The Road to El Paso (06-22-22)

 

We know we are headed to El Paso to check on Paul’s mom, but we looked at a map to find a new way to get there.  We chose Rte 191- The Coronado Trail Scenic Highway.

On our way there, we saw signs for Canyon De Chelly National Monument.  That started a brief conversation about whether we had been there before. We quickly decided that we had.  But it started bugging me, so instead of relying on our memories, I did a search on my blog.  No Canyon De Chelly

 ( pronounced De SHAY).

Well, that meant we should stop and check it out. It turned out, that was easy, and fast. We stopped at the visitor center and she assured us we could drive the free, scenic drive and look at the sights, with our camper towing the Jeep.  So, off we went.

There were about 6 stops along the road. We stopped at the first one, and saw…..nothing. Hmm.. we moved on to the second one, and saw….nothing.  We weren’t sure what we were supposed to be seeing because there were no signs with information, nothing that told us what we should be looking for, or where, and the museum is closed.

I think the best way to see this area is by guided tour, which is the only way you can actually go down inside the canyon. After the third stop we turned around and left.  And now it’s crossed off our list.

Its hard to believe we are headed towards late June and have not yet left the state of Arizona. Everyone thinks of the desert when they think of our state, but we arrived in Springerville, elevation 7500 ft, and it was too chilly to sit outside. It has also rained on us 3 times in the last two days.

We parked ourselves for two days to explore what we consider to be the upper end of the Coronado Trail Scenic highway. Our plan is to spend 4 days exploring 100 miles of this road.

The first thing we did was drive to the small town of Show Low. We've been hearing about Show Low from friends for years but had never been there. Well, now we can say we have. It sits at a high elevation which makes it popular for desert dwellers, and has a couple of grocery stores. Pretty much just a town.

The town does have an interesting legend about it’s name.  Supposedly two men were partners in a ranch but soon discovered it wouldn’t support two families, so they agreed to a poker game- winner takes the ranch, the loser leaves.  The game was running so evenly finally one said to the other “If you can show low, you win”  (he was holding a 3) the partner showed him a deuce- and took the ranch.  In deference to the story, Main Street is actually named “Deuce of Clubs" Avenue.

Wanting to hike, the next day we drove up in elevation, to about 8600 feet, in the Apache Sitgreaves National Forest. The scenery up here is gorgeous, with pine forests, meadows and lakes.

The trail we chose to hike is the Thompson trail. It gets great reviews and we did enjoy the trail. It starts out following a creek. We had the choice of staying above it, or on a trail right next to it. We chose above it, and really enjoyed the views. It would have been 6.5 miles if we could have finished the trail, but we couldn't.

At lower elevations its the heat that gets us off the trail early in the day. Here, its the afternoon thunderstorms. Almost two miles into the hike we started hearing consistent rumbles, and the sky started looking more ominous. With no cell signal, we decided not to mess around, so we turned around and headed back.

 I did pause long enough along the way to get pictures of the wildlife.

The next day we moved on down the road to a new destination, stopping along the way whenever we saw something of interest.  We were now driving through Apache National Forest.  We decided to drop the camper in a parking lot and explore in the Jeep. We were also looking for a good place to spend the night, and it’s much easier to do without the camper.

The road itself had some harrowing (for me) areas with steep drop offs into deep canyons.  The speed limit is 25 mph in many places, for good reason. 

 Luckily the road is not very well traveled (Sometimes we asked...why is this road even here??).

We tried to hike again but the sky kept spitting out raindrops, so we were left to drive around looking at stuff.

We did find a really nice camp spot the first night and totally enjoyed the quiet.

Up and moving the next day, we started talking about wildlife we had seen. Our count?

4 wild turkeys

too many deer to count

1 bear- we saw him along the road while we were driving, so, no picture.

When we had cell signal, we looked up hikes that might be of interest, and decided on Rose Peak.  We knew there was a parking lot that would fit us, which made it easy.  We parked and headed up the hill. Turns out its really a “road” that leads to a fire lookout (you can see it in this picture). 

 

Once we got to the peak, we realized the fire lookout was inhabited- by a guy named Jim. He invited us up into the tower, and we had an awesome chat. He has been here for 4 months, with another two weeks to go until monsoon season is in full swing, and he will not be needed.

He stays in the cabin for 2 weeks at a time and then heads to town for supplies.   We had a bunch of questions for him- one was “when was the fire “ we could see evidence of a recent fire on the trail- the answer was it was last year, and he had less than 5 minutes to get out after calling it in.

I asked him how often he sees bears (since we had just seen one). He said its a funny story- apparently the Forest Service uses the parking lot we parked in to dump “problem bears”.  4 bears had been dumped in the last few weeks.  One day Jim was in the tower and saw a bear exploring around his cabin.  The bear even stood on hind legs and put his nose up against the window.  Obviously dumped because he was habituated to people.

Once we left Jim we discussed our plans for a spot that night. With the country in a heat wave, our options were to be hot at night or find a spot with electricity.  We decided to drive south to Roper Lake State Park, instead of boondocking in the forest again.

The southern terminus of the scenic drive dumped us in the town of Morenci. In the picture you can see the arrow that is our GPS position. The strange swirl of colors is actually a mining operation.

This is a huge mine-so huge, its hard to grasp the enormity of this operation. At 80 square miles, its the biggest producer of copper in North America, and one of the largest pit mines in the world. 

This is the size of the tires used on the trucks that haul the rock. The trucks are 25 feet wide, weigh 80,000 lbs. and require 150 gallons of coolant.

The fact that they look so small gives an indication of the size of the operation here.

Our last stop before El Paso was Chiricahua National Monument. We have been here many times, partly because we love the hikes here, but its also at a higher elevation, so its cooler than the surrounding area.  This is the first time we were in a rig small enough to fit in the campground in the park.

The trail we chose was an 8 mile loop with 1600 ft of elevation gain. It was, perhaps, a little more than we were comfortable handling, but we knew we wouldn’t be hiking for a while so we wanted to push it.

One section is a smaller loop that contains “named” rocks such as…

   Camel’s head

and Kissing Rocks

We survived the hike, but we sure were beat.

Let The Summer Begin! (06-12-18)

On June 5th we had everything “summerized” in the house, and the camper all packed up ready to go! Ordinarily we would take the trailer on a trip this long, but not this time! Our plan for the summer is to combine exploring with genealogy research. Much of that research will need to be done in major cities, and we decided that driving a dually would get very old very fast, so we are taking the camper and towing the Jeep behind us. 

Before we left we sat down and made a list of the states and provinces we need to visit in our search for information. Our basic route will be Texas /Mississippi /Tennessee /Georgia /Alabama /Virginia /Massachusetts /Nova Scotia.Then, if need be, we will reverse the order on the way home, depending on what we learn along the way.

We are determined to keep our pace as leisurely as we can, even though we know that won’t always be possible. With that idea in mind, we stopped several times before we got to El Paso to visit Paul’s mom.

Our first stop was Colossal Cave, just outside Tucson.  We have seen the highway billboards for this cave for years. It has been a tourist attraction since the 1920s!



The underground temperature is about 70 degrees, which we figured would be a  welcome relief from the 107 degrees on the highway.

The only problem was the cat.  We couldn’t leave him in the camper for 3 hours without air conditioning, so for the first time ever, we paid for an rv spot with electricity, even though we had no intention of spending the night there.

There are several different tours you can take, and although I am NOT a fan of being underground, we chose the 1.5 hour long Ladder tour, which involves some scrambling and climbing. I figured as long as I was going to be underground,  it might as well be fun.

The pictures came out fuzzy because pretty much the only light we had was our headlamps, which made it more interesting, but more challenging for pictures.


We’ve been in quite a few caves over the years, and other than the hiking aspect, this one doesn’t rate in the top 5.  The formations are quite dusty and dirty, and not all that pretty ( admittedly, we are spoiled).

Our next stop along the way was Wilcox, AZ, the closest town to Chiricahua National Monument.  We have hiked many of the trails here, but we were again hoping for some relief from the heat by hiking at an elevation of about 7500 feet.

We chose the Sugarloaf Mountain Trail- its only about 3 miles long, and we tried to get an early start to beat the heat. There are great views wherever you go in the Chiricahuas-one of the reasons we like it so much.

After a quick picnic lunch we meandered through the town of Wilcox, thinking we would check out the museum that we somehow have never taken the time to investigate. We chatted with the woman operating it, (not pictured here) and she was warning us that she might get an urgent phone call that would require her to leave, and sure enough, the words were barely out of her mouth when her phone rang, and the “closed” sign went on the door.  Oh well, maybe next time. At least the ice cream parlor was open!

We spent 4 days with Paul’s mom, and dang it, I never took a single picture! I am great at taking scenic shots, but horrible at remembering to get the camera out when I am with other people.

Playing Catch Up (04-14-16)

Apparently “some” inquiring minds would like to know what we’ve been up to since my last post, which was, egad, over a month ago. 

After leaving Tucson, we headed to El Paso, by way of Chiricahua National Monument, where we spent some time hiking.

Hiking among the hoodoos at this park is quite a blast…..

…and offers some spectacular views as well.

We spent two weeks with Paul’s mom, taking care of some yard work and just general stuff that she wanted help with.  We also both had our dental check up since our favorite dentist is in El Paso.  How exciting!



In early April we went home to Havasu, stopping in Tucson to visit one more time and see our friends’ new house. 

We no sooner arrived home when we got a message inquiring if we were home.  Our friends Mike and Julie were looking for a place to celebrate Mike’s birthday:

So, along with friends Liz and Randy, they came to hang out with us for a few days.  The weather wasn’t very pool friendly, but we still had a great time.


As usual, the kitchen was well used and we cooked several meals together.

Of course, there is always something going on in Havasu and this weekend was no exception. 

The boat show was about more than just boats- also on display were side by side ATVs- do I see one in our future??

  

There were also Jet ski races on the lake, which were actually fun to watch.

Come Monday, they all took off again, but there was no need for long good-byes. They were headed to nearby Vegas, and we followed them the next day.


More on Vegas later…..

Chiricahua Mountains (2-6-2011)

   Paul and I spent our anniversary hiking in the Chiricahua Mountains, which was home to the Chiricahua Apaches many years ago.  The last time we were here, we hiked a short trail, in 5 inches of new snow.  This time we were luckier- there was no fresh snow on the ground, although about 30% of the trail was snow covered.  It was a test of our "layering" abilities, for sure.  Everyone knows if the temperatures are cold and may vary, you need to layer.  Deciding what to wear for those layers required some thought though.  In the end I wore a short sleeved hiking shirt, a sweatshirt, a hooded sweatshirt, and my Gor-tex windbreaker.  I also had two hats with me (baseball cap and a warm one), and swapped back and forth between them all day.  For the first hour I was really glad I had all those layers on, since the temperatures had barely approached the 40 degree mark.  We both shed and added layers all day long as we moved from sun to shade, snow to bare ground, and wind to calm and every combination of those factors imaginable.

 




Big Balanced rock- 25ft in diameter, weighs 1000 tons

                                                                                                                                                                We took a longer trail this time, hiking the Ed Rigg trail to the Mushroom Trail to get to the Heart of Rocks Trail that has some interesting rock formations.  Once we finished the Heart of Rocks trail, which is a small loop, we had to make a decision about our route back.  We could continue forward, taking the opportunity to see new formations, but that would add 2 miles and some elevation gain to the day; or we could turn back and return the way we came, keeping the day's hike at about 7.5 miles. 

   We decided it was too late in the day to comfortably hike the extra mileage, so we  turned around.  However, we did think it was worth adding a short 1 mile spur to get to see "Inspiration Point".  By that time we were getting tired, so we were hoping it would be worth it.  It was.  The skies were clear enough to see for long distances and the views were awesome.  Total mileage for the day was 8.5 miles.                                         



view from Inspiration Point



              Once we finished the hike, we went home to get ready to go out to dinner.  Willcox doesn't have too many restaurants, but they do have a decent Mexican one.   It was a great day and felt great to get out and get moving again.  Today we head to El Paso for a few days before heading down to the Gulf coast of Texas.

Celebrating 11 years

Paul and I are celebrating our 11th anniversary today.  I am not a "mushy" type of person, but the last 11 years have been the happiest of my life.  Having someone as a partner who is supportive, intelligent and fun, and always puts me first has made my life more amazing than I thought possible. 
    We're spending the day hiking in the Chiricahua Mountains.  We've basically been hibernating for the last few days as Arizona suffers record low temperatures.  Last night it got as low as 14 degrees here in Willcox.  We haven't had the snow that other parts of the country have had, but around here, no one is prepared for such low temperatures and they are struggling to cope.  We were planning on being in El Paso today, but the snow and the cold have caused us to delay moving again.
    Today it's supposed to finally warm up- 58 degrees in the mountains, 64 down in the town, but we are slow to get moving because its still only 28 out right now.  Hopefully we will get to hike and I can post some pictures.


February 5, 2000



Chiricahua National Monument, Willcox, AZ

Well, a new experience for us today.  We went hiking in the snow.  It wasn't snowing at the time, but there were a few inches on the ground.

Originally we were intending to hike Chiricahua National Monument yesterday, but the weather changed our minds.  Yesterday it rained most of the day, and the wind was whipping at about 30 miles an hour.  Oh. and it was in the 30s.  As anxious as we were to hike, there was no way it was going to happen.  As it turned out, it was kind of nice to decompress for the day.  We drove around Willcox, did a little shopping, and found Stout's Cider Mill.  We had some awesome apple pie, with cinnamon ice cream, then bought another small pie to bring home.  We also rented Star Trek, and now we know why everyone said it was such a good movie!  This morning, though, we realized that we had left on the outdoor stereo speakers by accident.  We apologized to the people next to us.  They laughed- it didn't disturb them, but they did wonder if we were watching TV  outside in the rain.

We were going to leave for Phoenix today, but we really want to see Chiricahua, so we postponed Phoenix for one more day. This area is known for its unusual rock formations. When we got up this morning, it was still in the 30s, so instead of leaving early, we relaxed over breakfast and left at about 8:30 for the 45 minute drive to the park.  Once we got there, we were surprised with the news that the road through the park wasn't open yet because they have to plow it.  Ooops.  We wandered the exhibits at the Visitor Center until we were told it was ok to go.  There are two basic trails through the area of the park that we wanted to see-one is 7.5 miles and the other is 3.5 miles. We didn't feel comfortable sticking to our original plan of doing the 7.5 mile loop, since there were still a lot of clouds around, it was cold, and we didn't know how slippery it would be in the snow. Although we didn't have any real issues, we're glad we kept it to the shorter loop.  The rock formations were amazing, and as we have found with  a lot of the natural beauty we have seen, pictures and descriptions hardly do it justice.

After eating lunch, we decided that it was early enough in the day that we could make the drive over to Fort Bowie (pronounced booee).  It was a little nervewracking for a few minutes on the drive over there.  We went down a long dirt road, and at one point, the mud was so deep and slick that the truck was fishtailing all over the road.  Paul said it was similar to being on ice....you can't go too slow- you have to go the right speed.  Trust me, sliding sideways down the road (in an F350 with dual rear wheels) was quite an experience. 

It was another 3 miles of walking to get to the fort and back, but at least there was no snow on the ground at this elevation. I have to say,  what impressed me wasn't the fort, it was the little information plaques that were along the trail.  They did a great job of describing what it was like here, and what took place in the 1800s. I think what helped me visualize everything was the fact that not much has changed in this area since then. As I looked around me there were no houses, no people, no manmade structures at all, except what was here 100 years ago. The fort was built in the 1800s to protect  the stage coaches and mail carriers as they passed through "Apache Pass", an area inhabited by Apache indians. At that time in history, Cochise was a leader of the Chiricahua Apaches. There was an uneasy civility between the indians and the settlers until Cochise was wrongly accused of stealing and kidnapping.  That accusation resulted in an 11 year war between the Apache and the settlers.

Very little remains of the actual fort, but walking through the dry river bed and along the trail, I could really get a sense of the incredible history of this area.