The White Mountains

We're rolling through the high heart of Arizona's White Mountains now — and if this doesn't look like the Arizona in your head, that's the wonder of it. No saguaros, no red rock up here: instead, cool green forests of tall ponderosa pine, spruce, and fir, mountain meadows, trout streams, and groves of quaking aspen that turn pure gold in October. You're up around eight and nine thousand feet, in some of the largest unbroken forest in the Southwest — the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest. This is elk country, black-bear country, and, as Boone will tell you, wolf country once more. Roll your window down and smell the pine. It's a different, greener, higher Arizona up here, and this road has it all to itself.