Back to civilization!

Just back online after three days in a remote campground. So we have to get you all caught up! We'll start here, and post again later today with another update...

Written Tuesday, Feb 24th 7:30am

Yesterday morning, we said goodbye to our great free campsite overlooking Roosevelt Lake. We had seen and done everything we wanted to in the area, so no point in hanging around just for the sake of it.

After all, Sherman has wheels and we have more exploring to do!

Spring is in the air!

I know that those of you in the north eastern part of the continent don't believe it, but here in the Arizona desert, they are saying that we're in for an early spring!

And on our guided hike yesterday at Tonto National Monument, the wildflowers were blooming.

Glad we have the bikes again

One of the reasons we don't tow the little blue car when we're traveling with the motorhome is that we like to use our bicycles. And if we had a car with us, I know that we wouldn't use the bicycles as often as we do.

Yesterday (and today) was a good example of that!

What's around the next corner?

A bit of an overcast day yesterday, but still nice...high of around 75F (24C).

We decided to go for a walk, and left around 11:00am. We weren't planning on being gone long...just heading up the road that leads towards the mountain in behind where we're parked. Still, Ruth brought the small backpack with water and snacks because we have been known to get sidetracked sometimes!

Why do they make it so confusing?!

Yesterday morning, we got up and started driving right away. We were in a cellular dead spot where we had parked in Mammoth, so we had no internet. It was the first time our Verizon mi-fi had let us down.

Plus, by putting on a few miles right away we could use Sherman's engine heat to warm us up instead of using up  propane.

An encounter with the police...

We wanted to get a fairly early start yesterday morning, but we had invited John and Jane for breakfast. Ruth makes the best gluten free pancakes! Too bad we didn't have any maple syrup left. But we did have honey, strawberry jam from Mexico, and a tart cherry jam that we had just bought the other day.

They came over at the prearranged time of 8:30am, and we one last get together.

The World's Largest Airplane Boneyard

We went for a bicycle ride yesterday with Janie and John from Flamingo on a Stick. Tucson has a really good system of cycling trails, so we looked at the map and decided on a route that would take us around Davis-Montham Airforce Base, and the largest boneyard of airplanes in the world.

They have a pickup truck, so we loaded up the bicycles, and off we went!

The Arizona Sonora Desert Museum

This is not really a "museum". It's kind of a cross between a museum, a zoo, a botanical garden, and an aquarium. Plus, 85% of it takes place outdoors.

The Arizona Sonora Desert Museum came highly recommended by a few of our readers, and it's one of the top attractions in the Tucson area. So, we decided to check it out.

Busy day with new friends!

We had made plans to get together with Grace and Steve, a couple who we've been in contact with quite a bit over the years. You may have noticed Grace commenting here occasionally as "Grace (in Tucson)" as she's been a regular reader here for as long as I can remember, and she's also on our personal facebook friends list.

Like we really are friends, who simply hadn't met in person yet!

Made it to Tucson, Arizona

Yesterday we did the 145 mile (232 km) drive from Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument to the city of Tucson (pop 526,000).

Uneventful drive through the desert. I've never been much of a desert person, although it's growing on me a little bit. I still much prefer a more varied landscape, even if it comes at the cost of slightly lower temperatures.

Almost bit off more than we could chew...

Yesterday, we had signed up for the 1:00pm shuttle that would take us to a trailhead on the Senita Basin leading to the Milton Mine and the Baker Mine at Organ Pipe National Monument. We had a trail map, and enough supplies, but I still thought it was not a very logical time of day to be starting a long hike in the desert.

It would have been okay, if everything went according to plan!

A taste of what the illegals feel

Many illegal aliens cross the Mexican border into the U.S. through the Sonoran Desert into Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. In fact, there are signs warning of the possibility of encounters with the migrants if you're out on the hiking trails, and of course a lot of border guard activity as well.

What a trip it must be for these people. No wonder some of them give up! Unfortunately, many don't give up. They simply die.

The difference between a National Park, and a National Monument

We arrived at Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument at around 10:30am. It was only a 45 minute drive south from the town of Ajo where we had spent the night before. We had purposely planned to arrive as early as possible to give us the most time to enjoy the area while we're paying for a campsite.

Our first stop was the Visitor's Center in order to find out what programs were included with our cost of admission, and to pick up a hiking map.

Enjoying Ajo, Arizona

As we drove into the town of Ajo, Arizona (pop 3,500) on the left hand side, Ruth spotted a Napa Auto Parts store that was also advertising "RV Supplies and Repair".

I had bought a new burner for our fridge, but when I went to replace it the other day I found that they had changed the design a little and I needed a different fitting on the flared gas line that attaches to the burner.

So I stopped in to see if they could adapt the line for me.

The package arrived!

Actually, it was there the entire time! The shipper had made an error, and had listed my name on the package instead of our friend Doug's name. So of course we're all looking for a package addressed to Doug, not me! When Doug went down to check on them, it was purely by chance that he noticed a package with the last name "Read" on it, and they realized it was mine.

So, that all came together, and it wasn't Amazon's fault, nor was it the fault of the USPS.

The missing package...

We had ordered two packages from Amazon. The orders were placed at exactly the same time, and with exactly the same delivery instructions. But, one was fulfilled directly through Amazon, and the other was coming from an independent supplier.

One package arrived on time. The other one hasn't arrived at all.

The Historic San Remo Hotel in San Francisco

We spent five fantastic days in San Francisco back at the beginning of November. Only a short while after that, our laptop gave up, and we thought we had lost all of those photos!

Fortunately, we now have those photos back, and so we're doing a couple of extra posts right now that we wanted to have a record of on the blog. And, we had promised to tell you about where we stayed and why, and so this post is to tell you about the historic San Remo Hotel.

A great birthday!

First of all, thanks for all the comments and birthday wishes yesterday. You've given us some great ideas of places to stop along the way over the next few weeks to make our Arizona trip all the better. We are especially looking forward to Canyon de Chelly, which we had never heard of before.

We'll probably get back on the road Tuesday!

Figuring an Arizona route...

We don't really need to have a plan, but we really should figure our approximate route of exploration over the next five weeks or so. After all, we came to Arizona to explore the state.

We sort of rushed our way from Nogales to Quartzsite in order to attend the "blogger-fest" on January 24th, and since then we've been doing some relaxing and visiting, and attending to some of Sherman's repairs and upgrades.

But we're already thinking about moving along, so we made a loose plan.

A visit with Judy at the Imperial National Wildlife Refuge

Judy operates a popular blog at Travels with Emma and she does volunteer work at the various National Wildlife Refuges around the country. She travels with her dog Emma!

Our regular readers will remember when we did a blogger interview with Judy in 2013. We had met her for a few minutes at the blogger-fest a couple of weeks ago, but we wanted to visit the refuge and spend some more time together.

Easier said than done...

We had made plans to go for a morning bicycle ride with Doug, who lives in his fifth wheel near where we're parked here at Imperial Dam. We said that we would be there around 9:00am, but our fridge burner had been acting up over night and now that we have a replacement I decided to change it before we left for the bike ride.

But it was easier said than done!

A great camping spot!

Our nearest neighbor is at least half a mile away. Just the way we like it.

We were excited to finally meet a long time reader of this blog. Doug has been a loyal daily reader for years. You've probably seen him comment as "Dugg". He lives here in his fifth wheel during the winter and knows the area well, so he said he would choose a camping spot for us. And being a long time reader, he knows what we like!

Sherman has a new awning!

We drove Sherman over to an empty lot near where our friends Geoff and Fran have their motorhome parked. Geoff had offered to help me install our new awning fabric to save the $150 installation fee that the awning guys at Quartzsite wanted to do the job.

If a penny saved is a penny earned, then I earned $50 an hour yesterday for the three hours it took to complete the job!

A four wheel drive adventure!

Great fun yesterday as we went out into the desert on a four wheel drive adventure with our friends Geoff and Fran. They bought a book that lists trail routes that are accessible only with a 4x4 vehicle, and so they took us out to one of the listed routes, the Dripping Springs Trail.

Then, we drove out to see one of only two natural stands of palm trees that grow in Arizona.

January Expenses

Well we're glad that month is over! The pocketbook (and the credit card) took a big hit. Definitely one of our more expensive months, but we got a lot of things done that simply needed to be done.

We spent $3,547.63. Yikes! (Note, all dollar amounts are listed in Canadian dollars which dropped like a rock throughout the month and just keeps getting worse).

Finally, our propane adapter installed!

We started yesterday morning with a bike ride. Happy to be a two bicycle family again, and both of them with good tires and working properly!

There's not a lot to see in the town of Quartzsite, but there were a couple of areas that are worth a visit.

More dental work, and then back to Quartzsite

We kind of changed our plans a little and came back to Quartzsite a couple of days earlier than we had originally planned. This way, we can hopefully go for our jeep tour with friends on Sunday, and then do our awning fabric installation Monday morning.

And after that, we have no plans for the next several weeks, so we'll be able to take our time visiting and exploring as we please without feeling to need to be somewhere!

Blogging visitors!

We had made arrangements to have visitors over yesterday afternoon, so we took advantage of our free time in the morning to go for a hike to the top of the little mountain beside Pilot Knob LTVA.

It's a relatively steep hike, but from the time we left Sherman to the time we were at the top was only 45 minutes. We took a different route coming back down.

Not the smoothest day

Sometimes everything goes according to plan, and sometimes it doesn't!

Yesterday was a "doesn't" day!

First problem was that we didn't get the earliest start, and that was nobody's fault but our own. We set out just after 9:30am, and the plan was to ride our bikes on the dirt road that goes around the mountain and hooks up to the road going across the border.

Quartzsite to Yuma

We packed up and hit the road yesterday morning. We had bought a 14 day LTVA (long term visitor area) pass for $40 ($50 CDN) so that we are able to camp on BLM (Bureau of Land Management) property for 14 consecutive days and be able to use their water and dump station facilities.

So, the first thing we did when we left was to empty our holding tanks, and fill with fresh water.

The highest mountain overlooking Quartzsite

It was a rare rainy afternoon here in the desert yesterday. We had been told to expect just enough rain to make your windshield dirty, but we got a lot more than that.

Fortunately, we picked a window of time to go for a hike where it just spit on us a little bit. We left Sherman at about 9:50am, and set out to hike the highest mountain overlooking Quartzsite!

What we bought at the RV show

One of the reasons we came to Quartzsite was that we figured we might get some deals on things that we need and want for Sherman. A few repair and maintenance items, and a few things that we simply wanted. But we had a list, and we've now crossed quite a few things off that list!

So yesterday morning, we drove back and parked so that we were walking distance to the show, about 1/2 a mile away.

A fun afternoon visiting with other RV'ing bloggers

A few weeks back, I think we were in Mazatlan at the time, I read on somebody else's blog that there was going to be an "official" gathering of bloggers during the time of the Quartzsite RV show. The date was to be January 24th.

We were already planning on being in the area around that time, so decided we wanted to meet some of the folks we regularly read about.

The Big Quartzsite RV Show

Okay, so the big deal here at Quartzsite is the RV show taking place this week. We're here partly because Sherman needs some repair and maintenance items and this seemed to be a good place to get them, and at a decent price.

Overall, I'm a little disappointed so far.

You just have to give your head a shake

We were up early yesterday. We wanted to do a load of laundry while at the RV Park, but although the laundry room was open at 6:00am, we didn't have any change! So we had to wait for the office to open at 8:30am.

By the time we got it all done and were ready to leave, it was 10:30am!

A new computer!

We left the Home Depot in Nogales, and our first stop was for gasoline! Sherman's tank was running dry. I used gasbuddy.com to check out the lowest fuel prices in the area, and found a nearby station at $1.759 per gallon ($0.582 per litre CDN).

Man, that is getting to be some cheap gas!

Hello Arizona!

Yep, we crossed the border yesterday afternoon. Sherman has never been to Arizona before! Can you imagine, we've been traveling in a motorhome on and off for eight years now, and we've never explored Arizona...the winter RV'ing destination of the world.

So, that's why we're here...to explore Arizona (and maybe some of California and Nevada) over the next couple of months.

A nine hour driving marathon!

Holy cow, what a day we had yesterday.

We knew it might be a long day, because we were going to try to get to Hermosillo. It was going to be a 433 km (268 miles) drive, and part of it was through the mountains. What we didn't realize was how slow going that would be!

To the bottom of Basaseachi Canyon

We set out yesterday morning at about 10:30am for what we figured would be a three or four hour hike. Turned out that we were gone for five and a half hours! Pretty quiet for the morning part of the hike, and when we got to the bottom of the canyon at the base of Mexico's highest waterfall, we were the only ones there.

The highest waterfall in Mexico!

Yesterday, we drove from Creel to Basaseachi Falls National Park. It's not a long distance, only about 130 kms (81 miles) so we didn't leave until about 9:30am. But I knew that it was going to be a slow drive. The road used to be just a narrow dirt road through the mountains and it was only paved within the last 5 years.

Sure enough, it took us almost three hours to do 130 kms (81 miles)!

Six days to Quartzsite

Hard to believe that in six days we'll be in Quartzsite, Arizona. We're still 1,300 kms (800 miles) away! But, using our normal driving average of 200 kms per day, we'll be there no problem.

So yesterday, we drove from Areponapuchi back to Creel. Only 50 kms (30 miles) but it takes an hour because the road is pretty curvy. We decided to stop for the night back at the old KOA campground in Creel.

Spot the dog!

One of the local dogs has taken a liking to us, and so when we went for a 4 hour hike into the canyon yesterday, we had some company. We nicknamed him Spot, because of the large black spot he has on the left side his back. Spot was a great hiking companion.

We do sometimes miss having a dog with us, but we're still quite happy to enjoy other people's dogs for the time being.