new King-size Down Comforter!  It is another beautiful morning!  We are leaving today and heading SE from Phoenix toward the Pinello Mountains.  We left camp at 10:45.  Drove AZ-88 road to the Town of Tortilla Flat past Canyon Lake.  It was a twisty, mountain road to Tortilla Flat but beautiful views of the lake.  4 miles on the other side of Tortilla flat we saw a sign "unpaved road next 22 miles".  What!!!!!  Sure enough for 10 miles we drove on dirt, ruddy, washed out, single lane, blind curves for 45 minutes!  OMG.... we stopped at an overlook for Apache Lake to eat lunch and chill out.  Thank goodness there was not much traffic on that stretch of road or we might not have made it.  After lunch we drove the remainder of the 22 miles (another 12) on the same type of roads!  It took us 50 minutes to do that section.  We ended up at Roosevelt Dam outside of Roosevelt Lake.  It had taken us nearly all day to drive less than 50 miles.  We visited the Tonto National Monument Cliff Dwellings for about an hour then drove back to Roosevelt Lake to camp for the night.  In Tonto National Park, you have to pre-pay to camp with a "tonto pass".   We didn't have that and it was 4:00 when we got to the campground.  We didn't want to drive another 20 minutes to buy a pass then drive back to the campground so we just went across the road and camped for FREE on a dirt road that's part of the National forest.  For supper, I used left-over caribou K-bobs and made spaghetti sauce with gluten free noodles and salad.

Awww.... Half-way thru Hell at
Apache Lake.

Taken thru the windshield.
The road thru Hell.