Nutrioso and the high volcanic meadows of the White Mountains — elk country in the second-largest ponderosa forest on earth.
You're rolling through some of the highest ranch country in Arizona now, near the little settlement of Nutrioso — the name is Spanish for 'beaver-bear,' after the beaver and the grizzly the first settlers found along the creek. Up here above eight thousand feet, the ponderosa pines open into wide mountain meadows the old ranchers call cienegas — wet grasslands where elk graze by the hundreds at dawn and dusk. This is the White Mountains, born of volcanoes, holding the second-largest unbroken stand of ponderosa pine on earth. Watch the tree line and the meadow edges: this is prime elk country, and a bull elk bugling across a frosty September meadow is one of the great sounds of the American West. Keep your speed easy — the wildlife up here has the right of way, and it tends to take it.