Skull Valley, Bagdad and the Yolo Ranch: an Arizona back-country road trip adventure...

NF21

I left Phoenix about 10 AM on Sunday morning, for a back-country jaunt in Yavapai County, Arizona. My initial purpose was to reconnoiter possible spots to get some train photos on the “pea-vine” branch of the BNSF railroad between Ash Fork and Phoenix. I didn’t do much reconnoitering after all – so I will go back for that on another trip. I did see a little of the track in the vicinity of Kirkland and Skull Valley so that will be a starting place for further investigation. What I did end up doing was a drive through some remote reaches of Yavapai County, between Bagdad and the Chino Valley area, seeing some Arizona back country that I had never seen before. There are no roads for 100 miles except forest and ranch roads – barely more than tracks.

I stopped for breakfast at Byler's Amish Cafe in Black Canyon City. I've eaten at Byler's many times before, but had never had breakfast there. I wasn't entirely satisfied -- I think the mark of a good breakfast place is the ability to cook an egg to order. They didn't get mine right. I like my eggs over-medium, which means nothin' runnin' but the yolk; mine came with whites not completely cooked. I wasn't happy about that but I ate them anyway -- Byler's serves lots of good food at a fair price so you don't go hungry. I had mine with a biscuit and gravy (half-order) and hash browns O'Brien. The highlight of my meal was the toast -- home-made white, buttered liberally and slathered with Byler's own blackberry jam. It was like dessert. Next time I go I will simply lecture the server for about five minutes on the proper way to serve an over-medium egg... problem solved (and hope she doesn't spit on my food...).

Driving on through Prescott, I stopped to top off the tank, kick the tires, fill the water bottle and get a Coke, then headed out toward Skull Valley in search of train tracks. I have vague memories from my childhood about visiting that area with my family on a picnic -- probably before Tina was born or maybe while she was still a baby. Mom thinks Ruthie was about 8 or 9 at the time, which makes me about 4. That makes sense since the memory is sketchy. I had always wondered where we had gone on that trip, but I always thought it might have been Skull Valley. I think I saw that place today -- looking downhill on a road that ran out across a wide valley to the mountains beyond. It looked just like the place in my childhood memory.

I looped down through Kirkland, through Yava and up to Bagdad, Arizona. This is cattle country, big time. It is high desert with wide open sky and far horizons. To this point and as far as Bagdad, the roads were all paved. Just before reaching Bagdad, I crossed the Santa Maria River which had a small amount of water in it. I stopped in Bagdad which was the last possibility for lunch on this route. I got a corndog at the Bashas' Deli and an apple -- and headed on to infinity on forest road NF21. Bagdad is already a remote, inaccessible town; nobody much goes there unless they have business there. But beyond Bagdad, a person can feel positively alone in the world. For the next several hours, I saw only a few cows and maybe four other people. 

A little ways out of town, I arrived at a water crossing -- on Boulder Creek, somewhere near Blue Mountain. It was a delightful spot and the road splashed through the creek. The creek was wide enough right there to be called a pool, or pond, but not quite a lake. There were a couple of groups camping nearby. The road was generally following the side of a mountain, with expansive views off to the south mostly, across the drainage and to the mountains and horizon away in the distance.

Coming to the junction of NF21 and NF702, my GPS told me to follow NF702. I don't know why, but this direction didn't seem trustworthy to me. NF21 climbed away to the left, while NF702 descended down a valley to the right. I still do not know which would have been the better route, but apparently both would have taken me to the same place eventually. I first took 702, drove about 100 yards or so and changed my mind. I backed all the way back out to the fork, and took 21 up and to the left. I almost as quickly regretted the choice -- the road got rough as a cob, rocky and narrow. There was no place to turn around, not one. So I was committed.

The road climbed up away from Boulder Creek onto Bozarth Mesa, and several miles afterward I came past some ranch buildings, and passed through several gates. Arizona back country etiquette requires a person passing through to carefully close these gates behind you, so some poor cowboy doesn't have to chase his cows halfway back to town (and so ranchers do not become inclined to put padlocks on said gates, preventing any later wanderers from passing through). The cowboy has enough to do just to keep the fences intact. I stopped once or twice to moo at some cows. They looked at me thoughtfully but none mooed back. I was disheartened about this. Sometimes you can have a moo conversation with more communicative cows and this is its own reward. I live for those.

Near the Yolo Ranch

This area was now high enough to start to be pretty in a non-desert sort of way. There was scrubby forest and trees, and the terrain was rocky and dramatic. After driving for a while, I came to the Yolo Ranch. This is a magnificent western ranch, currently for sale by the way (apparently), for a measly $14 million USD. It is about 110,000 acres of Arizona grazing land and will support, reportedly, about 1500 cattle. This is a John Wayne kind of place. The setting is beautiful, among Ponderosa pines and grassy meadows. It has its own airstrip. There are no modern amenities, save for a smidgeon of electrical power provided by on-site generators. There was no one around, although it did not look abandoned. 

This is where I got lost. The area sports a wide collection of meandering, maze-like forest roads. The GPS is telling me to go down a road that is clearly blocked by a locked gate. So I look at the maps (an Arizona Gazetteer). This is the first time I have ever been in a place where the Gazetteer maps are not to close enough scale to be of any use. I know where I am, but I cannot figure out how to get out of here. Hitting the detour function on the GPS, it simply tells me to circle around and takes me right back to the locked gate... This is where I got a little disconcerted, maybe even discouraged.

Plan B was to pick the widest, smoothest road I could see, and take that away from the area until I get far enough away that the GPS will refresh itself and choose another route. So I drive down this road and 4 or 5 miles away I reset the GPS. This works! It is still not optimum - I found out later that had I stayed on that wide, smooth road (which turned out to be the continuation of NF21), I would have gotten out where I wanted to be and it would have saved me about twenty miles.

So, lesson one, nothing beats a good fine-detail topo map!

I followed NF21 for several miles, maybe ten, and then took NF95 north about eleven miles to CR125. This little-bit-better road took me to Williamson Valley Road and that led me back south to Prescott. This sounds easy, but it wasn't quick. NF95 isn't much more than a trail (although none of these are necessarily 4WD roads). That eleven miles was definitely iffy -- there had been downed timber on the road and some mud.

The snow had melted off long enough ago that the mud wasn't too deep, and a firewood cutter had tracked this road literally minutes before I did, cutting the timber that had fallen on the road and removing it. I suspect if it hadn't been for him, I'd have had further problems since I had no saw with me to do it myself. When I asked the backwoodsman if I could get out in the direction I was going, his first question was "how much time do you have?" At that point I was just happy to hear I was going to make it out alive!

Williamson Valley Road

By this time, it was getting dark. I was driving down Williamson Valley Road in the golden-pink glow of an Arizona sunset. It was almost surreal, unearthly, the afterglow softly enveloping the terrain from seemingly everywhere. I almost stopped to set up for a time exposure photo, it was so beautiful. Instead, it will be one of those moments that only a memory can encompass. I do not believe a photo would have done it justice, anyway. The road wasn't bad either -- nice smooth graded dirt, no washboard whatsoever and therefore absolutely pleasurable to drive!

I regained the blacktop north of Prescott (after about 100 miles of dirt), bypassed the city using Pioneer Parkway, SR89A and Fain Road and stopped at Leff-T's Steakhouse for dinner (at Dewey, AZ). This is a place I have passed by for years without ever stopping -- it just doesn't look like much. What was I thinking! I ordered a rib-eye steak, soup and a salad. The soup was a delicious beef-vegetable; the salad was assorted mixed greens and vegetables with honey mustard dressing. The steak was thin (their smaller rib-eye). I am a steak-cooker of some skill and I know how difficult it is to get a thin steak cooked to order. Leff-T's got it right. The dinner bread was a deep brown-bread soft roll served with both butter and apple butter. The service was excellent and I can't think of a single thing they could have done better.

Leff-T's Steakhouse

[2013 update: I've made several return visits to Leff-T's since that first one and every time it's the same old story -- just excellent!]

After dinner, I headed down SR69 to Cordes Junction and home on I-17. I took my sweet time and enjoyed the drive. I was back in the driveway with pictures and my story by 9:20 pm. After 11 hours and 345 miles, all I am missing is a list of good vantage points for train photos. That was the point of the whole trip, but hey, who's keeping track, right? I had f-u-n.


This is not a trip for a leisurely Sunday drive. It is back country, rugged, and primitive. Once past Bagdad, there are no services of any kind. Anyone undertaking such a route (anywhere in the west, actually) must be completely self-sufficient to be safe and remain situationally aware. A visitor to the Arizona backwoods should carry and know how to use survival gear -- if you have problems you may not see another person for days - or longer. You should always leave information about your route and your schedule with someone reliable who will follow-up if you don't emerge at the other end. That said, this is magnificent country that I doubt even 1/2 of 1% of Arizona residents or visitors have ever seen. It was worth every dirt-road mile.

And I want to buy that ranch... someone loan me 14 million.

Reminder: clicking on the photos gets you a larger version so you can see for yourself just how pretty this Arizona country is!