Santa Fe to home via US50

(posted from home)
(This post covers 22 – 27 April, 2010)

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Tuesday, 27 April-

Today we cleaned out the van and took care of the normal re-entry-after-vacation tasks. We picked up the mail and buzzed through it to be sure we didn't have any missed bills or important notices. Labashi went grocery shopping and I took care of checking out the vehicles and setting up a round of battery-charging for the vehicles which haven't moved in the last month. It's not raining today, so that's a welcome change after the last few days of never-ending rain.
It's also wonderful to see all the greenery around here. We completely missed Labashi's daffodils this year, however. The shoots were just poking up through the ground when we left and today I see there's just one sad-looking bloom left. I suppose that's a small price to pay for the privilege of seeing the deserts in bloom, though.
We spent the evening watching a PBS documentary about the major economic theories and their failings in accurately modeling market behaviors (as revealed by the 2008 financial crisis).

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Monday, 26 April-

This morning we awoke to --- wait for it---- even MORE rain.
After breakfast we elected to go off of Route 50 and head for I-70 and the PA Turnpike rather than wind through West Virginia's hills in the rain.
We spent the morning working our way toward the Cabela's at Wheeling, WV. Labashi had expressed interest in an LL-Bean-style moc-boot and we had struck out in our search for them at Bass Pro and Gander Mountain stores we'd encounter on our trip. I bought a cool 175-lumen LED flashlight and a box of CR123 batteries. Labashi did find some shoes she liked but the moc-boots rubbed her ankle so we struck out again.
We were happy to reach the Turnpike and beeline for home. We finally exited the turnpike at 1800 and stopped for supper at the nearby Hillside restaurant.
I'm happy to report we found nothing wrong at home. Our internet connection worked right away but I did have to call to get the cable TV connection working--- it apparently times out when I have the cable-box powered down for such a long period.
We spent the evening catching up on email and web news and for some reason weren't sleepy until almost midnight.

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Sunday, 25 April-

This morning we awoke once again to the promise of a day-long drive in rain. The night had been very windy and we had had to park the van near the Wal-mart to cut down the rocking of the van by gusts and fortunately that worked well. It seems odd to have so much rain when we had almost none for more than a month. We had hit one short rainstorm on I-8 in San Diego but that didn't even last twenty minutes. That was it!
Today Route 50 took us across the remainder of Illinois and into Ohio. It's still a good road though not as open as Kansas and Missouri. The small towns are a kick. There are many 'twirly-top' ice-cream parlors and 'tourist court'-style motels, so many, in fact, that we kept commenting on how it felt like we had gone back in time. We saw many, many older cars and lots of farm equipment.
After our long day we had chicken quesadillas at a Taco Bell for supper, then drove on to the Wal-mart at Athens, OH for the night. There we rented 'The Informant' with Matt Damon. This one seemed entertaining for awhile, then got complicated and I believe it lost us. In any case, we have to do some more reading about this one.

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Saturday, 24 April-

Last night after I finished blogging for the evening we were treated to quite a light show. As I was sitting in the passenger seat working away on the laptop, I noticed a flash of light in the distance. I stepped out of the van and noticed a half-moon and fluffy-white clouds overhead and a few flashes of light in the far distance. After a minute, I went back into the van.
About 20 minutes later I noticed the flashes of lightning were much closer now. I again stepped out and now the sky above us was black with roiling clouds and we had cloud-to-cloud lightning bolts every ten seconds or so.
Oddly, there was no thunder. We had a fresh wind rustling through the nearby trees and the wind swung around to the south about 20 degrees but otherwise, we had no indication of a passing storm other than the vivid, but silent lightning flashes, now filling the eastern hemisphere of the sky.
We sat in the van watching the lightning show for another half-hour. The main part of the storm passed off to our east though we could still see lightning far to the south. It must have been a massive storm to cover that much sky.
After breakfast we got back on the road. For this trip home we're following US50 and it has been a delight. For the most part, we can do 65 miles per hour through very open farmland, then have to slow to 45 through a village, but those are small. We have no truck traffic to speak of and in fact not much traffic of any kind. It's quite nice.
We love seeing the changes in the landscape. As we started across Kansas our path led through massive, rolling pastures with many cattle. This is very much a Western landscape but it's a bit confusing to the eye-- it's just way too green to represent the West. But there are the same corrals and windmill-fed watering tanks and rodeo notices and tack shops (and pickups!) as Out West.
As we made our way across Kansas the pastures became smaller and had fewer volcanic outcroppings. Yet when we entered Missouri, we had much the same impression-- this is more like the West than the East.
Though we enjoyed the drive for the landscape, we did have a problem. It had begun raining lightly and now there was just no letting up. I became frustrated with the ever-skipping windshield wipers and stopped to apply some Rain-X. That normally works but this time it's not working, perhaps because the wiper blade was replaced on the last inspection cycle.
By mid-afternoon we started seeing more crowded roads. That turned kind of ridiculous at Lake of the Ozarks where traffic was very heavy as we wound around and past the lake in a heavy rain. We just kept plugging along and eventually circled around the south side of St. Louis. We were close enough to see the Gateway Arch but were surprised how empty the roads were here on the south side.
As sunset approached we found a Lone Star restaurant for a supper break. When we're in a making-miles frame of mind we like to take a supper break, then press on for another few hours of driving.
Today we found our Wal-mart for the night at Carlyle, Illinois. We didn't get in until 2000 but still elected to rent a movie from the Redbox. Tonight it was 'Up In The Air' with George Clooney. We liked it as we were watching it but thought it had a problem-- it didn't know how to bring the plotline to an end.

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Friday, 23 April-

We had some blustery winds last night but they weren't strong enough to cause us a problem. We'd get the occasional shake of the van but it was light enough that we could sleep through them. I woke about 0300, however, and couldn't get back to sleep for several hours. Labashi was similarly affected and this time we couldn't blame it one the flight of tequilas. We resolved our problem by reading. Labashi is reading 'Tikal', a novel about the Mayan culture along the Guatemalan border. I'm reading 'Flashback', a Nevada Barr mystery novel sited in Dry Tortugas National Park, some 70 miles off the coast of Florida.
Despite the late-night reading we woke around 0700 but we were so close to the Pacific-Mountain Time Zone border that for all intents and purposes it was 0800.
We drove into Clayton (NM) where I noticed an office of the Kiowa National Grasslands as I drove by. We turned back, hoping to find info on where we could visit a grasslands visitor center. As it turns out, this was it!
I spent a very pleasurable half-hour talking with Tom Mc___ about the grasslands. The grasslands they manage consist of parcels spread across 200 miles of high plains, stretching from the panhandle of Texas, across the panhandle of Oklahoma, and into northern New Mexico. The grasslands in many cases are lands which were turned back to the government during the Dust Bowl. They are managed for cattle grazing. The current price for grazing is $1.35 per AMU or animal-month-unit. In other words, the 'permittee' pays the government $1.35 per month for each animal grazing these federal lands. Tom says the rate is set by Congress and he obviously thinks it's too cheap.
Each rancher who wishes to lease grazing lands must come to the table with a ranch of at least 160 acres. And he/she must pay for any improvements to the grazing lands. Improvements must be approved by the government managers of the grasslands and in return the permittee is given credits toward his/her bill. The system tends to keep the same parcels assigned to the same ranchers year after year. If a rancher sells his/her 160-acre base parcel, the permit rights of any leased lands are generally recommended to the government to be assigned to the new owner.
When I mentioned that we had learned that the assumed acreage needed per cow in western New Mexico is 40 acres per cow, Tom said they use the same figure here. So it's not difficult to see that homesteaders who qualified for a 160-acre parcel had only enough land for four cows while back east, a 160-acre parcel would support 160 cows.
I noticed that some proscribed burning is done according to pictures posted on the board. Tom said that's generally done for noxious or invasive weed control though it does tend to be good for a parcel. He also said that a parcel must be 'rested' at least 60 days during the grazing season. This is done by dividing the parcels into pastures and moving the cattle from pasture to pasture to both avoid over-grazing the stubble to shorter-than-acceptable lengths and providing the rest period.
I asked Tom how a permittee might lose his permit rights and he said it would generally have to be something serious like permitting animals on the land outside of the proscribed grazing season or allowing cattle to eat the stubble too low.
The other interesting thing we learned from Tom was there had been a tornado a mile wide in Kansas last night!
We continued driving northeast and shortly crossed into Oklahoma. We weren't far from the Texas border either. This particular panhandle area of Oklahoma was once called 'No Man's Land' and is only about 35 miles wide. We drove through it in short order, noticing that already the grasses were getting greener and thicker.
We crossed into Kansas along the old Santa Fe Trail and had lunch at a McDonald's (our first Mickey-D stop for the trip) and then continued on to Dodge City. We talked for a half-hour or so with the visitor center women at Dodge City and learned that the two large beef-cattle operations east of town process some 10,000 head of cattle a day.
We turned more easterly now out of Dodge City and soon arrived in Greenburg, the site of the 2007 tornado which wiped out the city. There's still plenty of evidence of the tornado but we were surprised to not find a visitor's center. It appears the work is still concentrating on getting the city back to normal. The hospital opened recently and the new high school will open for the next school year.
Since we couldn't find a visitor's center we stopped at the Big Well Gift Shop. The Big Well had been one of Greenburg's claims to fame--- the world's largest and deepest hand-dug water well. We spoke with Helen Shrader, who had lived through the tornado crouched in the hallway of her home a few blocks away. She says her home is now in the landfill.
After Greenburg we continued East in the stronger-and-stronger winds. The winds were only supposed to be gusting to around 40 miles per hour but they were dead across our path. We could see oncoming tractor-trailers and larger Rvs leaning precariously into our lane. And when we passed a wind-break of some sort, Mocha Joe would suddenly dart to the right, then be thrown back left once past the wind-break.
We stopped in Witchita at the Wal-mart and Sam's Club to see if we could find a hidey-hole for the night but they were completely open to the wind so we moved on. Finally, at El Dorado State Park, east of the city, we found a campsite with some shielding by trees. Also, by that time (1900 or so), the winds were dying down a bit, making our site more comfortable.
We spent the evening blogging and reading and before dark I took a short walk along the El Dorado Reservoir.

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Thursday, 22 April-

In the night we had a bit of wind and some sleet and today was supposed to be quite a bit colder than yesterday.
We left Santa Fe this morning. We chose the High Road to Taos for our departure and that turned out to be a great choice. The route took us as up to 9000 feet as it rambled through the pine-covered mountains. As we drove we started noticing snow on the oncoming cars and soon we hit fresh snow in the mountain towns. The roads were clear but the light covering of snow was very pretty on the ponderosa pines in the bright sunlight.
In Taos we did a bit of shopping for supplies and took a turn through the visitor parking lot at Taos Pueblo. We had been there years before and today was colder and very muddy so we didn't stay.
We had been at Acoma Pueblo last Fall and had a tour and we know that Taos Pueblo doesn't normally do tours anyway so we didn't feel we'd miss anything but the many vendors and we had seen many vendors on the Plaza in Santa Fe.
We crossed the mountains to Angel Fire, an upscale skiiing and golfing resort. We enjoyed seeing the mountain valley and Eagle Nest Lake, then descending through Cimarron Canyon to the town of Cimarron. There we visited the Philmont Scout Ranch, a place I've wanted to see since I was a Boy Scout (in the Sixties!) We toured the museum and research library and then the Trading Post.
We then continued out Route 64 toward the extreme northeast corner of New Mexico. After passing through Raton we noticed the wind had shifted and it soon became very strong and on-the-nose. At one point we got out of the van at a rest area and had trouble closing the doors. As Labashi tried to re-enter the van, her longish hair blew straight up and nearly caught in the door as it slammed shut. That would have hurt!
As we drove on we could see the dark, low, rolling clouds of a fast-moving squall line to the north of us. We learned from our weather radio that the front was moving north-northwest and we were driving east and could see the end of the squall line. Sure enough some 35 miles later the wind had subsided quite a bit and we had clearer sky ahead. By the time we reached Clayton, it appeared we were past it.
At Clayton we turned back to the northwest toward Clayton Lake State Recreation Area for our campsite for the night. As the sunset came the sky cleared and we had a beautiful sun on the lake.
After supper we read and blogged and planned our route for the next few days.
Our drive today was also very interesting for its dramatic changes in scenery. We left the high desert of Santa Fe and crossed the New Mexico Rockies to Cimarron. Coming out of Cimarron Canyon, we had a sudden change from mountain pines to high plains. In fact, Cimarron's motto is “Where the Rockies Meet the Plains!”.
Northeast of Cimarron we saw massive ranches with a few beef cattle spread widely about. But on the drive from Raton to Clayton we crossed from The West to The East (OK, the MidWest). The sparse, dry, yellow, sprinkled-with-chollas vegetation of Cimarron changed to green, grassy, smaller ranches with herds of cattle. Very interesting changes for so short a distance.


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More Joshua Tree ; Lake Havasu City ; Grand Canyon ; Navajo National Monument ; Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park ; Santa Fe

(posted from Santa Fe Library)
(This post covers 15 – 21 April, 2010)

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Wednesday, 21 April-

Last night's tequila-fest put me to sleep very heavily early in the evening but then I woke around 0100 and couldn't get back to sleep. Labashi was similarly affected. Fortunately we both have reading material so we just read for a few hours until we faded, then woke up a bit late-- 0800-ish.
Today we returned to Canyon Road, the galleries district in Santa Fe. We spent the day finishing out our tour of galleries. We saw some really incredible art work but, fortunately, none we can't live without. But these walks always give Labashi ideas and later on those turn into projects back home.
Late in the afternoon we drove north of Santa Fe to a Mexican restaurant called Gabriel's near the Camel Rock casino. We had talked again to the same gallery gal who had recommended Maria's and she had praised Gabriel's table-side-made guacamole. She was right! Good stuff. We also split a tamales plate to see how the Santa Fe tamales compared to the special ones we had had in Tucson. Tucson won this time but the Santa Fe ones were also good.
We then looked up the local Wal-mart for a few supplies, then drove back across town to the Cross of the Martyrs for a sunset view of the city. As we left there we saw a sign for the library so spent the evening on the web and reading newpapers there before heading back to our campsite at Rancherias de Santa Fe campground.


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Tuesday, 20 April -

We left Angel Peak this morning and drove down Route 550 toward Santa Fe. Our goal today was to find a reasonably-priced campground with showers and wi-fi near Santa Fe and then begin exploring the city.
Our drive took all morning but we did find an RV and camping park to our liking called Rancheria of Santa Fe for under $20 a night. We had glorious showers and Labashi spent an hour or so figuring out which galleries she wanted to visit.
Against all odds we found a parking spot right in the heart of the gallery district on Canyon Road. We had gotten a late start but still managed to see a dozen-or-so galleries before 1700 closing.
In one of the last galleries I asked about a recommendation for supper and we happened to hit what I call a 'live-wire' type of person. She had asked us our opinion on changes she's making to the gallery's web page so I knew she was a bit out of the ordinary. And on the subject of restaurants she not only had opinions, she wasn't afraid to express them. She gave us a half-dozen options and wasn't shy about telling us which were over-priced or over-hyped.
We selected “Maria's” for dinner, based largely on the fact that we could order a flight of top-notch tequilas. Again, we found the last parking spot available and it was right by the door-- more Labashi-luck. We had to rely on our waiter, Kevin, to recommend three tequilas. They ranged from a young, clear one which reminded me of paint-thinner (Chinaco Silver @ $75 a bottle) to a pink one aged in oak and possessed of raspberry-chocolate notes (Asombroso Reposado @ $125 a bottle) and a yellowish, earthy one (Trago Anejo @ $85 a bottle). We thoroughly enjoyed comparing the three tequilas but perhaps the most important lesson we learned is we're not 'into' the sport of tasting exotic tequilas. We then had our meal-- chicken fajitas-- and again thanked our gallery friend for pointing us to Maria's.
After supper we drove back to the campground and spent the evening reading, blogging, and planning tomorrow's visit to Santa Fe.

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Monday, 19 April-

This morning we drove on to Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park. We loved being in Monument Valley and this park allowed us to get up close to the massive stone mesas. The Park is well developed and has a hotel, restaurant, museum, and trading post but its best feature for us is the 17-mile dirt road winding through the red-rock mesas. One stop along the way is John Ford Point where you expect to see a stagecoach cross the dirt road in front of a backdrop of mesas stretching off into the distance. The feeling is so real you see the image in black and white, just like the movie.
After we finished the long, dusty, and lonely tour drive, we headed north toward Mexican Hat. Along the way we were climbing out of Monument Valley and it was interesting to see the changes in the rocks as we climbed from the valley floor to the plain above. We continued winding our way through Indian reservations all afternoon and reached Shiprock around 1700. Off in the distance is the massive form of Ship Rock, a beacon to white pioneers and a sacred site to Indians.
In this area we saw the amazing transformation from the very dry lands to irrigated lands. Also, there's quite a presence of oil and natural gas rigs and support vendors.
In Farmington we stopped briefly at the Wal-mart for a few supplies. That one had a nice parking lot for overnighting but I wanted to get out in the country. We drove on to Angel Peak National Recreation Area, some 35 miles southeast. There we had a free BLM campsite overlooking a massive badlands area and with a 360-degree view. As night fell we could see the lights of Farmington and Bloomfield twinkling in the distance. We had a couple of very strong margaritas while we watched the lights, then called it a night.

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Sunday, 18 April-

We thought we'd simply be driving out of Grand Canyon National Park this morning but we stopped at the spectacular views at Lipan Point and Desert View and before we knew it much of the morning was gone.
We did get underway in late morning and drove out the east entrance, then to Tuba City, AZ. At Tuba City we parked in the parking lot for the Navajo Museum but it turned out to be closed on Sundays. We had lunch in the parking lot and pressed on.
By mid-afternoon we were driving along listening to Navajo Radio (AM 660, Window Rock) and finally arrived at Navajo National Monument. We walked the Sandal Trail, which took us to an overlook of the 13th century cliff dwelling/farming village. We also took it the visitor's film and museum-- one of the better ones we've seen.
This National Monument has free campsites so we decided to stay even though it was only 1600. If we'd go on we'd miss the next site because we'd be arriving too late in the day and there is no nearby camping listed.
We had a nice break and I took two walks, one before supper and one after. Labashi joined me on the second one and we found a wonderful overlook above the campground and on Indian lands. It's great to be out here away from civilization and camping in the Indian lands.

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Saturday, 17 April-

This morning I was awakened at 0530 by our next-door neighbor's generator. He had an extra-quiet generator and apparently thought it wouldn't bother anyone. He left at 0600 but I couldn't get back to sleep. We arose at 0700 and after our morning rituals we drove over to the visitor's center at Mather's Point. I loved seeing the detailed maps of the area and then we walked out to the rim and then on another mile to the Yavapai Observation station. From there we could see the tents and mules at a campground thousands of feet below and we could see a few rafts in distant Colorado River.
After returning to the van we drove east Desert View. We visited the Tusayan Ruins and Museum and hit a few of the viewpoints along the rim on the way back. We then took a National Forest Road back to a trailhead for the Arizona Trail. We took a late-afternoon break at a dispersed camp site in the Kaibob National Forest. I tried to nap but just couldn't quite fall asleep. We then went to the nearby fire tower at Grandview and climbed the tower and shot video clips of the surrounding forest and views of the Grand Canyon.
We then headed west, thinking we'd take a late-afternoon tour of the Hermit's Cove area. But as we figured out the timing we realized we'd not have enough time to do that yet toda. We elected instead to have dinner at the fancy El Tovar Hotel. We figured we'd have to register then walk around the area for a few hours before we could get a table. But luck was with us-- the last table available was ours for the asking.
We had a long, wonderful supper. Labashi had deviled crabcakes and I had a tenderloin and shrimp dinner and we shared. Our dinner was fairly pricey at $75 but when we saw that rooms were going for $174-475 per night, we felt lucky to be staying in the campground.
After dinner we just had time to see the sun set on the Rim Trail and then we drove to the Shrine of Ages for the evening ranger presentation. Tonight it was a presentation about the weather in the canyon and this one turned out to be a dud. The ranger had interesting information but was a terrible presenter and we were frustrated by the end.
After the presentation we returned to our campsite for the evening and turned in early.


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Friday, 16 April-

This morning we hit the local Wal-mart for ice and a few supplies and then headed north. We soon hit I-40 East. By Kingman, we had somehow developed a craving for a hamburger. We heard the best burgers were at the local Denny's restaurant so gave it a try. The Western Burger wasn't bad!
We then continued east on I-40, eventually leaving the creosote bushes behind and seeing the desert transition to junipers as we climbed the many hills. In Williams, we found a coffee shop with wi-fi and spent a few pleasant hours catching up email, posting the blog update, and checking the news.
The shop was called 'American Flyers' and had a cool bicycling theme and very good coffees and smoothies.
We took Route 64 out of Williams to the Grand Canyon, arriving about 1600. Just as we pulled up to the gate we saw the camping sign changed to 'Tents Only' for Mather campground but decided to give it a shot anyway. We took one of the last spots available and then headed over to the nearby Shrine of Ages parking area. From there we walked to the Rim Trail and along the Rim Trail for a mile or so to Grand Canyon Village. We saw sunset in front of the El Tovar hotel, toured the art work at the Kolb Studio, and got a look at the upper reaches of the Bright Angel Trail.
We then hiked bac to the van just before the start of the evening program at the Shrine of the Ages. A ranger did a credible job with the theme-- Humans in The Park-- a history of human habitation in Grand Canyon.
We were still keyed up by that time so we drove over to the El Tovar (the fancy hotel) and had drinks in the cocktail lounge. We then drove back to our campsite for the night and immediately crashed.

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Thursday, 15 April-

We spent the morning in Joshua Tree National Park. After waking to a 30-degree morning we drove east from our campground at Jumbo Rock and then turned south toward Desert Center. Shortly after the turn we noticed a significant change in the desert. As the altitude slowly drops the Joshua-tree yuccas thin and then disappear entirely. The creosote bushes (aka greasewood) and ocotillo take over. This is the transition zone from the Mojave to the Sonoran desert systems and this northern Sonoran desert is also known as the Coloradan. We drove south some ten miles-- as far as the Cholla Gardens-- and turned around. On the way back we stopped at several roadside exhibits explaning the geology. The rounded, sandy-colored monzogranite rocks (we learned) had surfaced through cracks in the overlying Pinto gneiss rock. And here in this short section of road we could see where the two intermixed.
This bit of geology intrigued us so we drove back past Jumbo Rock to the Geology Drive. This 23-mile loop was shown as a 4-wheel-drive-recommended road on the map but we thought we'd give it a try. As we entered the drive it looked good and we figured we could just back out if we got into bad stuff. So starts many an adventure!
We spent the next two hours making the geology loop and enjoying it all the way. The road turned out to have some deeper sand here and there but it was a granite-particle sand and would tend to pack down as the van tires sank into it and stop the sinking within a few inches of the surface. We've been in Florida sugar sand, on the other hand, which doesn't seem to pack at all and you're soon in to the axle.
After the Geology Drive we headed out of the park to Twentynine Palms. We then drove east on Route 62. As you drive out of TwentyNine Palms there's a sign--- No Services for 100 Miles--- and it's completely correct. But we loved the drive. This was very desolate-feeling area. There are no houses, no ranches, nothing but sparse desert all around, mountain-shapes in the distance, dry lakebeds with white gypsum fringes here and there.
After a few hours we reached the Arizona border and the town of Parker. We were surprised to find a new Wal-mart and a new Safeway at the edge of town. Since Safeway had a Starbucks counter, we visited the Safeway for our re-supply shopping.
We then drove north to Lake Havasu City. We found the famous London Bridge but that area just seemed too touristy so we moved on. We found the Lake Havasu State Park and selected a campsite, then I went for a walk while Labashi read. I walked to a nearby desert-plants nature park and then walked up to the bluff overlooking the lake. The problem, though, with both London Bridge and the state park was the extremely loud boats. The launch ramp was near the bluff and some fool was having a problem with his thunder-boat. For the next three hours he revved his unmuffled engine trying to figure out why it had a miss. And when he wasn't revving, there were plenty of cigarette-boats roaring by to keep the ducks and my nerves on edge. The boat noise went on into the wee hours of the morning and all I can say about Lake Havasu City is I'm glad I'm out of there.

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Attacked By Desert Monster ; Arcosanti ; Organ Pipe National Monument ; Yuma ; San Diego

(posted from American Flyer Coffee Company, Williams, AZ)
(This post covers 9 -14 April, 2010)

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Wednesday, 14 April-

This morning we continued up Route 101 into Oceanside and took a turn round the harbor marina looking at boats. We then headed inland across Route 76 to I-15, up through Temecula, then east via SR74 into the San Bernadino National Forest. After a long climb to the top we crossed beautiful meadows to the Pacific Crest Trail crossing. There we took a four-mile hike north and then had a late lunch in the parking lot upon our return.
We then continued across the National Forest and then down a steep, winding descent into Palm Desert. We visited the Santa Rosa and San Jacinto National Monument visitor's center for a break, then continued on to Palm Springs.
From Palm Springs we took SR62 to Joshua Tree National Park, arriving just after the visitor's center closed at 1700. But we were able to pick up a map so we entered the park just as the light was turning reddish. What a sight!
We found a nice pulloff with a view and had supper while the shadows began to fill in the rugged hillsides. In the last hour of daylight we went looking for our campsite and found the campgrounds at Hidden Valley and Ryan's were full. But we did find a great spot at Jumbo Rock.
I still wanted a bit of a walk so walked through the campground, then blogged. Labashi read her Nevada Barr book, “Blind Descent”.

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Tuesday, 13 April-

After our showers and breakfast this morning we drove up to Point Loma and the Cabrillo National Monument. We had perfect weather up there and stayed a long time watching the many planes, helicopters, and ships in action.
We then drove up the coast to La Jolla Cove. We walked around the cove and watched the seals for awhile. Across the bay we could see hang-gliders and paragliders so we drove up to the GliderPort and watched them take off and land.
We then took a long walk at Torrey Pines State Reserve in the late afternoon. We took the Guy Fleming Trail which had lots of variety and surprises.
We then drove north through Del Mar, Solana Beach, and Cardiff-By-The-Sea before reaching Carlsbad State Beach and our campsite for the night. The campsites there are on a high bluff overlooking the ocean so we could watch the tiny little surfers below until darkness came on. At sunset we took a long walk to the lower end of the campground but after returning to the van I was still antsy so walked to the upper end and back and was surprised how long this campground was. It has over 200 sites and they seem to stretch to the horizon. In any case all the walking was good for me... I slept SO well.

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Monday, 12 April-

Last night we rented a movie from the Redbox and watched Michael Moore's “Capitalism-- A Love Affair”. We were interrupted in the middle of the movie by the security guy. The guy asked us to move, then said it wasn't a Wal-mart policy that we move but the city has an ordinance about sleeping in a vehicle overnight. But he did say we could just move next door to a parking lot there. Now it made no sense to us that the city ordinance wouldn't also apply there but we moved to appease the security guy.
This morning we had some shopping to do in the Wal-mart so I asked a manager what the story is. It seems the city of Yuma does not extend as far as the Wal-mart location but they annexed the Wal-mart property (only) to the city in order to collect taxes from them. But that also means the parking lot beside the Wal-mart property is county, not city property. The manager also said Yuma police are ticketing without warning and the tickets are very expensive so I'm glad we moved.
We drove on into California within minutes of leaving Yuma. The Imperial Dunes are right on the border, running along both sides of I-8 and are quite a sight to see in this area.
We then exited the interstate to go into Calexico and took a short drive down to the border entrance station. Once we exited the interstate and until we got back on we were surprised to see how extensive the agriculture is. It's all irrigated, of course, by the fields are huge and perfectly tended.
Once back on I-8 we began climbing from something like 300 feet to 7000 feet. Once in San Diego County we took the Sunrise Highway exit and began winding our way through the Cleveland National Forest. I've been on this road several times and it has always been beautiful but today it was windy and cold. The visitor's center at Mount Laguna and the campgrounds are closed though we did visit the Laguna Mountain Lodge store. We then drove on a short distance and had lunch at the Desert View picnic grounds where we had a miles-and-miles-long view of the desert the whole way to the Salton Sea.
We then continued north to the little town of Julian. I've been there on a summer weekend when the streets were lined with motorcycles and fancy convertibles but today it was just the Europeans and us walking the streets to check out the shops.
After Julian we returned to I-8 via Cuyamaca Rancho State Park and again, everything was locked up. But I was glad to see that the fire damage to this area wasn't as bad as I had feared. We could most of the trees had been blackened but they had fresh growth and the understory was filling in again.
We continued west on I-8 into San Diego. We went looking for a campsite right away and found a dry-camping spot at CampLand on Mission Bay for $39. That seems like a lot for what was essentially a parking space but on the other hand it was right on Mission Bay and had a great view across the bay to the city.
We drove into the city around the harbor and ended up behind the convention center. We walked to a restaurant I had really liked on a previous visit but it had since changed hands so we instead had supper at Joe's Crab House. We had very good crab-dip nachos and the plate was so huge that we just left it at that for our meal. Well, that and some giant margaritas.
I then dropped Labashi off at the Fashion Valley Mall to shop a bit. I wasn't interested in the mall experience so drove around a bit refreshing my feel for the San Diego street layout. When I picked her up later on she had found a bargain at Nordstroms.
We returned to the campground and took a short walk around it looking at the lights across the bay. Very nice!

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Sunday, 11 April-

This morning we learned last night's happy ending wasn't so happy after all. The young lady's wallet had apparently been locked up when it was turned in and nobody had the key last night. She had to stay in a motel in Ajo last night and drive back to Organ Pipe this morning. But at least she was able to get it back with all its contents.
This morning we spent several hours driving the Ajo tour road. This 21-mile dirt road took us into the backcountry and led among the distant peaks. The tour guide gave us info about the various plants, animals, and soils. We hadn't been seeing much in the way of wildlife when I spotted a large lizard basking on a rock. I stopped for Labashi to take pictures and after a few shots we got out of Mocha Joe to try for a better angle. As I walked around the back of the van I heard a loud, insect-like buzzing sound.... like a cicada or something. It took me a few seconds to locate the source. It was a rattlesnake--- a Western diamondback coiled in a strike position. I went back to alert Labashi and when we came back the snake was still in its coiled, head-up position but had stopped rattling. We shot photos and video clips for a few minutes and then the rattler seemed to lose its fear and slowly moved away and slid under a bush. The head and neck were very sleek and at first we thought the snake was very young but when we saw the rest of the body it was a little over two feet and about an inch-and-a-half in diameter at its thickest diameter. As we drove away we wondered if we had interrupted its stalk of the basking lizard.
By late morning we finished the tour. We drove to the Mexican border but there was nothing to see so we headed back north and out of Organ Pipe. We stopped for lunch at a roadside table at Why, AZ and then continued up to Interstate 8 at Gila Bend.
We drove west on I-8 for a few hours, fighting a strong headwind all the way. Along the way we came upon Dateland, AZ where we had a 'world famous' date shake. It was very good!
We finally made Yuma late in the afternoon. After a whirlwind drive through the very small historic district we drove to a nearby park and took a break. The park is a nice little city park with a wedding going on and people fishing the pond, walking the paths, strolling the hummingbird garden, playing a bit of disc-golf. We just relaxed and then had a light supper (after the very filling date shake we didn't need much).
As the sun set we drove back east of Yuma to the Wal-mart for the night.


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Saturday, 10 April-

This morning we had breakfast in the Arcosanti dining hall. The meal was simple-- a breakfast bar of cereals, bagels and fresh hard-boiled eggs--- but that was fine with us. We continued talking with our new-found friends.
After breakfast we gave our friends a tour of Mocha Joe and then we both needed to get back on the road. They were headed to Sedona and we to points southwest.
We drove back toward Phoenix. Along the way we saw a Wal-mart so did our re-supply shopping. We also needed butane for our cookstove so we stopped at a motel and used their Yellow Pages phonebook to look up restaurant-supply businesses and make some calls. We finally located the right cartridges across town and chased them down.
We then drove southeast out of Phoenix down Interstate 10 to get to Casa Grande. From there we entered the Tahono Oodam Indian Reservation on our way to Organ Pipe National Monument. We stopped in Sells, AZ, hoping to eat at the Desert Rain native restaurant we had read about but it was closed today.
We made it to Organ Pipe by 1800 and settled in to our campsite. We just finished supper in time for a ranger presentation at the amphitheater. As the presentation started, the ranger said an object had been found at a trailhead this evening and if you had lost something important, let her know. She then did a presentation about the history of the Monument and the area.
Later that evening a Border Patrol vehicle and another car stopped in front of our van, probably because we were the only vehicle with interior lights still showing this late. The Border Patrol agent asked if anyone had been around asking whether we had lost a wallet. A young woman (from the other car) had lost her wallet and was a bit frantic about it. I told him no but the ranger at tonight's presentation had said something had been found at a trailhead. A few phone calls later the very-relieved young lady was re-united with her wallet and was on her way.

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Friday, 9 April-

This morning we had an unpleasant surprise. When I started Mocha Joe, I noticed the engine seemed not to be hitting on all six cylinders. And when I pulled out of our camping spot, it was apparent there was something wrong. We limped up to the bath house for our showers and I took a few minutes to look around in the engine compartment but saw nothing amiss.
When we left the bath house it was apparent we would not be able to go far. At least two of the cylinders weren't firing so departing from a dead stop was almost dangerously slow.
I used the GPS' Find Auto Services function and generated a list of five or six possibilities about five miles away in Apache Junction. The first three turned out to be duds-- either closed or nothing apparently there. 'National Auto Service', for example, was just some guy's house. 'Honest Engine Auto Service' was an empty garage behind a warehouse. After a few more misses we came to 'Roberts Complete Auto Service'. It appeared to be a former gas station, now without pumps, but there were uniformed mechanics working, vehicles on the lifts, and others apparently parked nearby to await their turn for service. It looked like a very busy garage and I thought the chances slim they'd be able to fit me in today.
I explained my problem to the lead mechanic, Howard, and he immediately said he'd be happy to take a look at it right away and felt certain he could fix whatever the problem is. He and another guy took a few minutes to run some tests and remove the extensive air-cleaner ducting for a better view. Within a short time he waved me over. “See that?”, he pointed. “A pack rat ate some of the wires off of the fuel injector and damaged the wire loom and some of the connectors”. Amazingly, Howard said he thought he could fix me up. He was pretty sure he had the right wires and connectors on some of the junker cars behind the shop. And that indeed proved to be the case. What appeared to be a major hassle evaporated. An hour and a half later, we were on the road. The bill was $150-- an hour-and-a-half's labor-- but after seeing the damage the little rat had done, I was glad to pay that bill.
We drove to the nearby Apache Junction library and made a few calls, uploaded the blog and checked email. In our call to Labashi's Dad, he mentioned a trip he had taken years ago to Phoenix. He had visited nearby Arcosanti, a demonstration project to build an energy and space-efficient small city. The project is the brainchild of Paolo Soleri and was begun in the Seventies to much fanfare.
We spent most of the afternoon driving to Arcosanti and arrived just in time for the last tour of the day at 1600. Our hour-long tour gave us the project background and introduced us to our tourguide, Caleb, who is a student at Arcosanti. After our tour Caleb mentioned that we could have dinner in the dining hall as guests so I said we'd like to do that and asked if it would be possible to stay in Mocha Joe overnight in the parking lot.
We had a nice, leisurely dinner with two of the other tourists who had taken the tour, a couple from Traverse City, Michigan. It turns out we had a lot in common and we spent the entire evening with them enjoying a very nice bottle of wine.
Long after everyone else had cleared out of the dining hall we four sat on the balcony sipping wine and telling stories. Our new-found friends had spent a year sailing to and in the Bahamas and we enjoyed hearing about their adventure.
Our friends had booked a room at Arcosanti's guest facility and we were staying in the parking lot so we had plenty of time to work our way through the wine.
Arcosanti itself is quite interesting. You can't call it a city since it only has about a hundred residents but it does have some very unique concepts. Students pay to attend workshops wherein they learn the basics of Soleri's theories of 'arcology'-- architecture and ecology-- and are members of the community supporting Arcosanti. They have work responsibilities which may include work in the forging crews who forge brass or ceramic wind-bells to sell in order to finance the community. Also, teams are constantly developing projects to add on to the community. A greenhouse is under development, for example.
I've not done a very good job of explaining Arcosanti, I'm afraid. On the one hand, it's a utopian project designed to demonstrate Soleri's vision of a future city. But on the other it's a long time coming and it's not at all clear that the ideas are scalable. Does that mean it's a failure or simply that change is incremental?
I do think the experience is probably very good for the students. They participate very deeply in the community and that can't be a bad thing.

*********** END OF POST *************

Tucson- SEED Pod, SkyBar, Second City Does Arizona; Boyce-Thompson Arboretum; Scottsdale- (Taliesin West)

(posted from Apache Junction Library)
(This post covers 6 – 8 April, 2010)

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Thursday, 8 April-

We had a quiet night at Oak Flats and woke to a very pleasant day. We've been surprised how cool the nights have been. The night before last went below freezing but last night only went into the mid-Forties.
We drove west on route 60 toward Phoenix, looking for a visitor center for info and a wi-fi connection. After Apache Junction we saw a sign for an Arizona visitor's center and took the bait. Three miles off of our route we finally found the visitor's center and Chamber of Commerce for Gilbert, AZ. They had some type of social going on so the too-small room was crowded and we couldn't look at the rather meager selection of tourist brochures. I asked one staffer if they had wi-fi and was told yes. But when I tried it outside the building, the chamber wi-fi was locked. I asked another staffer for the password but she said they don't have wi-fi for the public. We left and decided we'd try the visitor center in Tempe. There we had the same problems. A small center with not much to select from, a staff who could only suggest we try the Starbucks for wi-fi and you had to have a special key to use the rest room. Did we hit a time warp or something?
We used the GPS to find Taliesin West, Frank Lloyd Wright's famous school for budding architects. We took the 90-minute tour and enjoyed it very much. Like Falling Water in western Pennsylvania, Taliesin West is showing its age but it's easy to see what excitement it would have caused at the time. Even today the tours are filled and there's barely room to park in the extra-large parking lot.
After Taliesin West, we looked up the addresses of art galleries and found a gallery district on Scottsdale's Main Street in Old Town. We parked just off Scottsdale Avenue and spent the next three hours touring the dozens and dozens of galleries and a few antiques-and-curiosities shops.
By 1700 we were exhausted. We used the GPS to take us out of the city to Lost Dutchman State Park above Apache Junction and arrived just as the sun set.
After supper we dug out the Kwik Kampfire and sat around the fire for an hour or so, skywatching. Labashi spotted a satellite and we had lots of plane lights to follow and stars to see.

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Wednesday, 7 April-

This morning we took our good time with breakfast and took nice, long showers. We then drove back up route 77 past Oracle and kept on going to Winkleman where we turned toward Superior. This road 177 passes through the Copper Basin and we saw mountain after mountain of copper-mine tailings. We had lunch at the overlook of the Ray strip mine, watching the teeny-tiny-little giant dump trucks and power shovels at work down in the pit. The dump trucks didn't look to be all that impressive until I saw an 18-wheeler beside one and realized the scale.
The other thing along this route was the carpets of wildflowers. To date we've been seeing a few flowers here and there. But now the desert started showing us mixes of yellow poppies, cream poppies, orange poppies, blue-belles, and red, pink, and purple trumpets as far as wild flowers plus green grasses and weeds among the cactuses.
At Superior we turned onto route 60 and soon came to our goal for the day-- Boyce-Thompson Arboretum State Park. I've been reading wildflower reports from this park since I first found DesertUSA.com and its wildflower reports from the southwestern states. But what I didn't know was it has been a world-class botanical garden for years. We were surprised to find it wasn't really a state park so much as a massive garden of gardens.
We spent the whole afternoon walking the gardens and seeing many plants we've never seen before.
We tired out around 1600 and drove north toward Globe to the Tonto National Forest and a little campground not far off the main road called Oak Flats. We spent the evening blogging and reading and getting introduced to the Phoenix metro area for tomorrow.

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Tuesday, 6 April-

This morning we drove back down the Catalina Highway toward Tucson. We stopped at an overlook giving us a spectacular early-morning view of Tucson. We could even see the observatory buildings at Kitt Peak far off across the valley. A morning hot-air balloonist was up in the distance and soon disappeared among the peaks.
We drove back across Tucson to the University of Arizona. Last night I read a little blurb about their 'SEED-Pod' project and wanted to see it if I could. SEED is an acronym for Solar-Energy-Efficient-Design and the idea of a seed-pod is that in nature a seed-pod protects its contents from the elements. This project participated in the 2009 U.S. Department of Energy's Solar Decathlon.
On our way to the SEED project, we walked through the Architecture and Landscape Architecture building to the low-water-use garden. This small garden even has a a fish pond and marsh in the desert thanks to air-conditioner condensate sent to it from the roof and from carefully-placed catchments and angled surfaces which guide the water into channels and pipes leading toward the garden.
Beside the garden were five or six travel-trailer-sized constructions. They are the modules of the SEED-Pod. One is a large, oddly-shaped open steel frame which gives us a clue as to the skeleton of all the modules. The other modules were covered with plastic tarps but we found a few places to peek in. One module was obviously a bathroom, one a kitchen, and I presume the others were living and sleeping spaces. If I understand correctly (and I'm only going by the short blurb because we couldn't see much under the tarps), modules bolt together side-to-side at the demonstration site. The roof is covered in solar panels and those are the exclusive power source for the home. At least some of the walls are a translucent plastic. Where such walls are oriented toward the sun, rainwater and filtered graywater is cascaded over them to gather the heat during the day. That water is collected in tanks built into the undercarriage of the dwelling and continues to circulate at night to cool the water for the next day. We were unable to see any detail but asked for more info and were directed to uasolardecathlon.com. I'd have loved to have been able to walk through the assembled structure and see it in operation but for now it's in storage so the web site will have to do.
We then walked across the street to tour the UA Art Museum. I was very impressed by the Renaissance artwork and the infra-red studies of some paintings which showed hidden sketch-lines and details we otherwise can't see.
While reading through 'Tucson Weekly' newspaper last night I had found a listing for a performance we might want to see so we drove to the Temple of Music and Art to learn more. We weren't sure we wanted to spend the $31-54 per ticket cost listed in the paper. But when we learned that balcony tickets are available on Tuesdays for only $10, the decision was easy. The show in question was “Second City Does Arizona or Thanks But No Saguaro”. The Second City writing tem had visited Tucson for three weeks in January to gather material and tonight's show is a preview for this weekend's opener.
We walked from our parking spot at the Temple of Music box office to another of the 'Best-of-Arizona' restaurants listed in Arizona Highways magazine. This one was Cafe Poca Coso where we took a chance on the 'plato'. From a listing of eight or so dishes available, the staff selects three for your plato. We had a pork with spicy-red sauce, a beef with a mild-green-chile sauce, and a chicken in a chocolate mole. The latter sounds decadent but the chocolate taste is very, very light.
We then drove to Tucson's Sixth-and-Sixth galleries district and walked through six art galleries but didn't find anything extra-special though we did enjoy conversations about the works. One gallerie, the Eric Firestone Gallery, has an extensive showing of candid and posed photos of Andy Warhol taken by various people, including such names as Annie Leibowitz and Robert Mapplethorpe.
We then went on to the Tucson Museum of Art which had an Andy Warhol exhibit and an Ed Mells exhibit as well as extensive collections of very old Mexican and Central American pottery and effigies. We happened to walk in just as a tour of the Warhol exhibit was starting so tagged along and learned interesting new things about his work.
By this time we were quite tired so we found a quiet, shaded corner of the Museum of Art parking lot and took a break. I took a power-nap (yeah, right!) and Labashi read.
We then drove back to the Galleries area for supper. We had seen ads for read the SkyBar (Tucson's Astronomy Bar!) and its next-door neighbor, Brooklyn Pizza. We've not had pizza for ages so we ordered a special one from the pizza shop. We also loved seeing the readout of the solar panels and electrical feed. While we were there the solar panels on the roof were putting out 4725 watts and the two businesses (SkyBar and Brooklyn Pizza) were using a total of 5225 watts.
Next door we ordered margaritas while waiting for our pizza. These were different to say the least. They used Hornitos Reposado tequila, , fresh lime juice, a dash of bitters, and a dash of flower-water. The bartender then must have dipped the largish piece of orange peel we saw next in liquor because he then turned it away from his fingers and lit it with a lighter and it poofed with an impressive flash of flame. He then twisted the peel very tightly and laid it atop our drinks. We also notice he hadn't rimmed the entire top of the margarita glass in salt. He had merely dipped it at an angle to moisten it and then at the same angle into the salt, leaving one side of the glass salted about three-quarters of an inch down and the other side plain. Very nice!
The SkyBar, by the way, was fairly deserted this early so we don't really know what happens when things get going. There were four large screens and just before we left we saw some projected images of planets and galaxies. But the schedule does show some odd things. Sometimes they're showing photos taken via their own scopes (one of which was a Meade 14 or 16-inch dobsonian light-cannon sitting in the corner). But on Mondays there are new-age metaphysics talks. And on Thursdays there are fire-walking shows. And local universities are invited to bring their classes to the SkyBar (though the day, I presume) to use the projection system for their lectures while their students have a latte. A bit different, no?
We then went to the Second City performance at the Temple of Music and Art. All in all, the show was quite funny though we were at a disadvantage on some jokes. We didn't get allusions to Governer Jim Brewer, for example. The troupe did two improvisations, the first after selecting a teacher from the audience and bringing her on stage to run for governor under the state's Clean Elections law. That skit was very funny and inventive. But a second one late in the show fell flat when the audience member didn't really try. 'What do you do?” “I sell software”. What do you most dislike about your job? “Selling software” “What do you like most about your job?” “Money”. Not much to play off of there.
The funniest skit was a pantomime about a lonely guy and his blow-up-doll date. It was so hilarious because of her absolutely stunning talent in playing the doll. She had the perfect vacant, unseeing expression and her limbs bobbed perfectly to each jostle as the guy struggled to, say, suavely put his arm around her. The end was a bit predictable but the two actors were so perfect that we still laughed and laughed.
After the show we drove back out of Tucson to Catalina State Park for the night and went right to bed.

********** END OF POST ***********

Old Bisbee, Chiricahua National Monument, Amerind Foundaiton, Saguaro National Park (East), Coranado National Forest, Biosphere 2, Tucson Tamales, Molino Campground

(posted from SkyBar Astronomy Bar, Tucson)
(This post covers 2 – 5 April, 2010)


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Monday, 5 April-

Last night was wonderful. The sleeping temperature was just right and the campground was completely quiet.
We drove into Tucson and along the way passed something I've not seen before-- a clinic for balance and dizziness. We were interested because a family member has recurring problems with dizziness. A clinic staffer had a Pennsylvania connection and provided a contact point for a specialist near home who she knows to be very good in assessments and has an extensive contact base in our home area for treatments.
We then looked up Desert Divers. We had taken a SCUBA-diving trip to San Carlos, Mexico with Desert Divers back in the mid-Eighties and wanted to see if anyone we had met then was still around. The business had been subsequently sold but we did learn that our trip leader, Wanda, now works as a nurse in a nearby hospital.
We then drove to the University of Arizona campus and spent a few pleasant hours at the Center for Creative Photography and the Arizona State Museum. We then walked over to the campus bookstore where we played with an iPad for a few minutes.
We had a late lunch at Tucson Tamales. This little tamale shop appears in the current issue of Arizona Highways as one of the top 12 restaurants in the state. We tried the 'Boise', which was sweet-potato based, the 'Tucson', which featured a jalapeno masa, and the 'Austin', which was a spinach and mushroom tamale. Good stuff!
We then used the GPS to find the nearest library for a wi-fi connection. The smallish library had wi-fi but not many seats and no electrical outlets. The librarian said we could pick up the signal outside if we liked so we went back to the van and worked from there. We had gotten lucky and were parked in the shade right in front of the library so this option worked out very well. We had a nice breeze coming through the van, a good, strong signal, and our view was of a city park with kids playing and people just out enjoying this very fine spring day.
Around 1800 we packed up and headed for our campground up in the mountains. We took the Catalina Highway up toward Mount Lemmon to the 4000-foot level and Molino Campground in the Coronado National Forest. There were only a few other campers in the campground and we snagged a primo spot and it's only $10.
We spent the evening reading through the various tourist brochures, the Tucson Weekly alternative newspaper, and the University of Arizona visitor's guide.


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Sunday, 4 April-

I didn't sleep well last night. I had picked up a newspaper to read about the rancher murdered last week in the New Mexico boot-heel and I'm also reading a Michael Connelly novel called 'Scarecrow' which has some vivid scenes. And then we had the almost-hourly vehicles coming past our way-out-in-the-boonies 'campsite' throughout the night. Around 2300, for instance, a lone motorcyclist roared through, apparently training for a Baja1000-like night race. Around midnight, five or six trucks and SUVs bounded past all bunched up together. Later, a passing vehicle caused me to load the shotgun. It came through at 0300 with music blaring and instead of continuing on through it turned off and bounced its way up nearby hill and sat there for awhile with the lights and music off. It eased back down a half-hour later and seemed to be working its way toward us, now without music, but then it turned a bit and its lights went out. I watched for a half-hour or so in the bright moonlight before going back to bed to a fitful sleep. What was THAT about?
This morning it all seemed innocent. There was indeed a 4 x 4 road to the top of the next hill which I hadn't noticed in the fading evening light. And once you come down from the hill, there's a dropaway turn on the main road which quickly obscures the vehicle, thus the disappearance of the lights. Our visitors were merely exploring, albeit at an odd time of night.
But we woke to a perfect morning with views all around. After breakfast we headed back out on FR 371, bound for Redington. Some 30 miles of potholes and washouts later, we finally hit hard road again near San Manuel.
We gassed up and iced up and set a course for Oracle. There we visited Biosphere 2, a prokect of the University of Arizona. You may remember Biosphere's original mission consisted of a having a team of 8 people live in the self-sustaining, artificial world of Biosphere for two years. Ultimately, they found that their half-acre plot was just barely able to sustain them. A second team then began another mission, this a one-year commitment but it was called off early for essentially the same reason-- they were not able to self-sustain.
Today, Biosphere 2's mission is to provide a controlled space for research. It has five artificial environments-- rainforest, savannah, ocean, desert fog, and desert.
After our Biosphere visit we took an afternoon nap in the van at the far end of the parking lot, then headed into Tucson.
As we neared the city we checked Catalina State Park for campsites and grabbed one of the last available. We then used the GPS to locate one of the Best-of-Arizona restaurants. It was closed for Easter Weekend. We then tried calling the other two on the list and one had closed for the day just a few minutes ago and the other isn't open on Sunday.
We headed back toward the campground but saw an upscale Mexican restaurant which claimed to make their food in the style of Mexico City. It was called Parilla Suiza. We had margaritas and fajitas which were quite good.
We then returned to Catalina State Park and took and after-dinner walk under the stars, then I blogged and Labashi read.

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Saturday, 3 April-

This morning we returned to Chiricahua National Monument to check out the visitor center. We noticed several people waiting for them to open and that seemed surprising until we learned there's a shuttle. Hikers can catch a shuttle to the top and then hike down to the center, making it a descent almost the whole way.
We read the animal-sightings board and saw that a mountain lion had been sighted at Echo a few days ago and a family of four coati had been seen just a half-mile above the visitor's center on Wednesday. We took a short walk on the Lower Rhyolite trail but didn't see any wildlife other than a few birds.
We then drove the 75 or so miles to the Amerind Foundation, a private organization which studies anthropology and archeology of Indians and runs a fine museum. After the museum visit we had a picnic lunch on the ranch grounds.
We then drove on to the Saguaro National Park – East. We arrived just in time to see a lecture about the jaguar, grizzly bear, and Mexican wolf in the Park and in southeast Arizona. The last grizzly was shot in the Twenties, the last jaguar in 1950 and the last Mexican wolf in 1948. However, a jaguar was seen and captured as late as 1996 but it was a lone male. Trail cameras have captured photos of jaguars in Arizona but there is not yet evidence of a breeding population of them.
We then drove the eight-mile auto tour route through the saguaro 'forest', a quite remarkable change to what we have been seeing. Not only do the saguaros make an unforgettable sight, the whole area is teeming with cactus, particularly prickly pear and chollas.
We drove the auto route slowly and about half-way through stopped and made supper in the shade of a mesquite.
After the National Park, we headed northeast to the Coronado National Forest and Forest Road 371. This rugged, very rocky dirt road took us up to the mountain top on 5-mile-per-hour climbing switchbacks. We didn't have a lot of camping spots to choose from but finally found a very nice spot fo r the night about ten miles in just before dark.
I spent the evening catching up the blog and Labashi read.

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Friday, 2 April-

After a wonderfully quiet night at the Douglas Wal-mart we drove northwest to Old Bisbee, a turn-of-the-century mining town. As we approached the town we saw the massive Lavender mine and then the Queen mine. We stopped at the first parking spot to get a look further into town and decided we already have free parking and it's a short walk so why get into the pay-parking thing at all? That turned out to be a great spot to watch the tourists suit up for their trip down into the mine. Our vantage point was from across the highway but we had a good view. After suiting up they each sat astride a bench on a small rail cart- maybe six or eight people per cart and a dozen carts in the train--- and were towed down into the scary-looking mine opening.
We walked into town just as the town was beginning to stir. By the time we got oriented at the Visitor Center and began walking up Main Street, many of the shopkeepers were opening up. Bisbee was a rich town at one time due to their copper, silver, and gold mining activities. The brochure says they were the biggest, most prosperous city between St. Louis and San Francisco at the time.
But as they grew rich, many of the people moved out of what became Old Bisbee to new Bisbee. The old town was virtually abandoned for years until artists and other hippies (as the sign at the Lavender Pit says) took over. Today Old Bisbee has the intriguing and pretty-much-intact architecture which some guides say makes it the best-preserved turn-of-the-century town in the Southwest.
We explored Bisbee for about four hours, enjoying the art galleries and antique shops and a very nice little hippie bookstore-- a Whole-Earth-Catalog type of place with used books and records, art supplies, and a much more interesting magazine rack than your local Borders. I loved looking through the build-your-own solar power and wind-power magazines and all the various magazines offering advice on how to live an alternative, self-sufficient, off-the-grid lifestyle.
In that same hippie bookstore I bought the latest copy of coffee-table magazine Arizona Highways for their restaurant reviews. We took their advice on the best lunch place in Bisbee and had lunch at the Cornucopia Cafe. Labashi had the quiche and I had a chile-jack sandwich and sweet-potato-red-pepper soup plus their don't-miss fresh-squeezed tangerine lemonade. Good call, Arizona Highways!
After we finished walking the town, we took a break at the library and I posted a blog update. We then drove north to Tombstone, arriving in mid-afternoon. We only spent an hour and a half there, however, yet felt we had seen everything. Allen Street reminds me of the main drag in Skagway (AK). Tourist shops overwhelm any sense of history.
We then drove northeast to the Chiracahua National Monument. We were surprised to see the campground was full but figured we'd be able to find a dispersed camping spot in the Coronado National Forest nearby. That thought was confirmed by a ranger we met along the way so that took the pressure off. We went ahead and drove the length of the dead-end road. It steadily climbs out of the Bonita Creek valley and then gives terrific views of rock columns all lined up facing the setting sun.
As the sun set we rolled back down and out of the Monument and headed up the dirt road leading into the National Forest. A few miles in we came upon a rancher out of his pickup to close a gate at a corral. He told us we'd find a place to get off the road a few miles up at the North Fork and that indeed proved to be the case. There we found a string of road-side pulloffs, five of six of them already occupied by others with the same idea. But the last in the string was open and gave us a beautiful spot beside the creek. We had supper and then read until our early bedtime. For some reason we were both very tired and it was only 2130. I suppose some of that comes from our bodies thinking it was an hour later. Arizona does not participate in Daylight Savings Time so we had dropped back an hour two days ago.

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Three Rivers Petroglyphs, Sunspot, Cloudcroft, Pancho Villa State Park, Palomas (MX), Douglas (AZ)

(posted from Old Bisbee, AZ Library)
(This post covers 29 March – 1 April, 2010)

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Thursday, 1 April-

The wind was fairly strong last night but not enough to disturb our sleep. I'd guess the gusts were in the 25-30 mile range.
This morning we headed west across Route 9 which parallels the Mexican border and lies within a few miles of it across much of New Mexico. Then New Mexico's 'bootheel' drops away.
As we began our drive today we had some fresh winds but before long we were blasted by gusts over 50 miles per hour. We were driving pretty much head-on into it and Mocha Joe didn't want to do any more than 55 miles per hour. We also were very conscious of the Border Patrol. We saw something on the order of 30 Border Patrol vehicles in the 80-plus miles from Columbus to Rodeo. At Hatchita we pulled over at an historical marker and within minutes a Border Patrol vehicle stopped and checked on us. As I said to the officers, though, I thought of it as them watching out for our safety rather than an intrusion. Across this very desolate area we also saw quite a bit of evidence of Border Patrol technology. We had already seen the aerostat blimp near Columbus but in our drive today we saw several observation stations, including one with a desert-camouflage net over most of it and many communications installations, both radio and microwave.
After reaching the Arizona line at Portal, we turned south and very soon came upon the Chiricahuha Desert Museum. It seemed very oddly placed in we had just come across a very remote-feeling area yet here the center had a yuppie gift shop and played New Age music. And the museum portion turned out to be a gallery for very expensive wildlife artists rather than what we'd think of as a museum. We peered through the doors and couldn't think of a good reason to pay the $5 to enter. Labashi did find an exquisite fossil from Morocco, however, and has just the right place for it at home.
We had a late lunch at the roadside pulloff marking the surrender of Geronimo just north of Apache, AZ and the wind shook the van mercilessly. But the good news is we felt very secure in good old Mocha Joe.
We then drove on to Douglas which sits on the Mexican border across from Agua Prieta, Sonora. We checked in at the Visitor's Center and then did some re-supply shopping at the Safeway and the Wal-mart, then spent a few hours at the Library. It was great to take a break and spend a few hours on the web, read newspapers and magazines, and browse the book shelves. Douglas has a very pleasant and friendly little library for this.
And in today's paper I read an article about a community meeting we missed last night. Some 350 people showed up to a meeting with the Border Patrol in tiny little Apache to discuss border security in light of the murder of a rancher in the area a few days ago. The murder is believed to have been done by a smuggler who then escaped into Mexico.
After the library we set up camp for the night at the Douglas Wal-mart. We watched 'The Men who Stare at Goats' with George Clooney, Jeff Bridges, and Ewan MacGregor, a movie from the Redbox.



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Wednesday, 31 March-

A park ranger woke us this morning to collect for our stay and we talked with him for a few minutes about going across the border. No problemo.
The park's visitor center wasn't due to open until 1000 so we drove down the street to the Pancho Villa Cafe for a Mexican breakfast. Labashi had Eggs Mexicano which turned out to be scrambled eggs with veggies. I had chilequiles with egg which was a folded corn tortilla in a red chili sauce with a fried egg on top and accompanied by fried beans and skillet-fried potatoes. Very nice!
We then went to the park's very nice little visitor center to learn about Pancho Villa. Villa and his 'Villaristas' attacked the town in the pre-dawn hours of March 9th, 1916. And if they had attacked a town without a military post, they would probably have been very successful. But this town had a military post with a Machine Gun squad and in the next few hours the squad's three machine guns cut down some 85 Villaristas in a hail of over 20,000 rounds. There were eight US military deaths and ten US civilian deaths.
In retaliation, President Wilson sent General John 'Black Jack' Pershing after Villa. This pursuit marked the first time mechanized vehicles were used as part of the a military campaign. Pershing pursued Villa for eleven months, never catching him. Toward the end, the US military was ramping up for World War I and four months after Pershing's return to the US, he and his troops were sent to France.
As we approached the museum we happened to run into John Read, one of the park rangers. We asked him more questions about crossing the border to Palomas and, more specifically, about parking on this side and walking over. He said he routinely goes down there with his wife to a very unique restaurant and store called The Pink Store, just a block or so on the other side. He gave us parking information and even menu recommendations. He did say it's completely lawless down there-- the lawmen have long since left--- but if you're not into the drug trade you won't be bothered. It's the kind of recommendation to make you think about the consequences of mistaken identities.
We drove to the border and parked in the nice lot next to the crossing gate and simply walked across and ten minutes later we were in The Pink Store. The store turned out to be a large gift store in front and a restaurant and bar in back. As we viewed the many shelves of colorful gifts and trinkets and jewelry and pottery, we were offered margaritas and they turned out to be surprisingly strong. The free margaritas there are quite a bit stronger than the seven-dollar margaritas at Chili's, in fact.
After browsing for a half-hour or so we were shown to a table in the restaurant. John Read had recommended the garlic shrimp so Labashi had that and I had a soup called 'caliente'. My soup was a bit spicy and had potato and farmer's-cheese (they call it 'Mennonite cheese') cubes and green chiles.
Our waiter, Goel, was terrific. Labashi tried to use as much Spanish as she could and he'd help out and then say that he's learning too and would ask a question about English. Labashi asked him for a good recommendation for a song for the mariachis to play and he recommended 'Caballito'. Labashi asked the leader to play (in Spanish) and after a brief chuckle, he passed the word and we were treated to 'Caballito'.
After sharing an excellent flan, we left The Pink Store and walked a few blocks to another restaurant, 'El Sinaluense'. This restaurant had been recommended by our waitress at breakfast this morning. But when we entered town we saw it was two blocks down a side street and we were reluctant to go down there. But this afternoon-- with a few margaritas under our belts – it seemed fine and indeed it was. We weren't really hungry but after checking out the menus we split a piece of cheesecake anyway.
Our border crossing back into the US was also very easy. There was a line for cars but no line for pedestrians and all we did was show our passports to the friendly officer. He scanned them into the computer and we were on our way in a minute or two.
We were back in Columbus by 1600 and decided it was too late to drive on so we'd stay a second night at Pancho Villa State Park. We drove through the few streets of Columbus and wound up at the library where I saw they have wi-fi but were closed. That signal turned out not to work but I picked up wi-fi from the restaurant across the street and checked our email.
We then returned to our campground for the evening. Labashi read and I caught up the blog as fairly strong winds buffeted the van. Tomorrow's supposed to be another extra-windy day but the winds are supposed to die before bedtime tonight.

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Tuesday, 30 March-

We left Oliver Lee State Park fairly early this morning after a comfortable night. The overnight temperature was dramatically different than the last few nights for some reason. The low was around 57.
We drove into Alamogordo just to look around. We stopped at the Visitor's Center and tried to find a source for butane cartridges (no luck) and then hit the Lowe's hoping to find a creative solution to stabilize the van on windy nights. No luck there either.
We drove west on Route 70 to White Sands National Monument. As we drove into the parking lot I noticed a motorcyclist walking away from a BMW GS-style bike and I asked him how he likes it. That led to a fairly long conversation and demo of some of the features of his F650 GS. I was particularly impressed by the hard-sided bags which adjust width at the throw of a lever and by the low seat height. The guy has had as many as four bikes at a time and reduced his stable to this one and is very happy with it. He added a taller Cee Bailey windshield, nerf bars, and trunk and says he as about $11K in it. I think I may have just found my next bike.
We toured the visitor center then took the 8-mile drive through the ultra-white gypsum sands. We saw kids trying to slide down the dunes on snow saucers but they didn't go very fast. Gypsum has a lot more surface friction than snow, of course.
The sands come from the Lake Lucerne which receives gypsum-infused waters draining a wide area. The water evaporates, leaving the gypsum crystals which then are blown into the dunes. The dunes currently extend some 120 miles and are still slowly growing to the northeast from the lake.
We then drove on to the White Sands Missle Range headquarters area where we visited their gem of a museum. We enjoyed seeing the history of White Sands and the many types of missles, particularly the V-2. At the end of World War II, German scientists decided they'd have the best chance of survival with the Americans and apparently made it known they would surrender. The Americans brought them to America in an operation called Operation Paperclip. Among the scientists was Werner Von Braun. As the war ended, there was a stock of V-2 parts at Peenemunde in an area to be turned over to the Russians. Americans quickly shipped all the parts and the German scientists to White Sands. There the 39 German scientists worked with General Electric contractors assemble and launch sixty V-2 rockets. V-2, by the way, is a short form of “Vengence Weapon 2” according to the museum information.
After checking out the V-2 exhibit we walked the outside display yard looking at many different missle types-- Patriot, Hawk, Nike, Big John, Little John, Sargeant, Corporal, Copperhead, Redstone, and on and on. Very impressive indeed.
I kept looking around to see if I recognized anything since my Dad had brought the family to White Sands in the late Fifties when he attended a two-week school for his job at Letterkenny Army Depot. But I must have only been about eight. I very vaguely remember being at a campsite with Mom and brother Orat while Dad was in school and I remember it being hot and sandy. But that's about it.
We then continued southwest to Las Cruces. We had planned to visit the New Mexico Farm and Ranch Museum but we were both put off by it. It just didn't look like the gem it's supposed to be. We went inside and talked with the receptionist but she didn't know anything and the gift shop seemed to be a straight-on tourist trap. We moved on.
We drove into central Las Cruces just to look around and then headed back out to Interstate 10 to continue west. In an hour or so we reached Deming but only long enough to turn south to Columbus. We stopped for the night at Pancho Villa State Park which is just a few miles above the Mexican border. In fact as I write this I can see the border crossing just a few miles from our campsite. I can see a border fence lit by a string of streetlights and I see a set of green traffic-signal lights at the crossing gate. Before dark we had walked around our campground and we saw something odd and unmoving in the sky. It turned out to be an observation blimp.


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Monday, 29 March-

After an ultra-quiet night at Valley of Fires Recreation Area, we took showers in the heated (!!!) restrooms and then went to the visitor's center. There we met 93-year-old Johnson Sterns, a volunteer at the site. Mr. Stearns was a delight. He told us stories of growing up in nearby Carizozo in the Twenties and going to work for the Southern Pacific Railroad then the local bank. He retired in 1983 and his wife of 59 years died in 1996. He's in remarkably-good shape and has a young boy's grin. He says they had electricity in his boyhood home but they didn't have running water. He said it occurred to him the other day that he has lived his entire life living within a half-mile of where he was born and wouldn't change a thing.
We then drove south toward the Three Rivers Petroglyph site about 30 miles on. Along the way I realized Mr. Stearns had been here during the Manhattan Project's atomic bomb test at the Trinity site about 35 miles due west. I pulled over while Labashi looked up the phone number for the visitor's center and called him. He said that, yes, he was living here when it happened. His mother-in-law was hanging clothes outside in the pre-dawn darkness and all of a sudden the sky lit up like it was daylight. She thought daylight had come on all of a sudden but then realized it couldn't be daylight when the darkness came back. It's unclear why the noise wasn't more significant though he did say his mother, who had been staying with them that night, asked what the loud noise was. I asked what he had seen or heard and he said “Nothing! I slept right through it! I had worked a 16-hour shift on the railroad and was very tired that night.”
He said the Army claimed an ammunition dump had exploded and since they had never heard of an atomic bomb, they believed it. He said he heard some ranchers had been told to clear out because there might be some sort of big explosion so the ammo-dump explanation didn't make a lot of sense. Still, they didn't question it.
I also asked about shattered windows and the like, saying I read that windows were shattered as far as 120 miles away. He told me he wasn't aware of any windows being shattered though some in the area could have been and he just hadn't heard about it. He also said he knew ranching families who lived within 25 miles of the bomb site for years afterward and never had any ill effects from living so close.
We continued on to the petroglyph site and just before reaching it we saw eight elk in a plowed field. The site is just below the mountains and apparently the elk spend their winters down low.
We spent the rest of the morning looking at some of the 21,000 petroglyphs scratched into the rock at the site. Interpretive signs tell us it's believed most of the symbols were scratched or pecked into the rock by inhabitants of a nearby village. The symbols appear to have some common elements with Mexican Indian cultures.
After a late lunch we headed for Sunspot, NM and the National Solar Observatory. We rushed up the mountain to the 9000-foot level to reach NSO before it closed for the day and had deep snow along the roads but a pleasantly-warm sun shining on us as we walked to the observatories. We visited the Big Dome and the Tower Dome, the only two facilities open to visitors. We were particularly impressed by the scope in the Tower Dome. The building appears to be fairly tall but then inside we learned that the scope is longer than a football field and sticks down into the mountain over 250 feet. Its mission is solar research and it projects a twenty-inch-diameter image of the sun onto an observation station for researchers. Since our visit to the MacDonald Observatory near Fort Davis, we've been very interested in learning more about solar observation. Unfortunately, there was no live observation here at NSO but we did have an interesting conversation with an operator of one of the scopes.
We then toured the visitor's center museum. It was pretty good as far as content but badly needs an upgrade to the displays and the upgrade process is just getting started. Still, we're very glad we were able to see the facility and its location.
After NSO we headed back down to the mountain town of Cloudcroft and had a fine meal at 'The Lodge', an early 1900's lodge built by the railroad to attract tourist traffic to what had otherwise been a lumbering spur. Though the lodge is well past its prime we had an excellent meal with baked brie, dungeness crabcakes, pecan vinagrette dressing on the salad, and a super Rebecca's Filet Mignon in a green-peppercorn sauce. Outstanding!
As the sun set we zipped down the mountain to Alamogordo and drove a few miles south to the Oliver Lee State Park for the night.


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