Black River

Our annual Black River trip took place a couple of weeks ago. Dallas and I were accompanied by two of my brothers, Michael and Russell, two of Michael's boys, Matt and Mason, my dad, a friend, Reuben, and two of his brothers.

The trip was great, as usual. We didn't have as much success in the fishing department as we've had in the past, but we caught enough to have fish for dinner one night. The other night, we cooked up a dutch oven full of potatoes, onions, carrots and hunks of steak.

Mind you, we went to a fair amount of trouble for this meal. We camp at the river's edge, down in the bottom of the canyon. In terms of wilderness, it doesn't get much more remote than this in Arizona. This is "backpack all your stuff in" country, so getting the dutch oven, potatoes, steaks, etc. in means the addition of a lot of extra weight to already heavy packs. But, it's worth it, as you can see from the photos.

The area down in the canyon is beautiful. Very green. Very quite. We rarely see anyone else in the canyon as was the case this trip, so we had the whole thing to ourselves.

Wild turkeys are plentiful, antelope, bighorn sheep, elk, deer... if only we could shoot one and have it for dinner! Now that would be some good eatin'!

Looking forward to 2009!