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| | Car Camping | | 8 Days | | |
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| partners | | It had been a long ~six months since my last Camp Grasshopper Vehicle Camping / Hike Explore trip.
Originally, this early Spring'21 trip was planned for the remote Salome Wilderness - Thompson Mesa area at 4700ft elevation, but after a long day pre-trip 4WD in mid-February to confirm if we could safely drive out and back for a week period, it was decided we had better not risk it with my fully loaded and older 4-Runner  .
Our Plan B was to revisit for 7 nights / 8 days the even more remote, scenic, historic, and interesting Redman Mesa area (also bordering the Salome Wilderness, but from the north). For early Spring, this excellent Camp Grasshopper area (SW of Young, AZ, eight remote 4WD miles in off of Hwy 288) added an additional 1000ft camp elevation. This meant for me, colder nights/early mornings to prepare for with more risk of rain, muddy roads to drive, and possible snow. Mother Nature rules in our Wilderness and as it turned-out, she presented us with it all to include some beautiful hiking days as well.
This eight day trip included (for me) two full days of driving to/back home, Camp GH setup/teardown-pack which would allow me six days of area hike exploring and/or R&R Camp days which I also enjoy. Enjoyment of Camp GH cooking/cleaning was also a high priority for me, as always 
On Oregon_Hiker and my first week trip visit here in April'19, we kind-of concluded that we had exhausted the local area of interesting off-trail hike exploring, but after some additional Google Earth viewing, we quickly came up with another full weeks worth of interesting, new areas (for us) to explore only requiring more 4WDing to reach our planned off-trail TH Starts.
Of the six full days I had available to hike-explore with Oregon_Hiker, I enjoyed staying in camp for a total of 2 days of the 6. One of the two was a bad weather day (for me) to include some cold on and off rain with snow showers at our 5734ft elevation campsite [ image ]
Larry and I had two "big bang" 4WDing and off-trail day hikes planned for this trip, the first of which we had 4WD clearance, safety issue concerns getting to the Park/TH Start, so we had to scrap that hike plan for now, but our second was a very rewarding and incredibly scenic, historic, PrestonSands'-  [ Greenback Peak ] We did a little different twist on the route to summit at 6535ft by beginning/ending our hike at the historic Dupont Cabin.
This trip we also had time to more fully explore and view and hike the lesser known and visited rugged and scenic Indian Camp Canyon Creek and on different days we enjoyed additional views from a new location of the very mysterious J R Ranch Complex- [ J R Ranch - Copper Mtn 7.5 Topo ]
On exit day-3/25/21, our trip would not be complete without a celebration stop for lunch in Miami at [ image ]  |
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| (Outside.. "there is No Place Like It!!") |
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