Tempe

After all my whining about the BLM area near Tucson, we ended up staying there the whole 4 nights. The NFS campgrounds were on the other side of town--maybe 15 miles away, and Steve didn't want to move that far. We ended up finidng a better spot in the BLM campground, away from the road, and it ended up being fine. It was very handily close to Saguaro National Park, which is beautiful. We did a short hike there, intending to do a longer one another day, but ran out of days, but will go back another time. Steve spent a happy day at the Pima Air and Space Museum, and I spent an even happier one "shop hopping" quilt and yarn shops. I found 6 quilt shops and 2 yarn shops in the Tucson area, but had to apre it down, knowing I couldn't get to the them all. Thanks to my friend, Lisa, a fellow quilter/knitter who has a condo in Tucson, I got some recommendations of which ones I .'t miss--Quilt Basket, Quilters Market, and Kiwi Kntting Co.-- so I hit those first. I had a grand time, spent lots of money, and bought lots of fabric and some interesting sock yarn made of weird fibers--corn, soy, and chitin. Oh, and a "bonus"yarn shop, Grandmother's Spinning Basket, that I discovered by accident. It had only recently opened up in the same shopping plaza as Quilt Basket.

After Tucson, we drove to Maricopa, which is about 90 miles north and west, where my brother Bill and his wife, Patti, live. They are both realtors, and they drove us around Maricopa in Patti's bright yellow PT Cruiser showing us some of the homes they have listed. The next morning, Bill, who deals more in acreage than houses, took us on a tour of some of his listed properties out in Hidden Valley, about 15 miles from Maricopa, very near the mountains. We fell in love with a 2.5 acre parcel lushly (well, lush for desert!) with many mature saguaros and other desert plants, plus a small 2-bedroom manufactured home already there. All for $160,000. I can't say we weren't tempted, but we passed.

Yesterday we drove from Maricopa to Tempe (1/2 hour away) to spend a few days with our oldest son, Chris. He is single, bought a house a few years ago, and lives there with two roomates and two large dogs. We are parked in his driveway and are staying three nights. Chris is a graphic artist, and, for the past year, has been consumed with helping get a new program designed and off the ground. It finally launched about a month ago to rave reviews. AND, you can download it free. What is it? A program for designing presentations, very versatile, and with many extremely cool options for personalizing it. Think of Powerpoint on steroids, and not boring. Check it out on flypaper.net. And tell all your friends.

Tucson

We've had a great week in the Darby Wells area. Ellie especially has enjoyed the bike rides. She starts getting excited as Steve gets the bikes out--grinning from jowl to jowl, barking, prancing, running back and forth. I'm sure if she could talk, she'd be saying "Hurry up! Let's get this flock on the move!" There haven't been any bunnies to chase in the desert, but the lizards are out, and their quick little movements alert Ellie, and she is off after them. Her nose and face are continually brown from trying to dig them out.

We debated whether to stay there one more night, and, in the end, chose not to. In the words of the knight of the Grail in "The Last Crusade," we "chose poorly." Our current spot is about 9 miles east of Tucson, in another BLM 14 day area. It's right at the intersection of state road 86 and San Joaquin Road, and I mean RIGHT at the intersection. The highway is less than 100 yards away, there's a lot of traffic, and not a lot of choice for campsites. It's hard to know why people would want to stay here, except that it's close to Tucson and free. We do want to be in the Tucson area for a few days. Steve wants to tour the Pima Air and Space Museum and the Titan Missile Museum. I need to do laundry, and want to check out the two quilt shops and yarn shop in town. And we both want to visit Saguaro National Park. First thing on my agenda tomorrow, however, will be to do some scouting for a better spot. There are a couple of NFS campgrounds on the other end of town, or Catalina State Park, which we've stayed at before and liked.

Ajo and Vicinity

We've been out of touch for awhile because our air card won't work here, and the computer network crashed in Ajo and wasn't working for a couple of days. We're at the library now, each on a comuter, typing madly away as the online sessions only last 45 minutes, and there are people waiting in line for their turn. The countdown box at the top of my screen says I have 21 minutes left!

Today is Thursday, Valentine's Day. We left Holtville Hot Springs on Sunday, and spent one night in the Painted Rock/Petroglyph BLM Campground near Gila Bend. First time we've had to pay for camping this whole trip, but it was only $4, so I shouldn't complain. The campground wasn't much--pretty barren and flat--but the petroglyphs were interesting. Unlike the rock art in Utah, which is almost always on large, south-facing canyon walls, these glyphs were pecked into basalt boulders, which were heaped up in a pile. The weird thing was that there were two piles of boulders, right next to each other, and all the petroglyphs were in the same rock pile. Very interesting. Steve took lots of pictures, but we didn't think to bring the camera to the library, so, if I remember, I'll add them to a later post.

The campground host at Painted Rock, when she heard we were headed this way, recommended the Darby Well BLM 14 Day Area, and told us how to find it. Are we ever glad we took her suggestion. We are just a few miles south of Ajo, but out in the middle of the Sonoran desert, with no one in sight. This is a vast area, which we've been having fun exploring both by car and by mountain bike on the numerous little dirt roads and tracks. We've set out our hummingbird feeder and chunks of oranges on a palo verde tree right outside our dinette window, and are visited every morning by a Gila woodpecker, doves, and Blac-chinned hummingbirds. The woodpecker is a handsome fellow. He is soft brown in color, with a beautifully striated black and white back and a jaunty little red cap. I've also seen a pair of Phainopepla, which look sort of like slender cardinals, except the male is black with bright red eyes, and the female is charcoal. And some other brown birds that I haven't been able to identify.

Oops! Four minutes remaining! I need to hurry and post this.

Small Town News and a Date with the Tough Old Broad

We drove the Tracker into town yesterday for water and groceries and picked up a copy of the Holtville Tribune. Two stories on the front page--one about results of the California presidential primaries and the other about the Carrot Festival. Guess which one had bigger headlines, more details, and continued on to the next page? Here's a hint--the paper also featured a 2-page spread, with lots of photos, of the Wesley Preschool celebrating 100 days of the school year and 100 years of Holtville. I also learned from the article that Miss Betty's class was working on the letter P by making pizza and eating pickles and popcorn, and that Miss Nancy's class is making great progress in their potty training. Another page had summaries of all the police dispatch calls for the week. About the worst thing that happened in Holtville this week was that someone's tools got stolen out of their unlocked truck. Oh, and the police came over and gave a stern lecture to a 12 year old boy whose dad caught him sneaking out of the house late at night. I think I'm going to give up my subscription to the Salt Lake Tribune when I get home, and get one for the Holtville Tribune instead.

Early this morning, Norita, the "tough old broad," came by to pick up a bag of recyclables that we had for her; she had told us that her long walks into the desert are to hunt for bottles and cans to sell. After reading the great write-up in the paper, I really wanted to go to the Carrot Parade and Festival. Steve was absolutely not interested, so I ask Norita if she wanted to go with me, because it's always more fun to do something like that with someone else, at least it is for me. She did! So we did! And we had a blast. The parade was huge--must have gone on for over an hour. Five or six marching bands from different high schools in the area, quite a few carrot-themed few floats. A dozen or more beautifully restored cars from the antique car club, guys on horseback, guys driving their tractors in formation. Seems like anybody who wanted to march did so, including the under-age 8 soccer team, and the Holtville High School 1969-71 reunion ladies, dressed in cowboy clothes and riding stick horses. The parade route was lined with families who cheered and clapped for their family members in the parade. The folks at the grandstand announced each and every entry.

After we got tired of watching the parade, we wandered around the park, where the food stands, vendors, and carnival rides and games were set up. Yeah, the vendors had the predictable T-shirts, jewelry, scented candles, etc., but a lot of it was made and/or sold by local groups for fundraisers , and mixed in with Go-Fish games and make-your-own sand-paintings for the little kids. Everybody was having a good time.There was lots of great food, again made and sold by locals. For $3, I got a the largest baked potato I had ever seen, loaded with butter, broccoli, carrots (of course!), real bacon bits, nacho cheese, green onions, and sour cream. Someone was selling homemade root beer, and, right next to him, kettle corn. I watched it being made and shoveled, still warm, into big bags, and I grabbed one for a "prize" for Steve. One of the floats was made up of crates and crates of vegetables, picked fresh only hours before from local farms. After the parade, you paid $5 to stuff a huge plastic bag with as many veggies as it would hold. I came away with about a dozen carrots, a large cauliflower, a couple of heads of broccoli, and two huge leaf lettuces of different varieties. Norita got some bok choy (what does one do with bok choy, anyway?), turnips, several bunches of radishes, broccoli, and carrots.

We're leaving this area tomorrow, heading to Gila Bend and then on to Organ Pipe national Monument. Don't know if I'll ever get back to Holtville, but the thought of it will always make me smile.

Holtville Hot Springs

The afternoon before we left Slab City, a nice couple from Saskatchewan, moved in "next door." Ellie rushed over to introduce herself to their border collie, Zip, and their other dog, Maya. At age 8, Zip still has more zip than Ellie does at age 5--Loren and Sandy couldn't believe how "calm" Ellie was! I guess it's all relative! Loren and Sandy have been wintering in Arizona for 11 years, and knew everything about everyplace. They told us about the hot springs camping area and how to get here. We had seen it in our guidebooks, but the camping area next to it is designated a BLM Long Term Area, and we don't have a permit for that, so we didn't pay much attention.However, Sandy told us about the 14 day BLM Free Camping Area just two miles away, which is where we are now. We are camped in the desert a couple of miles south of Interstate 8, about 15 miles east of Holtville CA and about 40 miles west of Yuma. The desert isn't totally flat here; we found a spot tucked down in and protected from the wind that can really blow at times. The area is crisscrossed with many, many dirt roads. Some are formerly paved and some are just dirt tracks; but it's all fairly level aground, and we are at or below sea level, so biking is a breeze, even for my out-of-shape body.

The people here, both in the long-term area and the short term one, are friendly and fun to talk to. Many have been coming to this spot for years. We've met people from all over the United States as well as lots of Canadians. One couple from Nebraska, Jim and Phyllis, come in October and stay until April, in a motor home not much bigger than the Palms. Jim was diagnosed with non-Hodgkins Lymphoma 15 years ago, and was supposed to die within 2 years. He's still going strong with the help of 2 bouts of chemotherapy a year, in April and October, whether he needs them or not. He has to go into the Cancer Center in El Centro CA (about 18 miles away) every six weeks to get his ports cleaned out, has to rest a lot, but rides his bike, hikes, and is doing just fine. A little bit ago, Steve returned from a rabbit reconnaissance mission with Ellie with a woman in tow. She is camped about a half mile from us, but got lost out in the desert, without water, on her morning walk. She lives full-time in her RV, just she and her cats, is easily 70 years old, rail-thin, skin like leather, and a pale yellow braid halfway down her back. She says she walks at least 5 to 7 miles a day. Yesterday she walked to the hot springs from her camp, which she clocked at 5 1/2 miles each way. Oh, she has a motorcycle too, but it's in Slab City right now with some friends, and she has to go back there for it. She accepted a glass of water from us, but refused a ride back to her camp. I think the term "tough old broad" was coined with women like her in mind.

The actual hot spring is about two miles from our camp. The water is piped from 800 feet below ground, and enters the first pool at 104 degrees, then flows out of that pool into a smaller one, which is somewhat cooler. From the 2nd pool, the water flows down into a beautiful little lagoon ringed with palm trees. People swim in the lagoon too, but right now, it's pretty cold--about 64 degrees. Both pools are concrete, and someone comes and cleans them once a week. The first one is about 5 to 5 1/2 feet deep, depending on how many people are in it, and you have to stand (on tiptoe for me) or hang off the edges, as there are no seats. The second pool is smaller and shallower--holds 5 or 6 people max; you sit lined up with legs outstretched, two or three on each side. They've also rigged up an open-air shower. Water from the main pipe is diverted into a secondary pipe with lots of holes. Since it comes right up out of the ground without being esposed to the air on the way, it's the hottest of all. Very fun, and very relaxing.

I don't know how long we'll stay here. The Holtville Carrot Festival starts Saturday, and is supposed to be a lot of fun. They have a big carrot-themed parade with floats, a Carrot Queen (no, I'm not making this up), a cooking-with-carrots competition (last year a snowbirder from the BLM Long-Term Area won with her carrot cake), and who-knows- what else. Sounds like a hoot!

Slab City

This is certainly one of, if THE, strangest snowbird destinations we've come across. Slab City is actually the former Camp Dunlap Naval Base, a few miles east of Niland, CA. When it was abandoned, the concrete slabs that formed the foundations for many of the buildings were left, hence the name. It's a large desert area that isn't administered by anyone, which is not, in my estimation, entirely a good thing. There are a fair number of permanent or semi-permanent residents, as well as lots of people who just come for the winter . Although some "neighborhoods" appear clean and well-cared-for, many long-termers have their rigs and mostly ramshackle structures set up on the slabs, surrounded by broken-down and, and rusted out vehicles and burned out shells of old RVs, along with broken glass, trash, and assorted junk. And unlike all the other boondocking sites we've stayed at, the people don't seem very friendly; no one stops by and "visits" the way they do other places. I was pretty creeped out at first, although less so now, our third day. There is a very nice open air library/book exchange, run by a nice guy from Maine for the past seven years for the six months a year he's here; the other six months, it's "help yourself."

Yesterday, we visited Salvation Mountain, which is at the entrance to Slab City, maybe a mile from where we're camped. For the past 24 years, it has been a labor of love for the now-76 year old Leonard, who came here on a hot air balloon intending to stay for a week. Leonard mixes adobe from the clay hills and sculpts it into fantastic shapes, including an ocean, waterfalls, a "yellow brick road," flowers, etc. He finds tractor tires and huge branches out in the desert, plasters them with adobe, and turns them into trees. Someone donated 9,000 bales of hay, and he arranges the bales, covers them with adobe, and makes fantastic and complicated structures. Everything is painted in bright colors and labeled with Bible verses. Leonard loves giving tours of his mountain. He lives on site in the back of an old truck, also brightly painted, with his dog, Boy. He seems to live on donations, of paint and materials as well as cash. But he doesn't ask for anything, and just seems genuinely delighted to be doing what he's doing.

Today we're taking an excursion to the Salton Sea, a few miles the other side of Niland, and then tomorrow morning we'll head out again, not sure where. I'm ready for some good scenery and/or places to hike and mountain bike. maybe Organ Pipe National Monument?