During my assignment at the White Mountain Apache Reservation, the risk of cabin fever sometimes ran high. When opportunity in the form of travel-appropriate weather and four day weekends and a must-see concert or the like came up, both Arizona and New Mexico offered some temporary getaway destinations. The Reservation was about equidistant — around four or five hours each — from Phoenix and Albuquerque, so either was on the radar. (I made several trips to N.M., not only Albuquerque but Santa Fe and Taos as well, and will probably uncover photographic evidence of such travel in my archives.) Phoenix was fairly well known to me, as I had lived there for a few months in the late 60s on other GAO assignments, and of course, I always passed through on my trips to and from Los Angeles from the Reservation. Here are some photos from a couple of days in Phoenix (I once considered making a special photographic study of the quaint motels in that area, among other subjects) and its closely surrounding desert:
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- 1973
Driving east for two hundred or so miles, through the desert and on through national forest, we could finally arrive at my new home-away-from-home in the tiny town of Pinetop:
NEXT: Side Trip To Albuquerque