Of Rocks and Roadrunners

Agave

We left the Verde Valley a little after 8 in the morning, seeing more flowering cactus including agave like the Pink Jeep guided had pointed out to us and prickly pear. Shortly after heading east from Flagstaff we also had yet another adventure ... the front passenger window (right next to ME!) almost fell out onto the interstate. I glanced over at it and it was swinging loose. I grabbed hold of it and held it in place until we could stop.

The screws had mostly fallen loose and the ones left at the top were loose! We put the screws back in except for the one we could not find and headed down the road, checking them every half hour or so, tightening them back up as needed. Nothing like running down the road holding on to a screwdriver!

About mid day we stopped at the Painted Desert Cafe for lunch at the Petrified Forest National Park. The long loop road we drove on around the park seems to have both the Painted Desert scenery and Petrified Forest areas. There are a number of explanatory signs and a lot of warnings NOT to take any of the petrified wood away with you. An inspection station on the way out of the park probably checks out any suspicious vehicles. There are carefully sliced and polished bits of wood as well as raw pieces available at the gift shop which of course also has ball caps. I got a nice brown one!

After touring around the Petrified Forest, we got back on I-40 headed east. Along the way to our next overnight stop we saw quite a few Navajo hogans of several styles. Some appeared to still be lived in where others appeared to be used for storage. Definitely a reminder that much of this part of the country is Indian Reservation. We finally reached our stop at the USA RV Park at Gallup, New Mexico and hooked up for the night.

The next morning we continued east on I-40 towards Albuquerque where we found a place to have the RV washed, bye bye bug guts! Our next stop east of Albuquerque is the Petroglyph National Monument. The Visitor Center has a small gift shop and a small theater room that runs a video about the petroglyphs including the definition: Petroglyphs are rock carvings (rock paintings are called pictographs) made by pecking directly on the rock surface using a stone chisel and a hammerstone. When the desert varnish (or patina) on the surface of the rock was chipped off, the lighter rock underneath was exposed, creating the petroglyph.

As we were driving out of the Petroglyph National Park visitor center, we saw a real live roadrunner, actually running across the road! It happened far too fast to grab the camera so I can not take credit for this image but the moment looked very much like this.

A few miles east of the Visitor Center is the road access to the parking area at Boca Negra Canyon which has several good hiking trails (not our cup of tea) and some nice examples of petroglyphs such as this image we got there before heading on east. 

We continued to fuss with the window screws! The nearest place we have any confidence to deal with the window problem is the Camping World in Oklahoma City where we hope to get the issue dealt with tomorrow.

Back to I-40 eastbound we see storms north of us which don't look so dark and dangerous in the image below but certainly looked worse in person and we saw storm chasers headed that way. As we headed east we did keep a close eye on the north and the movement of the storms. Fortunately they did not seem to get any closer!

We arrived at the Santa Rosa Campground in Santa Rosa, New Mexico, with the threatening storms thankfully still staying to the north. The next morning we continued east on I-40 taking old Route 66 through Tucumcari and stopping long enough to get a ball cap reading New Mexico which had a Rte 66 badge pinned on it.

Time In Verde Valley

After such a busy day at the Verde Canyon Railroad, we dawdled a bit the next morning but eventually we headed out for Tuzigoot near Camp Verde. Tuzigoot is an ancient hilltop pueblo. I must admit I did not climb up to although there is a 1/3 mile loop trail that takes you around and through the pueblo but instead spent a good while with the exhibits in the Tuzigoot museum which show various artifacts with presentations about them and the Sinagua who lived here. There is an intriguing display showing what a room in the pueblo might have been like.Lest I forget, there is also a nice gift shop where of course I got another ball cap. This one is a nice light olive color with a rattlesnake on the front and Tuzigoot on the back. That night we explored the restaurants of Cottonwood eventually settling on Strombolli's which has an excellent spinach dip with batter fried mushrooms and zucchini.

The next day we went to another historical monument, Montezuma Castle. This is a limestone cliff with a dwelling built into it, a sort of high rise apartment building tucked into a cliff. After visiting the center here, we went on to Ft Verde State Historic Park. This site was established in 1871 replacing an earlier camp one mile north of the present site. The primary reason for its existence was as a staging base for military operations in the area protecting the settlers in the region. The small administration building contains displays of soldiers uniforms and equipment from that era. The officers' quarters and adjacent buildings show life as it was then and the website has some nifty short videos, sort of a virtual tour.

From here we went back to Cottonwood and tried the Black Bear Diner. We no longer remember what restaurant we thought was there but it had apparently vanished and been replaced, very recently, by the Black Bear Diner. The place was nice and the corn muffins so fantastic we later returned and got some to go! It appears to be one of the newer locations of a west coast chain.

At some point the day we went to Tuzigoot, we made reservations for a Pink Jeep tour in Sedona for June 3rd, the same day we were visiting my sister there. So we were up about 4 am in order to be ready to leave around 6:30 to be in plenty of time for our scheduled 8 am Red Rock Range tour. This is an easy ride with great views of the red rock formations. It also covers an area I never saw much of when I was younger and visiting my grandmother at her Crescent Moon Ranch near Oak Creek Crossing.

After the tour we went nearby to visit with my sister and see what all she has done with the house. Coming to the house was one of the main reasons for renting a car as this driveway would simply be impossible with the RV. Suffice it to say that many UPS drivers won't take their big brown trucks of happiness up there either!

It was the first time I had been to the house since my mother had passed and it was wonderful to see a lot of things that mostly just live in my memory. I brought several things back with me, most particularly a small figurine my mother made long ago of me playing my flute. Being made out of simple Plaster of Paris it has suffered over the years and part of the flute has gone. I was perhaps 12 or so at the time so it is about sixty years old. It now lives in our credenza behind a glass door sitting on a small doily crocheted by my great grandmother Lida Deshler Willson Kellogg. I sometimes debate having it restored but then decide the damage is part of its history.

The following day my son Mark was coming up from his home north of Phoenix to visit for a while. He arrived about 11 and we sat in Wolf for a while chatting and then, when Wolf started to get too hot ... his air conditioning can't quite cope with the hottest parts of the day in Arizona ... we headed to Cottonwood and the Black Bear Diner where we sat and visited in cool comfort for several hours. While we were waiting to be seated I spotted something I just had to have ... no, not another ball cap this time. It was a pair of plush stuffed hugging bears, about 8 inches tall, which now live on my bookshelves.


Our final day here in the Verde Valley was a down day for laundry, returning the rental car, picking up some prescription refills, shopping at WalMart ... the sort of things one has to do in life whether you are home or on the road. Of course Geoff also ended up spending some time fighting with the toilet/black tank system!

Choo Choo Caboose

When we were planning this trip, I would look at the various web sites and maps. The Verde Canyon Railroad in Clarkdale, Arizona, was originally a local railroad hauling ore, miners, and supplies from Clarkdale to Drake. When I was reading the web site and making our plans, I saw that they offer a caboose for a party of up to six people which features comfortable club chairs, panoramic windows and access to private outdoor viewing platforms. It grabbed my attention and checking availability I saw that it was quite popular and if we were going to do it I needed to decide immediately. The only available date in our time frame was May 31st and I grabbed it. Besides it was air conditioned and I could take my shoes off!

Mark

Thus the day after our arrival at Distant Drums, Geoffrey and I met my son Mark, his wife Natalie, my sister Carol and her daughter, my niece Tara at the Verde Canyon Railroad Depot in Clarkdale. We had some lunch and then were given a short ride in a golf cart to the end of the train and the caboose. We of course had enough time before our ride to visit the gift shop and, you guessed it, another ball cap joined my collection.

Natalie

The train excursion takes about four hours through the Verde Canyon, much of it above the Verde River. The canyon has an abundance of native flora and fauna including bald eagles which, since they are accustomed to the train, fly quite nearby and we saw several although the best time to see them is earlier in the year. In spite of being a high desert area, there is enough vegetation along the river for waterfowl, fish, and other animals that depend on the river for survival. There are a few hiking trails along the river where one can see these animals better than from the train including night hikes with nocturnal wildlife. This area is sandwiched between the Coconino National Forest and the Prescott National Forest.

Carol

This 20 mile journey includes a 680 foot tunnel, trestles and bridges across side gorges and winds along the side of cliffs. In some places there are ancient Sinagua ruins in the cliffs which our personal guide/valet pointed out to us. We also passed the huge piles of ore remaining after the extraction of the copper.

All this terrific scenery could not compete with the opportunity to visit with my family in this casual setting. Everyone moved from the comfortable chairs and refreshments to the windows, the viewing platform and even the elevated view in the back of the caboose. Hours of just conversation would have been awkward perhaps but broken up by the views was perfect.

Tara

We all had opportunities to visit with one or another. I got to spend time with my baby sister and with Tara whom I have not had much time with since she was a little girl (yes, Tara, you were once a little girl).

Both my son and his wife have their own businesses and it has been hard for them to have much time for me. I was especially glad that they both managed to get away for the day to join us.

I particularly enjoyed watching my son try to puzzle out why the hook ups between the cars were so noisy. We all came up with theories and I no longer remember which we decided was likeliest but it was like watching him as a small boy do the same sort of figuring and studying.

This day was I think the highlight of the whole trip and I have never regretted for a minute that inspiration I had when looking at the web site!

Down Time, Planes and Desert

We meant to sleep late this morning but habit and the time changes conspired against us. We arrived at the Crazy Horse RV Campground yesterday evening a day earlier than planned and are taking a down day with leisurely showers, catching up on laundry, and not doing much of anything until my oldest son, Mark gets here this evening.

When Mark got here we went out to a nearby Dennys and had a nice long and talkative dinner there before returning to the RV and Mark to a hotel before our planned visit to the Pima Air and Space Museum the next day. Mark picked us up the next morning and we headed for the Pima Museum which is absolutely amazing if you care at all about airplanes and space.

They have a 2,600 acre aircraft 'boneyard' with all sorts of aircraft, mostly military. A bus with open sides can be ridden around the boneyard to see all the planes they have. There is also a page on their website listing the many planes they have indoors and outdoors listing the manufacturer, designation, name, serial# and with thumbnail images you can click to view more closely. These are just limited to airplanes but also includes many flight related vehicles such as the line up of helicopters shown below.

By the time the bus tour of the boneyard was done, I was hot and had had my fill of airplanes which are not really my cup of tea so I wandered off to the gift shop while Mark and Geoff toured the many indoor exhibits of air and space memorabilia including uniforms and equipment. The boys spent some time viewing stuff while I spent money in the gift shop including another ball cap for my collection, this one beige with the navy blue Pima Air & Space logo on the front. Oh, had my growing collection of ball caps escaped mention previously?

Mark returned us to Wolf and left us to rest before Geoff and I tackled the next day's visit to the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum. The museum was founded in 1952 and my mother took myself and my sisters there at least once in the mid-fifties. It was interesting then but now it has grown to a major experience. It's primary focus is the presentation of live plants and animals, including birds and reptiles, from the Sonoran Desert region.

On the way in and at the museum we were fortunate to see many of the cacti in bloom. The museum has mobility chairs available for rent and this gave us the opportunity to take our time touring the various sections and exhibits. There is an extensive aviary with many sorts of birds from ducks to tiny cactus wrens, an aquarium, a hummingbird sanctuary, raptors, prairie dogs and of course snakes.

The image above has a bird hidden in the middle of it. This bird is even harder to see in the full size image or in the aviary. I only spotted it at the time when it moved. Absolutely, if you are ever in the Tucson area, take the time to visit this museum. Of course, I got another ball cap!

The road in and out of the desert museum location is a little bit winding and a lot of ups and downs. Certainly not to be taken at speed in Wolf! We left the museum and headed north with enough time to get our rental car when we get to our next stop, the Distant Drums RV Resort. I mentioned this RV park briefly when we stayed there last year in the blog Seester visit! It's a very nice place, conveniently located for visiting the Verde Valley area so we returned there for this week long visit this year.

Our rented grey Dodge Journey showed up from Enterprise with enough time for us to return the driver to their location in Cottonwood and visit the WalMart there! I may not have mentioned before but unlike many RV'ers, we do not tow a vehicle. The Subaru Outbacks we own do not lend themselves to being towed and for the most part we do fine without a car, renting one only occasionally.  Enterprise car rentals policy of delivery and pickup has worked very well and our only complaint is that we often end up with a Dodge Journey which has seat rails that tend to chew up the back of my legs just above the ankle. Thus the problem isn't the rental company but the car itself.

Okay, off the soapbox about the car ... time to rest up for tomorrow's adventures.

Can I Shoot It?

The leveler alarm that is. Most coaches have an alarm system when the levelers that keep the coach steady and level when you are parked don't retract properly. Wolf apparently has a glitch in the alarm system as the levelers all seem to be fine but the alarm beeps randomly, frequently and annoyingly when we travel along. Geoff has some hearing loss in that sound range but I do not and there are times if I knew where in the system it would shut it up I would be willing to shoot it!

We get on the road early and, except for my desire to shoot the leveler alarm, cruise along in the Texas Hill country enjoying the flowering cactus, yucca and thistles. Around 10 am we are back on I-10 and stopping for breakfast at the Sutton County Steakhouse in Sonora, Texas, where I worked, ummm, way back in 1978 or so. Boy has it changed since then! Although I suppose nearly 40 years does change things, even me I suppose!

Our plans had included a digression off I-10 of about 120 miles to see Ft Davis but on a closer look, the route is up into mountains ... yes, Texas has mountains, sort of. We finally decide to bypass the national historic site which is one of the best surviving examples of an Indian Wars' frontier military post in the Southwest. Unfortunately driving winding mountain roads has to be taken more seriously when you're in an RV. Instead we will go further today and have more time elsewhere.

And here comes another adventure! Geoff caught movement out of the corner of his eye and asked me if I saw anything. I certainly saw something moving in the reflection on the back of the side view mirror. He pulled over at the next exit and sure enough, the windshield seal was coming loose and flapping in the wind! Good old duct tape to the rescue, fixing the situation at least for a while. We will certainly keep an eye on it. Those of you who have read the earlier blogs about last year's trip will remember we got a windshield full of rocks which we had to have replaced when we got home. Clearly something has gone amiss with the installation of the replacement windshield. The image to the right actually shows that same corner of the windshield after removing the tape but before it was repaired and cleaned up.

When we got to the next reasonably sized place, Ft Stockton, we called in about it but basically it seems that since we are not in immediate danger we should just keep an eye on it and deal with it when we get home. Of course now we have even more adventure ... the traffic pattern at the Flying J in Ft Stockton was horrible and we managed to scrape the lower part of Wolf's passenger side on the freshly painted yellow concrete things Flying J uses to direct and control traffic. It doesn't show as strongly in the image here as that bright yellow does in person.Wolf must now bare the shame of a long yellow streak along his paintwork.

After gathering up our jangled nerves we headed west along the Texas mountains stopping first at the WalMart in Ft Stockton where Geoff announced it was 109 degrees per Wolf! We drove through pecan orchards and saw burn scars on the land from wildfires until we reached the Van Horn RV Camp in, of course, Van Horn, Texas.

We left Van Horn at a more reasonable time, close to 8:30 although that might still be Eastern time! In all the excitement the last day or two I forgot to mention that Geoff discovered we were missing the lug nut on one of the wheels. Along with everything else we have made several stops trying to find a replacement. We tried again in Van Horn with no luck and are now headed towards El Paso.

This stretch of I-10 runs very close to the border and for much of it we can see the Rio Grande and Mexico on the far side. We've seen Border Patrol east bound and cameras west bound. I'd never really thought about being so close to the border and, although I have been to Mexico, it was over 50 years ago and that was Tijuana when I was in college!

There are nasty cross winds through El Paso and on over the border into New Mexico. Just into New Mexico we pass a Border Patrol Inspection Station but all we had to do was slow down, stopping people seems to be random. We also see a lot of dust storms and it is sort of neat when they cross over the interstate losing their dust and going nearly invisible until they reach the dust again on the other side.

I think the picture above was taken around Bowie. It shows the mountains of Mexico and, if you look carefully, in the middle is one of the dust storms with another, fainter one, to the left of it and a third one at an angle on the right side of the image.

We've decided to push on through and get to the Crazy Horse RV Campground in Tucson a day early, arriving the evening of May 27th and a call to them okays the extra days stay. Time for some down time!

Old and Lost Rivers

We're up early again, headed west by 6am, eastern time I think but I am not at all sure. Around Baytown, we see a sign marking the river as the Old and Lost River which sounds a lot like I feel sometimes! Later I checked it out and there are actually two bayous named the Lost River and the Old River and where I-10 crosses them they come together and thus the designation of the Old and Lost River. Shortly after crossing the river we stop at a Flying J to fill up and there are trees full of birds.

By mid-morning we passed through Sealy, Texas, where they had what they thought was a tornado late the day before. The weather bureau insisted it was just a microburst but I don't think the people in the Sealy area care which it was as it tore off roofs and destroyed buildings. We saw signs blown over or twisted in half and news reports say big rigs and power poles were blown over. We are very glad we were still well east when this happened.

With our odometer reading 13,333, we finally found what a Buc-ee's is like when we stopped at the one in Bastrop. It is huge with all kinds of food and souvenirs and a whole counter full of all kinds of fudge. After wondering around in there for a while we found that the Puppy Pad (RV GPS) had pooped out on us or something as it had no charge whatsoever. We are still not sure what did happen but some how it must have not been charging when we thought it was.




About mid afternoon we got to the Fredericksburg RV Park in the Texas Hill Country. We sat outside at the picnic table at our site and enjoyed a quiet dinner, purchased of course back at the Buc-ee's. It was quiet and pleasant and we simply enjoyed just sitting out there.The image to the right wasn't taken until the next morning but it shows where we just relaxed the evening before.

The RV Park is close to downtown so the next morning we took a cab to the Pacific War Museum which is absolutely great. Using one of their motorized chairs, we spent several hours studying their terrific displays and I got a lot better idea of what it was like for my dad who, in 1944, was serving in the islands in the Pacific including Iwo Jima and Tinian and for Geoff's dad who was an Army medic in New Guinea, the Philippines, and after the war in Japan. I of course had to get a USMC hat and garden flags for both the Army and the Marines.

Okay, are my lower legs doomed or something? First I do the near face plant into the console and now I tripped on a high curb when we crossed the street, managing to scrape up the front of my legs and one knee thoroughly. We had called a cab and were gonna head for the Pioneer Museum but instead just took the cab back to Wolf.

After tending to my injuries we had an early night, ready to move on the next day.

On the Road Again

In case anyone has decided we fell off the face of the earth when I didn't blog anything on our last trip, here I am again, trying to catch up with that before trying (again!) to be a good girl for 2018's trips. If you forgot, in 2017 I blogged our plans in "Now What?" about a year ago. Life conspired and I never managed to blog as we traveled ... anyway, time to catch up.

After a short shakedown ride on Sunday May 21st, down to the Pilot at CR 206 where we topped off the gas tanks - it was raining so they wouldn't do the propane - we headed out early. Well, we thought 5am was early but at 6am headed west on I-10, it was busy! Where are all these people going?

We've been out this way on I-10 a few times but there are often some interesting sights anyway like the whole bunch of itty bitty goats in a meadow out near the I-75 junction and a sign for Buc-ee's which isn't until Texas and said "You can hold it! 737 miles to go!"

We stopped around 11:30 at a rest area and made sandwiches and Geoff announced he had decided to put mayo on his ham sandwich! I nearly fell off my seat, in nearly 25 years he has never had anything but mustard on his ham sandwiches! When we left I was exceedingly grateful to those truckers who move over a lane when a pokey RV is coming out on to the highway.

For our first overnight we went to the Pensacola RV Park we stayed at last year and had beef stroganoff Mountain House meals. Nice and easy, just pour the boiling water into the pouch, wait a little bit and chow down.

Looks like our adventures are already starting to show their ugly little heads again. The gasket around the slide-out is poking out into the inside of the RV <sigh>. It rained pretty much all night but at least the gasket problem doesn't seem to be leaking.

We headed west again early, about 5am although being Central Time now that is like 6am I guess in Eastern, right? I was writing in my journal by the light of the Puppy Pad (the name we gave the RV GPS tablet) as Geoff cruised along I-10 west out of the Pensacola area. Of course I had to head for the head as he moved along and on the way back I managed to fall down for the first time in over 20 years, nearly doing a face plant into the console and definitely getting rug burn on my knees and bruises on my legs. I felt rather like a beached whale as I struggled to get back up, eventually scooting over to where the steps go down by the door out and with my feet down there I could grab hold of the side of the sink and manage to haul myself upright again. I think getting back up was worse than the fall!

It was a cold grey morning as around six we crossed Mobile Bay with strong cross winds and then a downpour shortly before the tunnel where a sign says 40 MPH and Geoff commented "40 my f**king ass," a rather un-Geoffrey like comment! By 6:30 we were in Mississippi with the sun coming up behind us as we crossed the Pascagoula River. The sun soon went behind the clouds again leaving us in a mostly grey day, windy and rainy, but the 'challenge' keeps Geoff awake and alert. By 8 we were lost in a truck stop parking lot. By the time we finally found our way out, we decided not to even try heading back in for gas but just continued down the road. Of course the sun came back up briefly so it could shine in our eyes as we struggled out of the truck stop.

It seems that Alabama, Mississippi and even Florida along I-10 have lots of wetlands and lily ponds and crossing the Pearl River into Louisiana did not seem to change much. The road seems to run forever elevated above the wetlands and swamps.

It is only mid-morning when we stop at a rest area at the beginning of I-12 near Slidell. I-12 cuts across avoiding New Orleans, making a shortcut in I-10. At the rest area we discover there is a rather large pool of water across the bottom of the windshield so we dumped some rags down into it pulling out three sopping wet rags, replacing them with more.

We are sure glad we are headed west as the east bound side is backed up and slow as molasses. Perhaps it is yet another pickup full of stuff that has not tied down their load. We have already seen two with parts of their loads flying off. This stretch of road is bouncy as can be and the water at the bottom of the windshield is jumping around and a screw in my side window has come loose.

It must be wet here a lot as we're now passing a number of rice fields and water ponds with something apparently being grown in them. At least there is one good thing about the rain, it washes away the bug guts that like to accumulate on the windshield!! Finally we reach Texas where we now face 880 miles of I-10 and we soon pull into the Gulf Coast RV Park in Beaumont for the night.