Painting the lady

If you remember, I recently added some bling to the van in the form of new window shades.

Well once the momentum started it was hard to stop and now I've added a little paint to her. OK, it's not exactly paint, but prints pulled from paintings is close enough.

I have a half dozen different prints by George Boutwell, a decidedly Texas artist and now, years after buying them, I have a place to display them in all their glory.

No, not all at once, I don't have enough wall space in the van for that, but the frame can be pulled off the wall and the print changed out for one of the others anytime I get a wild hair.

As before, if you dare to delve into the gritty details on this project click here to go to my other blog, the one where I keep all-things-non-travel.

 

 

Arizona vacation with Mom: Silver City, NM

Apr 10 2013

Rested and feeling better about the world today, I continued on down US70.

 

The Union Pacific railroad runs right between US70 and the casino but soon turns off to the north, makes a loop, then swoops under the highway heading south near San Carlos. That looks like it might be an interesting route as the RR heads down to the San Carlos reservoir then follows the course of the Gila river until it rejoins US70 near Bylas. One of these days I'll have to try it out, but not today.

 

From Bylas to Stafford the RR parallels the highway but there was no action today so I had to content myself with taking in the sights of the several small communities and the Gila River along here.

 

The railroad hugs the shores of the reservoir and the Gila river while the highway,
up there in the top right corner, takes a straighter route.

 

 

The RR, highway and river all part ways in different directions just east of Stafford and then all briefly come together again around Duncan. Not long after that the highway crosses into New Mexico and makes a nearly flat bee-line across the Lordsburg mesa towards - well what do you know! Lordsburg. There was some road construction along here that slowed things down a little but I put that behind me and picked up SR90 just north of Lordsburg.

Straight and flat across the Lordsburg Mesa

 

 

This road gradually climbs up through a small, orphaned patch of the Gila National Forest where it crosses the continental divide before coasting past Copper Mountain and some restored mine tailings on its way to Silver City.

 

 

Make sure any passengers are awake as SR90 crosses a small patch of the
Gila National Forest and the continental divide; it's pretty through here!

 

 

I’ve been here before, Silver City that is, because while I was working in the technology field there seemed to be a lot of professional conferences held in Las Vegas and I rarely passed up the opportunity for a road trip, so Silver City, right there between Las Vegas and home, has been a stopover several times.

I like this little town and always find it fascinating to look down into the deep ravine that used to be Main Street until the night of July 21, 1895 when runoff from the overgrazed hills around town washed it, and one or two people, away.

That blue river cutting through Silver City used to be Main St. at one point!
That's what happens when city planners and Mother Nature collide.

Parking at the visitor center sandwiched there between SR90 and The Big Ditch, as it’s now called, is free and convenient. A couple foot bridges take you across The Ditch into the main part of town. On the other side, if you pay attention, you’ll notice that the addresses along Bullard St., which parallels the missing Main St., are all mixed up. That’s a result of businesses that used to front on Main St. just turning around and using their back doors on Bullard St. as their main entrances now. Pretty cool!

Today I climbed a few blocks on up the hill to the Silver City Museum on Broadway. The museum is housed in a really cool old house that looks small but it seems to have plenty of exhibit space. And they are always changing some of the exhibits so I’ve been back several times and see something new every time.

Eventually it was time to walk back down the hill and head east on US180, past the new big-box stores, (New in that when I first started visiting here they didn’t exist.) to my usual stop at the Silver City KOA. Besides being a really nice campground far enough off the road to be quiet, this is a good place to pick up information on hiking and biking the area, much of it compiled by the campground owners, Jim and Jackie.

 

 

Arizona vacation with Mom: Planes and campground restrictions

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.

 

 

Arizona vacation with Mom: Tuzigoot National Monument & Jerome

Apr 7 2013

 

I’m an early riser, especially after a fairly restless night worrying about my damaged mother, and being an imaginative person, there were all sorts of scenario’s, most not good, that went through my head as I waited for her call this morning!

 

But, after an uncomfortable hour or so she called and sounded pretty chipper.  Too damn chipper! She at least could have had a little hitch in her voice to validate all my worrying!!! But that's karma for you. I'm sure I put her through far worse one or two times - OK, maybe 5 or 6; or dozens.

 

Truth is, she was doing pretty dang good for an old lady that bounced off the concrete just last night, but chipper or not, this was not going to be a day for much walking as we nursed her knee so we headed on up SR260 to the Tuzigoot National Monument on the north side of the conjoined towns of Cottonwood/Clarkdale.

 

The pueblo perched above the valley on a limestone ridge

This was yet another community (The monument not the twin towns!) that existed long before Europeans came on the scene, but unlike Montezuma Castle, this was more like a pueblo; a built up town of rooms stacked on top of one another two or three stories high sitting on a limestone ridge above the Verde River.

 

After haunting the interpretive center for a while we strolled the easy 1/3 mile loop out to and around the ruins, taking in the view of the river and the flats that surround the community.

 

The view from up there

Now days you can see roads and houses all around and over the last century at least one of the abundant mines in the area used the flats around the ruins as a settling pond (Which has now been rehabilitated and turned into Pecks lake.) and to the north, mostly hidden by a ridge, lurks the Tapco power plant; but if you block that stuff out and cast your mind back in time you can envision standing on the ridge looking out on an area alive with planted fields and the comings and goings of the inhabitants  of Tuzigoot with the river winding past in the background.

 

A nice cozy home made from 100% recyclable local materials
I'll bet this place would get a LEED Platinum Certification 

Inside some of the rooms (Mom stayed down on the paved path while I climbed.) you can almost smell the smoke from the fire and hear the echo's of the original inhabitants as they chat together and settle in for the night.

 

And what a great first sight upon awakening
in the growing glow of dawn!

With Mom ensconced in the van with a book I hiked a short trail that runs from the visitor center down to an overlook on the Tavasci marsh. From there I could see people (Remember it’s Sunday and there were a lot of people out and about.) on the trail system of the Dead Horse State Park enjoying the same marsh from the other side of the river.

 

Dead Horse has a pretty interesting looking trail system winding around the valley and up to the mesa that I will keep in mind for a future trip.

 

There were lots of wildflowers along the way so the hike, short as it was, took me a while since I was constantly stopping for 'just one more' photo.

 

OK, I had a whole mess of wildflower photos to choose from,
though I'm enough of a realist to know there are way more than
enough to bore anyone else to tears, but I still couldn't help
myself. So, exercising remarkable restraint, I randomly
chose a few to stick in here anyway.

After lunch in the parking lot of a grocery store where we picked up the fixings, we headed up SR89A, and I do mean up, to the mountainside town of Jerome. There is nothing flat about this town which sits on the 30 degree slopes of Cleopatra hill and streets that back up to each other horizontally are separated vertically by as much as a 2 story house, including roof!

 

This is a small town but has plenty of gallery’s, tourist shops and eateries, and, on this day, more cars in town than parking spots, so we drove on through and headed, still up, towards the pass above town.

 

At one point along the road a large pull-over is tucked into the bend of a double switchback and the view from here is pretty spectacular with glimpses all the way down into the Verde Valley as well as closer views of the slopes towering above. To the north, if you look for it, you can see the remains of what looks to be a wooden aqueduct that I presume used to carry water to the massive copper mine below Jerome.

 

We started in the valley at about 3700 feet and, climbing some very pretty miles, (and passing up a few interesting looking trails) made it up to about 6500 feet before the road started back down towards Prescott. As we continued in a generally southerly direction the land flattened out and eventually we crossed the valley to join up with SR89 which took us right into downtown Prescott.

 

We toured town and the square from behind the windshield before climbing up SR69 past the adjacent and well-populated Prescott Valley (Big box stores, all the restaurants you can think of and traffic light after traffic light.)

 

After using SR169 to cut across a low pass to I17 and back up to Camp Verde, we killed off the rest of the afternoon sitting under a tree in my campsite reading. Mom got the chair and I made do with the yoga mat I carry.  I guess she pulled rank on me!

 

It was a little melancholy this afternoon because we head back to Phoenix tomorrow and Mom gets on a plane for home the next day.

 

 

 

Arizona vacation with Mom: Montezuma Castle National Monument

 

Apr 6 2013

 

Oh crap! I broke Mom!!!

This morning I fetched Mom from the hotel and brought her back to the campground where we had breakfast and planned the day.

 

Montezuma Castle, a whole different kind of urban sprawl!

We started out at the Montezuma Castle National Monument which is just north here on the west bank of the Beaver Creek. There’s a pretty good interpretive center explaining some of the history of the area as well as a very easy paved trail below the 800 year old cliff dwellings. We even managed to catch a talk by one of the rangers while out on this trail.

 

Man! I wouldn't want to be the gopher that had to get all that
stone and mud up there!

We ambled along and imagined life in these cliff houses stacked one above the other in some places. As a mother at what point do you let your child leave the house, which involves negotiating very narrow ledges above big drops, on their own, ? How long does it take before you stop dreading carrying water or firewood from the valley floor up to the front door? Or does it never stop until the kids are big enough to take over? What was it like coming home in the dark, perhaps slightly tipsy, after a dance or other gathering?

 

Eventually we decided we were not going to get answers to questions like this unless we lived it ourselves, and that wasn’t going to happen! So we eventually made our way back to the van.

 

By the way, is it just me or are there faces up there watching
our every move??

It’s a good thing we got here early! We had a parking spot right near the visitor center but by the time we left, the parking lot was full and vehicles were creeping around playing musical chairs, pouncing on any vacated slot. That should have been a hint but I still don’t know what was so special about today that had so many people out and about. True, it’s a Saturday but I thought we had delayed our trip long enough to miss the worst of the spring-break madness of March.

 

Anyway, blissfully unaware and having done our quota of hiking for the day we shifted to road-trip mode and headed on up the road to Sedona.

 

I bet you stepped carefully when you came out the front door!

Along the way we stopped at the Red Rock Ranger district visitor center which has another nice museum/interpretive center and spent quite a while strolling the exhibits. They have some big, and I mean BIG, clay pots in there!

 

Little did we know that nice drive up SR179 was to be the last quiet stretch of road for a while!

Can you imagine walking home at night with a bit of a
buzz on after the party?! Might be enough to make you
swear off drinking!

The closer we got to Sedona the more time we spent just sitting. The traffic was horrendous! Of course this did give us a chance to inspect all the houses of varying architecture, some little and some obscenely big, and businesses along here, though we weren’t tempted enough to stop – any more than we were already stopped that is.

 

Finally working our way through the heart of Sedona one car-length at a time, we shifted over to SR89A and continued north through Oak Creek Canyon. The road here clings to the canyon wall above Oak Creek and though there’s not actually a lot of road in some places it seemed like any little patch alongside it, big enough or not, was under a car, many of which didn’t quite get all the way off the road before stopping. It was very pretty through here but the place was crawling!

 

Or maybe you just pick a nice patch down here
by the river and sleep it off.

Where there weren’t cars, parked or trying to move along, there were people on foot. I say people but the truth is they were mostly, by far mostly, kids, I assume college students with a smattering of high school wanabees, looking for a place where they could scrabble down the canyon side and claim their butt-sized patch of the already very crowded Oak Creek.

 

The whole Sedona area has lots of trails and ruins and forest roads and is in a national forest large enough to have three separate districts and looks like it would be a great place to spend some time exploring, but not today.

 

Today we stuck to driving. We drove to the head end of Oak Creek Canyon where the road negotiates 6 switchbacks as it climbs up to the mesa above the canyon. There’s a rest area/arts & crafts market/overlook up there.

 

We walked to the end of the path and looked down on where we had been, turned around and watched some climbers working a cliff just to our northeast, and did some shopping at the many booths set up along the way. It was a pleasant break.

 

Not wanting to run the gauntlet of the canyon again we continued north on SR89A. It was, by comparison, a very relaxed drive through some great forest scenery. Not all that far south of Flagstaff we picked up I17 and headed south towards our respective temporary homes again.

 



This guy was doing his own version of an afternoon stroll
near the rest area at the head of Oak Creek Canyon.

By the time we ate dinner light was fading and I took Mom back to her room where I promptly broke her!

 

As she stepped out of the van and headed towards her ground floor room a curb jumped up in the way and she went sprawling. The sound was awful, a bump, cry, scrabble, thud.

 

Oh crap oh crap oh crap!! My sister is going to kill me! As this trip approached she made it emphatically clear, on several occasions, that I was to take good care of Mom on this trip, and there were some thinly veiled threats about the consequences of not doing so. Now look what’s happened!

 

Mom is now settled in her room with her knee iced down and a full ice bucket within reach, and I’m sitting here in my campsite freaking out! I might have to move and not tell anyone, especially my sister, what my new address is!

 

 
 
 



The climber is right there at the end of the arrow. In this
reduced res image he's just a handful of orange and yellow pixels,
but in the original, full-res image I can zoom in and see him
smiling, probably because it took him a long time to get to the
base of the cliff, which has to be much more enjoyable than
getting there too fast!

Looking south down Oak Creek Canyon toward Sedona
some 15 miles away. From here you can see the potential
and none of today's river people. From here we stayed up on
the mesa and had a nice drive through the forests.

 

 

Adding a little bling

I got around to replacing the failing window covers on the van the other day.

Four years of sun had taken their toll and the original covers were starting to come apart.

Instead of using a material covered with white plastic like the originals, for the new covers I went with Refectix which is covered in a silver foil instead. I might even go so far as to say the new bling has given the lady a twinkle in her eye!

For technical details and the full story of my heroic efforts to keep her dressed in the manner to which she has become accustomed click here.




I know, I know, using the extra-large photo format overlaps some of the stuff there on the right side of the page , but I wanted to make sure you got the full effect of the new twinkle in her eye.

So what do you say y'all? Doesn't she look good? (Warning, this is one of those auto-response questions, just like the infamous, 'Does this make me look fat?' There's only one right answer and you better be quick with it!)

Arizona vacation with Mom: moving north to Camp Verde

Apr 5 2013

Today we left Tucson and headed north through Phoenix and on up to Camp Verde.

After finding such convenient accommodations in Tucson I spent quite a bit of time on line and on the phone trying to find something similar up in this area but didn’t have any luck. The few parks/campgrounds I found with rental units wouldn’t rent them out for anything less than a week. So instead I found a campground on one side of I17 and a hotel on the other.

North of Phoenix, as we approached the Black Mesa area, chatter started up on the CB about a wreck in the northbound lanes that had the freeway closed down. Fortunately, right there at the high-point of Black Mesa there’s a rest area; fortunate because there’s not a whole lot of other options right through here.

Going northbound you pass the rest area, which is on the west side of the freeway, then get off and cross back under the freeway and go back up a ramp to the shared north/south bound rest area that looks out over a steep valley with Black Canyon Creek in the bottom of it. The slopes were steep, we were up high and it was very windy!

There’s a road down there in the bottom of the valley threading through cool sounding places like American Gulch, Mexican Gulch, Dead Cow Gulch, Tiger Canyon, (You have to wonder how that got its name!) Rattlesnake Canyon (I think you can figure out where that name came from.) and a spot on the map called Bumble Bee with no visible buildings or streets, but after careful examination with the binoculars and much perusing of the map we decided it wasn’t a viable by-bass so just sat still and had a long lunch while waiting for word on the CB that traffic was moving again.

The hotel we booked Mom into is the Cliff Castle Casino Hotel on the tiny Yavapai Apache Indian Reservation on the north side of Camp Verde. You get off the freeway, take the first right off the round-about, then go up the hill, passing under a big sign for the place. As I approached I could see they have valet parking, which I loathe and was not about to use, so I dropped Mom and her bags at the front door and drove on to find my own parking.

 

As I was walking towards a side entrance to meet Mom at the front desk, I saw a little old lady tooling around the corner in the distance dragging her suitcase behind like a bag lady. Hey that's Mom! Turns out the Casino Hotel is not at the casino, but rather back down the hill and around to the second right off that round-about.

We finally got that sorted out and once Mom was established in her room I went back across to the west side of the freeway, which is outside the reservation, to the Distant Drums RV park and settled myself into a small back-in site off in one corner. This is a RV resort type campground with very nice facilities and makes a good base camp for what we have planned.

Not as good a setup as we had in Tucson but certainly serviceable.