Slavin Gulch, Take Two (12-14-14)

Slavin Gulch Trail is a hiking trail in the Dragoon Mountains of Arizona…..but I guess I am getting a little ahead of myself, since my last blog post was a couple of weeks ago, and we were in Texas.



Well, after leaving Big Bend, we stopped for a few days in El Paso to spend some time with Paul’s mom.  Julie and Mike came with us for a day or so and we showed them around town a little.

While in El Paso I usually get some exercise by having Paul drop me at the bottom of the hill on the way to his mom’s.  Its two miles up the hill with an elevation gain of 800 feet.  Not bad. If we really wanted to hike, all we have to do is step out her back door.  Her house backs up to the wilderness.

  

After leaving El Paso, we stopped in Benson AZ.  We are working our way towards the Palm Springs area of California, where we will park the rig for Christmas.

In Benson we caught back up with Nancy and Dave, and Mike and Julie.  We had time to go out to dinner and some of us went to the town craft fair.  No pictures though.  On my list of things to do in Benson, is to hike Slavin Gulch.  We attempted this trail almost exactly 3 years ago, but a mile or so into the hike I fell and broke my wrist.  (the link to that post: 1st attempt at Slavin Gulch )

A mile or so into the hike, we came upon the “scene of the crime” so to speak.  Yup, I fell going over that little itty bitty barbed wire fence.  It was a less squished down back then, but still, the height wasn't the issue, the instability of the rocks was.  A boulder shifted, my foot rolled, and down I went.  This time Paul made sure he was hanging on to me, haha.

No broken bones this time, so we continued on the 7.5 mile hike.  It has 1400 feet of elevation gain and ends at the ruins of an old mine. The trail, in some spots, could barely be called a trail, and was very difficult to navigate.

We stopped for lunch along the way and discussed the fact that it didn't seem like we were going to be gaining that much elevation, since we hadn't been going up too steep of an incline.  But, of course, we should have known better and that situation changed very soon after lunch. 

One of the perks to elevation gain is the view from the top.

 

Once we reached the end of the trail, Paul wanted to do some exploring of the mine, as usual, and I didn't, so I plopped myself down on a very convenient nearby bench and dozed in the sun while he scrambled up the rocks to the mine.

 

The trip back down wasn't very much fun because it’s hard to control your speed and easy to roll on the rocks when you are going too fast, but we made it down with no injuries.  We had been hoping we’d have enough time to do the short hike to the historic Council Rocks, an area used years ago by the Chiricahua Apache Chief, Cochise, but with a 12 mile drive down a dirt “road” ahead of us, we thought we’d lose daylight too quickly. Maybe next time.


We have now moved on from Benson and are getting closer to Palm Springs.

El Paso (11-06-14)

I don’t know where the last week went, but it’s gone, that’s for sure.  We have been visiting with Paul’s mom in El Paso.




She usually puts together a short list of projects that she would like help with while we are in town, which is good for Paul because he likes to stay busy.














While Paul was occupied, Dozer helped my with my projects.  I got caught up on my paperwork and organized my pictures.

I have also started back up with my genealogy research and recently  made contact with an 81 year old priest, who is my third cousin once removed. He has a lot of family history information and has even written a 200 page “book” outlining the family tree.  He was nice enough to send it to me.  Now I have a lot of work to do!

Actually, he and I are related on both my mother and my father’s side of the family which makes the connection even more fun!



Just like with a house, the trailer has wear and tear issues and needs occasional updating. On the way into El Paso, Paul noticed that the airbags in the hitch that keep the trailer riding smoothly had lost their air.  We can travel without them but prefer not to go too far.

Once he pulled it apart, he could see that the airbags had worn through.  We ordered new ones, and the company who makes the hitch is sending us an upgraded “bed” for the airbags to sit in so they won’t rub.

After spending the summer with AGM batteries in the camper, I knew it was just a matter of time before we upgraded the batteries in the trailer. 
Having dealt with batteries on an ongoing basis on our boats, we long ago instituted a “battery rule”.  We don’t mess around- once a battery doesn’t seem to be holding a charge, out it goes.  Well, that time has come, and the old batteries are out, and new AGM batteries are in. Well, one is in.  Sam’s Club only had one, so we still need a second one.

Both Arizona and Texas have spectacular sunsets and we were treated to some awesome ones while we were in El Paso.

I did it! (10-30-14)

About 3 years ago,  a good friend of mine gave me his entire music collection- over 90 gigabytes of songs.  Both Paul and I are music challenged. What that means is we have no idea which songs by which artists are on our “wow I love that song” list.   So we ccouldn'tjust say we like John Mellencamp for example.  In fact, had you asked, I would have said, yeah, I like his music.  Well, it turns out, there is only one of his songs I liked enough to keep.

So for the last 3 years I have painstakingly added this music a batch at a time to my iPod.  As I listened to each song I made a note as to whether I should delete it or keep it, and if I keep it, what type of playlist should it go on.  Originally Paul helped me, but he finds it too stressful to listen to bits of songs while he is driving, so I did most of it on my own.

  And I am finished. 

El Paso (09-29-13)

The last week has been a flurry of activity while Paul and I visited his mom.  We started our visit with dinner at the local country club- what a view!

Paul spent a few days helping his mom with some projects around the house, and also took advantage of her workshop to refinish a couple of our cabinet doors.  As in most homes, the doors in front of the sink take a bit of a beating so he added a coat or two of polyurethane before they showed any wear.  






Of course, we don’t call his mom the energizer bunny for nothing ( if you ever wondered where Paul gets his energy and his intelligence, look no further!). She is extremely busy with her many philanthropic endeavors so we took some time to do some hiking.

  The nearby Franklin Mountains provide plenty of hiking  trails, so we set out on the Ron Coleman Trail. 

We were supposed to get to the peak of the mountain, but after almost 3 hours of hiking, we turned back.  We’ll get to the peak some other (cooler) day. The views from the trail were still spectacular, including this one, where we could see not only the City of El Paso, but into New Mexico and Juarez Mexico.

The week flew by and pretty soon it was our last night in town.  We spent it attending the first of a month long series of events celebrating the city of El Paso.  We heard two famous El Pasoans tell the story of “their” El Paso.  The first was Ginger Kerrick (who attended via video), a flight director with NASA, and the second was astronaut Danny Olivas.  It was interesting hearing what it was like for them growing up in El Paso, and the influence their childhood here had on their success.

We are now on our way to Santa Fe, New Mexico.  We’ve had to adjust our plans and our campground reservations because of the government shutdown.  For us, its just a minor inconvenience.  Others have been much more adversely affected by the shutdown.