A drive to Alpine

Our friends from Venture Out, Don and Linda, had told us that they previously stayed in a campground in Alpine during the summers -- they had talked about how pretty it was around there, so we decided to take a drive there from Show Low.

Don suggested that we take the route from Show Low through Pinetop-Lakeside -- the drive took us to higher elevations... 

Pine forests with very clear understories

It appears that there have been fires through this area in not too distant past.

There were also broad meadows. I think that this is still considered to be high desert, but there were shallow lakes and cautions about flash flooding in places.

We ate at the Bear Wallow Cafe and enjoyed our lunch!

Looking down the main drag in Alpine

On the way back, we took a less scenic part of the loop, heading north out of Alpine -- the land looked much more like desert...

This is along US-60 heading west back toward Show Low -- we were almost to the New Mexico border when we started heading back west. In this area, very low grasses and shrubs...

As we continued west, larger shrubby-type trees.

We enjoyed the drive -- it was about 3 hours of driving with a few stops along the way.