Take the Long Way Home

Apache Junction to Williams AZ  200 miles

Day 29

We are starting our fifth week of being 'on the road again'. 

Even the dogs wanted to enjoy the sun...or a rabbit

We enjoyed the sun and warmth that we've been searching for since we left home...for a couple of hours, that is.  Then we said goodbye to Jim's sister and headed north toward Sedona.  Nice highway, stopped at a rest area near Black Canyon, walked the dogs and enjoyed an observation deck's view of the beautiful valley below.

View from a rest area....not too shabby

Shortly after I began to check our  'bibles' the books we use to find RV parks around Sedona.  It looked like there was only one and it was more than we prefer to spend.  If we couldn't get a spot there, then we would have to continue on to Flagstaff.  Then I had a bright idea - if we took hwy 69 we could go to the Prescott area, and we've never been to Prescott.  Well, there wasn't much around there either and Jim wanted to try a new KOA (opening soon, check online) in Chino Valley.  I called, they never returned the call, I'm guessing they are not  open yet, we never saw any signs either.  So we ended up going all the way up Hwy 89 to I40 and east to Williams. This certainly is not the fastest route to Williams.  We never did see Prescott...OR Sedona...so much for saving a few bucks at the RV park in Sedona.  We used a ton of gas...oh well, win some lose some.

Williams, however is quite the little town.  This is where the train ride up to the Grand Canyon departs from.  It's an old town and tonight Jim and I walked up and down the old Main Street, which incidentally is the famous Route 66, as in 'Get Your Kicks on Route 66'.   We stopped at the Safeway for a couple of things and walked out with two bags full.

Tonight's forced march was on Route 66!

Remember when gas stations looked like this?   Of couse, it was before my time (cough)

The first RV's!

This part of Rt. 66 is one way, and if you can read this, you're in trouble!

Tonight, temperatures are expected to dip into the high 20's tonight.  Yikes! 

We are trying to decide our next move.  There are so many ways to go from here.  Until we firm up plans, we are leaning toward the southern Utah canyons. 

Of one thing I am very, very grateful - that we are NOT in the vicinity of the devastating tornadoes in Mississippi, Alabama and Tennessee.  In previous trips we actually were in those areas around this time of year.  I can't even imagine a tornado almost a mile wide in the south east, that is more of a Kansas/Oklahoma type of cell.  Unbelievable.  My heart goes out to those affected.

Tomorrow we are traveling to.....  Anybody got a dart board?

All in the Family

Apache Junction AZ

Day 28

Nice today!  Coolish but sunny.  We went to the Phoenix Zoo with Jim's sister and her two children, a college freshman and a seventh grader.  The city of Phoenix has  done a lovely job with this place.  There are plenty of old growth trees for shade, which I'm sure is very welcome when the weather is hot...and it certainly gets HOT here.    One of the better ones that we've been to.

Begging for bananas from the trainer

Couldn't firgure out if he looked more like a tail-less squirrel or a fat rat

We came back to the RV for a few hours and later went out to dinner with the sister and her gentleman friend...just seems wrong to call a man in his 50's 'boyfriend'.  He's from Brooklyn and sounds it.  We had a good time teasing about all of our accents.  He laughs at us saying 'bee ah' for beer. 

Pretty sunset at the Apache Junction/Mesa KOA

View from the RV, Superstition Mt. (I think)

The mountain and beautiful  Bougainvillea made a nice background

We will be leaving late morning  tomorrow.  We're not exactly where we will be going, there's still snow in so many places.  Also we are trying to work out a plan to accommodate my daughter who wants to fly out to meet us somewhere in California, she really wants to see the giant sequoias.  Jim's brother and wife will be in Las Vegas in mid May and we are also trying to work that in.

Could be a rather convoluted trip..

Maybe Sedona tomorrow, we'll see.

The Long and Winding Road

Apache Junction Az

Day 27
The clouds were all around, but plenty of sun too this morning.  We didn't know if the weather would cooperate with outdoor attractions so we took the morning slow.  Headed to Costco and Walmart for a little restocking, then back to the RV for a quick lunch.

The weather looked okay, so we headed out of Apache Junction to travel up part of the Apache Trail, a scenic highway ( I use the term highway loosely) that winds through canyons, mountains and around lakes, , east of Phoenix.  I've been on the 'easy' part a couple of years ago, from Apache Junction to Tortilla Flat on our 2008 visit here.  That is what we planned to do today...but we never hold fast to plans, now do we?

After a stop at the shops in Tortilla Flats, we decided the weather was good enough to travel 'a little further' before we turned around to go back.  Apache Trail is an eighty mile loop, doesn't sound like it should take long, but 23 miles of that is dirt...rutted, washboard dirt. Oh...and it's not level either.  Most of the dirt portion is one lane, hairpin turns, precipitous steep grades and clings to the edge of the mountains.

Jim checking out 'The Duke' at Tortilla Flat

Every inch of the walls are covered with dollar bills

The first of three lakes on the drive

One lane bridge

Taken from that one lane bridge

Dirt...

I've finally stopped twitching here

Finally pavement!  The Roosevelt Dam

Bridge near the Roosevelt Dam

I don't know what possessed us to venture onto the unpaved section, maybe it was because had the 'Quadra-Drive' Jeep that we've never taken on anything worse than a gravel driveway and we felt infallible.
Only a couple of miles in, I started to realize that we probably were in for more than we bargained for.  I kept thanking God that we were on the inside edge every time we encountered another car.  The cars going in the opposite  direction were clinging to the edge of the cliffs and it was straight down.   I thought about asking Jim to turn around, then realized that doing that would shorten the trip but meant that I WOULD BE ON THE OUTSIDE EDGE!  Nope, going on, even if it meant many more miles of this type of road, would be much more preferred than going even a few miles ON THAT FREAKIN' OUTSIDE EDGE!

The fact that I am blogging this means that we did indeed survive the ride.  The dark clouds held and it didn't pour and knock us off the mountain, another concern.  I kept seeing newspaper headlines *South Carolina couple washed over side of mountain in rare, April flash flood*  And must admit it was a wonderful experience.  It was one of the three scary, but worth it, mountain drives we've ever done.  One was in Maui and the other was Hwy 550 in Ouray Colorado.  The Colorado road is the only road in the country that I REFUSE to ever, ever, ever drive on again. 

It's chilly and raining tonight, but we had a good time today. 

Dust in the Wind

Benson Az  to  Apache Junction Az 180 miles

Day 26


You know, a person can get quite self-sufficient while on the road.  I've groomed and clipped all three dogs since we left and today my fur...er, hair needed attention.  I got it cut just before we left, but couldn't squeeze out the time, between our frantic pace and my daughter's work schedule to take care of my roots.  So, three and a half weeks later, I really needed a touch up!

What to do?  Call Monsieur Jacques, my personal hairdresser.  Gave him a quick lesson in parting, squirt bottle hair color, dabbing and not rushing.  One other trip he had it done in three minutes and I came out looking like a calico cat.  This time, however, he took his time.  At one point I looked up at him with the plastic gloves, comb and bottle and couldn't help but giggle thinking that his old fellow cop buddies would never believe that this was the same man! 

The color was in and I waited for it to do its magic and realized that the water pressure wasn't strong enough in the RV to rinse it all out adequately.  I was going to have to walk up to the office area where the showers are.  Have you ever seen what a person with a head full of dye glop looks like?  Okay, I thought, I'll just wrap my head in a towel, but didn't want to ruin the towel, so I got the bright idea of wrapping my head in plastic wrap and then put a towel over that.  Walking to the shower I prayed that I wouldn't get run over, have a heart attack or stroke or anything until I got the damn dye and plastic wrap off my head.  I couldn't imagine having to go to a hospital like that!  Of course, I couldn't get the combination lock to work, I kept trying, the dye had now been on way too long and was starting to ooze out of the plastic and down my temples and forehead and the towel was starting to fall off. It was at this point that the lady from the office came by...I think I scared her.  She unlocked the door for me (really fast) , I shampooed the toxic chemicals out of my hair, took a nice shower, my over-processed hair didn't fall out and all was right with the world.

Next we zipped everything up and hit the road.  The sun was out, but the wind was howling and forecasters had said that it would only get worse...oh joy.  We were going to take the state hwy 79 that runs east of the interstate, but decided against it due to the weather.  It  would have taken another 45 minutes and fighting wind isn't fun.  Wind is almost unavoidable in this part of the country at this time of year.  Portions of the ride today were really hairy, especially when the dust kicked up into it.  Jim's arms were cramping from trying to hold the RV steady, thank heavens he didn't have to deal with bad visibility, it wasn't good visibility by any means.  Tonight on the TV news we learned that I40 north of here was closed down between Flagstaff and Winslow due to dust and extreme winds, so we weren't so bad after all.

And then there's the weather.  The heavy clouds started about 30 miles into the trip, then it got cold.  This is Phoenix, for cryin' out loud!  The normal temp is around 85 degrees, and we all know that Phoenix is always sunny!  Yeah right.  When we pulled into town this afternoon it was 59 degrees, windy and cloudy...even had a rain shower!  There is snow not too far north of here....this is getting old.

As if the day wasn't going crappy enough, we had the worst time ever getting a RV spot.  Seems the DOGS are a huge problem here.   I told the truth about having THREE and was refused for having one too many, another would take them, but didn't have a spot on one of their 'dog streets' (I'm not making this up) and another place refused us because they close from noon until three, and the lady sounded like I was really bothering her by asking if we could pay her $50/night for a piece of dirt with hook-ups!  So we continued on. 

Bad day.  We were both stressed for a variety of reasons.  Trust me, today there was nothing worthy of using up any space on my camera's memory card.  I'm freezing and getting ready to crawl into my cuddle duds, pull the extra blanket over my head and forget about today.

 The weather is forecasted to be nasty....until the day we are scheduled to leave when it will be 90 and sunny.  

Bah.

I Wanna Yama!

Benson and Tucson AZ

Day 25

Beautiful sunshine and temperatures in the 80's today.  Finally.  We decided not to leave here just to travel less than hour down the road, so we stayed and drove the Jeep to Tucson for the day.  After considering several places that we would like to see, we chose two...one for me, one for him.  In other words, a girlie  thing and a guy thing.  ONE of us will be enjoying each place less than the other.  Like me having to endure a blood and guts movie after he falls asleep during a 'chick flick'.

Today, MY thing was Tucson Botanical Gardens  and HIS thing was the Pima Air and Space Museum. 

Just a few miles down the Interstate we passed a ranch with llamas, or alpacas...more than I'd ever seen before.  Maybe being joined at the hip for TWENTY FIVE days is making us both a little crazy, but the converstion went like this:

Me - Oh my gosh, look at all the llamas!, Maybe they're alpacas...
Him - Maybe it's pronounced 'yamas'
Me - No, it's not.
Him - Why not? A double 'l' is sounded as a 'y' in Spanish.
Me - Isn't that just in the middle of the word?
Him -  I forget.
Me - No, definitely llama...'l' sound
Him -  You're so sure?
Me - Yes! 
Him - Why?
Me - Because, who ever heard of  *Yoyds of London*?

Never, never spend 25 days in a 30 foot box with anyone!

A short time later we arrived at the Botanical Gardens.  It was a fairly small place, but done so well.  Located in an older neighborhood, provided it with mature trees that almost formed a canopy of welcome shade.  I always miss my irises and clematis blooming because we're always on RV trips, but I got my iris fix here with hundreds of irises in full bloom.  Beautiful.  It was a very relaxing experience, hearing the water trickling over decorative stones and just sitting and drinking in nature's beauty.  

Remember Clay Potter?

Clematis Vine...be still my heart!

Just trying the macro setting...

Will pose for food

A tree that blooms in sunflowers, how cool is that?

So many irises

More irises

And lastly, couldn't forget a rose

Chick thing done, we drove a few minutes down the highway to the guy thing.  The Pima Air and Space Museum is amazing in the sheer number of planes located there.  They have many inside and about a million or so outside...maybe it just seemed like a million.  We walked around a couple of hangers and then took a one hour tour on a trolley to learn about the ones outdoors.  The gentleman giving us the tour was remarkable.  He was a retired Air Force pilot, then flew for American Airlines.  He knew everything, and I mean everything that anyone would ever want to know about aircraft.  This guy lived and breathed aviation, if he couldn't be around aircraft he would die.

And I do NOT want to see any more old planes, jets, helicopters, or any freaking thing that can fly for a long, long time!  Psst...I must have forgotten to take any pictures of planes, oops.

On the return trip to the RV, we passed the llama/yama/alpaca ranch again.  Jim looked over at all the animals and said, "Yeah, they're not llamas, they're the other ones...pakles, they're smaller." 

I thought I'd fall out of the car door, "What?  What did you call them....PAKLES?  You mean, alpacas?"

Almost swallowed my tongue laughing....

Later, out of curiosity, I looked up the ranch on Google...I mean, how many llama/alpaca ranches are in a small town like Benson Az. and is located right on the side of the Interstate?  I discovered that this is the place Cienga Farms and my eyes popped like Ricky Ricardo's when I clicked on the cute little alpacas available for sale.  Holy mother of all that is furry...the cheapest one for sale was $10,000 and one was $50,000! 

Whoa...Jim's in the wrong line of work, we need to raise llamas and alpacas!  But first, we'd need to know exactly what they're called.  I can just see the ad now...

*FOR SALE  -  YAMAS AND PAKLES*

Tomorrow, heading toward Phoenix on the back roads maybe.

Tombstone Territory

Benson & Tombstone AZ

Day 24

Slept, woke, slept, woke to the rootin' tootin' railroad trains.  Seemed almost constant there for a while...I think it may have had something to do with an accident on the tracks near Tucson.  They must have been backed up last night, tonight seems much quieter.  We'll see.

Yesterday afternoon, when we arrived, the weather was quite warm.  Well, that all changed during the night.  The sun has been replaced by thick clouds and the temps may not get out of the 60's.  Oh well, at least we won't have to worry about getting overheated today!

Mid morning we headed out to Tombstone, about 25 miles south of here.  Took the scenic road down and although it wasn't exactly 'scenic', there was more to see than on the highway.  This was actually a stage coach run between the towns of Tombstone and Benson.  Jim has always wanted to stop here.  It's on his 'Bucket List'...way down on his bucket list.

Our first stop was Boot Hill.  The Baby Boomer Generation watched so many westerns we are all familiar with it.  Actually, it was interesting.  It certainly tells a story of the violence in the area at that time.  So many murders, sorta sounds like North Charleston on a Saturday night...

They were SO not politically correct back then...

Next stop was the Town Hall, now a museum.  Excellent!  Tells the real story of the cowboys we became acquainted with watching TV in the late 50's and early 60's.  We spent a couple of hours there, which was amazing because Jim can run through a museum in record time.  I swear we got through the Smithsonian in an hour years ago.  His thoughts are...why waste time reading everything, it happened a long time ago!  Today he read everything. 

Tombstone Court House

My problem was that I couldn't get the TV theme songs out of my head!  As I stood there reading about Wyatt Earp, the song immediately popped into my head...

Wyatt Earp, Wyatt Earp,

Brave, courageous and bold.

Long live his fame, long live his glory

And long may his story be told

The building  also had exhibits from the mining history, weapons, Native Americans and life in general at the time. Very informative.  It has photos of all of the sheriffs and as soon as I laid eyes on one yet another song popped into my head!  John Slaughter, as in 'Texas John Slaughter':

Texas John Slaughter made 'em do what they outta,

And if they didn't...they died.

Why is it, I can't remember what I did five minutes ago, but I can remember the words and melody verbatim of  something from 1960?  And good old John stayed, looping around my brain all day...

Our generation was fed a constant stream of violence on TV.  Gosh, even our cartoons were violent.  We all played cowboys and indians, cops and robbers, every boy had a cap gun...I think we 'got it out of out system'  Later, they banned all that stuff and so many of the young are more violent than our generation ever thought of being!

Main Street

We had some lunch and walked the old downtown.  Some of it is typical touristy junk, but still walking up and down the boardwalks in fun.  There are some decent shops also. 

It started to rain  so we headed to for a return visit to Kartchner Caverns State Park,  On the way we passed through another Border Patrol check point...what's that, like four now?  We went in 2008 and these caverns are worth a second trip.  Arizona  made the area a state park to preserve the site.I highly recommended it , some of the best caverns in the country and tours are by park rangers who know what they are talking about.   Just make sure you aren't 'linty'...they let you know that lint is the enemy of caverns and they do everything short of running a Lint-Pick-Up roller over your body.

Back to the RV, had a nice dinner and relaxed.  Tomorrow the weather is supposed to be GREAT!  I'm afraid to believe the forecast...

Happy Birthday Jim!

Sunday, April 18, 2010

El Paso Tx  to  Benson Az  280 miles

Day 23

   
We spent the morning doing housecleaning RV chores,  then headed about 45 minutes north west on I10 to meet my friend for a little touring and lunch.

They brought us to Old Masilla, a historic town a few minutes south of Las Cruces NM.  It is similar to Santa Fe, but on a smaller scale.  Beautiful, thick-walled adobe buildings that now house shops and restaurants, around a village square.  Today,  arts and crafts booths framed the perimeter, and I bought  a couple of things. 

Me and the birthday boy

For the first time on the trip, I forgot my camera in the RV.  Luckily my friend had hers and took photos.  Later I discovered that even if I had gone back for my camera, I still wouldn't have been able to use it because my memory card was left in the lap top!  They say the memory is the first to go....

Lunch was at La Posta Restaurant.  with its beautiful decor, my friend said it had atmosphere and she was so right!  I don't believe I've ever had a margarita at the stroke of noon before.  It was one of the better ones I've had, not that I've had THAT many...but it is the only alcoholic drink that I like.  The dish I ordered was La Posta Chica, 'chica' means small...it wasn't.  But I ate practically all of it, would have eaten ALL but my wimpy palate couldn't handle heat of one the things on the dish.  Oh...and I have NO idea of what I ate, except for the taco, which I recognized.  At least nothing had TWIGS in it, like my last Mexican meal!

Enjoying Margaritas!

Small?  No, and that's without the dessert that came with it!

As you enter the restaurant...

Part of the town square and church in Old Mesilla

All too soon it was time to leave.  We were hoping to be able to get close to Tombstone AZ by evening.  We were out of town and immediately into range lands.   There are areas where many dust storm warning are posted, thankfully we didn't have to deal with that.  I could see rain showers heading toward El Paso, but we didn't encounter any rain today! 

Yesterday we left the Central Time Zone somewhere near Van Horn Texas.  Today we entered the Pacific Time Zone when we crossed over into Arizona.  We are so confused...the only way we know the correct time is to look at our cell phones!  The good news was that we gained an hour so drove a little further and make it to the city of Benson, located at the exit for Tombstone, about 25 miles south of here.

This RV park is very nice.  One of the nicer ones we've stayed in, heated pool, spa, dog walks, cable, good WIFI, near stores...and unfortunately also near a double RAILROAD TRACK!    The train whistles woke us many times during the night.  All the nicer RV places around also seem to be close to the tracks too...

Tomorrow, is going to be cool, cloudy and showery...what a surprise!  We are going to tour Tombstone.  You know....Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, OK Corral, Boothill...etc.

Are We Doing A Rain Dance?

Saturday April 17, 2010


Big Bend National Park to El Paso Tx  350 miles

Day 23

Starting week four, the first few weeks always go fast...then the 30 foot box starts to shrink a little every day....

Woke up to...surprise RAIN!  We figured if we went to the desert areas, it would stop.  Nah. 

Clouds were low as we left the park

So we left our tame (and still waiting for food) buzzards and headed across the park to the west side where we exited.  Just wish it had been sunny, because the desert landscape is so much more colorful.  We picked up Texas hwy 118, a very good road.  Jim didn't have to turn the steering wheel until we got to Alpine, eighty miles,  how's that for straight? 

We had lunch in the RV near Alpine in a thunderstorm, with lightning striking close by.  Later we watched the clouds turn black just to the east of us.  Fortunately, we didn't go the original way we planned, a more scenic way, by accident.  I was talking on the phone and Tom Tom told him to take US90.  If we'd gone the other way we'd have been in the mountains in severe storms, so it worked to our advantage, for once.

We passed through some interesting town including Marfa.  Hwy 90 goes directly through the town, we noted the architecture of the old buildings...there's the movie house, the feed and seed, the post office, bank and....WOW - the county courthouse!

That picture was obviously NOT taken today.

We continued on Hwy90 in the stormy weather.  At one point the sky was so black to the northeast that I phoned my son to check the weather on his computer.  I really didn't want to be surprised by anything funnel shaped dropping down in front of the RV and taking us to Oz! 

A few miles up the road we noticed a huge, strange blimp-like thing off in the distance.  Yup, that's exactly what it was....a huge blimp like thing, or a TARS (Tethered Aerostat Radar System)  It's all by itself in the middle of a cattle range.  It's a surveliene system...we're very close to the border, figure it out.

The sun was shinning by the time we got to El Paso.  Stopped on the eastern edge of town at a so-so park, but for an overnight it was okay.  A little difficulty getting settled, the first site we were sent to had someone's car parked square in the middle.  Went back to the office, get a new site, circle around again and there's already a motor home in that site.  Finally we just pulled into the next site...

Took a little ride to a grocery store and Home Depot.  I did not hear one word of English in either place. Gee, if I spent a few days in the stores around here I'd be speaking Spanish in no time!

Easy rotisserie chicken, salad, corn on the cob and fresh asparagus for dinner.  Got in touch with a lovely lady, who is a friend of mine from an Internet site that I've been a part of for many years.  She and her husband are meeting us for lunch.  Really looking forward to it.