BACK ROAD ADVENTURE

Superstitions' Queen Valley Road Can Be a Trip Into Flowerville

I AM ADDICTED TO WILDFLOWERS, especially poppies, and I have heard that in a good wildflower year, the Queen Valley Road winding 33.5 miles through the Superstition Mountains east of Phoenix can yield an effusion of flowers.

The Superstitions seem an unlikely setting for delicate poppies. It's a tormented landscape of hell-fired rock, fit to dumbfound Dante. But that's precisely what makes the anticipation so delicious, knowing hidden poppy seeds can nurture their luminous orange dreams of spring through decades of drought.

I cannot resist the gamble on a back road ramble to search for wildflowers, which in a dry year is like what wise men say about second marriages-the triumph of hope over experience.

So I lure Elissa, my wife, to join me, promising an easy day trip with potential flowersightings. We drive east from Phoenix on U.S. Route 60, and at about 3 miles past State Route 79 at Florence Junction, turn left (north) onto Queen Valley Road at the sign for Whitlow Dam. Here I zero out the odometer, and we drive an easy 1.6 miles before veering right onto the graded dirt Hewitt Station Road (Forest Service Road 357).

The road wanders through a typical Superstition landscape, dominated by saguaro cacti. No wildflowers worth mentioning so far, just forgotten scatters of blooms.

Still, I am impressed by the riot of saguaros. They live for 200 or more years and can stash tons of water in their pleated trunks. They provide shelter for birds and food for the whole neighborhood, not to mention the mild, sweet wine made from the fruit essential to the ceremonies of several desert Indian tribes. The saguaros soon assuage my grief for the sparse wildflowers.

At 4.6 miles from U.S. 60, we bear left onto clearly marked Forest Service Road 172, where a sign directs us to Woodbury (11 miles) and Roger's Trough (12 miles). If we'd continued on Hewitt Station Road, we would have gone straight back to 60.

FR 172 quickly narrows and roughens, but remains no challenge for my high-clearance,two-wheel-drive vehicle. The scenery gets steadily better, a deep desert treasure barely an hour's drive from the nation's fifth largest city. At 5.3 miles, we come to an unmarked fork, and head to the right-northeast-to stay on 172.

The road soon drops into a narrow, beautiful canyon, with a sculpted layer of light, fused volcanic ash running like a daydream through the iron-dark lava and basalt. In the tight throat of the canyon, at about 8.4 miles, we get out to look around.

I immediately start picking up heavy mica-rich rocks, thinking of the legend of the Lost Dutchman, whose hidden gold mine made the Superstitions famous. Reportedly, several people ended up dead after following Jacob Waltz into the mountains to steal the secret of his mine. Certainly, many people have died since in fruitless searches, and the legend spurred at least one documented shooting war between rival gangs of prospectors. So I am seriously digging these rocks in the grip of a Dutchman moment.

"Oh, look," whispers Elissa.

Perched on a sloping slab 100 feet up the canyon wall, a female desert bighorn sheep watches us dubiously. She's perfect, a molded mass of muscle. Exquisitely adapted to the desert, bighorns can go several days without water, even during the summer. Poised on shock-absorber joints, they can walk a 2-inch-wide ledge, run up a cliff at 15 mph and clear a 20-foot horizontal jump.

Bighorns have sustained and fascinated human beings here for a millennium. Spanish explorers reported finding heaps of up to 100,000 horns left behind by ancient hunters along the Gila River, reportedly to invoke the bighorn's supernatural link to the winds that bring vital rains. But the miners hunted them, and domestic sheep and goats infected them until only scattered herds along the Colorado River survived. In the past half-century, the Arizona Game and Fish Department has used those herds' sheep to repopulate various areas, including the Superstitions.

So we sit for half an hour in rapt attention, watching this gift of the wind. Finally, she disappears into a side canyon after scrambling up a 50-foot cliff face where I can scarcely see a foothold. We climb back into the car, wobbly with wonder.

The road struggles up and out of the canyon, past a small, rare volcanic arch and on through bristles of saguaros and ocotillos. Soon, it rises past the 3,500-foot-high, frost-enforced limit of the saguaros' range and into piñon and juniper pines, offering sweeping views in the process.

As the road gets narrower, steeper and rockier, we leave the land of the passenger car far behind, and I worry that we'll soon find ourselves marooned in the rugged land of the four-wheel drive.

We come finally to an unmarked T intersection at 18.4 miles and I bear right onto Forest Service Road 650, ever so slightly rattled by the elevation gain and the tenuous road. Elissa remains cheerful, but makes note of my long pause, agitated map shuffling and the fall of the gas gauge to well below a quarter tank.

A few miles later, I smell tortured rubber. Getting out, I discover a flat tire that, while I worried about other things, I've driven past recognition. So I change the tire, nearly lost and out of gas, but still impressed with the panoramic view as the hollows fill with shadow and the long last light red shifts on its trip through the atmosphere. Fortunately, the flat tire is the final problem of the day. We roll on down the unmarked road (Happy Camp Road on the map) toward the highway. The road gets so narrow and steep we have to back up to inch around the switchbacks Another blessing: Had I done the loop in the opposite direction, I doubt I could have gotten up this grade without four-wheel drive.

At the bottom of the hill, two jaunty roadrunners watch us pass with amused contempt. I'm happy to see them. I have a private superstition that the editor will like any story based on a trip during which I have seen a roadrunner.

roadrunners watch us pass with amused contempt. I'm happy to see them. I have a private superstition that the editor will like any story based on a trip during which I have seen a roadrunner.

Some 34 miles after our start, we end up back on U.S. 60 at the junction of Happy Camp and Hewitt Station roads, close by the entrance to the Boyce Thompson Arboretum. We're running on gas fumes, but a few miles to the east stands Superior, where we can fill up and get a cold drink. I realize suddenly that I have forgotten all about the scattered wildflowers, what with the saguaros, the bighorn, the flat tire and the roadrunners. But giving yourself to the day is like praying: You're better off listening than asking. All