Apr 9 2013
Yesterday we made our leisurely way back down to Phoenix and
had dinner out with the friends Mom stayed with overnight while I went back to the same nearby campground I was in a week ago.
This morning I picked her up, we stopped for breakfast and
then I dropped her at the airport. Instead of leaving right away, I parked in the cell-phone lot where I
could get a WIFI signal, probably because the lot is pretty close to the end of the terminal block, and kicked back reading a book and keeping an eye on
the status of her flight. When it had been in the air for a half hour or so I
began the process of extracting myself from Phoenix. I figured if anything had gone wrong with
her getting on the flight I would have heard by then.
I had debated whether to head up SR88 to the north side of Superstition
Mountain where there are a whole mess of trails, or stay on a more direct line
of travel down US60 to Gold Canyon and check out the popular Hieroglyphic trail
up the canyon of the same name on the southwest flank of the mountain.
The downside of the Hieroglyphic trail is that it is easy
and well used; the upside is that it's easy. Don’t get me wrong, spending time
like that with Mom was great. It’s something I have never done before and I
think we both came away better for it, but I was really wore out from spending
a week alone with my mother, (Though I guess technically that's not alone is it.) so I chose the easy trail.
This was a decent desert hike. It was a little crowded
despite being a weekday but several hikers told me if you get there early in
the morning during the week you can pretty much have the place to yourself.
Other than an initial switchback just beyond the trailhead, the climb up the
canyon is pretty gradual at first then starts to steepen; then gets really
steep if you insist on climbing up towards the ridge that eventually terminates
in Superstition Peak! (Which I did not.)
The views are good right from the beginning, especially if
you remember to stop and turn around often on the way up before you’re too
tired to appreciate them fully on the way down.
The petroglyphs are pretty cool to see, though I wish we could do
something about the stupid, the idiots and the just plain malicious that seem
to think it’s alright to scratch their own marks into this ancient artwork.
Speaking of stupid, I don’t know how I managed it but when I
checked my memory card this evening all the photos I took today seem to be
missing. Sure hope I figure out what happened because I don’t want a repeat of
that!
The sun was getting pretty low by the time I finished the
hike but, using The Book, I had located a campground very close by so wasn’t in
any rush. That turned out to be a mistake.
The Canyon Vistas RV Resort threw me out when I tried
securing a site for the night, literally. I was escorted to the gate by a guy in golf cart and shown
the door. (Maybe I should have shaved first since it's been a week now.) Seems they do not accept trailers under a certain length nor are
Class B motorhomes tolerated. It would have been nice if they bothered to
mention something so basic in the description they submitted to Trailer Life
Campground Guide. I can assure you, that information has now been entered into
my own personal campground guide!
So, having been soundly rejected, I turned my back to the
setting sun, driving right past the next ‘RV Resort’ since I didn’t want a
repeat performance, and drove through the deepening dark to the far
side of Globe (Under other circumstances this looked like a pretty cool town to
explore.) to the Apache Gold RV park, which is nothing more than a parking lot
with some rather ragged out hookups sticking up out of the
pavement alongside a casino.
But hey! It’s a place to stop for the night, wasn’t all that
expensive, (You check in at the gas station convenience store.) I can’t hear
anything going on over at the casino
because there’s a whole lot of parking lot between me and there, the trailer
next to me seems to be vacant tonight and, besides I’m
ready for bed, so it works.
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