We were out of our camp site at 6:43am. I had missed the sunrise over San Carlos Lake.
Globe's McDonald's was our next stop for coffee, as there was nothing open in San Carlos. All we saw were stray dogs off the roads, littered yards and people on back porches. The yards, I noticed, had no flowers. Many abandoned homes were badly graffittied.
So far what we saw was depressing: dilapitaded houses, mangy-looking stray dogs, litter in the streets and yards, rusty cars in backyards and boarded-up buildings. People stared at us. No one waved. It was best we moved on and came back later, when people were out and about and stores were open.
We opted to drive Northeast on Highway 60 toward the Salt River Canyon, "Arizona's Little Grand Canyon." And that site did not disappoint. We were now in the White Mountain Apache Nation, having crossed the tribal boundary when we crossed the Salt River.
This reservation seemed nicer, and even a little cleaner and a lot more scenic with the snow-capped White Mountains closer to our east. But there was no doubt that both were poor, desolate places and perhaps our cool reception from the locals was because we were seen as intruders or trespassers on their land.
At White Mountain at least our reception was a little better. We stopped at Fort Apache Historic Site, paid our daily permit, toured the old fort (home of General Crook's cabin and an old Indian boarding school), then drove northeast toward Whiteriver where a skateboarding team from the local high school was selling Apache t-shirts to earn their air fare to an Native American Movie Festival at New York City's Smithsonian Institute.
We found the youths at the Basha parking lot, where other Indians were also displaying their second-hand goods for sale. The shirts were made and designed locally, and the proud teens showed me two of their short movies they made via their iPod. One, "Four Wheel War Pony" was especially good, with soft indigineous music playing in the background. Parts of the video, the teens told me, was filmed outside of Douglas, AZ. This group of teens were the nicest group I met this weekend, and we had a pleasant conversation. Both movies were well-made, showing both past and present photos of Apache history.
After we left the teens we had a quick dinner at the nearby hotel restaurant. The special was a $5.99 cheeseburger platter that came with a huge portion of French fries. The waitress showed very little hospitality but she was otherwise very efficient. It was here that I felt like an intruder. No one welcomed us into the establishment but we were treated fairly. And the food was good.
The area we were in had more pines compared to San Carlos. Rapid creeks flowed in several directions as we drove back west to stop at the Kinishba Ruins, an ancient Hopi ruins that once housed over 800 people. We kept the dogs in the van under some shade so that they did not disturb the ruins.
Another couple pulled into the parking area as we were ready to leave. The husband had worked at the Indian Boarding school back in the 1970s before he was transferred to Oklahoma and then to Tucson. The wife just came with her daughter to show the younger woman where they used to live. "I liked it here in Whiteriver" said the older woman, "and I never saw these ruins before!"
The ruins were impressive.
My big mistake today was talking Kevin into taking a shortcut over the mountains via Mountain Road 9, a dirt road that kept climbing into the pine-studded peaks. In the SUV the road would have not been a problem, but in the van there was little clearance. Every big rock hit the under carriage.
The 12-mile drive to the Black River crossing took us an hour, and we were still three hours from San Carlos at that speed. Kevin was behind the wheel (had I been driving he never would have stopped criticizing my driving), driving at times no faster than 15 miles an hour.
The vistas were beautiful, though, despite the patches of dead and dying pines. But where were we? The only person we came across was a San Carlos Ranger at 3pm who stopped us to make sure we had valid permits to be out there in the wilderness. We showed them our permits, to which he admitted surprise.
"Have you seen any turkeys?" the ranger then asked us, perhaps wanting to be more friendly now that he knew we were legal travelers.
We saw no turkeys. "I am more surprised that you have seen no turkeys than I am about your permits" he added.
Shortly after we drove on Kevin found a nice campsite near a small creek. Here is where we stopped for the night. There was water for the dogs and solitude for the rest of the night, where not one sound was made, not even any whispers from the pines. The dogs were calm, too. And despite the higher elevation I slept better Saturday than the night before.
http://www.nativenetworks.si.edu/eng/orange/4_wheel_war_pony.htm
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