Towering over the Gila Valley near Safford, Arizona is the stately peak of Mt. Graham.  This summer the beautiful mountain was a glow with fire for over one month.

The Mountain was struck by lightning in early June.  Due to high temperatures, winds and no rain, the fire burned and burned claiming over 48,000 acres!

Now that it is fall and the fires have long been extinguished, we thought it would be a good idea to have our next Palooza on the Mountain to see the fire damage for ourselves.

Rob and Michelle were not able to join us on this adventure, so Tom and I took our beautiful daughter, son in law, and grandsons.

We were pleasantly surprised with how well the firefighters held the fire at bay from the cabin area.  The trees were on fire, but only of the fall leaf colored variety.

It isn’t often we get to see fall colors in Southern Arizona so of course we stopped to take a picture or two 🙂

The road up the mountain is paved all the way to the back side of the mountain.  The side roads are easy to drive on as well.

We drove to Snow Flat camping area and once again we were pleasantly surprised with how nice it looked.

That’s not to say that we didn’t see any fire damage.  On the back side of the Mountain facing Wilcox, there were several views of burnt forest as far as we could see.

Most of the dirt side roads were closed due to fire damage.  But the main road was mostly quite pretty with happy green trees.

The views from the top of the mountain were very impressive!

Our grandson had a wonderful time hiking and exploring when we would stop and look at the views.  He is so cute!

While this isn’t a rugged UTV destination, it was fun and very interesting.  We loved the fall colors and crisp air.

Thank you for dropping by and reading about our Palooza adventures.  Until next time, happy trails to you!