Category Archives: Exploring

Exploring

Yuma, Palm Desert, Hemet, Acton & Ridgecrest, CA 2018

After our fun time in Quartzsite we headed back to Yuma, AZ for two weeks so Bill could attend the Yuma Hamfest in mid February. He had a great time and we enjoyed a sort of reunion picnic get together with a large group from the Quartzsite Hamfest as well as a banquet the last night of the Hamfest.
Leaving Yuma we spent a couple days at a casino on the Arizona, California, Mexico border with free RV parking. We were amazed at the large number of RVs camped out there. We went inside and signed up for a free players card with $5 loaded on it. Because it was my birthday I was given an additional $5. It didn’t take us long to lose that $10 at the slot machines. I was very content to walk away at that point. I am glad neither of us have a gambling desire! We actually enjoyed parking at the casino. It was quiet and very secure with lots of roaming 24 hour security.
On February 20 we continued on to Palm Desert, CA. Along the way we passed by the Salton Sea which we could see in the distance. We visited the Salton Sea in 2014. It is a shallow lake located directly on the San Andreas Fault. Its surface is 236 feet below sea level. The lake’s salinity is greater than the water in the Pacific Ocean. We also saw agricultural areas with citrus trees and plants. I loved the tall palm trees in the distance.

As we drove we noticed the elevation levels on our GPS fluctuating from below sea level to just above sea level. We are in the desert now!

We arrived at the Palm Springs Thousand Trails RV Resort where we stayed in 2014. It is a beautiful area, part of the greater Palm Springs area with streets named Frank Sinatra, Gerald Ford and Dinah Shore. You can see billboards advertising such services as the ability to freeze your fat and then re-sculpt your body.

It is a beautiful area with blue skies and tall palm trees. On the downside, the traffic is frustrating and since we are now in California, gas is well over $3.00 a gallon. When shopping you need to remember to take in your own bags so you don’t have to pay for plastic bags; aluminum cans and plastic bottles all have deposits which adds up quickly.

While in Palm Springs we visited a college friend of Bill’s he hadn’t seen in over 40 years. We had a nice visit and dinner with Leo and his wife Kathy.

Also while in Palm Springs we drove over to Hemet to Hemet Dermatology to have a skin cancer spot removed from my leg. On the way we went through a mountain pass where they had snow during the night. It was beautiful. After the surgery I had to take it easy and wear a tight ace bandage on my leg for 10 days. Unfortunately the rest of our time in Palm Springs was spent with my leg elevated and wrapped.

Next up was Hemet for a week at an RV resort we stayed at twice before in 2014. We really like Hemet and the Golden Village Palms RV Resort. I continued to recover there and one day we drove over to Menifee to meet Bill’s friend Bob for dinner. Bob and Bill worked together in 1980.

We visited the Hemet Public Library to use their free internet. I was very impressed with their library, including a way to check out books after hours using an outside library access. You just reserve the books ahead of time and the carousel lets you retrieve your book without going inside. Really impressive!

Across from the library at the fire station was a pretty mural.

Our time in Hemet went by quickly and we headed to our next stop at a Thousand Trails Resort in Acton, CA.

While there, we left the RV and flew to Florida for the wedding of Bill’s youngest son Sean in Vero Beach on St Patrick’s Day. We took the red eye flight from Los Angeles to Orlando. We arrived early in the morning pretty tired. We picked up the rental car and met our friends Peter and Beth for lunch in Bushnell. We last saw them at the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta in October. It is always great to see them. Sure wish we could have spent more time with them but this was a short visit to Florida.

We enjoyed our stay in Vero Beach with Bill’s sweet Aunt Charlotte. We took her to dinner one night to celebrate her 88th birthday. She is truly amazing.

It is always great to see the Atlantic Ocean and the beautiful Florida beaches!

Saturday, St Patricks Day, we attended the wedding of Sean and Cathy. A beautiful wedding and joyous day. We wish them many many years of happiness.

The next day it was back to Orlando and the long flight back to L. A. One reason we chose Acton was because it was only an hour from the L. A. airport and we could safely leave the RV.

The next day we drove into Hollywood to Sunset Boulevard to tour the CNN building.

Bill’s cousin Jeff works there and graciously offered to give us a private tour of the building. Picture taking is not allowed in much of the building for security reasons so we have only a few pictures to share.

Jeff did take us to the roof of the building for a great view of Los Angeles and the Hollywood sign.

We had planned on staying in Acton and visiting Bill’s cousin George in nearby Castaic, but we saw alarming weather forecasts for torrential rains, flooding and mudslides from all the recent fires. So we quickly packed up and moved early to our next destination of Ridgecrest, CA. We passed by some really cool rock formations on the way. We plan to be back in the Acton area in the fall and will have to check out this area some more.

We are currently at the Ridgecrest Elks Lodge, a great place to stay with full hookups for $20 a night. We have had some rain and the winds are gusting up to 40 MPH. All should be much better tomorrow (Friday) when we head to Death Valley National Park about 100 miles from Ridgecrest for five days. We are both really looking forward to it since neither of us has ever been there before.

Quartzsite, AZ January 20, 2018

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After a fun and busy seven weeks in Yuma, Arizona we headed north to Quartzsite. Each January and February more than a million RVers converge on this desert community to socialize and enjoy the warm climate. We were last there in 2015 and had such a wonderful time we have been looking forward to returning ever since.

For much of the year Quartzsite is a very small community of less than 4,000 people in the hot Arizona desert, but for a couple months during the winter the area swells with visitors in RVs. There is more than enough desert for all the RVers to have plenty of room to spread out. Quartzsite is nicknamed the RV Boondocking Capital of the World and the Rock Capital of the World. During January and February there is a Gem Show, RV show and vendors with anything and everything an RVer could possibly want or need.

Quartzsite was the site of an experiment in the late 1850’s and 1860’s by the U.S. Army who purchased camels and transported them to Arizona to be used as transport animals in the American desert. The experiment failed mainly because horses and mules feared the camels and panicked when around the large animals. The camels were eventually auctioned off. The camel trainer and scout is buried in Quartzsite.

Our first day in Quartzsite we attended a large Escapees RV Club Happy Hour event with food and music.

The next day we moved to a different area where we would spend more than a week at Quartzsfest, a large amateur radio event. Bill was in his glory with all the amateur radio people, including some friends he had made in Yuma. A total of 850 amateur radio enthusiasts attended the event with approximately 400 RVs during the week. They had over 118 seminars for Bill to attend as well as daily Happy Hours with door prizes, pot luck dinners and a Hobo Stew. It was a fun filled time and the days passed very quickly.

After Quartzfest ended we joined the Escapees Geocaching Club for a four day rally. Once again our time was filled with daily seminars and Happy Hours, socials, and pot luck dinners. Each afternoon we did some geocaching in the desert, including this one where we searched for “Shorty”, a poor guy whose life ended on the desert while geocaching.

Unfortunately during my last couple days in Quartzsite I came down with the flu. By the time we arrived back in Yuma, Bill had caught it from me and had to visit our Yuma doctor. We have spent the last few days resting and recuperating. We will be here until February 21st when our time in Arizona comes to an end and we head to Palm Springs, California.

Yuma, AZ DEC 1, 2017

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After leaving Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument we drove to Yuma, AZ on December 1st for a seven week stay. This was our third trip to Yuma so we were already very familiar with the area. Along with the typical name brand stores and restaurants Yuma has three Walmart Supercenters. It is a thriving snowbird community.

Our first couple weeks we were super busy with yearly medical exams, dentists and eye doctors. We are just about finished with all the appointments, follow ups and lab work. We feel extremely blessed that we both received good results. Now we can take a big breath and relax for the remainder of our time here.

Along with the medical stuff we did manage to have a little fun and social time. Bill met with the Yuma Amateur Radio Group and helped them one Saturday with testing for those trying to receive their amateur radio license. He also met the group for breakfast one morning and attended one of their meetings another Saturday.

There is a very active Escapees Boomers group here in Yuma. They meet every Wednesday afternoon for a movie then an early dinner we have joined them three times so far.

The South Western Area Geocachers are also an active group in Yuma and we met them at an area park for one of their events. We plan to join them at a breakfast get together in January.

Our RV park, Mesa Verde RV Resort had a welcome back snowbird ice cream social one afternoon and we had a chance to meet some of our neighbors.

Bill even won a door prize which he shared with several people at our table.

They invited us to join their Happy Hours but we just haven’t had time yet! The RV park is having a Christmas Eve Hors d’oeuvres get together which we plan to attend.

As snowbirds often say, if you are bored, it is your own fault!

We have taken advantage of being in one spot for a while to order to complete some things we need. Bill ordered a camera to mount on the front of our Honda. I love our rear backup camera. We ordered a new mattress and Santa brought me an Instant Pot for Christmas. I am used to my crockpot so it will take some getting used to.

We made several trips across the border to Los Algodones Mexico where we both got new eyeglasses for less than half the price quoted in Yuma. I got a haircut and a new hat. Bill enjoyed some shrimp tacos and we both enjoyed the margaritas. During one visit we ran into some Escapees Boomers from our Wednesday movie and dinner group and joined them for some margaritas and music. The central plaza was full of snowbirds eating, drinking and dancing to the music.

And there are always plenty of people walking among the throngs selling jewelry and just about anything you can imagine. I was plenty happy with just a new hat!

We have been attending church here in Yuma. The First Methodist Church had a social one Sunday after church and had on display over 300 nativity scenes owned by church members. All beautiful!

We wanted to get this blog posting done in time to wish everyone love and a very Merry Christmas. Thanks for following along in our travels and taking the time to read our blog!

Yuma facts:

In the Guinness Book of World Records, Yuma is called the sunniest place on Earth, with an average of 339 days of sunshine a year. It is the country’s driest and least humid city, but not the hottest. Miami wins the prize for the hottest.
Yuma sits near the end of the 1,400 mile long Colorado River in Arizona’s southwest corner and shares borders with Mexico and California. It is about halfway between San Diego and Phoenix.
Spanish explorers first visited the Yuma area as early as 1540 and over the years many have passed through the area on their way to California including 60,000 gold rush prospectors in 1849. In the 1930’s thousands fleeing the Dust Bowl passed through Yuma.
Yuma was acquired by the United States from Mexico in the Gadsden Purchase in 1854.
The first railroad bridge across the Colorado River was built here in 1877.
Yuma is home to one of the world’s largest reverse osmosis desalting plants to ensure the United States could meet treaty obligations for water delivery to Mexico.
Yuma is the winter lettuce capital of the world. If you eat a salad anywhere in the United States in the winter, there is a good chance the greens grew in Yuma. Yuma’s winter produce production is the main reason Arizona ranks second in the country in production of head lettuce, leaf lettuce, romaine lettuce, cauliflower and broccoli. It is the world’s top producer of gourmet Medjool dates and the major exporter of durum wheat to Italy to be made into premium pasta.
Movie makers have been making movies in Yuma since 1913.
Yuma’s population doubles in the winter when the snowbirds arrive.
The number two economy in Yuma is the military with both the Marine Corps Air Station and the U.S. Army Yuma Proving Ground located here.

Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, AZ NOV 28, 2017

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We left Casa Grande and headed south to Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument which is seven miles from the Mexican border. Along the way we passed fields of cotton.

We settled in for a three night stay at the National Monument campground called Twin Peaks (no utilities at their campsites). Normally we get enough power from our solar panels but it was overcast the entire three days so we had to run our generator twice a day for about 45 minutes to charge the batteries completely.

After getting settled we drove over to the Visitors Center where we watched a movie about the park. The National Monument is a 516 square mile “biosphere reserve” of rare cacti located in the Sonoran Desert.

One afternoon we drove along part of the southern boundary of the National Monument on the Puerto Blanco Drive which borders Mexico for 31 miles. We could see some of the wall separating the United States and Mexico in the distance, but were shocked to see this “border” along the boundary of the National Monument!

We looked and then asked each other if that could really be the only thing separating the two countries?? About that time a Border Patrol vehicle with two border agents came by and stopped to ask us if we were okay. We asked if that was really the border fence. They said yes and we commented on what a hard job they have and thanked them for their service.

We drove for about an hour and many many border patrol vehicles passed us as well as helicopters flying overhead. What a tough and dangerous job they have. A park brochure said the smuggling of drugs and humans goes on in the park. In 2013 there were over 4,000 arrests and approximately 100,000 pounds of marijuana seized just in the National Monument alone! At the Visitirs Center is a monument to a young park ranger named Kris Eggle who was killed in 2002 while attempting to apprehend illegal aliens. The National Monument Visitors Center is named the Kris Eggle Visitors Center in his memory.

It was not unusual to see signs like this in the park. Our first day in the National Monument we talked with a Park Ranger driving through the park and asked him about safety concerns. He told us most smugglers and migrants want to avoid detection and therefore avoid contact with people. But we did take extra precautions at the campsite and while hiking.

Speaking of hiking, we learned if we walked at least five miles in the park we would earn a park pin. We kept track of our hikes and on the last day we stopped by the Visitors Center and picked up our pins. We were pretty proud of them.

During our stay we took several nice hikes which were relatively easy except we had to walk on very rocky trails. A little hard on the feet but at least I didn’t have to do any rock scrambling which I detest.

We learned about the various types of cacti, including the organ pipe cactus for whom the park is named. It is easy to see why they are called organ pipe.

This area is the furthest they grow north of Mexico and the only place they grow in large stands in the United States.

These Organ Pipe Cacti Grow On the South Side of the Ridge

On one hike we came across the remnants of an old homestead and corral.

Our second day in the National Monument we drove a scenic road called the Ajo Mountain Drive that wound along the foothills of the Ajo Mountain Range for 21 miles. It was a dirt and gravel road and our car was really dusty by the time we finished! The Ranger at the Visitors Center gave us a driving guide that explained various stops along the way.

While we were very happy not to see any snakes, we were disappointed we did not see any wildlife other than birds. We were especially disappointed we did not hear any coyotes at night. We always heard them while in Tucson and felt certain we would hear them in this very remote park.

Here is the view of the border crossing.

When we left the National Monument we drove through the tiny village of Why. Next to a gas station we saw a coyote and stopped to take his picture. Normally they are shy and hard to take their picture.

Next stop: Yuma, AZ where we will be for seven weeks through the Christmas and New Year holidays.

Cactus facts:

A Saguaro cactus’ first arm appears at between 95-100 years of age. It reaches its full height with two or more arms at 200 years of age!
Average height of the organ pipe cactus at maturity is fifteen feet.
They were named organ pipe by the early settlers who thought they looked like church organ pipes.
The organ pipe cactus produces its first flowers at around 35 years of age.
Organ pipe cactus, unlike saguaros, live around 150 years.

Casa Grande, AZ NOV 21, 2017

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We arrived in Casa Grande for a relaxing twelve day stay at the Fiesta Grande RV Resort. We stayed here in December 2013 when passing through the area.

On Saturday we drove to Phoenix to tour the state capitol building. The traffic in Phoenix is terrible, even on a Saturday morning.

Phoenix Skyline

The capitol building is not the prettiest capitol we have seen and didn’t have beautiful architecture and paintings compared to other capitols. But it had one of the friendliest security guards we had encountered who went out of his way to be helpful.

It is the only capitol building we have been in that is a museum and not a working building. Due to overcrowding, additions were built on either side of the museum for the House of Representatives and Senate to conduct business and the capitol building became a museum. The museum capitol was built from Arizona rock, stone and granite, opened in 1901 and served as the terrorial capitol until Arizona became the 48th state in 1912. On top is a copper dome with a large weathervane in the shape of Nike, the Greek goddess of victory.

In 1923 the large tile mosaic of the State Seal was laid. Unfortunately the artist lived in Ohio and had never seen the Arizona State Seal before. He was only furnished with a written description and some drawings. When the tile mosaic was laid, it was missing the cow to the right of the miner.

The artist offered to fix the mistake but it was determined to be too difficult to take up the tile to fix the mistake. The motto Ditat Deus means God Enriches. The sun rising symbolizes Arizona’s climate and the reservoir and dam represents water reclamation farming. The irrigated fields of cotton and citrus trees symbolizes Arizona’s rich agriculture. The quartz mill and miner represents Arizona’s mining industry.

We enjoyed walking through the museum with four floors of comprehensive exhibits on the history of Arizona. The Miranda warning law used today was a result of the Miranda v. Arizona court case when a man by the last name of Miranda was arrested in Phoenix, not read his rights and was later convicted. The case was taken all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Arizona State flag is divided into two parts. The top half has thirteen alternating red and yellow rays representing the thirteen original colonies. Because Arizona is a western state, the rays show a setting sun. The red and yellow colors refer to the Spanish flags carried by Coronado when he came to Arizona in the sixteenth century.

The large copper colored star in the center identifies Arizona as the largest producer of copper in the United States. The bottom half of the flag is solid blue, same as the blue in the United States flag.

The friendly security guard offered to allow us access to a part of the museum currently off limits to the public and under renovation. Inside the large room were silver items originally on the battleship U.S.S. Arizona which had been removed before it was destroyed in Pearl Harbor.

There was also a model of the ship and a hull recovered from the ship.

A piece of the Arizona Battleship

In front of the capitol are pieces of petrified wood found in the state.

On the way back to the car we stopped by a park dedicated to veterans and pioneers.
We also looked at a Confederate troops memorial.

A Nation That Forgets Its Past Has No Future

While in Casa Grande we also celebrated Bill’s birthday on November 22nd and joined in a Thanksgiving dinner with others at the RV park.

It has been hot and dry. We heard the weatherman out of Phoenix say they have not had rain in 100 days.

Next stop: Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument.

Tucson, AZ Part 2, NOV 15, 2017

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While we were in Tucson we visited Saguaro (sa-WAH-row) National Park. They are actually two districts to the park: Saguaro West-Tucson Mountain District and Saguaro East-Rincon Mountain District. The two districts are separated by Tucson and are about thirty miles apart. Together, they preserve over 91,000 acres of the Sonoran Desert, including the saguaro cactus. The saguaro cactus, the supreme symbol of the American Southwest, has been protected in the park since 1933. When we visited Tucson in December, 2013 we visited the west side of the park. This time we visited the west side again and also visited the east side. We took time to see the movies at both Visitors Centers and drove through both parks, enjoying the views, especially of the saguaros and different cacti.

This is what a saguaro looks like on the inside

First up was the Bajada Loop Drive in the Saguaro West District.

On another day we drove the Cactus Forest Drive in the Tucson East District.

After finishing our drive in the Tucson East District, we drove the Mount Lemmon Scenic Byway which took us to an elevation of 9,157 feet. The temperature averages thirty degrees cooler here compared to Tucson. At the top is a small ski resort, many lodges, restaurants and a general store.

We enjoyed a picnic lunch at the top and it was so chilly we had to put on jackets. The views of Tucson at the top and during the drive were beautiful.

Before we left Tucson we drove to a nearby RV park to meet up with two of Bill’s FMCA amateur radio buddies. We enjoyed meeting them and their wives and after visiting for awhile we all went out to lunch. Weekly they talk by radio where ever they maybe.

KW4FD Bill, W0BEB Bruce and K5WF Howard

Next stop:. Casa Grande, AZ

Titan Missile Museum, AZ NOV 13, 2017

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Continuing with our time in Tucson, on Monday we drove to nearby Sahuarita to visit the Titan Missile Museum.

After watching a short video, we took a guided tour of the underground control center and saw the 103 foot tall Titan II missile in its underground silo.

We had an excellent guide who gave an in depth description of the missile facility. This was once an active intercontinental Ballistic Missile complex. Of the Titan II sites in the U.S. weapon system, this is the only one not destroyed. At one time there were 54 missiles sites, with eighteen each distributed over three locations (Little Rock, Arkansas, Wichita, Kansas and Tucson, Arizona).

The Missile Silos Around Tuscon

Site in 1962

Site in 2012

The elevator into the underground silo was under maintenance so we took the 55 steps in and then back out, not too strenuous. Anyone over six feet tall was required to wear a hard hat because we were entering low areas and they didn’t want to risk anyone injuring their head. For sanitary reasons each hard hat had a hair net, giving the wearer an unusual look! Bill didn’t seem to mind. He is always such a good sport.

The Titan II is the largest ballistic missile developed by the United States. It can carry a warhead of nine megatons, equal to nine million tons of TNT. The amount of TNT needed to equal the explosive power of the Titan II warhead would require a train of 90,000 boxcars. The train would be 1,534 miles long, stretching from Tucson to Lexington, Kentucky. While we were in the launch command center the guide simulated what a launch would have been like. It was sobering and rather scary to think what might have been.

During the Cold War the facility, and others like it, was manned twenty four hours a day, waiting for the command to launch. While they waited, men and women worked keeping the extremely complex system of hundreds of electronic and mechanical systems which must interact perfectly with each other, safe and ready to fire.

There was an accident at a Titan II missile site in Little Rock, Arkansas.

A movie made for television, called “Disaster at Silo Seven” was filmed here. Also in 1996 part of the movie “Star Trek: First Contact” was filmed at this facility.

The power of the Titan wasn’t all potentially devastatingly destructive. When no longer needed as a weapon, the Titan also launched the Gemini Program’s astronauts into orbit, sent the Viking probes to Mars and launched Voyager into the outer solar system. While it can be said the Titan missile prevented a possible catastrophic war with the Soviet Union, it also advanced the exploration of space.

After our tour we walked around outside. We saw the cover over the missile which allows satellites from other countries to see the missile silo is inactive. Our guide told us we had to explain to our potential enemies why we wanted to keep one of the missiles instead of destroying them all.

Bill was also excited to find an amateur radio antenna where ham radio operators can bring their radios and talk to people around the world using this very large antenna.

Tucson, AZ Part 1, NOV 9, 2017

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On Thursday November 9th we drove from Benson to Tucson, settling in at Justin’s Diamond J RV Park in the Sonoran Desert. It was easy to tell we were in Tucson when we saw the tall saguaros and heard the coyotes howling at night. We were last in Tucson in December, 2013. You can read about that visit here: Tucson, Tucson Mountain Park and Tucson Desert Museum.

With temperatures averaging 10 to 14 degrees above average, on Saturday we spent a very hot day at Old Tucson. In 1939 Columbia Pictures began building a replica of the 1860 Tucson city as a setting for the movie “Arizona” starring Jean Arthur and William Holden. Over 350,000 handmade adobe bricks were used to build the dusty town.

Old Tucson has been used for 400 films and commercial productions. Some example movies:

“Gunfight at the OK Corral”
“Cimmaron”
“McLintock”
“El. Dorado”
“Joe Kidd”

and many episodes of TV shows:

“Wagon Train”
“Little House on the Prairie”
“Bonanza”
“The High Chaparral”
“Death Valley Days”
“ Gunsmoke” to name just a few.

In the museum they had the shirt and hat worn by Hoss in “Bonanza” as well as some of the clothes worn on “Little House on the Prairie”.

It was easy to spend an entire day there riding the little train around the park, viewing live western shows, riding a stagecoach, touring an old mine and seeing reenactments of western scenes.

Next up: more Tucson

Tombstone, AZ NOV 2, 2017

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On November 2nd we left Willcox and arrived in Benson where we stayed for seven days at Valley Vista RV Park. Benson is another small town, population 5,100. Because it is on the Southern Pacific Railroad route, it once was a prime distribution center for copper and silver mines. When the railroads began to decline in the 1920’s, like many similar towns Benson changed into more of a stopover for tourists traveling west and snowbirds seeking a warmer winter climate.

Saturday we made the short drive to Tombstone, known as the “town too tough to die”. In the early 1880’s the town produced millions of dollars in silver and gold mining. After seven years of mining, rising underground water forced the mining to end.

Much like Dodge City, Kansas and other western towns, Tombstone was known for lawlessness and violence. The most infamous gunfight battle fought there was between Wyatt Earp and his brothers against the Clanton brothers.

We walked the old historic streets of Tombstone browsing some of the many souvenir and western apparel shops. In one shop we met a couple visiting from Jacksonville, Florida. They had vacationed on the west coast and were on their way back home. We really enjoyed chatting with this nice couple from Bill’s hometown.

We had lunch at Big Nose Kate’s where Bill had their famous reuben sandwich. Big Nose Kate’s was from Hungary and was Tombstone’s first prostitute. She was also the longtime companion and common law wife of gunfighter Doc Holliday. No, she didn’t have a big nose. She got that name because she was always sticking her nose in other people’s business! Big Nose Kate died just five days before her 90th birthday.

We took a narrated stagecoach ride which took us around Tombstone and told us some of the history of the area.

Bill made sure to thank the horses for the ride!

The rest of our time in Benson went by quickly with laundry, grocery shopping and RV chores.

Next stop: Tucson, AZ

Arizona fun facts:

Arizona and Hawaii are the only two states that do not observe daylight savings time.
The Arizona Cardinals are the longest running continuous franchise in the National Football League (1898).
Autumn is an active season for rattlesnakes because they are finding food before hibernating for the winter.

Willcox, AZ OCT 30, 2017

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After an overnight stop in Deming, New Mexico, we said a fond farewell to New Mexico and hello to Arizona. We really enjoyed our two months in New Mexico and made many great memories, but the weather was getting colder and it was time to move on to warmer weather. We crossed over the Continental Divide between Deming and Lordsburg, New Mexico, elevation 4,585 ft. Unfortunately we passed by the sign too quickly to snap a picture.

We knew for sure we had entered Arizona when we started seeing many signs on Interstate 10 warning of potential dust storms. It seemed every few miles there were yellow dust storm warning signs followed by signs with advice on what to do if you encountered a dust storm.

Another way we knew we were near Mexico was when we passed through a border patrol checkpoint on I-10, even though we were really not that close to the border. They photographed the vehicle as we slowly passed and the border patrol agent waved us through. We didn’t even have to come to a stop.

Our first stop was in Willcox where we stayed three nights at another nice Elks Lodge with electric and water hookups. Willcox has a population of just over 3,700, a nice little town. Cattle raising is important here as well as the cultivation of apples, peaches, pistachios, onions and tomatoes. Willcox is also known for its vineyards.

On Tuesday we made the forty-five minute drive to Chiricahua National Monument. This area is also called “Wonderland of Rocks” and was established as a monument in 1924 to protect the rocks. It exceeded our expectations and definitely had the WOW factor! These lands were once owned by the Chiricahua Apaches who were led by the great Cochise. Cochise led the Native American resistance to the white man’s advances during the 1860’s.

Twenty-seven million years ago violent eruptions from a nearby volcano covered the area with white hot ash and formed a twelve mile wide caldera. The ash cooled and fused into an almost 2,000 foot layer of rock. Over time erosion sculptured the rock into odd shaped rock pillars.

We stopped by the Visitors Center located in Bonita Canyon and saw a short movie on the area.

This view is from the sun roof of our car

We drove the eight mile scenic drive where the rocks at times towered above us.

We also took two hikes, both on rocky paths and we were glad we had our walking sticks.

The views were amazing and reminded us of the magnificent national parks in Utah. We especially enjoyed the balanced rocks and the grottoes, which are small cave like formations.

Next stop: Benson, AZ

Through the Eyes of the Selphs

Bill and Diane's travel notes and pictures

Category Archives: Exploring

Yuma, Palm Desert, Hemet, Acton & Ridgecrest, CA 2018

Quartzsite, AZ January 20, 2018

Yuma, AZ DEC 1, 2017

Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, AZ NOV 28, 2017

Casa Grande, AZ NOV 21, 2017

Tucson, AZ Part 2, NOV 15, 2017

Titan Missile Museum, AZ NOV 13, 2017

Tucson, AZ Part 1, NOV 9, 2017

Tombstone, AZ NOV 2, 2017

Willcox, AZ OCT 30, 2017