Who Says Arizona Isn't Green?

Yes…it’s true that large portions of AZ look like the surface of the moon (if the moon was 120 in the shade during the summer).

However, in the higher elevations, Arizona has some really beautiful scenery, like colorful gems scattered across a sand box.

I snapped these photos around the area of Alpine, AZ. The elevation is approximately 8,500 ft. above sea level. It’s coniferous forest…almost all various types of pine trees, with a smattering of aspen and oak to break things up. The Ponderosa pine trees can grow quite large, soaring dozens of feet into the sky, their trunks big enough around that a grown man would have difficulty wrapping his arms around it.

This is an area of our country that is far more wild than my home in the Midwest. Out here, you can jump on horseback and ride through millions of acres of national forest without ever encountering a fence. We have bears, wolves, and mountain lions. The air is crisp, clean, and scented with a sweet pine scent. The skies are a clear, deep shade of blue that I never saw when I lived east of the Mississippi.

No, it’s not the beautiful emerald green found in Indiana and Kentucky, but I have to take what I can get out here. Fortunately, what I can get is pretty darn gorgeous, itself!