Saturday, December 19, 2020. We found a decent boondocking spot up the Miller Canyon just south of Sierra Vista. We spent a couple days visiting friends Deryle and Wanda, then went up the Ramsay Canyon for a hike. Ramsay Canyon is famous for hummingbirds, but they must’ve gone on vacation to Mexico because we didn’t see any. It was a nice walk in the woods and the spring-fed creek actually had water!

On Saturday, we piled into our truck with Deryle and Wanda and drove over to Bisbee, a quaint copper mining town.

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It took us longer than it should have (half a day) to figure out when we had last seen Deryle and Wanda: July, 2013. Hope we don’t have to wait that long to see them again!

Tuesday, December 15, 2020. Our next stop was Sierra Vista to visit with friends Deryle and Wanda and we stopped in Tombstone on the way. It’s kinda cheesy but fun.

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Tuesday, December 15, 2020. We stopped for a couple of days in Pearce, AZ to visit friend Klayton, who told us about the Cochise Stronghold. After some dinners and good conversation, we headed up there on Sunday afternoon and found a really nice spot in the trees with some whitetail deer and another dry creek bed.  We had to shoehorn Harvey in there but we were very happy.  Until the next morning.  When the chainsaw gang showed up at 8 A.M.  Seems they were clearing out brush and piling it up to avoid large forest fires.  Ugghh.  We almost cleared out then and there but we had a date to go hiking up the Cochise Trail with Klayton so we stuck it out.  When Klayton showed, we left for the trail, walked slowly and managed to stay gone all afternoon by which time the chainsaw gang was gone.  But they were back again same time next morning, so we left shortly thereafter.  Nothing like half a dozen chainsaws starting up in unison at 8 A.M.  Perhaps we’ll go back another day and stay longer.  Perhaps there will be water in the creeks.

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December 12, 2020.  There is a campground in the Chiricahua Monument but our rig is too big so we drove down Pinery Canyon Rd. and found a great boondock site on Pinery Creek (dry).  It’s interesting how much the vegetation changes from place to place depending on elevation and rainfall.  This place has alligator juniper, Arizona white oak, manzanita, sycamore, and lodgepole pine.  If the creek had water it would be very lovely.  The dry creek bed is full of petrified wood and pumice stone.  We think this area is just outside the caldera of Turkey Volcano.

The animals are different too.  Here we saw a flock of wild turkeys on the way in, on the way out and twice they’ve come foraging through our campsite.  I read that Chiricahua means “place of the wild turkeys.”  We have also seen many deer, a roadrunner and signs of bear but no bear.  

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We took one day to drive back to the monument and check it out.  We would’ve gone a couple of times but it’s five miles of washboard gravel road to get back to the main road from here.  The monument is basically a hoodoo forest.  

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We drove out to Massai point and hiked around.

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We hiked down to the Echo Canyon Grotto which was very cool.  It was a bunch of hoodoos close together that we crawled in and around.

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And then there were hundreds of huge rocks hanging by a thread:

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December 5, 2020. We’ve spent several days here on BLM land just outside of Safford, doing chores, visiting with friends Deanna and Ryan, and enjoying the hot springs.  Two of the hot springs on public land have been closed, one permanently and one hopefully temporarily (covid).  That left only two other options, one a tepid stream flowing into Dankworth Lake in Roper State Park and the other a commercial enterprise called Essence of Tranquility.  Visits from Roger are sporadic and mostly non-existant, so I have to write these blogs and upload in batches, sometimes on the fly as we pass through towns.

We first visited Dankworth Lake where I enjoyed soaking my feet in the stream. Though the water was only tepid, it’s still a surprise to stick your feet in a stream and not find it freezing cold.

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The Essence of Tranquility was awesome!  We LOVED it and spent two entire afternoons there.  There were 5 private pools and one, cooler communal pool along with several places to sit and relax.  We tried all the pools, ranging from 105 degrees to about 102 degrees (the communal pool was about 98 degrees).

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Hooking up with Deanna and Ryan was a hoot.  Somehow, we got it into our heads that they were in Wilcox, about 50 miles south of here.  Luckily, I sent a message before we arrived here in Safford.  They actually winter in Thatcher, which is adjacent to Safford.  We sent several increasingly frustrating messages back and forth until I began to think Deanna was demented!  Finally it became clear that WE were the demented ones!  How embarrassing!  So glad we figured it out before we blew by and missed them.  We had a jolly time and got to see a roadrunner in their backyard!  We also heard coyotes here.

November 29, 2020. This trailhead has several boondocking sites so we decided to try it out.  There were two other RVs besides us, but plenty of room so that we could neither see nor hear them unless we tried.  We did hear some coyotes one night.  We have been surprised at how few times we have heard coyotes, only one other time in Utah.  We would have expected them all over the western states.  

We spent a pleasant two nights here and hiked a couple of miles of the Continental Divide trail. In and out of NM, and we have crossed the continental divide a few more times.  It seems we have been criss-crossing it since Montana.

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November 26, 2020. We had planned to take Hwy 191 from Alpine to Clifton in AZ.  But several people warned us against it.  It’s supposed to be one of the twistiest roads in the U.S. with elevations over 9,000 feet.  It has a posted vehicle length limit of 40 feet.  We are about 40 feet (or more), so we chickened out and went from Alpine into New Mexico on Hwy 180.  

We stopped at Head of the Ditch, a primitive campground with few other campers, a creek and a (dry) ditch. We spent Thanksgiving here and got about three inches of snow on the Friday after Thanksgiving.  We hiked around in the snow a bit and saw a couple of bald eagles for the first time since leaving WA.  A couple of days after the snow there was water in the ditch so we filled our tank and water jugs with the snowmelt. 

Pine trees, a creek and a ditch. Nada mas. But quiet and peaceful.

Wednesday, November 25, 2020.  Just before the south entrance to the park is a gift shop and museum with a huge parking lot where RVs can park for free.  We took a spot in the far corner and there was only one other RV there the whole time.  Not too bad.  When we pulled into the parking lot, the first thing we saw was this:

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The problem here is obvious.  But as we drove past the other cars in the parking lot, several more had flat tires.  I said something about that not being a good sign.  Well, you guessed it: as we were leaving Alan noticed that one of Harvey’s tires was flat.  Not so free parking after all. 

But the petrified forest was pretty cool.  We entered the south gate and walked around the “Giant Logs” near the visitor’s center.  There is a two mile trail to the “Agate House,” which is a pueblo constructed entirely of petrified wood.  I would’ve liked to have seen that but we figured we’d better save our strength and not get fagged out on the first round.  

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Next we walked around the Crystal Forest, indistinguishable from the Giant Logs; i.e. petrified logs everywhere broken up into slices.  Looks like the logs were prepared for splitting firewood.

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We then drove to the Agate Bridge, which was a huge petrified log spanning a (dry) creek. Though they called it a bridge, they didn’t allow anyone to walk across it or even get very close.  They’ve reinforced it with concrete. 

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We followed the road in a loop around the Blue Mesa. The layers in the cliffs consist of all colors of the rainbow and are really striking.  

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Next up was another “Newspaper Rock.”  There were actually two rocks covered in petroglyphs but they were smaller than the one we saw in Utah and we couldn’t get close.  I took a few photos, but you really can only make out the various designs with binoculars. 

The ruins of Puerco Pueblo were next.  This was originally a large settlement.  There were petroglyphs all over the rocks here and probably in the entire valley.  One of the huge boulders has a natural split in it that perfectly lines up with the sun at the equinoxes.  Opposite the slit, illuminated by a narrow strip of sunlight at the equinox, is a spiral petroglyph.  It was in shadow while we were there, so is difficult to see.

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Finally, we circled the north end for stunning views of the Painted Desert.

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November 23, 2020.  Remember, back in Montana, when I disparaged several campgrounds as, “just pine trees and a creek”?  In Arizona, it turns out, it’s difficult to FIND pine trees OR a creek.  Both together is nearly impossible.  But we were running low on drinking water.  We meandered south of Flagstaff along  Lake Mary Rd (FR3).  We passed three lakes, Upper and Lower Lake Mary and Mormon Lake.  Lower Lake Mary and Morman Lakes were dry.  A small puddle or two in the middle is all. Upper Lake Mary had some water, but not much. Every creek bed we passed was dry.  

We finally realized that the only creeks with any hope of water would be spring-fed. So we looked for some of those.  We found one at Flowing Springs Campground next to the East Verde River.  The water here was not fit for bathing in so we drove upriver looking for the source of Weber Creek (a feeder to the Verde).  As we neared the creek we came to a locked gate and private property.  This is in the Tonto National Forest but the Weber Creek is privately owned.

We stayed one night in the campground and then went looking for spring sources of the Verde R.  We drove about 15 miles up the Houston Mesa Rd, then a few miles up a forest service road and parked in the pine trees next to a creek (the East Verde River is a creek where I come from)!  Heaven!  Until the dirt bikes and buggies started passing back and forth.  

We were smack dab in the middle of what must be the most popular OHV place in the state!  We have enjoyed it as much as possible.  This morning we headed up river to once again find the springs that feed this “river.”  After a few more miles we came to more private property, no trespassing signs and locked gates!  Looks like springs in Arizona are closely guarded, even in the stupid forest.

We hiked a trail along the river that was supposed to go to a waterfall but, after 1/4 mile of scrambling over boulders and rocks, we gave it up as a job for younger folks.  We then went to check out some ruins called “Shoofly” for reasons unbeknownst to us.  This was a path through a whole bunch of ruins where only the first layer of foundation stones were still present.  Hard to tell what was what.  

All I got is a waterfall that we didn’t find, a pile of rocks, pine trees and a creek.  Nothin’ to see here.

November 13, 2020.  We found a nice boondocking spot in the Coconino forest just north of Flagstaff.  It was quiet and peaceful with a night sky full of stars.  That’s the good news.  The bad news is that we drove several miles over very badly rutted dirt road to get there.  Leroy was tilting to the right while Harvey was tilting to the left.  We had to jockey back and forth between pine trees (dry branches snapping off right and left as we passed) to back into a level spot. I had to clean out my drawers when we finally got parked.  On our way back out we actually drove cross-country for a short distance to avoid a really bad spot in the road.  This is a problem. To find peace and quiet we have to go where no one in their right minds will go.

The main reason for stopping there was to re-provision in Flagstaff, but since it was so peaceful and we had such a time getting parked, we decided to have a look around.  We knew there were a couple of old volcanos up the road but what we didn’t know was that there were also tons of Anasazi ruins!

We first drove through the Sunset Crater Volcano National Monument. We stopped at the first turnout and hiked 1.5 miles straight up the side of the Lenox Crater to look into the crater.  It was underwhelming. It was a big hole filled with pebble-sized volcanic rock with a few struggling juniper bushes.  The same stuff that we slogged through on the side of the volcano to get to the rim.  We should have saved our energy for hiking around the Anasazi ruins.  

Before leaving the volcanos, we enjoyed a panoramic view of the Painted Desert.  We could see everywhere we had been: Lee’s Ferry, Grand Canyon, and Monument Valley.  It was hazy and the pictures didn’t come out, so I won’t waste bandwidth on them. 

The first ruin we came to was the Wukoki Pueblo.  The sign said these people lived here circa 1120-1210 CE. It was an amazing structure, once three stories tall, built of stones and clay mortar on top of a huge rock. 

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Next was the Wupatki Pueblo.  This one had a pueblo with many, many rooms, again built atop a large rock.  Features of the rock were cleverly incorporated into the rooms.  There were also two large, circular foundations that must have been community gathering places.  The tower of the Wukoki Pueblo was visible in the distance and we suppose that signals could be sent and received.

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Around the corner and a few miles further we came to two pueblos.  One small one with about five rooms was called Nalakihu Pueblo.  It sat at the foot of the hill below the Citadel Pueblo.  On the other side of the Citadel was a deep crater that was probably left over from a volcano.  The Citidel is so far the only ruin we have seen that incorporates lava rocks, along with odd-shaped rocks and stones.  The others have all been built of the flat, red rock that looks like bricks.  The only part standing in the Citadel was the lower portion of the outer walls. The sign said it may have been two or three stories tall with many rooms inside.  Inside was only a pile of stones so we couldn’t tell about the rooms.

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Finally we came to the Box Canyon Dwellings (one on each side of a box canyon) and the Lomaki Pueblo.  We were getting tired by this time so we only hiked to the nearest Box Canyon Dwelling and took pictures of the other two from there.  The sign said there were many ruins all over this valley so we started looking around as we were driving out and we did see them everywhere!  Once you know what to look for.  If we had it to do over, we would replace the hike up the volcano with some cross-country trekking to look at some ruins that were NOT on their maps and lists.

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