Kit and Carol on the Road

We are now less than an hour from the Caverns, in Willcox, in a private RV park with WiFi. Saves us a couple hours of driving Wayne (the truck) to go hiking. Friday afternoon we moved camp AND went in search of Fort Bowie National Historic Site. (It IS part of the park system). This is the most remote National What we’ve visited. We drove down a washboard road and then hiked a mile and a half into the fort ruins. It was easy to imagine Apaches and cavalry in these hills. We could have spent much more time here but it was late afternoon and time to leave.

Hiking in the Snow
Saturday we went to Chiricahua National Monument for a day of hiking. It was to be 78 in Tucson. In the mountains it was 52. (Yesterday’s high was 39) Luckily we were warmly dressed. We did a lot of walking on SNOW. We hiked 7.3 miles with lots of ups and downs and all between 6000 and 7000 feet. Amazing rocks! Nice forest trail but along with juniper and pine there are still yuccas and agave.

Wine and Chocolate
Sunday was a non hike day. Went birding :), grocery shopping, and to a wonderful wine and chocolate event at the local winery. Wine in Arizona? And some of it was really good--but the chocolates were super!!

Hiking the Guidion Trail with my red balloon

We are probably the only people to stay in the campground at Kartchner Caverns State Park and NOT visit the caves. I did spend an hour or so at the Visitor Center. Mostly we hiked. On the cold yucky weather day we went to Fort Huachuca—which is a real operational army base—we had to have car registration and insurance cards to get in—so we spent 10 minutes cleaning out our glove compartment to find current documents. It is also a National Historic Landmark (not in the park system) and has 3 interesting museums. Thursday was a lovely warm day and we had a really fine 4 mile hike in the National Forest. Kit found me a valentine balloon caught in a tree up a canyon. Hopefully I’ll be able to post a photo.

All of our plans are set in jello but since we plan to be off the net more than on, I thought I'd post some tentative plans here. We leave here on Tuesday and plan to go East to Kartchner Caverns and maybe on to Wilcox and Fort Bowie--or maybe back to Tucson and one of the public parks here. The Presidents Day weekend affects planning somewhat. We plan to spend the last week of the month up in the Cave Creek area (again a public park) north of Phoenix. In March we'll head back through Yuma to Anza Borrego. Then up to Joshua Tree and out to the Mohave Preserve. I hope we can then head over to the beaches near Santa Barbara and up the coast to Monterey. Maybe we'll stop in Calistoga again/ maybe not. Hope we'll have time for a few days in Eugene and Sweet Home. Plan to be home sometime around April 1. If there is a huge gap in this blog it's because we are off having fun in public campgrounds with no internet hookups.

Wednesday we rode out to the visitor center at Saguaro East. There are reasonably nice bike trails we can access from our park. It's all uphill to the National Park but a cool ride coming down. Friday we headed on our bikes toward town. The bike trails this way are a bit confusing so we had to look at our map a lot. We rode through some nice neighborhoods to the University of Arizona but the bike trail through the U led us in circles so we came around and came home. It was a 22 mile ride. Perfect weather for biking. Of course every afternoon is pool time.

I have not yet taken a photo of every saguaro in Arizona but I am working on it. They have so much personality--even in "death".

We've had two morning hikes in Saguaro East. Thursday we had a flatland hike in the park adjacent to Broadway. Lots of cactus. Lots of sand. I am still trying to post photos --no luck. The big adventure of the day was spotting (luckily) a swarm of killer bees. We knew they were in the park but didn't expect to see them on the trail. Went off trail to avoid them and then reported to visitor center.

Today (Saturday) we went on a ranger led hike up the Tanque Verde Ridge. Lots of climbing up rocks. Even though we think we know a lot about desert plants we always learn a lot. The adventure/ mystery today was two suspicious dudes running down the mountain with no water and wearing leather gardening gloves. Our guide was an interpretive ranger so had to call an enforcement ranger to cut them off at the bottom... We'll never know how it all came out.

I just deleted a couple posts to keep this thing in sequential order. After 2 wonderful weeks off the grid in Organ Pipe we arrived in Tucson (which is really spelled this way/ strange). We have finally found a park here that we like and are staying here a week. (until next Tuesday). There is a wonderful warm pool where we have spent most afternoons. The best thing is that we can ride bikes out the gate and up to Saguaro East Nat. Park (or downtown if we choose). Another best thing is that hardly a block away is a wonderful grocery store. We go every day and choose dinner. Right next door to the store is a French Bakery. There's a Home Depot around the corner where we went last night just to hang. And there's even a quilt shop within walking distance. Oh, and did I say that they recycle here. (almost unheard of in RV parks). The weather has been really great which sure helps.

Sunset over the Ajos. This picture is taken facing east. The light is reflected from the sunset in the west. We had a few days of spectacular sunsets because of cloudy cooler weather.

On Saturday we hiked with some friends up the Arches trail. Here I am clinging to the cliff in very windy weather. We are on top of the arches --up about 1000 feet from the truck. We didn't linger long.

Our last hike in ORPI was out of the campground to the Senita Basin. This was a 8 1/2 mile round trip hike. We did not find any senita cactus but did find this huge hunk of quartz. This was Sunday, after the weather finally turned quite warm.