Home Sweet Home?

Benson has been touted as a great place to retire. At about 3500 feet, it's considered high desert rather than low desert, and, while not too cold in winter, it doesn't get the summer heat the way the Phoenix area does. One of Steve's goals was to check out this area as a retirement place for us. He has developed an extreme aversion to cold and snow, and really wants to move to a warmer climate. For me, it's going to take some convincing, at least to do it as soon as he'd like. I love my life in Salt Lake, and would have a hard time leaving. My grandson, Jack, is at my favorite age, and his little brother isn't far behind. I don't want to miss that. My friends, my job at the quilt shop--these are important to me. I'm not ready to give them up and start all over somewhere else.

Nevertheless, as we often do when we travel, we looked at houses for sale, a little more seriously this time. Steve had seen one on the internet that he really liked, and, when we got to Benson, he contacted the agent and arranged for us to go see it. It didn't quite come up to his expectations, but Sydney, our agent, took us by a couple of others, and gave us a list of still others for sale. We drove around, nothing really catching our eye, until we found this one. It was one that Sydney had almost dismissed as being too small, but we were intrigued because it is a total solar home. We drove by, peeked in the windows, liked what we saw, and arranged to see the inside the next day. Both of us got pretty excited.

The house sits on four acres with gorgeous views of mountains all around. It's 1300 square feet, with 3 bedrooms and two baths, and nicely laid out. The little courtyard in front is off the master bedroom. Radiant hot water heat in the floor, heat and AC all solar-powered. Downside: no garage or storage for all our stuff. The price is rockbottom, though. they started out at $219,00, and it has dropped a couple of times, now at $179,000. It's never been occupied, and the builder apparently has several others he hasn't sold and is eager to sell before it goes into foreclosure.

It's a longshot. Steve is working the numbers now. But IF we can get the price down still lower, and IF his inheritance is enough to pay off some of our debt, we MAY be able to swing it. It would be a second home for now, that we could use a base for winter traveling while we build a garage, workshop, and storage area, and wait for the grandkids to grow up a little so I could bear leaving them. Stay tuned.

Camping in the Boondocks

We’ve been slowly making our way from Holtville up towards Tempe and our son, Chris, where we’ll end up tomorrow. First came Benson, which is worth a blog entry of its own (see “Home Sweet Home?”). Then we headed to the town of Bowie and Fort Bowie, which was a favorite place of ours several years ago when we did our first “Tour de Arizona” to celebrate our retirement. Fort Bowie, in case you don’t remember, is a National Historic Site that can only be reached by a 1.5 mile hike each way. It was built and occupied in the 1860’s to protect mail routes and emigrants from Cochise and his Apaches. The hike itself follows the path that the soldiers took to the fort, and includes an old cemetery, ruins of a stagecoach stop, and the site of a battle between the army and the Apaches for control of a spring in the area. Once you get to the fort, there are foundations and partial walls of buildings as well as many photographs and artifacts from when it was operational. We found a great campsite at Indian Breadrocks National Recreation Area , about halfway between the trailhead to the fort and the town of Bowie. I have no idea why it is called “breadrocks,” but the rock formations there are truly unique and beautiful.

Our next stop was Florence. There were no boondocking sites listed in our trusty free camping guide, so I dug out our Arizona atlas. The area map showed some state trust and BLM lands off highway 79, about 20 miles south of Florence, so we set out to find them. We turned up Freeman Rd., a very good dirt roads, and soon found smaller dirt roads branching off it. We chose one at random, and struck gold! Although I had never thought of using the word “lush” to describe a desert, that’s exactly what this place is. I’ve never seen so many cactus and desert plants in one place--all huge and healthy. We were there two nights. The only downside was that the dogs attracted cactus like red flowers attract hummingbirds; they’d pick it up on their legs, feet, and pads, and then get it stuck on their noses, chins, and in their mouths when they’d try to pull it out. Naturally, neither of them liked us “helping” get the spines out. Ellie bore it with a fair amount of patience, but Tex, as soon as he saw us coming at him with the hemostats, took off in the opposite direction.

Today we drove north from Florence to Florence Junction and found another good boondocking site. We’re camped by a wash, under some trees. The desert is still nice and green here, but there seems to be less of the “jumping cholla’ that plagued the dogs at our last camp. Or else they’ve finally gotten smarter about where to step.

Adios, Mexico

Thursday was our final day in San Felippe. I had a mocha fria and homemade cinnamon roll at Baja Java and tried to post the blog entries I’d written, but the internet was very slow today, and just didn’t seem to want to upload my photos.I saved them to post when we’re back in the states with better service. Jim and Janice took their Hobie kayak out on the sea when the tide came in, and then I took a turn with Jim as well, Steve being in the middle of “Master and Commander” and content to sit on the beach and read. We paddled out quite a ways, and saw a couple of jellyfish pulsing along. In the evening, we drove into town for dinner at a restaurant on the malecon. Everyone but me has tired of seafood at this point--they all had various Mexican dishes; I had “Governor Tacos”--chunks of shrimp with grilled onion and melted cheese folded into corn tortillas and topped with the chef’s special sauce. Oh, and a couple of pina coladas to wash the down.

Yesterday, we crossed back into the U.S. at Mexicali. Border crossings have always been pretty much ho-hum for us, but not this one. After questioning us as to where we’d been, how long we’d been there, and what we were bringing back (all very politely), we were told to move our RV to the side and wait. After about 15 minutes, they brought out the canine squad. The handler and the dog checked everything inside and out of both our vehicles pretty thoroughly, and left. We thought that was that, but no. Two more border guards came over and spent another 10 minutes re-inspecting our Samurai, again, inside and out. They felt around all the padding in the doors, upholstery, and window visors. They peered down the door frames with flashlights and poked and prodded up under the chassis, the wheel wells, and any other crack or hole they could find. Eventually, they appeared satisfied that we were not smuggling in guns, drugs, or undocumented Mexican nationals; they handed us back our passports and said we could be on our way. Jim and Janice got the same treatment, although perhaps not quite so thorough. Once back in the states, we speculated on why. Do they do this to all RVs? Why here and not when we came through Nogales a few months ago? Did we fit some kind of profile? Maybe retirees are smuggling drugs across the border to make up for lost pensions in this economy? Enquiring minds want to know.

We spent last night at the short-term BLM area near Holtville, and introduced Jim and Janice to the joys of a long soak in the hot springs. This morning, we went our separate ways. Jim and Janice were heading to Quartszite and then home to Salt Lake. We really enjoyed traveling with them again--it’s been many years since we’ve done that--and hope to plan another trip with them this summer. Steve and I are headed to Benson, which is east of Tucson. Steve has heard that it’s a popular place to retire, and wants to check it out. We are currently camped out in the desert at a county park about 20 miles west of Casa Grande. I found it in my Don Wright Free Campground book, and yes, this one is actually free.

Still San Felippe

Today is Thursday. We leave here tomorrow and it's going to be hard. This place has really grown on me. The weather has gotten warmer each day. Janice and I go on a long beach walk every morning when the tide is out. We've found lots of wonderful shells, some of which are inhabited by hermit crabs. The sea is much warmer than I had expected, and yesterday I couldn't resist going for a swim. It was wonderful! Ellie was not happy about it, however, and kept swimming out to "rescue" me. She takes her herding job very seriously, and when I'd send her back to shore, she would station herself close to the water and give me the border collie eye, as if to will me back to dry land where she thought I belonged. Tex prefers watching the action from under his favorite palapa; he leaves it only to chase away marauding gulls or come in for his dinner.

More Rocky Point Photos

These are the ones that mysteriously disappeared from my desktop, but suddenly reappeared when I tried to recopy them. The cool ocean scene is the inside of a beachside restaurant called Gamma's. We went there on a recommendation of a local selling fresh fish out of coolers down by the shrimp trawlers. Did I mention that fresh caught shrimp here is $5 a pound and fresh flounder is $4 a pound? We are eating as much of it as we can. Gamma's specialty (we found out after we had ordered our fish tacos) is a whole fried fish--generally flounder or grouper) that they bring to the table with tortillas and all the trimmings so you can make your own fish tacos. We were going to go back and try it but ran out of time. We'll keep it in mind for another trip. I have a couple of photos of the shrimp trawlers, but the internet is slow here, so I'll add them later.

San Felippe

We left Rocky Point on Sunday, Valentine's Day, and drove most of the day. The roads were actually very good, vor the most part, but we were slowed down by three military checkpoints 9two of which conducted thorough searches of our rigs) and one bad stretch of a pockmarked, bumpy road under construction. We are staying at an RV park called Pete's Camp, about 7 miles north of of town. It's an odd little community of mostly Americans living, or at least wintering in dwellings that range from run-down shacks to elegant little villas. Camping is on the beach below the houses. Fifteen dollars American per night gives you a ramada for shade, a palapa in front, and a beautiful beach. No hook ups, but there is drinking water, a dump, dumpster for garbage, and a restuarant and bar with Wi-Fi. Since we are on the opposite side of the Sea of Cortez from Puerto Pinasco, we get sunrises over the water instead of sunsets. The pictures i took and theoretically loaded onto the computer are nowhere to be found at this moment, while I'm trying to write this, so I'll add them to my next post.

I somehow came down with a cold between here and Rocky Point, so I've mostly been sitting on the beach, sneezing and blowing my nose. Still, as a friend on Facebook pointed out to Janice when she was complaining of the same thing in Rocky Point, if you're going to have a cold, the beach is a pretty good place to have one.

Mexico at last!

Hooking up with Jim and Janice proved more difficult than we had thought. I checked in on the internet at the Ajo library one more time before we left, and, although Janice had posted a message on Facebook to her son saying that she was so excited that we were on our way, there was no indication of where in Puerto Pinasco they were staying. We found a beachside campsite at Concha de la Mar, and I began scouring the area for signs of Jim and Janice. There was a big RV park, Playa la Bonita, right next door, and I checked at their office to see if they were registered there. Nope. I drove to the other large RV park at the other end of town and inquired. Nope again. Our RV park had good internet service, so I posted our location on Facebook and asked them to come find us. The next morning, they came driving up. Turns out, they were in Playa la Bonita, right next door, all along!! Janice had sent us their location, even their site #, but their internet service was flaky and it never got posted. We never did find out why the office did not seem to know they were there.

Our days at Rocky Point were great. We had a lot of fun strolling along the beautiful beach, walking on the malecon, and poking around the harbor where the shrimp trawlers come in and the fishing charters go out. We watched the pelicans crowd around the fishermen who were cleaning their catches, waiting for their share. Each evening, the sunset over the Sea of Cortez was more glorious than the night before. Our nights, however, were not nearly so pleasant. This is Mardi Gras week; the carnaval started at 4 p.m each afternoon, and officially ended with fireworks each night about 10 p.m. That would have been fine, but unofficial parties on the beaches and in the city park continued well into the night. Loud music with a deep, throbbing bass blasted past 2 a.m. Sirens woo-woo’ed off and on until 4 a.m. Sleep was impossible. After three nights of this, we decided we’d seen enough of Puerto Pinasco and decided to move on to San Felippe, our original destination

The last thing I did at Rocky Point was to fulfill one of my all-time fantasies--gallop a horse along the beach. They wouldn't let me actually ride it in the surf, but, other than that (and the stupide Horse for Rent blanket flapping in the breeze), it was perfect.

Puerto Pinasco

We arrived here today, in search of our friends, Jim and Janice, who decided to come to Rocky Point instead of San Felippe because it was closer and they don't have as much time as we do. Unfortunately, Janice was not specific about which RV park they ended up in. We are camped in Concha de la Mar, right on the beach. No hookups, but only $10 a night. There are only about 5 or 6 other RVs camped here, so it's nice andf quiet. The beach is beautiful and the weather is balmy. The manager speaks excellent English, and has agreed to help me with my Spanish. He has an adorable almost-two year old son named Alan. Good internet connection at the park office. I'll take some pictures later and/or tomorrow and post them. Looking forward to a great sunset over the Sea of Cortez. Now off the jump in the Samurai and see if i can hunt down Janice and Jim.