Rim Shots

The Mogollon Ridge belongs in one of those old sword-and-sorcery stories in which the Hero Barbarian slays a Corrupt Mandarin and then, to escape the official's Vengeful Minions, climbs some impossible cliff with his bloody sword clamped in his teeth, only to find a cave with a mummy in it, red eyes glowing malevolently ...

View from the highway, minions in hot pursuit

However, the only mummy I found was anything but malevolent.

Did you know Arizona had trees? I didn't.

Not a bad view for $0 a night. Even the neighbors were nice. The campground host coughed through his yellow-stained beard that we could have a fire in the fire ring so long as it was dead cold when we were done with it. But once it was roaring, an elderly gentleman came out of his RV to tell us fires were strictly forbidden, fire danger was extreme, you don't see anyone else with fires do you, etc. He loosened up once he saw we weren't liberals or immigrants or whatever it is Arizonans don't like and was really quite nice. So once we had cooking embers, we let it die out.

I mean, seriously. The paper products industry needs to hear about this.

For scale, note chairs in upper left corner. One great thing about camping, the rooms are huge.

The location of the cave with its cursed treasure remains a secret.