1-8-2014 Diving into Texas

Current Location Balmorhea State Park, Texas Currently 40F  Predicted High today 65F

Old Town Mesilla at the square

Yes, I did mean to say “diving” not driving, although the last couple of days we have been driving along at a nice pace. I’ll explain the diving part later. We took two days to travel about 510 miles from Tucson to Balmorhea, Texas.  Nice to have the luxury of our own home with us and the time to go at a reasonable pace.  When daughter Deb moved to Texas  I helped her drive the rental truck and we drove from LaQuinta, CA, to Van Horn, Texas in one day, almost 900 miles!  Ack!!

The I-10 route from Tucson to Las Cruces is fairly straightforward and not all that exciting.  I am sure there would be great things to find in the mountains north of the highway, but we are on a mission to get to Texas and Florida, so those little side trips are not tempting us.  We arrived in Las Cruces around 3 with a reserved spot at the Coachlight RV Park, advertised to be within walking distance to old Mesilla and a Passport America Park with a good rate at $18.65 for our overnight stop with hookups and sewer, good WiFi, but no cable. It wasn’t the finest of RV parks, but decent enough for an overnight.  If you want something fancy and aren’t worried about the expense, try the Hacienda RV Resort, where Mo and I stayed on our first trip through when the MoHo was just a few days old and we didn’t have Passport America.

Walking distance is relative, however, with over a mile each way not something we particularly wanted to do after a day of driving to go get supper!  Instead we unhooked the baby car and drove down the road to Old Mesilla to walk around the square a bit.  I remembered a little place on the square that had all sorts of salsa and chili stuff, so added a bit of green chili to my goodie stash.  The square was fairly quiet, with the Christmas holiday behind us and not many folks out and about on a weekday afternoon.

I won’t rewrite what has been written so well about the history of Old Mesilla, but if you are interested in reading about one of the oldest settlements in New Mexico, explore this link.

When we were here in 2007, we did eat dinner at La Posta, a very historic restaurant with very good Mexican food.  This time, however, we opted for a less pretentious little restaurant recommended by several locals we spoke with, Andele’s, just on the edge of Old Mesilla.  The atmosphere was generic at best, but the food was great and the salsa bar was fun too.  We ate early, but by the time we left there was a good sized waiting line at the door, so the popularity of the place was evident. I had what they called traditional Mexican tacos, and the fixings arrived on a plate with some warm fresh corn tortillas to go with.  With six different kinds of salsa at the salsa bar and some grilled onions, my meal was incredibly tasty, and was enough to feed us a second night with more left over for snacks.

With a location along the interstate between El Paso and Tucson, the city of Las Cruces might be easy to bypass.  It is a nice medium sized city with a great University and a dry climate.  I guess that is what has caused the population to increase so dramatically in the last decade or so.  The shopkeepers all said it was retirees from the north and from California who were buying up the land, building new housing developments and still not adding much to the economy. 

I was lucky to see Las Cruces from a completely different perspective back in 2002 when I had the opportunity to spend six weeks here for some advanced soils training.  My work with soils was about the landscape, how different kinds of soils are distributed and what makes those differences.  One of the major factors that affect soil development is the geomorphology, the shape and age of the landscape where the soil is located. 

As head of the National Cooperative Soil Survey, NRCS is committed to keeping its scientists well trained, and the Soil Science Institute is held every few years at different locations in the country.  If you are lucky, you get to go and if you are especially lucky you get to go to Institute here in Las Cruces where one of the most incredible geomorphic studies of the landscape exists.  The Desert Project is a sort of bible of western geomorphology, and that man you see in the photo with the white hat and gloves is one of the authors.

I spent several weeks in the company of soil scientists from all over the country learning from the best.  It was a highlight of my career and I count several friends among some of those I met at Institute.  I also saw Las Cruces and the surrounding area in much more depth than would happen any other way.  Las Cruces is about so much, but most of all it is about the Rio Grand River.  We studied the ancestral terraces of this once mighty river, visited the farms and orchards, wandered the wild spaces of the Jornada del Muerto, where some of the best rangeland studies are conducted, and spent a day studying the geomorphology of the White Sands not far away.

Las Cruces is about the River, about cotton and peppers and some of the most extensive pecan orchards in the US.  It is about hot sun and no shade, about wind and dust much of the time.  It is about good restaurants and the smell of chilis roasting in September.  It is about the Organ Mountains and Dripping Springs, the place to go if you need to get out of all that gravelly dusty alluvium and find some real rocks.

We saw none of this soul of Las Cruces as we passed by on I-10, but I remembered it well.  I enjoyed having an excuse to go back and look at the several hundred photos I took during Institute where I celebrated a birthday in Old Mesilla and planned for my new life in Klamath Falls.  When I came to Institute, I had just been promoted to project leader for the Klamath Falls soil survey, had moved there and bought a house but didn’t take possession of the house until I returned six weeks later from Institute.  It was one of the biggest turning points in my entire life.  Daughter Melody and her husband and kids now live in that little house that I bought before I drove down to Las Cruces. 

Yesterday, Mo and I left early in the morning with another reasonable driving day to Texas.  Much of the route from El Paso is quite near the Mexican border, and as we passed through the city, we could see the dilapidated houses of Juarez across the river.  Once east of El Paso, however, the landscape opened up again and the distant mountain ranges of West Texas beckoned.

We were still undecided where to spend our next two nights when we stopped in Van Horn for gas.  With the cold weather recently, we had decided that Fort Davis State park was too high and cold and thought that staying at Balmorhea State Park, just 4 miles south of the interstate, would be a better idea.  Lower elevation, a bit warmer, and hookups. 

Stopping at a rest area just a short way from Van Horn, Mo discovered to her dismay, that the electrical connection to the Tracker had come loose and the cord was dragging on the highway, destroying the connection tips.  Lucky for us, we were only a few miles from town, and we backtracked to an auto parts store in Van Horn where Mo got the parts.  With a bunch of fiddling, she still couldn’t get the turn signals to work, so with only 72 miles to Balmorhea, and the evening approaching, we made the decision to just drive with running lights and settle into the Balmorhea.

Once there, I walked up to the office which was closing, so we were told to just find a place and pay in the morning.  I walked back to the rig, carefully avoiding the large curb, and caught my foot right on a big chunk of asphalt that was this side of the curb.  Bam.  Hence the diving into Texas.  I dove into the ground, missing the curb I think, and didn’t break anything.  My hip hurt like heck, but not enough to be broken and I am sitting and walking around so I am pretty sure I am fine.  I do get tired of these dives, however.  I used to leap boulders when I was doing soil survey, so being such a giant klutz is pretty embarrassing.

Settled in, Mo  figured out that a fuse was blown when the “hot” terminal of the connector was dragging on the ground when it came loose. She replaced the fuses,  and everything worked just fine. We ate our yummy leftovers from Andele’s. Looking at the maps, we decided that it would be very easy to just stay here one night and tomorrow drive the 34 miles south to Fort Davis and then 3 miles out of town to Davis Mountains State Park.  We really don’t mind overnighter’s at all, since setting up is fairly quick and very easy.  Especially since the alternative would mean staying here two nights and driving into the Davis Mountains tomorrow and then having to backtrack again.  I dislike backtracking more than I dislike setting up!

Hip stuff woke me up at 3 and I couldn’t sleep, so it has been a good time to write, to read blogs, and to look at old photos of my days in Las Cruces so many years ago.  Tomorrow the Davis Mountains!

Am I on a trip or am I just living life

Agave Gulch Military Family Camp Davis Monthan AFB Tucson AZ High today 67 F currently 48 degrees F and clear

I had a moment this morning, while walking to the laundry, that felt like I wasn’t traveling at all, that I was just living “life”.  I wasn’t on a big trip, I was just doing laundry.  How do you explain moments like that? Of course I am on a “trip”, and yet it feels a bit like full timers feel when they say traveling around the country in a motorhome isn’t a vacation, it is just life.

We landed at Davis-Monthan AFB Agave Gulch Campground yesterday afternoon, early enough that the campground office was still open, and early enough to get settled in before the “big” game between the Packers and the 49rs.  Having lived in the Bay Area for so long, Mo is a 49rs fan.  We weren’t able to get local tv with the antenna, but managed to get a pretty good description of the game on the radio as we settled in for a couple of days here in Tucson.  It was a good day all around, Mo’s team won.

It was also a good day in that there were plenty of sites to choose from here at the FamCamp, and we got a nice one on the outside loop with no one next to us.  This is definitely a great place to stay in Tucson for just $20 bucks per night for full hookups, minus TV of course.  Hence a game on the radio.  Mo bought a satellite for the MoHo recently but it didn’t arrive before we left on this trip.  Oh wait…we aren’t on a trip….we are just living.  Well, we are living without much TV and I find that extremely relaxing.  It is good to get out of the news cycle now and then.  Of course, I do have the internet and the computer for the really important stuff. Like banking.  What in the world did we do when travelers didn’t have access to online banking? 

I had planned to do laundry here because I remembered the nice clean laundry facility with plenty of machines and only 1.00 to wash and 1.00 to dry.  It is a good place to get the rugs and blankets all spiffed up and fresh again and I took advantage of that yesterday afternoon. 

Today we woke to a free day with wide open possibilities.  Local friends in the Tucson area all seemed to be gallivanting off somewhere else, so there were no visits planned.  Instead we decided to explore a different part of Tucson than we saw when we passed through here in 2007 and again in 2011.

Most of the time we have traveled from the air force base toward the south, with one visit to the downtown area.  This time we traveled north to visit the popular Catalina State Park, at the base of the beautiful Catalina Mountains just north and a bit east of town.  As we drove up Swan Road toward Oracle Road the shift in lifestyles and neighborhoods was dramatic.  The flatter areas were lower middle class homes, tight little neighborhoods with lots of cars parked around and small shops and groceries.  With just a little bit of elevation, the houses got bigger, and as we climbed the hills toward the mountains, the houses and shops increased in value with every foot uphill.

Before long we were in nosebleed territory with Whole Foods anchoring some pretty fancy malls and some houses that looked as big as hotels.  Of course there were also hotels and spas behind huge gates, all with gorgeous views of the city below and the Catalina Mountains behind.  It was beautiful, and especially in January I could imagine living here.  In some other very wealthy life, I am sure.

Barbara Kingsolver is one of my favorite authors, and she lived in Tucson when I first started reading her books. She and her husband and family picked up lock stock and barrel and relocated to her ancestral home in the Appalachian Mountains.  She said she wanted to live a more sustainable life, where there was water and soil and you could grow your own food.  Tucson is lovely in many ways, but would be pure hell without air conditioning.

Still, as we meandered into Catalina State Park, the Arizona sun worked its magic on us entirely.  The day was clear and nicely warm with a cooling breeze.  The skies were so blue they almost hurt.  Many bloggers have extolled the virtues of Catalina State Park, and it almost seemed like too much hoopla to me, so I was never that anxious to get there.  I was so wrong.

What a gorgeous place to be in January.  We checked out the campground loops and decided that yes, we could definitely spend a week or more here hiking these beautiful mountains.  Funny, because the last time we were in Tucson we thought we never needed to come back unless we were passing through as we did this time.  After our day in Catalina SP, I can see us coming back again for some January sunshine and blue skies.

The main reason we decided to visit this park was to enjoy the dog friendly trails.  So often park trails are closed to dogs and it was great to find some areas that let us bring Abby along.  She especially loved the cool water in the creek that meandered though the canyon floor.  We did too, and took our time hiking three miles or so and stopping for photos and just sitting by the bubbling stream. What a perfect day!

We had planned a couple of other activities for the day, but by the time we left the park the afternoon traffic was getting thicker and we decided to skip the tour of the downtown art colony and instead go back home to our waiting supper.  I recently found a nice little crockpot and decided it was time to make a stew, so it had been cooking all day while we were gone.  Nice to come home to dinner all ready to go after a long day.

Jeremy wasn’t too happy for us to be gone that long, and did some old cat things that made me not so happy as well.  sigh.  I am glad he is with us….most of the time.  Sometimes not so much. I am doing more laundry tonight, catching up on photos and blogs while I wait for the last batch to finish. 

Tomorrow we will continue east toward Las Cruces.  An easy day of Interstate 10 driving and an early arrival at a Passport America park within walking distance to Old Mesilla and some Mexican food!

1-5-2014 Surprise boondock

Currently: Gila Bend AZ 52 degrees F and sunny morning

We are traveling east on I-8, between Gila Bend and Tucson, Arizona.  The interstate on this stretch is butter smooth, smooth enough that I can type away on the laptop while Mo cruises down the road.  Gotta love that.  So few stretches of Interstate in California are like this, and Oregon isn’t much better.  Does Arizona have a lot more money for road taxes?  Just wondering what the difference is between states that have great highways and those that don’t, especially when they are nationally funded roads, at least I think the interstates are nationally funded.  Who knows anymore how anything gets paid for anyway.

We pulled out of Desert Hot Springs yesterday right around 9am as planned, filled up at Costco at LaQuinta for just 3.37 per gallon.  Looking forward to cheaper fuel as we continue east, with Tucson prices now hovering around the $3. mark for regular.  We are not a diesel rig, obviously.

Last night turned out to be a surprise.  Originally I planned for a night at the Military Family Camp at Gila Bend, but with recent renovations, there weren’t even any hookups available.  Why pay to boondock in a gravel parking lot with no amenities?  So we then thought we might push hard to get all the way to Tucson, just 388 miles or so, and we can do that if we want to.

But then, not long after we left the Coachella Valley, the signs for Quartzite started showing up, and Mo said, “Maybe we could take a little break.”  Is there an RVr out there who doesn’t know about Quartzite?  I read somewhere that 20 percent of all registered RV vehicles in the United States can be in the area at one time.  Not to mention the Canadians.  Boondocking there is a fine tuned art, and we passed the Dome Rock exit where RV Sue hung out a bit back, and saw the folks who like a bit of space between their rig and the next one scattered across the desert below the rocky hills.

As we got closer to town, the long term and short term BLM parking areas were visible with their more closely spaced rigs, and then in town I was quite surprised at all the “real” RV parks with hookups that were lining the highway adjacent to the freeway.  I first camped in Quartzite in a tent back in 1988, selling my flowers at a booth at the Tyson Wells Show for ten days.  I mostly remember the wind and the dust.  Mo and I parked in La Posa one year for an overnight, but in spite of the nice invitations from fellow rvrs, we have declined returning.

Except for the tools.  Mo wanted to walk around a bit and look for little tooly things, and there is certainly no better place to do that.  Things are still fairly quiet, and we parked the rig easily at the Pilot station in town for our walkabout.  Somehow this photo of baseball caps reminds me of all things Quartzite.  Kinda crazy I guess. 

However, there was a new addition since I was here last, a giant box store called the Gem Store.  It was HUGE, and I walked inside and was completely overwhelmed.  Filled wall to wall with all the “stuff” that is sold at little gift shops all over the country for very high prices, the store seemed to cater most to wholesale buyers.  Still, there were rows and rows of beads and jewelry findings, boxes and bags for packaging jewelry, and it was filled with people with little heavy metal carts lined up at the registers spending a LOT of money.

I couldn’t resist, and called daughter Deborah, who likes to do beadwork.  I bought a bunch of 1 pound bags of seed beads for $4 bucks each for her.  Birthday girl coming up soon and this was a perfect shopping moment.  Yes, Deborah reads the blog, and yes, she already knows I got the beads for her.  There were so many choices I had no clue what to get without asking her.

By the time we left town it was already 3:30 in the afternoon.  How the heck did that happen??  UhOh.  Time change in Arizona, and we completely forgot about that .  Gila Bend was already looking better than Tucson for our night.  But then, what about all that great BLM land around us?  We didn’t want to stay too close to Quartzite, but as we turned south on highway 85 toward Gila Bend, it seems there was a lot of flat cropland and no sign of BLM land.  I looked up boondocking in the area and most of the information led us back west from Gila Bend, and we didn’t want to do that.

Surprise!  Just 8 miles south of I-10, on Highway 85 is the expansive Maricopa County regional park called Buckeye Hills. There is a shooting range and a sheriff training facility near the entrance and on google maps the main road just seems to wander around the hills toward nothing in particular.  I found the park website which said something about no hookups and pit  toilets, but we couldn’t find any evidence of a campground. It is possible that the official campground is further up the road in the park.

Instead, less than 1/2 mile in, adjacent to the wide graded gravel road, we found several large sites, obviously used for camping.  No signs had said anything about camping restrictions, so all alone there in the desert we pulled off and set up camp.  The timing was perfect, just at sunset, which came a little bit later in this part of the time zone.

Mo built a fire from some nice hard firewood that we found near our Joshua Tree boondock site.  Nice to a chance to use it, since it was taking a bunch of space in the Tracker!. The park police never showed up to run us off or say anything about the fire.  In fact, no one ever showed up except for 3 cars that passed us on the road during the evening.  Who knows where they were going.  The night was dark and beautiful, and we had a nice supper, watched the fire, played some cards before retreating to bed with the windows wide open to the stars.

I know there are a lot of folks who boondock in the middle of nowhere, and I have no idea if they worry about security.  But there was that little nagging thing in the back of my mind that felt a bit vulnerable out there.  What IF someone decided to harass us.  We have some protection, but still it isn’t exactly fun to have to deal with it. 

One of the main reasons we prefer a motorhome to a fifth wheel is about security.  I asked Mo if she would indulge my niggling little bit of fear and I pulled in the slide and put the key in the ignition.  That way if anyone did hassle us, with the car hooke dup ready to go, the slide in and the key ready, we wouldn’t have to fumble around in the dark trying to get out of there.  It would just be a matter of jumping in the drivers seat and driving off.

The night was completely quiet and completely beautiful, and of course my fears were probably silly.  Still, I did sleep better knowing that I had paid a bit of attention to the possibility and was prepared to handle it.

I haven’t looked at the internet this morning, so don’t really know how the predicted severe cold weather is affecting the rest of the country.  Here the sun is so bright I am having trouble seeing the screen and the temperatures are steadily rising.

This afternoon we will find a way to watch the 49rs game and I will do laundry at the very nice FamCamp facility.  There are no reservations taken at Davis Monthan AFB FamCamp, but there is a system of waiting in line for a space after spending time in the overflow no-hookup areas.  Won’t know till we get there if we will get a site or not, but we are ready either way.

1-3-2014 It has something to do with the light

Desert Hot Springs 62 degrees F this evening and high thin clouds with a sliver of a moon

I guess because I grew up in Southern California there is something about the color of the light that touches me down deep.  I certainly wouldn’t want to live here all the time, but when I visit, memories surface and I feel as though I am in very familiar territory.  I slip back into feelings and impressions I had when I was a kid, nameless, the memories are nothing solid, but the sensations are interesting to experience.  Wordless, really, and yet I keep trying to put it into words somehow.

It felt that way early this morning, as Mo and I swam in the hot springs pool at 5am, watching the stars and the many airplanes in the dark sky going in all directions.  We had the place to ourselves until 6:30, a surprise, because usually there are early risers slipping into the hot water long before daylight.  The water in the adult pool in the lower part of the park where we like to stay was a comfortable 95 degrees or so, and the hot spa was 104F.  Hot enough to soak out any left over aches and pains left from sitting around too much in the rig.

As much as we enjoy coming to Catalina Spa and RV Resort, it is getting to be a bit more difficult.  The park is a membership only kind of place, and while they honor our Passport America card, they now limit our stay to only 2 nights. Otherwise the rate is 65 bucks a day, more than either of us wants to spend, no matter how nice the pools are.  The new rules will let us stay here for 4 days for a mere $45, if we spend an hour listening to a spiel for purchasing a Coast to Coast membership, and this would be our home park.

We are a bit too rambling for that sort of thing, though, and our road trips include state parks, national parks, boondocking, and lots of other kinds of camping than a Coast to Coast membership would provide.  Not a good use of money.  So who knows if we will come back again.  Today we went over to Sam’s Family Spa, a place that Nina seems to love, but it seemed a lot bigger and busier and the pools aren’t open all night as they are here.  That is my favorite thing.  I love slipping into a silent hot pool in the middle of the night and swimming under the stars.

Later this morning, when we emerged from the Tracker at the Whitewater Preserve ranger station, that light thing hit me again really hard.  Adding to the light was the fragrance of sycamore trees and cottonwoods along the riverbed that almost made me feel that I was 9 years old again.  My daddy used to take me on hikes into the San Gabriel Mountains that looked and felt very much like these mountains around us at the base of the Mt San Gorgonio Wilderness.

Nina and Rick have both talked about hiking Whitewater Preserve with their dogs.  Finding dog friendly hikes in Southern California is only second in difficulty to finding dog friendly beaches in Florida.  I was happy to have a new idea for something for us to do that would be fun on our only full day here in Desert Hot Springs.

The hike was a perfect Southern California hike on a perfect SoCal day: warm, a light breeze, and brilliant, brilliant sunshine illuminating everything around us.  I stopped in at the ranger station first to get a handle on the trails and a young man at the desk gave me a thorough and very practiced talk on where to go and what to follow.

What I didn’t realize was that we would be hiking along a very small portion of the Pacific Crest Trail,  the PCT, subject of a great book I just read called “Wild”.  The PCT meanders along the Cascade crest not far from our home in Rocky Point, and Mo and I have hiked bits and pieces of it when we climbed McLoughlin and hiked in the Sky Lakes Wilderness.  The cute little guy behind the desk said, “Gee, you could walk home from here!”.  Hmmm…maybe not.

The 3.5 mile loop that we hiked today was definitely enough. I am a bit soft from an autumn full of quilting and not enough snow shoveling.  The switchbacks weren’t too difficult on the way up and neither of us were huffing and puffing too terribly, but the knees definitely need a bit of work to handle those downhills.  Thank goodness for hiking poles I guess.

We spent about two hours actually hiking and some more time just sitting by the bubbling water letting Abby play before we ambled back to the parking lot.  There are lots of hikes in the area,  a couple of easier ones, and several more strenuous 8 mile one way hikes that followed the PCT for a great distance. 

With a light breakfast and no lunch in our bellies, I was glad that we needed to slip into Palm Springs to buy a missing printer cable on the way home.  I just knew there had to be ice cream somewhere in downtown Palm Springs, and with a little bit of help from google we found Lappert’s Ice Cream.  My oh My!  I had some kind of Kona coffee thing with fancy chocolate in it.  The place had lots of Hawaiian themed goodies, and something called Donkey Balls.  Hmmm….I did ask about that, and they are macadamia nuts coated in chocolate.  Just like the ones from Maui, although I didn’t know they were called donkey balls. 

Who takes a Segway into the mountains?

We were happy to get home in late afternoon.  Dealing with Palm Springs traffic and people isn’t exactly fun, although seeing Palm Springs in the daytime was kind of nice.  Most of the time when we are here we only go there in the evening for the street fair.  Once back home we settled in to do money stuff, and Mo was very happy to have our little working Canon printer along so she could print out needed documents. 

I said, heck with that, I am going for another swim!  With only two days to enjoy the pools I don’t want to miss a minute.  I walked a bit more distance to the upper pool, supposedly the nicer one.  It was a bit cooler and a bit bigger, but there were a lot more folks around, since it was getting close to time for the “all you can eat” spaghetti supper. With just an ice cream lunch, it started smelling pretty good and I walked back home to start of the Weber and made some yummy pork chops and rice with a salad.  Much better than spaghetti from a community pot I think.

I swam last night when we arrived, at 5am this morning, and again this evening.  I will be in the pool again tomorrow before dawn as well, you can bet on it.  We are heading to Gila Bend and Tucson tomorrow, still not sure whether we will stop in Gila Bend for the night or just press on to Tucson.  All depends on how we feel.  Gila Bend FamCamp isn’t that great and Tucson is fabulous, but who knows.

Google Earth image of our hike on the Whitewater Canyon Loop

Got an email tonight from Texas warning of possible weather trouble in the vicinity of Fort Davis, so spent a bit of time re-checking routes and weather and fuel stops.  Nope.  Don’t want that low fuel thing to get us when nights could be in the teens as we get into Texas in a few days.  When I planned this trip, I knew that the weather could do anything and everything between Oregon and Florida, so hopefully we are ready for whatever comes our way.

 

1-1-2014 New Year Boondock

South of Joshua Tree NP currently 61F going to 74 and gorgeous sunshine

How could I have been so dumb?!  Somehow it never occurred to me that a national park would be completely filled to overflowing during the Christmas break.  Duh!  What was I thinking??  Mo and I were in Joshua Tree last year just two weeks later than this and it was very nearly empty.  We thought, great, lets boondock in Joshua Tree before we head to Desert Hot Springs. Here is the link to last year’s entry about our wonderful visit to Joshua Tree.  Seasoned RV travelers would probably laugh out loud at my assumptions. 

After picking two bags of sweet oranges at Orange Grove RV park, we got on 58 east early enough to get to Joshua Tree by 1pm, early enough we thought to get a first come first served site in one of the campgrounds.  Right.  For the first time since we have been coming here, we had to wait in line to get to the entrance station, and then there were people everywhere.  Every single Exhibit parking area was jammed and every single campground was full to bursting.  Again…what in the world was I thinking??

In a way, it was an incredible blessing.  We knew from Mo’s memory of her trip through this area, and from other bloggers that there was a great boondock site between the southern park entrance and Interstate 10, so we just ambled along enjoying the beautiful scenery knowing there was a place for us to land before evening.  Although, somehow in the middle of high, bright winter light and a lot of people, the park had a bit less charm than we felt on our wonderful visit early in 2013. 

When we passed the park entrance toward the freeway, almost immediately we saw the wide rather smooth dirt  road leading west into the desert.  There were three other rigs parked in the vicinity, but before very much distance we found a perfect site, level, and a bit elevated above the road, and protected by a man made dike from desert surface flooding.

It is a great spot.  I can see RV Sue or Nina or Al and Kelly settling into this place very easily. I am also fairly certain that Rick wouldn’t think that much of it.  Some love boondocking, some hate it.  Some are fully prepared, and others like Mo and I just hang out for a few days here and there to enjoy the silence and privacy.  We went to Quartzite once, and have no need to go back.  That is a completely different world of RV fun.   I am pretty certain that RVSue wrote about this place and that is why I remembered it was here, tucked away in my blog reading memory, along with Mo’s trip memories.

We had planned for boondocking, since even in the park it is a dry camp, so we had water and empty tanks and all we needed.  Except for one little minor thing required for boondocking without solar panels.  Fuel.  Now I can hear all of you laughing uproariously again at my stupidity.  I told Mo, “Let’s just wait to fuel up at Costco on our way out of DHS.  We have a quarter tank and that will be plenty to get us there”. 

Oops.  Generator stops working at 1/4 tank.  We were really hungry, so I decided to bypass the WeberQ potato in favor of the microwave while I cooked the steak for our New Year Eve supper.  Suddenly the microwave shut down when the generator shut down and I looked at Mo with that sheepish expression that says “oops”.

So instead we turned everything off, I cooked some great fried potatoes on the stove top to go with our steak and Caesar salad and we opened the great bottle of Troon Vineyard Cabernet that Deb gave us for Christmas.  The air was balmy and the sunset was simple but lovely.  We got a kick out of using the new RV wine glasses that Deb also gave us for Christmas.  They just stick into the ground by our chairs and aren’t as susceptible to spilling as they are on the little plastic table we use when we are out.

With temperatures only going as low as 55 degrees last night, we slept without any need for extra heat.  Unlike other years, we had no television to watch the ball fall and with darkness thick with stars by 7pm I think I barely made it to 8 before putting my book away.  Funny thing happened, though.  At just a couple of minutes past midnight a gust of wind blew our single solar panel over, and it woke both of us up.  In time to say “Happy New Year” and think of all my kids who usually call me at midnight. 

I thought I would be without phone and internet for a few days, but in spite of our quiet boondocking status, we have several bars both on the Verizon MiFi and the Verizon iPad as well as the ATT iPhone.  All bases covered for the time being.  Oh yes, except for that fuel part and running the generator.

After breakfast this morning, Mo took the MoHo just 6 miles or so toward the closest gas station at Chiriaco Summit, and put in 20 gallons at 3.89 PG.  Which is why I can now write and post and read emails and do all those things that might require a bit of generator power. We haven’t had to start it up yet, with plenty of charge on the batteries and the little panel keeping things at least charged enough to use the inverter and the Fantastic Fan.  Nice.

While she was gone, Abby and Jeremy and I sat in the sunshine, although Jeremy was really concerned that the MoHo was not here.  He sat on the rug by where the entrance of the MoHo should have been, patiently waiting for it to appear.  Funny, the one time that I left him with Deborah over at the cottage, he did the same thing, sitting in the spot where the door had been, waiting for us to come home.  I think Jeremy thinks he is a dog.

Our beautiful, warm, sunny New Years Day is slipping by with such grace and silence.  The breezes are light, and it’s warm in the sun and cool in the rig with the windows open.  I am enjoying reading all the “year end reviews” that fellow bloggers are posting. We enjoyed a great bike ride on the reasonably level road that wanders beyond our site into the desert toward the west. Later toward sunset we walked along the man made dike that separates the BLM land from the National Park land.  Nice bit of elevation that allowed us to see in all directions. I know it is a trite saying, but I feel it so strongly at this moment:  “Life IS Good”!