Photos by David S. Robertson

I decided to go camping this weekend and take some pictures along the Mogollon Rim near Payson, AZ.

On Saturday, we (My friend Russell and I) drove up to Payson and took Hwy 260 East to Ponderosa Campground. We checked out the campground and found a nice campsite that was open. The campsite was located towards the back of the park and had lots of good flat areas, a picnic table, firepit, bbq grill, and lots of pine trees that provided nice shade. We quickly setup camp and headed for the Mogollon Rim for exploring. 

The Mogollon Rim is about 10 miles east of the campground and about 1,800 feet higher in elevation. We stopped at several vista points along the rim road to scan the horizon and take pictures. The rim had recieved a lot of snow over the winter and has a thick base in some places. There is still snow on the ground from the winter and some pools of water from the recent snow that melted quickly. See the picture of the watery meadow. We drove about 13 miles out on the rim road, then returned to the vista point for sunset. Then it was back down the rim to the campground for dinner.

After dinner at the campground, we setup the camera on a tripod and got out the flashlights to paint some neat pictures. See the light paintings below.

The next day, we got up early, cooked some breakfast, then broke camp and headed for the rim again. On this day we drove the entire rim from east to west stopping many times for photos and views. We found a nice lake which had recently been stocked. See photo of the catch.

After exiting the rim road, we headed down to Strawberry and then through Pine and eventually down to Payson. Then it was back to Phoenix. We were sad to see the burning RV along the road from Pine down to Payson — Everyone made it out safely.

This was a really fun weekend with great weather. I hope you enjoy the pictures.

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 19th, 2009 at 11:00 pm and is filed under Arizona, Light Paintings, Places. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.