Across Arizona and to the Tonto National Forest; Tonto National Monument ; Show Low, AZ ; Besh-ba-gawah pueblo ; El Morro National Monument ; El Malpais National Monument ; Sky City ; family visit in Albuquerque ; on to Texas
(posted from Daybreak Coffee Roasters, Lubbock, TX)
(This post covers 13 – 19 October, 2009)
------------------------------------------------
Monday, 19 October-
We left Albuquerque this morning, yet another blue-sky-and-75 day. There were snow flurries back home over the weekend but I see it’s supposed to get up into the Sixties in the next few days.
We drove across New Mexico seeing ranches east of Albuquerque and seeming to stretch to the horizon. We turned down Route 84 toward Clovis and saw much the same, though we did see a nice wooded valley along the Pecos River at Fort Sumner.
As we neared Clovis, we began to see more green in the pastures and a definite change from range-land to fields. In Clovis we started seeing giant farm machinery for sale and we saw a massive field of pumpkins which took us a few seconds to recognize; they seemed out of place.
Soon after Clovis we entered Texas and saw an immediate difference. Cotton appears to be king around here.
We changed our clocks to Central Time and continued on to Lubbock, where we looked up the local Wal-mart, checked whether we could stay, then sought out the nearest Starbucks for an iced-tea, and a Walgreen’s, hoping to get a flu shot. All the flu vaccine is gone in this area, though. We’ll have to keep checking as we go.
We had supper in the van at Maxey Park in Lubbock and took a short walk after to the lake.
As darkness neared we returned to the Wal-mart and shopped to replenish supplies, then blogged the evening away. It’s quite windy here tonight. The winds were coming from the west as we drove today and I’m sure that helped the gas mileage but it appears they’ve swung south and become stronger, which may give us a less-than-comfortable night.
-------------------------------------------------
Sunday, 18 October-
Today our friends had church responsibilities so we had most of the morning to ourselves. I walked down to the nearby Smith’s Grocery and had a cappuccino at the Starbucks in their lobby while Labashi did a bit of laundry and relaxed.
After lunch Labashi’s brother took us and the two boys to the Albuquerque Zoo. What a nice zoo it was! We were surprised to see that most animals were out and all appeared very healthy and active. The polar bears were incredible and were inadvertently hilarious as they played with ‘floaties’ (giant floating discs). The snow leopards were an unexpected treat (and had two young ones) and the jet-black jaguar mysterious and possessed of burning eyes which gave me chills to imagine meeting in the wild.
We finished off the afternoon at the zoo’s climbing play-space where the boys had a blast. Finally, they kicked us out at 1730 after the zoo closed.
We went out that evening to the County Line, a bar-be-que restaurant where Labashi and I split a full rack of baby-back ribs. Labashi likes the fall-off-the-bone type of ribs and these definitely weren’t that. They had a tarry covering of burnt skin and wanted to stick to the bone but once you decide to just pick up the ribs with your fingers and dig in, they were excellent.
At home we said our goodbyes to the folks who we wouldn’t see in the morning and read for an hour before sleep.
-------------------------------------------------------
Saturday, 17 October-
Today we awoke to another beautiful New Mexico day. The forecast is for mid-Seventies and clear for the next few days with overnights into the mid-Thirties here. We took a tour of the house and continued the conversations from the night before and then that afternoon we went to another house her brother is selling in this cooled-off market. Afterwards, we drove to the Sandia Aerial Tramway, the world’s longest.
We caught the tram going up the east side of the valley just as the sun was setting on the west. Though it was still 70 as we boarded the tram at 6000 feet, it was 42 at the top’s 10,000-foot level but fortunately the winds were very light.
We spent about an hour looking at and photographing the view and the small Forest Service visitor’s center, then had a drink at the restaurant. Labashi and I split a ‘Black Diamond’, (which was Bailey’s, Kahlua, coffee and a bit of hot cocoa) while our friends had a hot cocoa liberally doused with peppermint schnapps. Lovely!
Later that evening we had leftovers from a birthday party at the house, then sat up talking for a while.
------------------------------------------------------
Friday, 16 October-
We left El Morro this morning and continued eastward through the Indian reservations on Route 53.
In a short while we came upon the El Malpais National Monument. The ‘malpais’ or ‘badlands’ are lava from the many volcanoes here. At the visitor’s center I noticed that the Continental Divide Trail goes through here and I talked with the ranger at some length about it. I’ve been impressed by the CDT at every trail crossing and want to read more about the experiences of the CDT thru-hikers on Trailjournals.com.
After El Malpais, we continued eastward, which then turned a bit north toward Grants and then into New Mexico.
We soon were on I-40 East but noticed signs advertising Sky City, an Acoma Indian pueblo. The sign that attracted my attention was one advertising traditional Acoma foods. We diverted some 15 miles off the Interstate to visit this out-of-the-way pueblo and visitor’s center.
The valley in which the pueblo lies looks like something out of a movie. You descend down off the mesa into a deep, wide valley strewn with fantastic shapes of massive bluffs and standing rocks. Across the valley lies another mesa, atop which is a pueblo.
At the visitor’s center we bought tickets for a tour and while we waited we had a delicious red chile poblano stew and fry bread. A small bus then took us up the mesa and into the center of the pueblo. We later learned the road had been built by whites who were making a movie in the Twenties. Otherwise, the only way in and out is via a hidden canyon and steps and hand-holds carved into the sandstone.
We had a long tour of the pueblo and it was very well done. We learned the pueblo is of course the historical home of the Acoma people. Still today, there’s no electricity and no running water. In general the Acoma live in nearby homes much like ours or perhaps in Albuquerque but have their homes in the pueblo for weekends and ceremonies. Upon retirement, some Acoma may live full-time in the pueblo though of course many choose to continue to live outside the pueblo.
Our Indian guide had a good sense of humor. When we stood on an area looking down from the mesa at the tops of ravens below, he said those ravens are known as the Acoma Air Force. And at the one tree on the pueblo (next to a water-collection basin), he said his friends call it the Acoma National Forest. He spoke of the kivas where traditional ceremonies are held but simply said he would not speak of or describe the ceremonies themselves.
There are 14 clans within the Acoma people, most with names like Wolf and Bear but our guide’s clan is the Pumpkin clan.
Our tour concluded at the old straw-and-mud church, built in 1629 and it was very impressive, as was the five-levels deep cemetery.
After our tour we climbed down the stone stairway and there were several spots that made us blanch. We had to turn around and use the handholds to keep from falling and the ‘stairs’ were merely impressions in the rock. A fall would have been very nasty, though it would have ‘only’ been ten or fifteen feet since the ‘stairway’ was more of a trail leading from ledge to ledge.
After making it safely back to the visitor’s center we had a snack at the café and than bid a fond goodbye to Sky City.
Back on I-40 East we noticed we crossed through Laguna Indian lands, then Isleta Indian lands as Albuquerque and the Sandia Mountains came into view.
We arrived in Albuquerque at the rush hour but had little problem finding our way to Labashi’s brother’s home in the northeastern foothills. This was our first visit to Albuquerque but we immediately liked the look of it, particularly in those foothills.
We spent the evening catching up as we all went out to a Mexican restaurant and had a wonderful time.
------------------------------------------------------
Thursday, 15 October-
This morning we took nice, long showers in the state campground. We’ve learned to take a folding chair and our Buddy heater in to the shower room, particularly when the weather’s cooler (like this morning’s 38 degrees) and the shower building is made of a stone-based material. It makes a world of difference to have a bit of heat and a comfortable (and dry) seat for undressing and dressing. (We’re so spoiled!!)
We then used the GPS to find a local coffee shop (“Java Deli”) listed in the wififreespots.com listing for Show Low so Labashi could ship off one of her Oregon Trail logs to family and friends.
We then hit the road again, bound (in general) for Albuquerque. We could have zipped up to US40 to shorten the trip but instead took the secondary roads through the Zuni and Navajo reservations, crossing into New Mexico around lunch time.
We bought freshly-baked bread from an Indian bakery in Zuni, home of the Zuni Pueblo, the most traditional of the 27 pueblos still in existence in New Mexico and had it for a roadside lunch in the van.
After driving through miles and miles of ranchland, we came to El Morro National Monument. It’s know for having a centuries-old water source at the base of a massive white rock called ‘The Bluff’ (El Morro in Spanish) and for inscriptions left by people visiting the water source in their travels. The oldest inscriptions are by Spanish explorers who came through the area as early as 1605. Also, atop the rock is a partially-excavated pueblo dating to the 13th Century and thought to have consisted of 800 rooms to support a community of about 1500 people.
The water source is a pool 12 feet deep and holding up to 200,000 gallons of water. It’s not fed by a spring but by rain water and by snow melt.
After touring the visitor’s center, we walked the trail past the rock inscriptions and petroglyphs, then climbed steep switchbacks to the top of El Morro. There we walked a narrow path across open rock, at times with steep fall-off’s on both sides, to get to the pueblo. A few rooms were reconstructed but most of the 800 rooms are still under stones and earth. So this is what an unexcavated site looks like. The clues are subtle but the shapes and contours say there’s a large pueblo here.
After our 2-mile walk we descended to the visitor’s center again and then on to the campground in another portion of the Monument. The campground charges no fee this time of year and our two hours of walking put us at a good stopping time.
We spent the remainder of daylight cooking our prairie-coal hot dogs for supper. Then we took a walk around the campground and chatted with a few of the other campers. Next door is a woman from Albuquerque who is camping in her truck camper with her dog, Stella. We also met a guy from San Diego who’s camping in a Tab trailer. These trailers are about the size of a Casita but they have the shape of a teardrop trailer. This fellow bought his Tab off Ebay and loves it for its comfortable simplicity, much like we love Mocha Joe for the same.
We blogged and I did some skywatching to while away the pleasant evening hours. This was one of my better skywatching nights. I saw four satellites, one nearly as bright as the brightest stars in the sky. I also saw what I call a ‘sizzler’. It was a shooting star so bright that it seems it must be making a sizzling noise.
------------------------------------------------------
Wednesday, 14 October-
This morning we left Cholla campground and drove along Roosevelt Lake to the nearby visitor’s center. I talked at some length with the permits lady about the Tonto Basin permit system. Here I am with my Interagency Pass (formerly called a National Parks Annual Pass) which, when raising the price from $65 to $80, the government said could be used for multiple agencies, including the Bureau of Land Management, the US Forest Service, the Reclamation Service, and others. But when I arrive at this US Forest Service site here at Roosevelt Lake, I find they want me to also pay a daily fee for any use of Forest Service facilities here. I can, explained the lady, get an Interagency Pass upgrade for $15 and that will allow me into picnic areas and primitive campgrounds. But if I want to get into a developed campground I have to buy a daily pass. And if I don’t have an Interagency Pass I would have to have the same daily pass. In other words, there’s no benefit whatsoever to having the Interagency Pass at this site.
She also explained that the marina next door to the visitor’s center is owned by the US Forest Service but it’s operated by a vendor and you must have a separate vendor pass to enter the grounds (at six dollars per car and four dollars per boat per day).
Fortunately, we were done with the US Forest Service. We drove on to the Tonto National Monument. This Monument has two 12th Century cliff dwellings, one a half-mile walk above the visitor’s center and the other out of sight and available only by special arrangement for a ranger-led tour.
The visitor’s center movie was one of the best we’ve seen and we later learned it’s an award-winner. Afterwards we began the very steep walk up to the cliff-dwelling, knowing all the while that it’s blocked off due to an infestation of Africanized honeybees (at least that’s the story!). We had a wonderful walk, though. After we were about half-way up, ranger Eddie Colyutt came along on patrol and we struck up a conversation. We spent the better part of the next hour chatting with him about everything from other archeological sites in the park (there are 72 of them); the reasons the people left (overcrowding, drought, over-use of resources); palo verde trees (this green-barked tree is the state tree of Arizona, is a relative new-comer to Arizona, is believed to have been a key factor in the Indians changing from living in a widely-dispersed, hunter-gatherer lifestyle to a farming lifestyle; saguaro cactus (to get moisture from one, dig into it like you would to take a plug out of a watermelon, then suck the plug); the quality of the National Park Service (top-rate, according to Eddie, who has worked for three different agencies in his 30 years in Federal Service); the paving of the road to the remote little town of Young (being done by the state for tourism but it ruins the remoteness of the town); and on and on. Eddie is a very intelligent guy (and says he’s a survivalist) and we greatly enjoyed our talk with him.
After Tonto Monument, we drove on east to Globe, a copper-mining town and home of an early pueblo (‘Besh-ba-gawah’, by name). This wasn’t a cliff-dwelling but rather a stone-and-adobe pueblo abandoned, like the cliff dwelling at Tonto) by 1300. Today, the adobe is almost all gone but part of the pueblo has been rebuilt. We were able to walk about in a three-story reconstruction which had ladders between the levels and was furnished much as it would have been when in use. Very nicely, done, citizens of Globe!
We then continued east on Route 60 into the Fort Apache Reservation. We drove for the better part of a hundred miles through beautiful mountains, going up and down between 3000 and 7000 feet and back and forth through the vegetation zones associated with those altitudes.
We finally reached the town of Show Low. We didn’t actually enter the town, we turned just before it to go to Fool’s Hollow Lake Recreation Area for our campground for the night.
Our campground is nice but a little more citified than what we were looking for. We had hoped to go out into the National Forest tonight but directions didn’t match the map and we were ready to stop.
After supper I took a walk around the campground in the dark, looking at the sky. I didn’t see any shooting stars tonight but the Milky Way looks like a searchlight coming up from the southern horizon. Very cool!
We blogged and I read a copy of ‘Family Motor Coaching’ I picked up from the book-swap box at the after-hours sign-in station. I’m stunned to read ads for motor home ‘pads’ selling for $75-150K in resort areas. And the entry-level motor home featured this month costs $179K. So you spend $180K on a motorhome whose value plummets like a rock the moment you drive it off the lot and costs you $1000 to have the tire pressure checked. And to have a parking spot in a resort area, you also have to pay another $100K for the privilege of using a clubhouse and pool, perhaps even a golf course in the exclusive, gated “Motorcoach Resort”. And I guarantee you there’s an owner’s-association fee to pay that goes up every year. And the ‘pads’, like timeshares, are difficult to resell.
A fool and his money, say I.
------------------------------------------------------
Tuesday, 13 October-
We awoke in our Motel 6 room this morning, both having done only ‘OK’ in the sleeping department. I didn’t get to sleep for awhile and both of us were awakened repeatedly starting at about 0500 by slamming doors. This particular Motel 6 appears to be popular with work crews judging by the number of utility trucks in the parking lot and apparently they like to go to work early.
Labashi cut my hair and we took care of phone calls, emails, and web ‘stuff’ we needed to get out of the way before getting back on the road.
After checking out we drove to the nearby Wal-mart to re-supply and had lunch at the Red Robin across the street.
We then began driving across Arizona toward Payson. I loved seeing the land and the different types of vegetation. Down low is sage and mesquite but it doesn’t take much elevation (or water) to introduce trees, yet the understory is wide open. Along a creek will be willows and cottonwoods and otherwise it will tend to be juniper and ponderosa pine.
Now we are starting to see various cactuses. We see some prickly pear (and a few appear to be in bloom!) and late in the day we started seeing the classic desert cactus, the saquaro.
After crossing through the Prescott Valley, we climbed and descended into Camp Verde and the Verde Valley, then crossed yet another range of mountains and finally hit Payson. We merely passed through, though, and then headed south toward Phoenix.
We were only a few miles outside of Payson when we began looking for prospective campsites. We found Teddy Roosevelt Lake recreation area and Cholla campground by 1700. The campground is a very nice Forest Service facility and is relatively empty. And campsites were only $6.
We had a spectacular sunset while Labashi was cooking supper. The clouds lit up a brilliant red against an electric-blue sky I don’t think I’ve ever seen before.
After supper I was fascinated by the stars coming out so quickly. The Milky Way was visible before it even got completely dark. I saw four shooting stars and two satellites in only about an hour of watching.
We spent the rest of the evening blogging and reading.
********* END OF POST **************
(posted from Daybreak Coffee Roasters, Lubbock, TX)
(This post covers 13 – 19 October, 2009)
------------------------------------------------
Monday, 19 October-
We left Albuquerque this morning, yet another blue-sky-and-75 day. There were snow flurries back home over the weekend but I see it’s supposed to get up into the Sixties in the next few days.
We drove across New Mexico seeing ranches east of Albuquerque and seeming to stretch to the horizon. We turned down Route 84 toward Clovis and saw much the same, though we did see a nice wooded valley along the Pecos River at Fort Sumner.
As we neared Clovis, we began to see more green in the pastures and a definite change from range-land to fields. In Clovis we started seeing giant farm machinery for sale and we saw a massive field of pumpkins which took us a few seconds to recognize; they seemed out of place.
Soon after Clovis we entered Texas and saw an immediate difference. Cotton appears to be king around here.
We changed our clocks to Central Time and continued on to Lubbock, where we looked up the local Wal-mart, checked whether we could stay, then sought out the nearest Starbucks for an iced-tea, and a Walgreen’s, hoping to get a flu shot. All the flu vaccine is gone in this area, though. We’ll have to keep checking as we go.
We had supper in the van at Maxey Park in Lubbock and took a short walk after to the lake.
As darkness neared we returned to the Wal-mart and shopped to replenish supplies, then blogged the evening away. It’s quite windy here tonight. The winds were coming from the west as we drove today and I’m sure that helped the gas mileage but it appears they’ve swung south and become stronger, which may give us a less-than-comfortable night.
-------------------------------------------------
Sunday, 18 October-
Today our friends had church responsibilities so we had most of the morning to ourselves. I walked down to the nearby Smith’s Grocery and had a cappuccino at the Starbucks in their lobby while Labashi did a bit of laundry and relaxed.
After lunch Labashi’s brother took us and the two boys to the Albuquerque Zoo. What a nice zoo it was! We were surprised to see that most animals were out and all appeared very healthy and active. The polar bears were incredible and were inadvertently hilarious as they played with ‘floaties’ (giant floating discs). The snow leopards were an unexpected treat (and had two young ones) and the jet-black jaguar mysterious and possessed of burning eyes which gave me chills to imagine meeting in the wild.
We finished off the afternoon at the zoo’s climbing play-space where the boys had a blast. Finally, they kicked us out at 1730 after the zoo closed.
We went out that evening to the County Line, a bar-be-que restaurant where Labashi and I split a full rack of baby-back ribs. Labashi likes the fall-off-the-bone type of ribs and these definitely weren’t that. They had a tarry covering of burnt skin and wanted to stick to the bone but once you decide to just pick up the ribs with your fingers and dig in, they were excellent.
At home we said our goodbyes to the folks who we wouldn’t see in the morning and read for an hour before sleep.
-------------------------------------------------------
Saturday, 17 October-
Today we awoke to another beautiful New Mexico day. The forecast is for mid-Seventies and clear for the next few days with overnights into the mid-Thirties here. We took a tour of the house and continued the conversations from the night before and then that afternoon we went to another house her brother is selling in this cooled-off market. Afterwards, we drove to the Sandia Aerial Tramway, the world’s longest.
We caught the tram going up the east side of the valley just as the sun was setting on the west. Though it was still 70 as we boarded the tram at 6000 feet, it was 42 at the top’s 10,000-foot level but fortunately the winds were very light.
We spent about an hour looking at and photographing the view and the small Forest Service visitor’s center, then had a drink at the restaurant. Labashi and I split a ‘Black Diamond’, (which was Bailey’s, Kahlua, coffee and a bit of hot cocoa) while our friends had a hot cocoa liberally doused with peppermint schnapps. Lovely!
Later that evening we had leftovers from a birthday party at the house, then sat up talking for a while.
------------------------------------------------------
Friday, 16 October-
We left El Morro this morning and continued eastward through the Indian reservations on Route 53.
In a short while we came upon the El Malpais National Monument. The ‘malpais’ or ‘badlands’ are lava from the many volcanoes here. At the visitor’s center I noticed that the Continental Divide Trail goes through here and I talked with the ranger at some length about it. I’ve been impressed by the CDT at every trail crossing and want to read more about the experiences of the CDT thru-hikers on Trailjournals.com.
After El Malpais, we continued eastward, which then turned a bit north toward Grants and then into New Mexico.
We soon were on I-40 East but noticed signs advertising Sky City, an Acoma Indian pueblo. The sign that attracted my attention was one advertising traditional Acoma foods. We diverted some 15 miles off the Interstate to visit this out-of-the-way pueblo and visitor’s center.
The valley in which the pueblo lies looks like something out of a movie. You descend down off the mesa into a deep, wide valley strewn with fantastic shapes of massive bluffs and standing rocks. Across the valley lies another mesa, atop which is a pueblo.
At the visitor’s center we bought tickets for a tour and while we waited we had a delicious red chile poblano stew and fry bread. A small bus then took us up the mesa and into the center of the pueblo. We later learned the road had been built by whites who were making a movie in the Twenties. Otherwise, the only way in and out is via a hidden canyon and steps and hand-holds carved into the sandstone.
We had a long tour of the pueblo and it was very well done. We learned the pueblo is of course the historical home of the Acoma people. Still today, there’s no electricity and no running water. In general the Acoma live in nearby homes much like ours or perhaps in Albuquerque but have their homes in the pueblo for weekends and ceremonies. Upon retirement, some Acoma may live full-time in the pueblo though of course many choose to continue to live outside the pueblo.
Our Indian guide had a good sense of humor. When we stood on an area looking down from the mesa at the tops of ravens below, he said those ravens are known as the Acoma Air Force. And at the one tree on the pueblo (next to a water-collection basin), he said his friends call it the Acoma National Forest. He spoke of the kivas where traditional ceremonies are held but simply said he would not speak of or describe the ceremonies themselves.
There are 14 clans within the Acoma people, most with names like Wolf and Bear but our guide’s clan is the Pumpkin clan.
Our tour concluded at the old straw-and-mud church, built in 1629 and it was very impressive, as was the five-levels deep cemetery.
After our tour we climbed down the stone stairway and there were several spots that made us blanch. We had to turn around and use the handholds to keep from falling and the ‘stairs’ were merely impressions in the rock. A fall would have been very nasty, though it would have ‘only’ been ten or fifteen feet since the ‘stairway’ was more of a trail leading from ledge to ledge.
After making it safely back to the visitor’s center we had a snack at the café and than bid a fond goodbye to Sky City.
Back on I-40 East we noticed we crossed through Laguna Indian lands, then Isleta Indian lands as Albuquerque and the Sandia Mountains came into view.
We arrived in Albuquerque at the rush hour but had little problem finding our way to Labashi’s brother’s home in the northeastern foothills. This was our first visit to Albuquerque but we immediately liked the look of it, particularly in those foothills.
We spent the evening catching up as we all went out to a Mexican restaurant and had a wonderful time.
------------------------------------------------------
Thursday, 15 October-
This morning we took nice, long showers in the state campground. We’ve learned to take a folding chair and our Buddy heater in to the shower room, particularly when the weather’s cooler (like this morning’s 38 degrees) and the shower building is made of a stone-based material. It makes a world of difference to have a bit of heat and a comfortable (and dry) seat for undressing and dressing. (We’re so spoiled!!)
We then used the GPS to find a local coffee shop (“Java Deli”) listed in the wififreespots.com listing for Show Low so Labashi could ship off one of her Oregon Trail logs to family and friends.
We then hit the road again, bound (in general) for Albuquerque. We could have zipped up to US40 to shorten the trip but instead took the secondary roads through the Zuni and Navajo reservations, crossing into New Mexico around lunch time.
We bought freshly-baked bread from an Indian bakery in Zuni, home of the Zuni Pueblo, the most traditional of the 27 pueblos still in existence in New Mexico and had it for a roadside lunch in the van.
After driving through miles and miles of ranchland, we came to El Morro National Monument. It’s know for having a centuries-old water source at the base of a massive white rock called ‘The Bluff’ (El Morro in Spanish) and for inscriptions left by people visiting the water source in their travels. The oldest inscriptions are by Spanish explorers who came through the area as early as 1605. Also, atop the rock is a partially-excavated pueblo dating to the 13th Century and thought to have consisted of 800 rooms to support a community of about 1500 people.
The water source is a pool 12 feet deep and holding up to 200,000 gallons of water. It’s not fed by a spring but by rain water and by snow melt.
After touring the visitor’s center, we walked the trail past the rock inscriptions and petroglyphs, then climbed steep switchbacks to the top of El Morro. There we walked a narrow path across open rock, at times with steep fall-off’s on both sides, to get to the pueblo. A few rooms were reconstructed but most of the 800 rooms are still under stones and earth. So this is what an unexcavated site looks like. The clues are subtle but the shapes and contours say there’s a large pueblo here.
After our 2-mile walk we descended to the visitor’s center again and then on to the campground in another portion of the Monument. The campground charges no fee this time of year and our two hours of walking put us at a good stopping time.
We spent the remainder of daylight cooking our prairie-coal hot dogs for supper. Then we took a walk around the campground and chatted with a few of the other campers. Next door is a woman from Albuquerque who is camping in her truck camper with her dog, Stella. We also met a guy from San Diego who’s camping in a Tab trailer. These trailers are about the size of a Casita but they have the shape of a teardrop trailer. This fellow bought his Tab off Ebay and loves it for its comfortable simplicity, much like we love Mocha Joe for the same.
We blogged and I did some skywatching to while away the pleasant evening hours. This was one of my better skywatching nights. I saw four satellites, one nearly as bright as the brightest stars in the sky. I also saw what I call a ‘sizzler’. It was a shooting star so bright that it seems it must be making a sizzling noise.
------------------------------------------------------
Wednesday, 14 October-
This morning we left Cholla campground and drove along Roosevelt Lake to the nearby visitor’s center. I talked at some length with the permits lady about the Tonto Basin permit system. Here I am with my Interagency Pass (formerly called a National Parks Annual Pass) which, when raising the price from $65 to $80, the government said could be used for multiple agencies, including the Bureau of Land Management, the US Forest Service, the Reclamation Service, and others. But when I arrive at this US Forest Service site here at Roosevelt Lake, I find they want me to also pay a daily fee for any use of Forest Service facilities here. I can, explained the lady, get an Interagency Pass upgrade for $15 and that will allow me into picnic areas and primitive campgrounds. But if I want to get into a developed campground I have to buy a daily pass. And if I don’t have an Interagency Pass I would have to have the same daily pass. In other words, there’s no benefit whatsoever to having the Interagency Pass at this site.
She also explained that the marina next door to the visitor’s center is owned by the US Forest Service but it’s operated by a vendor and you must have a separate vendor pass to enter the grounds (at six dollars per car and four dollars per boat per day).
Fortunately, we were done with the US Forest Service. We drove on to the Tonto National Monument. This Monument has two 12th Century cliff dwellings, one a half-mile walk above the visitor’s center and the other out of sight and available only by special arrangement for a ranger-led tour.
The visitor’s center movie was one of the best we’ve seen and we later learned it’s an award-winner. Afterwards we began the very steep walk up to the cliff-dwelling, knowing all the while that it’s blocked off due to an infestation of Africanized honeybees (at least that’s the story!). We had a wonderful walk, though. After we were about half-way up, ranger Eddie Colyutt came along on patrol and we struck up a conversation. We spent the better part of the next hour chatting with him about everything from other archeological sites in the park (there are 72 of them); the reasons the people left (overcrowding, drought, over-use of resources); palo verde trees (this green-barked tree is the state tree of Arizona, is a relative new-comer to Arizona, is believed to have been a key factor in the Indians changing from living in a widely-dispersed, hunter-gatherer lifestyle to a farming lifestyle; saguaro cactus (to get moisture from one, dig into it like you would to take a plug out of a watermelon, then suck the plug); the quality of the National Park Service (top-rate, according to Eddie, who has worked for three different agencies in his 30 years in Federal Service); the paving of the road to the remote little town of Young (being done by the state for tourism but it ruins the remoteness of the town); and on and on. Eddie is a very intelligent guy (and says he’s a survivalist) and we greatly enjoyed our talk with him.
After Tonto Monument, we drove on east to Globe, a copper-mining town and home of an early pueblo (‘Besh-ba-gawah’, by name). This wasn’t a cliff-dwelling but rather a stone-and-adobe pueblo abandoned, like the cliff dwelling at Tonto) by 1300. Today, the adobe is almost all gone but part of the pueblo has been rebuilt. We were able to walk about in a three-story reconstruction which had ladders between the levels and was furnished much as it would have been when in use. Very nicely, done, citizens of Globe!
We then continued east on Route 60 into the Fort Apache Reservation. We drove for the better part of a hundred miles through beautiful mountains, going up and down between 3000 and 7000 feet and back and forth through the vegetation zones associated with those altitudes.
We finally reached the town of Show Low. We didn’t actually enter the town, we turned just before it to go to Fool’s Hollow Lake Recreation Area for our campground for the night.
Our campground is nice but a little more citified than what we were looking for. We had hoped to go out into the National Forest tonight but directions didn’t match the map and we were ready to stop.
After supper I took a walk around the campground in the dark, looking at the sky. I didn’t see any shooting stars tonight but the Milky Way looks like a searchlight coming up from the southern horizon. Very cool!
We blogged and I read a copy of ‘Family Motor Coaching’ I picked up from the book-swap box at the after-hours sign-in station. I’m stunned to read ads for motor home ‘pads’ selling for $75-150K in resort areas. And the entry-level motor home featured this month costs $179K. So you spend $180K on a motorhome whose value plummets like a rock the moment you drive it off the lot and costs you $1000 to have the tire pressure checked. And to have a parking spot in a resort area, you also have to pay another $100K for the privilege of using a clubhouse and pool, perhaps even a golf course in the exclusive, gated “Motorcoach Resort”. And I guarantee you there’s an owner’s-association fee to pay that goes up every year. And the ‘pads’, like timeshares, are difficult to resell.
A fool and his money, say I.
------------------------------------------------------
Tuesday, 13 October-
We awoke in our Motel 6 room this morning, both having done only ‘OK’ in the sleeping department. I didn’t get to sleep for awhile and both of us were awakened repeatedly starting at about 0500 by slamming doors. This particular Motel 6 appears to be popular with work crews judging by the number of utility trucks in the parking lot and apparently they like to go to work early.
Labashi cut my hair and we took care of phone calls, emails, and web ‘stuff’ we needed to get out of the way before getting back on the road.
After checking out we drove to the nearby Wal-mart to re-supply and had lunch at the Red Robin across the street.
We then began driving across Arizona toward Payson. I loved seeing the land and the different types of vegetation. Down low is sage and mesquite but it doesn’t take much elevation (or water) to introduce trees, yet the understory is wide open. Along a creek will be willows and cottonwoods and otherwise it will tend to be juniper and ponderosa pine.
Now we are starting to see various cactuses. We see some prickly pear (and a few appear to be in bloom!) and late in the day we started seeing the classic desert cactus, the saquaro.
After crossing through the Prescott Valley, we climbed and descended into Camp Verde and the Verde Valley, then crossed yet another range of mountains and finally hit Payson. We merely passed through, though, and then headed south toward Phoenix.
We were only a few miles outside of Payson when we began looking for prospective campsites. We found Teddy Roosevelt Lake recreation area and Cholla campground by 1700. The campground is a very nice Forest Service facility and is relatively empty. And campsites were only $6.
We had a spectacular sunset while Labashi was cooking supper. The clouds lit up a brilliant red against an electric-blue sky I don’t think I’ve ever seen before.
After supper I was fascinated by the stars coming out so quickly. The Milky Way was visible before it even got completely dark. I saw four shooting stars and two satellites in only about an hour of watching.
We spent the rest of the evening blogging and reading.
********* END OF POST **************
posted by Bezabor&Labashi | 23:59
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home