Chapter 15: San Diego to Phoenix
January 11, 1998 to January 26, 1998
1/12 What in incredible change of scenery! We're parked in the desert, among sparse cholla cactus, creosote bush, mesquite, ocotillo, and smokebush scattered across a barren gravelly soil. Our campsite does have a tree - a California Fan Palm, washingtonia filafera - North America's largest palm, and the only native palm in the US. This palm has an unusual "grass skirt": as the lower branches die, they don't fall off, but rather gradually droop straight down, surrounding the trunk. The leaves decay until only the supporting fibers remain. The dense mat of fibers is typically four feet in diameter, from the ground up to the crown. On some trees, this skirt persists until the tree is 40 feet or more tall. On others, the lower portion gradually falls off after the tree is 20 feet high or so, exposing the lower portion of the trunk. It was a bit startling to see a palm in the middle of this desert, until we noticed a drip irrigation outlet a few feet from the trunk of the tree.
The mountains form a backdrop for everything - rising steeply short hike to the west and north of us, and rising through the haze about 10 miles to the east and south beyond this desert valley. During the early morning, we had a pair of Gambel's Quail poking around our campsite - large gaudily marked ground birds with a unique keyhole-shaped topknot.
We're in Anza Borrego State Park, a huge place - the largest contiguous state park in the country. The Borrego Palm Canyon campground is on the alluvial fan at the mouth of Palm Canyon. "Borrego" is Spanish for "lamb" or "yearling ram", referring to the native bighorn sheep (the park contains about 300 of the 500 remaining animals of this endangered species). Up the canyon, about two miles from our campsite, is an oasis, fed by constantly flowing springs, supporting a large grove of the native fan palms, which can survive only with a steady supply of water. Yesterday, I walked up the canyon. The oasis was cool and damp, and it is a strange sight to see these large palms stretching up among huge tumbles of granite in the narrow canyon. Recent rains had caused the stream to be flowing briskly, and it tumbled noisily over a 10-foot waterfall in the middle of the palms.
Concerning the bighorn sheep, the park literature says: "The elusive prize has sometimes seemed as well concealed and legendary as Sasquatch. For years, you may have crossed its path, pondering over droppings and tracks left in the white dust of a rocky trail, musing over a shallow depression on the knife edge of a ridge where it may have rested. Was it here or not. Driving through the stony highlands of the park, you have scanned the sharply etched horizon, convinced that this is where you will see your first real proof that this fabled creature exists." So it was with some shock that I met a group of four young male bighorn sheep along the trail. They were within 30 feet of the trail, busily cropping the tender new growth on the shrubbery, seemingly unaware that they were supposed to be "well concealed and legendary". These are very impressive animals - the horns curve through nearly 360 degrees, and are massive. They also have massive bodies - much larger than a domestic sheep - and long legs. While I was watching, something startled them, and they dashed to the nearest high point - a little cluster of boulders perhaps five feet high - and stood on top, pressed close together, motionless, staring intently back towards the trail. And I didn't bring the camera!
The drive to get here from San Diego was somewhat exciting. Map'n'Go said that it was a two-hour drive, but it took us closer to three hours. As we climbed up into the mountains, going north up highway 79 from Interstate 8, dark clouds were gathering over the mountains, and we were soon in heavy rain and limited visibility. The road is narrow and twisting, often with no shoulder, climbing several thousand feet in the 20 miles or so from I-8 to Julian. At one point, a temporary sign said "road flooded ahead" (it wasn't). The real fun started at Julian, where we turned onto route 78 and almost immediately started to lose all that altitude in the next 5 miles, winding down the side of Banner Canyon. The warning signs said "trailers over 30 feet from kingpin to rear axle not advised". Believe it! We are only 19 feet from hitch to trailer axles, and I was just barely able to keep both truck and trailer in the narrow lane on the hairpin turns. It would be tougher for a fifth wheel, which has the trailer axles mounted further back, and which also tracks even further toward the inside of the turn than a travel trailer. In good weather, this would have been fairly comfortable driving, although very slow. In rain, with questionable road traction, poor visibility, and darkness approaching, it became somewhat uncomfortable, although not quite to the "white knuckles" stage. I was very glad that we had scouted this route without the trailer last week.
We arrived at the park after dark, paid the exorbitant $22/night weekend fee, and went looking for a campsite. The clouds had broken, and the moon was nearly full, so we found a nice site and got set up with little problem, although the campsite has lots of cholla and I had a couple of close encounters of the prickly kind before I learned proper respect. Next morning, we found that our picture window was framing a perfect picture - an unobstructed view up Palm Canyon.
Our rig is sandwiched between two 6' smoke trees, psorothamnus spinosus, with a California Fan Palm shading our picnic table and fireplace ring. One of the cholla (teddy bear, staghorn or jumping? - all are opuntia), lightly pricked Dave through his jeans last night when we were setting up camp after dark. Small white bursage, ambrosia dumosa, decorate the site, and creosote bushes, larrea tridentata, show further away. These plants have almost no bloom, or only dried up remnants of seeds or bloom, but one prostrate plant I have not yet identified had lovely hot pink umbels of 1.5" diameter blooms.
The San Diego newspaper reported that there was 1/2" of rain in the desert this week, and indeed the soil was noticeably moist in our campground. The ocotillo have noticed the moisture - most have leafed out (which they can do within a few days of rain, leafing out and then dropping their leaves several times a year) and a few are blooming - fiery red spears on the end of the long sinuous branches. On our walk last night we found a small stream with water in it, which the park literature says is dry most of the year. We sat on some boulders for a while, listening to the water and watched the rain clouds come across the mountain ridges and evaporate within minutes! It was amazing to see such quickly disappearing clouds.
1/15 We've stayed here longer than we expected, really enjoying the weather, and the scenery. A couple of days ago, we drove over to the Salton Sea, about 30 miles east of our campground. This large body of water was formed accidentally in 1905-1907 when an irrigation canal broke, and subsequently was sustained and stabilized by runoff from irrigated farmland. It's in a salt-filled depression, a remnant of the pre-historic Lake Cahuilla. At its largest, it covered 400 square miles and was up to 85 feet deep. It's now gradually drying up, partly because of more efficient use of irrigation water and perhaps also because of climatic changes. It is somewhat saltier than the oceans and getting more so, threatening to become biologically dead within the next 15 years. At some point, several very ambitious projects for resort communities were started. There are miles of residential streets laid out, blacktopped, with utilities in place, with only an occasional house. Several resort buildings along the water were abandoned and decaying. One "yacht club" was high and dry. At another point, we saw an abandoned public boat launch, beside a new earth-fill jetty extending several hundred yards out to meet the water, with a new boat launch at the end. Several communities may be on their way to becoming ghost towns. The local paper has a photo of Interior Secretary Bruce Babbit with a local Congressman, pledging a new Federal Environmental Impact Study, "as a first step toward improving the health of the Salton Sea" in cooperation with a bunch of other agencies. Somehow, I'm skeptical. Given the shortage of water (nearly all fresh water in this entire region, including Mexico, comes from the Colorado River) and the tremendous competition for this water from cities (including San Diego and Los Angeles) and agricultural regions, I'm dubious that anyone will ever agree to dumping massive amounts of fresh water into this salt pit.
Anyway, it was interesting to be 220 feet below sea level. Death Valley is a little lower, but not much. Along the shore of the Sea, we drove through prosperous-looking orchards of citrus fruits and date palms.
This morning, a ranger told us that the bighorn sheep were again down in the valley, and we walked over to the west edge of the campground to look. A mixed group of 16 individuals was grazing among the campsites at the base of the mountain. We watched for a long time, Helen with the binoculars and I with the camera. I hope I got some good shots. We still haven't seen or heard the coyotes, which are supposed to be common.
We went on a nature hike with a volunteer naturalist - saw a few new things, and gained a few new insights about familiar plants. The nest of a desert rat was interesting - the nest was build under a rock overhang, and was surrounded with prickly pieces of cholla cactus, collected by the rat to discourage intruders.
One evening, we drove to a trailhead in the southern part of the park, and walked a trail up a canyon to see a herd of Elephant Trees (yes - the park literature calls it a "herd"). These rare trees are named for the unusual bark which resembles an elephant's skin. They are otherwise unimpressive - scraggly, and about 10 feet high at maturity.
Today, we drove up S22, a twisty mountain road which headed up a canyon just west of the campground. From the upper portions of the canyon, we had nice views back down to the campground and east through the valley, At the top, we found Ranchita - a nondescript collection of houses. And a little further along, we headed up a jeep trail to the north and found the abandoned Montezuma Mine. I'm not sure what they were mining, but it couldn't have been very successful - we found a plugged mine shaft, footings for mining equipment which was removed long ago, and a modest pile of tailings cascading down the hillside. It was a nice drive and hike, through high desert terrain quite different than the lower altitude desert around our campsite. We saw several promising campsites for a small RV, but wouldn't try to get our big trailer in here.
After being here a few days, we're starting to recognize a few of the natives. For a desert, there's a surprising amount of animal life around our campsite. New (to us) species include the cactus wren , rock dove, white-crowned sparrow and Gambel's Quail.
1/17 Yesterday morning, we moved from the serviced sites up to the unserviced portion of the campground near the canyon mouth. (The serviced sites had all been reserved for the weekend, before California's park reservation contractor went bankrupt - and those reservations are still being honored). It's much prettier up here, although few of the sites are well-suited to a large trailer (and those few were occupied). We squeezed our 35' trailer into site 114. The hardest part was making the turn into the narrow gravel drive which led to this isolated group of campsites - we cleared obstacles on each side of the turn by an inch. Getting into the campsite was also tricky. It appeared to be a pull-through, but sharp turns coming in and out, big boulders at awkward places, and an overhanging roof on the ramada (sun shelter) all conspired to make it just barely possible to get the trailer in. Once in, the site was spacious and beautiful. But now, the mountain to the west is a looming presence, so close that we can't see anything but mountainside out the windows on that side. The sun sets behind the mountain at about 2 p.m., significantly reducing the daily power gain from our solar panels.
Late in the afternoon, we became aware of a commotion in the parking area near the Palm Canyon trailhead - just a few hundred yards from our campsite. A hiker had been injured. One of the rangers had left the radio turned up in his truck in a corner of the parking lot, and I stood nearby for over an hour watching and listening to the story unfold like one of those television rescue dramatizations. A man fell 35 feet on the mountainside just at the top end of the palm oasis, and a 1000-pound boulder came down behind him, hitting him. So he was in really bad shape. Fortunately, another tourist close by on the trail was an EMT and medical student. A small airplane was circling with considerable difficulty up in the narrow canyon. Occasionally he would drop down low enough to communicate with the people on the ground, using a public address system on the plane, and shouts and hand signals from the ground, then would climb up to where he could make radio contact. He then relayed the information back to a headquarters radio dispatcher. The fire department, the Borrego Springs cop, a bunch of Sheriff's deputies, and a gaggle of Park Rangers all arrived. A group of rangers headed up the trail with first aid equipment and a radio. Later, the sheriff's small, highly maneuverable helicopter, which had been far away on another call, arrived, landed in the parking lot, stripped out a bunch of gear - external doors, seats, and such were left in a pile - and headed up into the canyon. After much circling around and radio chatter, the helicopter was able to land fairly close to the accident, and bring the victim, now coccooned in blankets, strapped into a stretcher, and infused with blood plasma, down to the parking lot. A huge Medivac helicopter then showed up, landed in the parking lot, took the victim aboard, and headed toward a major hospital somewhere. The whole drama took about two hours.
1/18 Map'n'Go did it to us again - you'd think we'd learn. From Borrego Springs to Yuma, the shortest and most interesting route seemed to be state highways 86 and then 78, down around the south end of the Salton Sea and then east through Brawley, Glamis, and Ogilby, dropping down to I-8 just before Yuma. Map'N'Go told us that this was only about 15 minutes longer than the fastest route.
All went well for a while, as we drove through the slowly changing, very dry, desert. As we drove into the major Imperial Valley agricultural region, the desert gradually changed to irrigated farmland - everything from citrus and date palms to lettuce and cabbage. As we got close to Brawley, we were surprised to see some of these expensive irrigated fields growing alfalfa. Then, on the east side of Brawley we discovered hundreds of acres of densely packed cattle in small pens, apparently being fattened and awaiting shipment to where ever they get converted into hamburger.
Just before Glamis, we went through the Imperial Dunes. Here, the desert looks just like our old image of a desert - huge wind-sculptured sand dunes in all directions, without a hint of plant life. This is a playground for dune buggies. Literally hundreds of them were buzzing around in the sand, and a large number of RV's were boondocking in scattered spots where the sand was firm enough to support them. At Glamis, we stopped briefly at a store which billed itself as "the world's biggest sand toy dealer" with dozens of dune buggies and ATV's clustered around it. The typical dune buggy looked sort of like a miniature drag racer - small front wheels, huge rear wheels, and a welded pipe frame, including a roll cage. The engines I saw all appeared to be scavenged from VW Beetles, and were all unmuffled. Young children were riding the conventional mass-produced 3- and 4- wheel ATV's. I do not recommend this area as a peaceful place to boondock.
At Glamis, we almost missed our turn south. The GPS insisted we were at the turn, and as usual, it was right. An unimproved road, barely distinguishable from the surrounding desert, headed southeast. After studying the map, and finding that the only alternative routes from this point were significantly longer and might be just as bad, we started down this sand track. It turned out to be not as bad as it appeared - most of it was graded smooth, with only occasional washboard sections, and we could travel 30 to 35 mph. The vibration took its toll on the trailer, however. Later, when we stopped, we found the freezer door open, with most of the contents on the floor. The kitchen spice rack had partially disassembled itself, and one of the built-in bedroom loudspeakers had loosened several mounting screws.
Before leaving San Diego, we had called the Escapees Co-op in Yuma to find out about site availability. At that time, they had exactly one boondock site available and no sites with hookups. They don't accept reservations. We took a chance and went there anyway. We arrived in mid-afternoon, and they still had one boondock site, which we grabbed. I guess we have to get lucky once in a while. KOFA Ko-Op has 152 lease lots and only 11 boondock sites. The lease lots are 40' x 60', but the streets are narrow and the overall feeling is quite cramped. It is surrounded by citrus groves - we suspect that the smell could be heavenly at the right time of year. The local Escapees fully lived up to the club's reputation for friendliness. Before we could get the trailer unhooked and leveled, two different individuals stopped by and initiated long and interesting conversations. It would have been wonderful, except that we were in a hurry to get away and use the remaining daylight to see the local countryside.
After setting up, we went for a drive south and east along the Mexican border. In most places, roads that led to the border had been permanently blocked. The irrigated citrus and vegetable farms continued right up to the border, but in Mexico there was nothing but undeveloped scrubland. Further west, the border consisted of swamps along the Rio Grande, and we were able to drive quite close. We saw a couple of border patrol vehicles as we drove, but no other sign of border precautions, except near the border town of San Luis, where high fences defined the border in town and some distance each side of town.
1/19 The drive from Yuma to Tucson was uneventful and boring - a couple hundred miles of expressway that we've driven before. We had called before leaving San Diego to reserve space at Mission View RV Park on the south edge of Tucson. They were booked solid. We decided, rather than spend a lot of time calling around for reservations, to just drive on to the Escapees Saguaro Co-op park at Benson, about 45 miles further east. Again, they don't take reservations. They had a few boondock sites available, but no sites with hookups. We settled in to a boondock site and put our name on the waiting list for a site with services. It is a large park, with about 300 leased sites (available to transients when leaseholders are away traveling), 22 transient sites with hookups, and 26 boondock sites. The sites are spacious enough to feel pleasant, and the streets are wide. It is on a terraced east-facing slope, so that nearly every site has a view of the mountains to the east. It is a couple of miles south of I-10, far enough so that the noise isn't noticeable.
There is a major astronomical observatory in the mountains south of Tucson, which may be part of the reason that nighttime lighting is subdued in this whole region. Streetlights, if they exist at all, are designed so the light all goes down to the street. We can do some star watching right in the campground in front of the trailer.
1/20 We drove the back roads to Green Valley, about 20 miles south of Tucson. In late morning, we visited the Titan Missile National Historical Site. They have preserved one of the original 54 missile silos as a museum. They even have a complete Titan II (without fuel) in the silo. The tour was quite complete and very interesting - going through the underground control center, the missile silo itself, and the various support facilities on the surface - a huge NORAD antenna, underground antennas that can be raised as needed, fuel transfer stations, various security devices, etc. I was particularly interested in some of the exhibits since I spent two summers while in college working on various aspects of the Titan I reentry vehicle - one summer at AC Electronics, who did the guidance package, and another summer at AVCO, testing telemetry systems and working on an acoustic simulator which was supposed to generate the same sound level that the missile electronics would experience during launch. The acoustic vibrations during launch are so powerful that they tend to destroy the innards of the missiles. During that summer, we burned up a large number of huge loudspeakers , with voice coils wound with pure silver wire, powered by bank of modified 50-kilowatt commercial radio transmitter amplifiers.
After lunch, we visited an old friend from Xerox, who retired to Green Valley about 10 years ago. We had a wonderful afternoon and evening, reminiscing about old times, getting a tour of their house and the town, and having a fine dinner with them at one of the local golf clubs. Green Valley seems to be a wonderful retirement community: It's within an easy drive of Tucson, yet is in hills, at significantly higher elevation, hence cooler. The streets have special lanes marked off for golf carts. Each neighborhood has a community recreation center - large swimming pool, tennis courts, facilities for several hobbies, including a complete ceramics shop, wood shop, lapidary equipment, etc., conference rooms and a large auditorium. Residents pay about $280 per year for full use of these facilities. The average age in the community is 72!
1/21 Today, we headed to Chiricahua National Monument, and spent the afternoon hiking. This is a must-see for anyone in this part of the country. There are numerous hiking trails for all levels of hiker. The main feature of the park is a canyon lined with spectacular rock formations. But it is also an unusually diverse ecological community, merging desert and mountain plants and animals We saw huge Douglas Fir trees growing alongside yucca and agave. Soon after we started up the scenic drive through the park, we had to stop and wait while a small herd of Javelina crossed the road. We walked the Echo Canyon loop and would heartily recommend this to anyone who can do a moderate walk - about 3.5 miles, a few hundred feet elevation drop going in, and the same climb back out. The rocks - tall pinnacles and huge balanced rocks - are eroded out of an unusual volcanic Rhyolite formation. These mountains, an isolated range surrounded by desert, were the last stronghold of the Apache Indians, led by Cochise and Geronimo.
1/22 The little town of Bisbee sits, literally on the edge of a huge copper mine - originally, starting in the 1890's a network of hundreds of miles of deep shafts, then more recently a 1000-foot-deep open pit. The mines are currently inactive - waiting for the price of copper to increase. The ore that's left is low grade (0.2% copper), and requires both higher copper prices and the installation of new extraction technology. Meanwhile, the town is mining tourist dollars by offering tours, both of the surface operations and the underground mines. We've been in a couple of underground mines (which looked pretty much alike), and so took only the surface tour. The mine pits and the mountain sides show two distinct ore bodies on opposite sides of a major geologic fault line - a lavender-colored oxide and a yellowish sulfide, both containing useful quantities of copper but requiring different extraction technology. Our guide, a retired miner who has lived his entire life in Bisbee, competently answered our questions about the mines, and also had a large fund of stories about life in a small mining town. Most of the old town is crammed into two narrow canyons, with houses perched precariously on the steep hillsides. In one of these canyons, the main street also serves as the only path for water when heavy rains hit the upper canyon. The canyon walls are so steep that there is almost no off-street parking. So the residents must move their cars out of the canyon, or chain them down, when heavy rain is expected.
During the peak of the mining era, 25,000 people lived in the old town. Today, about 6000 people live in the area, which includes the old town and several modern suburbs located further down the mountain on flatter land. We could see the remains of terraces where tiny miner's shacks were built high up on the steep hillsides, accessible only by narrow, steep, switchback footpaths.
Out of curiosity, we drove a few miles south to the sleepy little unincorporated border village of Naco. There is a border station there - small, but the most impressive building in town. Unlike other border towns we've visited, nothing was happening - few people on the streets, no businesses which catered to border-crossing shoppers or tourists, no traffic crossing the border.
1/23 Chores day: grocery shopping, a haircut for Helen, repairs around the trailer.
The Board of Directors at Saguaro Co-op (an Escapees Park) has voted not to allow the use of the office phones for Email. (None of the board members are computer users, of course). They have, however, been told that starting in March they will have modem plugs on the pay phones from the local phone company.
I prowled a shopping plaza in Benson and found a Postal Annex - a small store that is an agent for FedEx and UPS, sells boxes, has copiers and fax, etc. Although this is the first one I've seen, it apparently is a chain of franchise operations, sort of like Mailboxes Etc. The owner provided me with a phone connection for free and while the mail downloaded we talked about his business. He's an older man, probably retired from some other business, who bought the franchise and started the store quite recently. He attended a special school to learn how to set up and run this particular business. Business is slow - he said that about all he's selling is five-cent copies. I'm only about the third person who's asked about a modem connection. Quite a few people have asked to use his computer - larger chains like Kinko's are conditioning people to expect this service - and he is planning to offer this service later.
During the long, dark, cold winter evenings, we're using more power than I expected. So today, I modified our solar panel mounts to allow me to tilt them up to gather more light from the low winter sun. It turned out to be quite easy, and resulted in a 40% increase in power generated. With the current setup, this only works if the trailer is oriented north/south, but I'm thinking about a more elaborate arrangement that will allow a side-to-side tilt as well.
The spice rack on our kitchen wall fell apart on that 15 miles of gravel road we drove. I discovered that it was assembled with tiny staples and no glue. Although the trailer itself seems well-built, we're finding that many of the accessories have this sort of shoddy construction. I glued it back together - we'll see what happens.
1/24 This morning, we were offered a rental site for two days - it's been vacated by another renter, but the leaseholder will be returning on Monday. It's likely that we would have had to move the trailer to the dump station and back anyway - we've been here five days, and we must be nearly out of fresh water and the sewage tanks must be filling up. (Our gauges are unreliable) So we moved a few hundred yards to the new site. It's large and pleasant. The site is 52' x 75', surfaced with a fine washed gravel. It contains a storage building, perhaps 12' x 15', but no other improvements or landscaping. Some of the leaseholders have built fairly elaborate cactus gardens, and even little decorative pools. These "improvements" are mostly quite tasteful - no pink plastic flamingos or strings of Japanese lanterns. Behind our lot, a landscaped terrace drops about 6' to the next row of lots down the hill, giving a feel of spaciousness and a great view of the desert and mountains out the windows on three sides of the trailer..
The Co-op has a three-tiered structure - leaseholders, renters, and boondockers. Leaseholders sign a long-term lease, buy in to the Co-Op by paying a fixed cost plus the value of any improvements on the lot, and pay an annual maintenance fee to the Co-Op. Saguaro Co-Op, where we are now, has 297 leased lots, a buy-in cost of $6300, and an annual maintenance fee of $525. When a leaseholder is away traveling, (assuming he took his RV or moved it to storage so that the site is empty), the site becomes available for short-term rental to people like us. The rental fee of $7.50/day goes to the Co-Op, helping to pay for overall operational expenses, and thus reducing the maintenance charges to the leaseholders. There are also a few sites with hookups that are only available for short-term rent, not lease, and about 25 boondocking sites, like the one we've been on for the last five days. These cost $2.50/night, are much smaller, and have no services at all - just a marked - off parking space in a big blacktop parking lot. There is a three-day limit for boondocking, except for people on the waiting list for rental sites. Each of the 11 Co-Ops has slightly different costs and policies, although the ones described above seem fairly typical
This is a nice scheme, but it isn't working as well as intended, because many leaseholders have put essentially permanent dwellings on the sites - big rigs and even park-model trailers that aren't intended for travel at all. They then buy smaller RV's for traveling. As a result, relatively few sites become available for rental. I've previously described Rainbow Parks, the other kind of Escapees park, which are divided into deeded lots and a conventional campground. This seems to work better, and new parks will apparently all be of this type.
1/25 Cave Canyon sounded like a scenic place to do some hiking, so we headed that direction in mid-morning . It is on the East Side of the Chiricahua Mountains, about a 2-hour drive. The last 15 miles were wonderful scenery, as the mountain road wound up the side of Pinery Canyon, our ears popping every few minutes as we gained thousands of feet of elevation. The foliage changed from desert to dense pine/fir forest, and we began to see patches of snow. The road also deteriorated rapidly, to a narrow one-lane track hugging the cliff. Shortly before we got to the pass, the road began to be snow and ice covered. After rounding a tight switchback curve where I barely had traction on the ice, we stopped to inspect the next curve, and found the truck sliding backwards down the road. It was fairly exciting to try to steer back around the switchback, sliding backwards with essentially no traction, with a deep canyon on our left and a vertical cliff on the right. The anti-lock brakes didn't seem to be doing anything while moving backwards - I found myself back in the old reflex actions of pumping the brakes, trying to find the best compromise between maximum braking and minimally effective steering. We finally got back onto gravel, still on the road, still pointing uphill, and then backed slowly to a wide spot where we could turn around. After retracing our path back down the canyon, we stopped and inspected the map. The only other route was a huge detour around the mountains and would take hours. We admitted defeat and drove the few miles into Chiricahua National Monument, up a small canyon on our side of the mountain range. We had done one hike here a few days ago, and this time we hiked up Sugarloaf, the highest point in the park (although we could see much higher mountains beyond the park to the east and south). The trail was easy - a long gentle grade cut by the CCC in 1934. Except that the middle third of the trail is on the shaded northern side of the mountain, and was covered with ice. We forgot to pack crampons when we planned this trip, and picked our way slowly over the ice in our sneakers. At one point, the trail goes through a short tunnel cut under an overhanging cliff.
The view from the top was spectacular - we could see down canyons to the desert both east and west of us. To the south, we could see a huge caldera where a giant volcano exploded 27 million years ago, depositing a white pumice layer up to half a mile deep over hundreds of square miles. This layer fused to form the Rhyolite rock that subsequently eroded to form the fantastic rock sculpture we hiked through earlier in the week. The Rhyolite often looks like badly-mixed concrete, giving the impression that these mountains were sloppily assembled by the lowest bidder, and are now falling apart fairly rapidly. The trail surface often felt and looked exactly like crumbling concrete. Some layers fused better than others and the poorly fused rock has eroded much faster than the rest, creating undercuts and caves, and drifts of fine pumice.
On the way into the park, we stopped to watch a mule deer walking through the chaparral, fairly close to the road. These deer, also called the black tailed deer, look quite different than the eastern white-tailed deer we are used to. Their color is slate gray, unlike the reddish-brown color of the eastern deer.
We drove back just before sundown, listening to a local radio station - "The voice of the Cowboy". "Howdy pahdners, This is your host Mike Segall, reminding you to keep a short rein and a deep seat. Today, Ah'm honored to have as our guest the owner of the Four-Sixes ranch, Jim Somebodyorother. Tell me Jim, what is it you look for when hiring new cowboys?". "Wayl, Mike, the first thing we look for is seriousness and dedication. And of course we look for somebody that's grown up in the business. These fellows who've taken up the profession a little later in life always seem to be lacking that finely honed edge that makes all the difference in a difficult situation. And of course, we insist on good roping skills." "Our best cowboys become campmen, each camping some distance from headquarters, and responsible for 30,000 to 50,000 acres and 800 to 1400 head of cattle. They gotta be completely self-reliant and able to handle any situation that arises." ... "And now folks, it's time for our special feature. Each week, we read you excerpts from a selected article from Range Magazine. This week's article reports new research which shows that the current flap about Mad Cow Disease is actually a conspiracy against the cattle industry. We're reporting on a woman in Britain who has the disease which is incorrectly called Mad Cow Disease. Actually, the disease comes from other source, since this woman has been a vegetarian all her life. In another related research program, scientists are discovering that the disease in cows doesn't come from eating processed cattle byproducts at all. Rather, it seems to be caused by eating spoiled alfalfa". "And now a word from our sponsor, Farm and Home Insurance Company, specializing in medical insurance designed for the special needs of you folks out on the range". And so on!
1/26 We're outta here. The Co-Op is filling up with leaseholders, partly because the annual meeting is this week, and there is a controversial capital improvement proposal on the agenda. Time to go anyway.
We got underway shortly after 11 AM, and arrived at Mesa Royal RV Resort in Mesa AZ, a suburb of Phoenix, at about 4 p.m., struggling through the early phases of rush hour traffic. Highway 60 was stop-and go, bumper to bumper, for many miles. We've learned to follow the truckers in these situations - pick whatever lane they are in, and drift along at their speed, letting the frantic commuters dart in and out though comfortably large buffer gaps in front of us. It's really nice not to be in a hurry.
This ought to be called a subdivision, not an RV Park. It has approximately 2400 sites, laid out on a rigid grid of narrow streets. I'm not sure how many sites are available for short-term rent. We are in the middle of a long street - the only moveable RV among a sea of Park Models - trailers in name only - which are firmly anchored with skirts, porches, fences, and elaborate plantings. Several old men showed up to watch us maneuver into our site. It was a bit of a struggle because of the narrow street and the grapefruit tree partially blocking the path into our slot. These folks were quite curious about us, as though they had never seen a moveable RV before. They wanted to know how we found out about this place (It's in the Trailer Life Campground Directory).
We got one of the last spaces, and have to be out before the end of the month. After Feb. 1st, the park is booked solid. Baseball's Spring Training season starts, and apparently attracts huge flocks of snowbirds (northerners who migrate south in RV's during the cold weather). This huge place is just one of many such parks in this neighborhood. Each site has a small citrus tree in front, with the fruit reserved for whoever occupies that site. While backing the truck into our narrow parking space beside the trailer, my mirror extension knocked a grapefruit off the tree. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to be quite ripe. We'll try it for breakfast, but I'm not optimistic.
This is our first time in Phoenix, so we wanted to be close in to the city and do all the standard tourist things. We'll get tired of the big-city scene in a few days and move out to North Ranch Rainbow Park - another Escapees park about two hours northwest from here.
This note is getting too long. It's time to head out and find a phone. The RV park has a computer club, with a room of it's own and several computers. I wandered in with my laptop and was firmly, almost hostility, told that phone hookups were not available. Fortunately, there is a Kinks down the road a couple of miles.