Sedona: Red Rocks & a Snowy Valley

Approaching Sedona midday

Monday, Jan 30…

Happy Birthday, Greg!  At breakfast I gave him 60 wine bottles in a thousand pieces. J Uneventful drive north to Sedona (the last spot I’m revisiting since October). Washed the car so we could do a couple side trips. Greg has great car-washing stuff, including a towel-size synthetic chamois that makes drying quick and easy (and when you’re done, you just wring it out and stuff it back in its plastic container).

Skeleton trees heading 
into Oak Creek Canyon

...into the valley of the
shadow of death.

Probably a good 1000' down.

Lots of rocks, but also lots of green.

Later in the afternoon we did a short Red Rocks Loop drive. The geology here has to be experienced to be fully appreciated.

Approaching sunset.

BlogThoughts... It was 30° this morning (there was ice in our water hose). By the time we were in Sedona, however, the temp was in the 60s. It was a gorgeous afternoon!

Prescott, AZ - elevation 5367'

Sunday, Jan 29…

Five cats traveled in this rig. Three of them were
happy to escape to the outside thru this wire mesh
tunnel and play tent.

As predicted, 2 nights at Quartzsite sufficed. Off to Prescott (another place I visited back in October) via I-10 (briefly), then AZ 60 to 71 to 89. Before 89 the scenery was vast, colorless, mostly uninhabited (except for occasional permanent-resident RV parks) and kinda boring. Shortly after we turned onto 89, however, we climbed the apparently infamous Yarnell Hill (lots of switchbacks) and crossed the Weaver Mts into Peeples Valley. Suddenly the road was lined with beautifully maintained ranches. At bit later we were climbing again, summiting the Bradshaw Mts at 6100’. Many more twists and turns (w/ the usual useless guard rails), snow on the surrounding mts – it may be the prettiest pass we’ve been through (at least today 😃).

Peeples Valley Ranch

At least one of us can enjoy the view.

 

By 1:30 we had settled the rig outside Prescott and headed back into town for a late lunch at "The Palace" (the oldest saloon west of the Mississippi). Wyatt Earp & Doc Holliday played poker here. The building was destroyed by fire in 1901, but the bar was removed & salvaged and is still in use today. 

view from our MH:  desert - cliff - Fain Lake Park - upper ridge homes - mountains - (my thumb)

BlogThoughts… Tumbleweeds. We’ve been thru umpteen deserts over the last several weeks, and I’ve seen exactly 2 actual tumbleweeds (actual meaning in motion – I’ve seen gazillions of wannabees still firmly anchored in soil). For some reason, I have fond memories of the Sons of the Pioneers crooning “lonely but free I’ll be found, drifting along with the tumbling tumbleweeds” and was looking forward to humming a few accompanying bars as they swished across the highway.

One other highway sideline. As I mentioned above, the early part of today’s drive was miles and miles of the same dry desert landscape. Eventually I wasn’t paying much attention… suddenly I noticed a huge field lined with California-straight rows of deep green (maybe spinach?) in beautifully tilled dark soil. And then we were past it and the desert returned. 

Quartzsite, Day 2

Desert scrub (no sand, just dirt & crushed rock)

Saturday, Jan 28…

Easy day, and good weather (high in the 60s w/ light wind). Got 3 good walks in by traipsing through various camping areas. Like I mentioned yesterday, it’s not really crowded where we are, but there are clumps of RVs scattered for miles outside of Quartzsite. Our group gathered for a potluck and campfire this evening. I was amazed at how much food appeared (I still only count 22 rigs in our cluster). There was a fun around-the-circle sharing time after we ate. Lots of praise for the increasing number of women drivers (and instructors), and several men commented that while they do most of the driving, their wives do the parking. A lot of full-timers – one couple for something like 30 years!

These tracks are shiny dried
mud - barely any stones in them.
They end just as abruptly at
the top of the picture.

Lots of space, lots of RV clusters.

Gathering for the potluck.

Campfire 😃

Quartzsite, Day 1

Friday, Jan 27…

Travel day. Easy drive following the Colorado River south from Lake Havasu to the Parker Dam (250 miles south of Hoover Dam and also built during the Depression), then continuing on Hwy 95 to Quartzsite – an isolated desert community sometimes referred to as the “RV boondocking capital of the world.”

This portion of the trip is not one I’ve been excited about. It’s a huge gathering (think boy scout jamboree for old people) on open desert land bordering the highway. It’s sunny but still windy, dusty & cold. Very cold after sunset, but then campfires pop up here and there (more of that boy scout mentality). The crowd does have some subgroups – we’re camped a couple miles south of the main vendors tent w/ others who have either taught or taken the RV Driving Instruction class. (We took this in Bremerton back in August.) Probably only 20 RVs in our area now; more will arrive tomorrow, and we’ll have our own potluck dinner and campfire stories in the evening.

Today we visited the vendor area – kind of like a carnival w/o rides. Lots of good smells (and ice cream in yummy sounding flavors, but not outside in a cold breeze). I saw a “My Pillow” booth –  even w/o paying attention or caring, I know this item has had gazillions of complaints. There were a couple of demos by those speak-without-breathing folks, and… let’s just say it was like QVC live. Below are two booths I chuckled over.

See anything wrong here?

Maybe a holdover from the wild west days.

Greg stirred up a great leftovers meal – bits of chicken & pork, mixed veggies (plus lots of newly sautéed onions), raisins, apricot bits, sesame seeds. Yum! Now just chillin’ 

with lively Mexican music on the radio. 

Vash, our night sentinel

Colorado R. (above Parker Dam) & Whipple Mts.

A quick comment on the pic to the right. For Christmas, Chris gave us 12" metal sculptures to replace Lady and Vash, the pets (his pets, actually, but we've had them for the last 7+ years) we couldn't take with us. When we're camped, they both preside from the wide padded dash. We do enjoy them.

BlogThoughts... Driving down a long straight stretch in the middle of nowhere today I noticed a lot of sparkly glints beyond the highway shoulders. Eventually I realized they were glass - dozens of bottles (beer would be my first guess) scattered for miles. From a distance, the effect was actually kind of pretty, but I was still irritated. I have no patience w/ litterers.

And just FYI: Back when Greg first mentioned this Quartzsite event, I was like "OK, I can handle one night" -- pull in mid-day, check out the vendors, do the potluck, and leave late the next morning. Two days ago I was checking our itinerary and saw 3 nights. I think we may compromise at 2. Then it's on to Sedona, where the temp this morning was 20° (but the red rocks will still be gorgeous at sunset).

Lake Havasu

Lake Havasu

Thursday, Jan 26…

In planning this trip the general idea was to stay in the south during the winter – obviously neither southern CA or Arizona is “the south.” This morning’s temp was 38°.  By now (late afternoon), it’s 57° and beautifully sunny, but there’s still a stiff breeze.

This morning I managed at least a couple miles walking while Greg waited for some work to be finished on the M3. Then we drove over the old London Bridge (which didn’t look very London-ish to me) and wandered through a nice park they’ve created on the small island on the other side. Fact is, they had to create the island too in order to have a body of water for the bridge to cross. The Lake Havasu shoreline used to have a good-sized “thumb” of land that created a smallish back bay with very little current. The water got scummy and folks weren’t happy. So they “amputated” the thumb by dredging a channel (maybe a couple hundred feet wide) at its base. Then there was a nice little island that needed a bridge. London had one for sale, and it’s been a quirky attraction here since about 1970. 😃

After lunch I got a much-needed haircut and Greg cleaned all the MH windows. (He spent the last 2 days polishing the rest of the outside.) Like I mentioned in an earlier post, maintenance is a big job. And an important one – RV sites (even the Elks) don’t want rundown vehicles in their lots. TEMP UPDATE: The sun just dropped behind the horizon. Brrrr.

APOLOGY: I have frittered away a at least an hour trying to lay out photos on this page. (I had 2 more I really wanted to include and finally gave up. I can't do anything about the huge blank spaces. Grrrr.

One of the trees from my long walk.

Landscaped dry wash.

London Bridge

Channel that severed the thumb.

Even an empty lot looks better under a sunset.

On track at last.

Wednesday, Jan 25…

Sound the trumpets and break out the champagne – I am writing about today!!! (Fortunately, Greg was busy w/ automotive errands and helping his friend install a windshield, so I spent nearly all my time catching up. It feels really good.) 

The only other item worth mentioning might be that we finally had dinner at the Elks Club. (We’d been told that a retired chef had recently been hired and the food was actually GOOD.) Again, we shared the plate of ribs - plenty for both of us, meat literally falling off the bones and doused in decent sauce. Teens served, and the cocktail waitress apparently never saw us, so Greg had to manage w/o wine (and me w/o carbonation), but for $12 we were quite happy.

(This particular Elks Club always has cars in the parking lot, and the place was packed tonight. I’m sure they served at least a couple hundred meals.)

BlogThoughts… I haven’t posted any of these for a while, so it’s going to be a rather random assortment of ideas.  

·            ---We’ve stumbled across Route 66 at least twice – in Barstow and yesterday in Kingman. Neither day did I think to take a picture, but it is fun to see places identified with that era of travel. Here are a couple relevant pics, stolen from the internet:

Barstow

Kingman

😃

 

·-           ---When we pulled into the Visitors Center in DV, a very shiny bus was unloading Japanese tourists. People kid about these folks being everywhere with their cameras, and I’ve never given it much thought, but lately I have become more aware of their ubiquity. I remember seeing large groups a couple times when we spent that week in the Canadian Rockies last September.  I have no issues with it; I guess I’m just a little surprised at how many/how often they travel to the U.S.

      ---Regarding that huge windstorm last Sunday night... After I knew Greg wasn’t really worried, I found myself smiling b/c one of my concerns had been whether I should get some sort of clothing on “now” rather than after the MH blew over.

  

     Finally, here's the only picture I took today. 

Sunset Minstrels (metal sculptures)

s

On the road again...

Tuesday, Jan 24…

Travel day. This morning’s news said the weather satellite showed clouds over almost the entire U.S.  The photos below show that to be true in our little corner of the world.

more as we move into open land...

 A few outside Boulder City...

nearly full coverage...

(Forget the clouds, there's
SNOW on the roof!)

Consumer goods in transit.

See that white “dotted line” in the photo to the right? Those little rectangles are containers, and there are dozens of them on this train, which was pulled by 4 engines. We probably saw half a dozen trains in less than an hour. There were tracks (both main and side) on both sides of the highway. We also saw several semi’s, including 2 off the highway - one after a collision, and the other surrounded by cargo after a rollover.

Lunch in Kingman (AZ) was definitely the highlight of my day. By chance, I had been in Kingman w/ my sister and sister-in-law just last October, and we enjoyed a great meal at Redneck’s Red Hot BBQ. I wanted to share that experience with Greg.  In order to have room for some peach cobbler (a la, of course), we split a pulled pork sandwich w/ slaw. And, b/c I have no willpower when it comes to sweets, we also ordered a piece of the frozen lemon pie to tuck away in our freezer. Yum all round.

50's funk inside

mural on outside wall

Coasted into Lake Havasu mid-afternoon and were immediately befriended by another couple who good-naturedly accused us of “stealing their Meridian” (owning the MH they’ve been trying to find). Later we enjoyed a wonderful evening w/ a couple Greg had met during his PQEI days. (PQEI was the business he co-owned for 10 years.) This area is a haven for lots of retirees, but I need real trees, real seasons, and my family.

So long, Cali. Hello (briefly), Nevada.

Monday, Jan 23…

last dunes of DV

With a wistful farewell to the Valley we follow State Line Road into Nevada and pass through the interesting metropolis of Parumph. (Funny how reality kicks you in the teeth sometimes. Despite its unusual name, I didn’t find the town very impressive; hence, “interesting metropolis” was meant to be tongue-in-cheek. But when I googled it I found some truly interesting info.) The name is derived from the Paiute pah-rimpi or “water rock,” a reference to the abundance of artesian wells in the area that enabled the white settlers of the late 1800s to develop large ranches and raise cotton, alfalfa and livestock. Jumping ahead almost a century, Pahrump grew almost exponentially from 1980-2010, and is considered an archetypal example of an exurb (you can look that  up yourself 😃). And, most surprising (or maybe not at all), in 2008 Michael Jackson bought a home and briefly home-schooled his three children here. Who knew?

More than meets the eye
(including the Chicken Ranch,
which does not raise chickens)

somewhere in western Nevada

bypassing Vegas

After settling in at the Boulder City Elks Club, we unhitched the car, cleaned the windows so we could drive (cringing at the dirt left everywhere else), and headed for Hoover Dam. I’ll let photos tell the rest…

pedestrian walkway on bypass

Hoover Dam Bypass, opened 2010

view from the bypass

Fast Facts:

• The base of the dam is 660’ thick (that’s 2 football fields!)
• The dam is 726 feet tall – almost 200’ taller than the Washington Monument.
• During peak periods of electrical demands, enough water runs through the generators to fill 15 average-size swimming pools in one second.
• There’s enough concrete in the dam to build a four-foot-wide sidewalk around the Earth at the Equator.

view of the bypass

sculpture honoring the dam's builders

That "moon" is really the street light!

 

Driving on the dam.

(If you look closely, you can still see part of the dam's electric grid at the back.)

BlogThoughts... Frustration! When I preview this page, I see that the layout is a MESS in the middle.  And, as happens repeatedly, you must wonder why I've used such a small image when there's plenty of space for a larger one. Plenty of space in the preview/publish version, but not on my working page. I finally gave up trying to fix the bullet list. (It is slightly better than the original, which was ludicrous.)