Southeast Arizona B and B Directions
After taking Judd St. and crossing the wash you end up on Escalante Rd. There is no turn around until you are almost at the San Pedro River.
Just where you are able to pull off the road, Escalante becomes worse with ruts.
Our Southeast Arizona B and B directions are given to all our guests so that they don’t get stuck in the San Pedro River while driving to Down By The River B and B. Our directions use Apache Powder Road so that guests will make it to our front door without a wilderness adventure. Because we have guests that ask us about using Judd Street to Escalante Road, I decided to take some pictures to show just what the road looks like.
The road disappears as you near the river and the banks have been eroded away by the flooding.
There are online sites that believe this is an easier way to get to Down By The River. GPS and Google Maps are wonderful things but they do fail more in rural areas. The reason is that these programs sometimes have not been updated or, better yet, they extrapolate a cow path as a road. We have sent information to Google about previous errors in the maps and some have been updated. The one using Judd Street as a route has persistently been ignored.
A high clearance 4 x 4 would be needed to be used to negotiate this crossing at a minimum.
The use of Judd Street in St. David to get to Down By The River is usually the route that these two programs use for directions. Prior to this Fall, that way was probably accessible across the river with a 4 wheel drive vehicle. It required you cross a wash that can be quite sandy at times and then to drive across the San Pedro River in an area that has quicksand. Unfortunately there is no bridge at the San Pedro River on this road. This year we had the remnants of 3 hurricanes hit Arizona. The heavy rains caused the San Pedro River to overflow its banks at the crossing. Escalante Road has been washed away and there is no trace of the original road anymore near the San Pedro.
The road west of the river is worse. The flood created a flow channel where Escalante Road was and there is a 2 foot ditch now at the road.
The San Pedro River crested behind Down By The River about 2 feet below the bank. The San Pedro was over 20 feet deep at this point. Click here to view a video of the flooding San Pedro River. The river bed is now 3 to 5 feet lower than it was in the spring of 2014. There is a shear drop from where Escalante Road used to exist at the river. We have always sent guests our Southeast Arizona B and B directions so that they don’t have problems reaching us. Still we do have some people that call asking if the only way to the B and B is by crossing the river. We know that they are using GPS when we get that call.
After Escalante climbs to the top of the bank, the road is rutted and there are sink holes located along the entire route to Efken.
If you were able to get across the San Pedro River, you would find that the road on the west side is worse than the Judd Street approach. The road has been washed out and the San Pedro created a channel where the old road used to be. Escalante Road as it leaves the river is now full of holes and gullies for a quarter mile after you leave the river. There are places that you may find where your car will become stuck just trying to reach the river. So we want to inform our guests that our Southeast Arizona B and B directions are the best way to arrive safely at Down By The River.
One advantage of the floods has been that the river area is full of debris. This debris is great for the birds to find shelter and refuge while looking for food. You can walk back in this area and find clear paths of travel. The overflow channels that the river cut during the floods allow for easy access back to parts of the river south of us. Needless to say the old trails along the river no longer exist. We have always had water flowing above ground in the San Pedro River behind the b and b. It will be interesting to see if next spring and summer, prior to the monsoons, we will have even more of a flow than in previous years.
The wash at Judd St. finds its way down to the San Pedro River and crosses what used to be Escalante Road.