Wednesday we got up and after breakfast drove to a trailhead a few miles away and hiked the Thompson trail which was a nice trail up in the mountains on the south side of Lake Roosevelt. We had views of the lake on our left and the 4 Peaks on the right as we hiked it to the end 3 miles away. Joyce returned by the same trail and I decide to make it somewhat of a loop by hiking the roadway along the lake back to an old cemetery and back up the mountain to the trail and back to our truck. It was a nice sunny day in the 60's.

 Stormy weather across the lake

Thursday was supposed to usher in a winter storm with windy, cloudy weather that would bring much lower temps and snow at elevations above 3000'. (we camp around 2200' thank goodness) 

 Snowy mountains up by the Pigeon Trail

 Ready to go on the Pigeon Trail

 This is a mountain round-about due to the very tight turn

 Thought we left the snow back in the UP

We decided to try a new trail called the Pigeon trail down towards Tonto Basin. We drove on a challenging forest road about 11 miles (45 minutes) to reach the trail head. The road twisted and climbed it's way to about 5600 feet elevation and consisted of some ice and snow covered areas maybe 3 to 500 feet long just to make matters interesting. The trail was a nice change with hiking thru some tall pines and juniper trees. The trail was about 50% snow covered to start with and after a mile or so it became mostly snow as we climbed in elevation. After an hour or so we came to an area that we could not determine where the trail was. The wind had picked up and the clouds were coming a bit lower over the mountains, so we decided it was time to make a u-turn and head back to the truck. 

That evening and overnight the winds blew with strong gusts as the storm front passed thru. In the morning we awoke to nice sunshine, but very cold temperatures. The cold temps remained for the next 5 days with daily highs only in the 40's and nights in the 20's. Needless to say we went thru a bit more propane than we normally do. Even though it was chilly we had nice sunshine every day and we were able to hike in the lower elevations. Most afternoons we could sit out in the sun and read and relax. Hard to complain about that!

 Along the Cottonwood Trail

 These folks were from Kentucky & Illinois

 An Arizona forest

On the Pigeon Trail