Projected departure time was 11 a.m., then noon, then 1. Actual was 3 p.m. — two hours earlier than last year – hurrah! Temperature in Tucson today was a roasting 110 F (that’s 43 C for our metric friends) — really too hot for humans to tolerate. This human, anyway!
Our route starts out heading north on Oracle, the main drag of our part of Tucson, on which we almost always drive south. And within 20 minutes, we’re on a road never before travelled by us. Very few towns and mostly pure desert for the first couple of hours, complete with hundreds of saguaro cactus in flower, but now with increased elevation, comes fresh green piney forest.
We are crossing the San Carlos Apache Nation territory. The landscape is hills, buttes and canyons, and the road is correspondingly challenging. Carla has driven it before hauling a horse trailer, so I feel in very good hands. And more than comfortable in our brand new salsa red Toyota Sienna!!
Lucky (my dear black feline travel companion, for new readers) is being an angel. He allowed himself to be placed in his travel bed without a whisper of protest, happy, perhaps, not to be left behind to the fierce desert predators that he loves to watch as they pass by outside our little casita.
The road got amazing there for a while as we switch-backed our way down and then up Salt River Canyon! My iPad camera got a great work-out. If the pics aren’t too blurry I will post many. Turned out that our delayed departure time worked to our benefit as the canyon blazed in the light of the setting sun. Wow!
Losing the light now and still on a fairly steep, winding descent. Twenty one miles to go to our Painted Pony motel. All four of us could use a good rest after a rather stress-ridden departure day. Glad we kept Day 1 fairly short!
forwardmotion1.wordpress.com 
Looking forward to those pics!
Mimi
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