Posts from the ‘Arizona’ Category

Jan 1

Good Times At Dead Horse Ranch State Park

On Sunday Kelly and I traveled about 90 miles north of Sun City West to the town of Cottonwood and set-up shop in Dead Horse Ranch State Park. Wanting to visit a number of locations in this general area, DHRSP seemed like an ideal, centrally situated location to base ourselves before moving 5 hours(ish) southwest to California’s Joshua Tree National Park.

Our spot overlooking the town of Jereome

Our spot in Dead Horse State Park

Unlike the weather my family and friends in Minnesota, Wisconsin, & Illinois have been experiencing the past few days, Mother Nature has not waved her miserable wrath-of-winter wand anywhere here in the high desert. Under brilliantly blues skies, daytime temperatures flutter into the low 60’s before giving way to cooler 30’s at night. Factor in virtually zero wind – the “feels like” effect has resulted in my donning t-shirts, shorts, sunglasses, and plenty of sunscreen while enjoying delightfully blissful conditions.

For those of you freezing-off your tushes elsewhere, you’ll need to trust me that these conditions are quite enjoyable. Too bad for all of you.

Kelly taking a refreshing reprieve from the heat

DHRSP is big, offers loads of multi-use (dog friendly) trails, spacious sites, and surprisingly clean bathrooms/showers. The park offers water and electric, but not sewer. Consequently we must display conservative water disposal into our holding tanks when not secretly “watering” the bushes outside our door.

Less the absence of sewer, the situation here is so nice, we cancelled our plans to visit Joshua Tree and we will be staying put through Saturday.

So what makes this place so nice you’re wondering … many things actually. The park is mostly empty which affords us plenty of elbow room, we’ve fallen smitten for the hipster cool town of Sedona located just up the road, and we have blazing fast mobile broadband directing the internet into our laptops … enabling us to work remotely Thursday and Friday.

I’ve added a few snapshots from the past few days below.

Dec 28

Sun City West

As mentioned in my last post, Kelly and I left Tucson on Christmas morning and drove to Sun City West – home of Kelly’s father and his wife (Sandy). Sun City West is an interesting place – something straight from the stereotypical pages flipping through your imagination. There are lots of golf courses, a seemingly infinite number of retired people (some really old), and a shocking abundance of medical care facilities.

More, for the person preferring to run errands while driving a golf-cart in lieu of an automobile, this place is fit for purpose.

The locals refer to this township as “SCW” and I always enjoy visiting this area. Something about all these retirees racing around in gasoline powered golf carts with lap dog driving shotgun makes me smile. I’d guess that at any given moment I am the only mixed race, socially liberal Democrat within the city limits, but despite that nuance, I find a peacefulness to the area. From what I can tell, people here seem to fall into two camps – a happily retired and pleasantly carefree person, or a curmudgeonly bastard … likely pissed-off at somebody for no sensible reason.

I get a kick out of both scenarios which affords me plenty of humor all around. BTW, if you’re wondering – Gene and Sandy fall into the happily retired and pleasantly carefree camp. They love it here.

(True story … one morning at the senior center fitness room, I witnessed two locals nearly break into a fist-fight because one guy was mad at the other for allegedly scaring the dog he brought into the gym. Literally, two grumpy old men cussing like sailors and daring the others to keep talking trash. It was awesome to witness. Displaying a knack to multi-task, I was impressed that the guy with the dog didn’t once break stride atop the recumbent bicycle he was riding.)

Gene and Sandy are great hosts and visiting their home is always easy. We abandon our trailer and stay with them in their home, which is spacious and comfortable. As an added bonus, Lilly has access to a big backyard wherein she can run freely.

Fortunately, the streets in SCW are wide and barren – a combination which easily accommodates our home for a few days.

Mabel rests quietly on Marble Drive.

Once upon a time, spending time in a home like this was no big deal, but now these periods of Airstream abandonment seem oddly foreign. At roughly 1800 sqft, their home is not huge by our societal standards, but compared to our 188 sqft home, theirs seems huge and grandiose to what we are used to. To be honest, retreating back to the familiar cocoon is strangely comforting.

Another benefit of arriving to SCW was my rendezvous with the holiday gift package my mom sent us. Complete with traditional family foodie items and other gifts, the care package landed at Gene and Sandy’s prior to our arrival and I was happy to have a bit of Christmas tradition, albeit 1,600 miles away from my immediate family and frigid upper Midwest temperatures.

Regrettably, I didn’t capture many fun pictures during our stay, but like our stay in Tucson, these few days in SCW were fantastic. Gene and Sandy are fabulous hosts and before we knew it, Sunday morning arrived and we began our trip north to Sedona.

Dec 25

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Pre-Christmas in Arizona

Friday morning (Dec-20th) we began the long drive to Kelly’s mom’s house. We’ve traveled this stretch of road before and knew to expect a mostly uninspiring experience. Suffice it to say, 834 miles later we arrived to Marana, our destination just north of Tucson.

Kelly drove exactly zero miles.

The sun sets along Interstate-10

While visiting Kelly’s mom, we stayed at Valley of the Sun RV park near her home. As we live in an RV park when not traveling, I wasn’t thrilled to be staying in yet another park, especially with all the beautiful boon-docking in the area. But we are here to spend time with family and this location is only a few minutes walk to Kelly’s mom’s home.

This particular park is typical of many – lots of big rigs in close proximity to one another, a cuckoo-bird park manager who seemingly is barely competent, and lots of overly friendly retirees, most with an uncanny ability to talk for extended periods of times, yet fail to articulate anything interesting.

The long row of RVs

Boring chit-chadder with the locals aside, the visit was great. We had a few quality days with Kelly’s mom and her husband. And while I’d love to tell you we did all sorts of wonderful and exciting things, I’d be a liar if I gave any impression of the sort. The truth is we were quite lazy … and it was perfect.

I did some computer repairs for Kelly’s mom, ate lots of unhealthy food, completed a bit of trailer maintenance, washed the truck, etc. Mainly, little things that aren’t really interesting except to those directly involved. That said, in our desire to avoid being the target of local RV park gossip, we did complete a local hike and sit for a proper Christmas-Eve dinner. That is to say – we city slickers in the shiny Airstream, tried to fit in amongst the army of otherwise nosey snow-birds.

First up was a nice hike.

Not far from where we were staying is Picacho Peak State Park. Following a quick 15 minute drive, we arrived to the visitor center, paid our $7 park entry, chatted with the ranger (yes, more chit-chat), and began our ascent to the park’s namesake. During the hike we were disappointed to see that Lilly is not capable of using the cable handrails anchored into the rocks to assist herself as needed. It turns out that her ability to scramble incredibly steep and sometimes loose rock faces are not akin to those of a mountain goat … and despite her best efforts, couldn’t quite push onward to the peak (but we came damn close).

Notwithstanding our failings, we did had a nice three hours on the trails, most of which involved some amount of scrambling and navigating over rocks or other boulders. Lilly was in heaven.

Lilly leading the way

Scrambling one of the steeper sections

Trail on the backside of the mountain, overlooking ranch and farmlands

The park is quite nice – on the smaller side, but a very nice state park. Campsites are primitive, but fairly spacious and appeared to be well maintained. Adjacent to the state park are amenities to compliment any family during their stay – tours of an ostrich farm, a Dairy Queen, an automotive repair shop & gas station, and obviously … an adult sex toy store.

Christmas-Eve was relatively subdued. We ate a nice meal prepared by Kelly and her mom, exchanged a few gifts, engaged in a bit of conversation banter, and watched an old episode of The Unit. The evening was quite nice, but sadly our last in before moving on.

My new stocking cap – totally diggin’ the pom-pom

Kelly & Barb making final touches to dinner

On Christmas Day morning, Kelly and I said our goodbyes, thanked our hosts for a wonderful couple of days and drove about 90 miles to Sun City West – home of Kelly’s father and his wife.

** Note, the following contains nerdy details related to hitch maintenance

I make a habit of checking hitch bolts connected to the trailer before every tow, however, I’ve never checked the bolts attaching the hitch receiver to the frame of the truck. Having towed about 12,000 miles, I suppose it’s only logical that the bolts will loosen, but to my surprise, torque was nowhere near the installation specifications of 110 ft lbs.

If you have not checked your hitch receiver, you should. For my 2012 Ford F-150, the process was quite simple. Ten bolts (5 per side) tightened … a really quick inspection. More, since I was already under the truck, I took a good look at the entire hitch receiver to ensure there are no cracks or other potentially dangerous issues lurking.

5 bolts per side

I also made a point to inspect the (Equalizer) hitch assembly and tighten all bolts to torque specifications, something I’ve done a few times in the past.

Dec 31

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Exploring Painted Rock

Yesterday Kelly proclaimed that the agenda would be comprised of nothing. To that end, we didn’t do a whole lot, although I did a bit of work while listening to the Bears-Lions football game (via satellite radio). So lazy was our day, I didn’t even bother to test my new shower head. (although I did today and can report it is fabulous).

Following the game, Kelly and I decided we were acting a bit too slothful and managed to drag ourselves out of the Airstream and survey some of the ancient sites. Very close to the campsites are a big collection of ancient rock petroglyphs, which I assume are considered the ‘main attraction’ as there is a day use parking, a picnic shelter, and lots of informative signs (in two languages) explaining the site’s varying history.

Collection of rock painting

Close-up of the rock paintings

In addition to the sites near the campground, we wandered out into the trail network. The area is largely an extinct volcano site which over thousands of years has evolved into a cattle grazing area, which seems to then have been over-grazed. Now it’s basically just a bunch of vast land.