Week ending Jan 26, 2017 Casa Grande to Gila Bend

Friday, we went into Casa Grande to Norris RV to pick up a 15' extension cord for our solar panels.   This will give us more flexibility in what direction the trailer is parked when we are boondocking.  Then we drove over to Maricopa Walmart to pick up the last curtain we needed. 

Saturday, Rupert and Helen took us in to the Mesa Market Place Swap Meet.   It is a huge semi-indoor area, with 4 rows of vendors each 1/4 mile long.   There are shops with clothes, kitchen accessories, rugs, tools, 'as-seen-on-TV' and many other things.  Joan found a new change purse to replace one that is wearing out. 

Monday, we got the trailer ready to head out, then chatted with Helen and Rupert for while before we moved to Gila Bend, only a 60 mile trip.  This time we checked into the correct RV Park, much nicer than the one we stayed in 8 weeks ago.  As we were setting up our next door neighbour came out to chat.  He is from Tumbler Ridge.  They have stayed here quite often over the years.  We had a bit of chat before we finished setting up.   After we rested for a bit, we walked up the stairs in the back wall of the RV park.   We took a picture of 'snakes' looking into the back of our trailer. 

 

We followed a little trail across a wash, onto a paved road.  It went through desert until it connected with 'Old Highway 84', which used to go from here to Maricopa.  About half an hour out, we came to a gate across the road.  It said we would need a permit from the Land Commissioner to come onto State Trust land.    By the time we got back to the trailer, there were no spaces left in the park. 

Tuesday we drove north along 85 to check out a couple of boondocking sites near Buckeye.  Then we drove into the Red Robin in Goodyear, on the east side of Phoenix.  We were surprised to see a picture of the elevator in Bents, Saskatchewan on the ceiling above our table.

Bents Elevator

John had a Mr. Pineapple beer, which is a local brew by the Santan Brewing company in Chandler Arizona.

Holt's Shell has an impression collection of ornamental work.  On Wednesday we added a little coyote from the selection of ornaments at Holt's to our canine litter and paid for our spot until next Monday.

 

There are also a large number of metal-work sculptures, mostly dinosaurs, plus the group below.  We don't think the spears carried by the warriors had Clovis points, since there were no ride-able horses during the ice-age.

Thursday, we recorded the GPS co-ordinates for the various sites related to the Oatman Massacre and Fourr Ranch Cemetery and checked out the route, as we had planned on going there before, but couldn't find the route without going through private property.  On the route out toward the Painted Rock Petroglyphs, our truck had to take a bit of dip.  That put a bit of a different point of view on the road signs along the route.   Fortunately, we were able to drive around most of the puddles we encountered on the unpaved section of route further on.

 

 

Once we got to the private property, we found our road to the left along the fence line of the private property.   We found Fourr Cemetery pretty close to the GPS co-ordinates, although our truck GPS doesn't know this road exists. 

Fourr Cemetery

Further along the road, around the farm fields we had seen on the web-site google maps, the road turned into a BLM atv road heading south.  We knew this must be where the parking spot was indicated.  As we were getting ready to hike to the Massacre sites a group of 5 atv's came from the BLM road.   We followed the trail around the west edge of the farm fields, and roughly where expected, we found the Oatman memorial site. 

Oatman memorial

We carried on to the steps, but below the steps, into the bottom of the wash was slippery clay which John slid down.  He was able to get up the other side using a couple of  sticks to hoist himself up high enough to get traction.   Joan wasn't able to get up that slope, so after John checked out the other side of the valley, below the bluffs, without being able to see the other sites, we returned.  We found out that the Massacre site  was probably on the bluff above where John turned around.  

 

 The 'hobbitt' view also seen on the web-site

The web-site made a lot more sense once we reread it after being there.  Maybe next time there is that much information available on a web-site, and no directions or clear trails at the site we will download it to the tablet so we can review the info once we are there.   We had tried to take some pictures of the web-site using the phone, but they weren't readable on the phone. 

As we were posting the blog, a roadrunner scooted along the wall behind the trailer.   We had seen a few roadrunners cross the road on our way to Oatman as well.

 

Week ending Jan 19, 2017 Huachuca City, Casa Grande

On Friday, we went to the Lehner Mammoth Kill Site.  This is another 11,000 year old Clovis site.  A large bone bed containing remnants of extinct mammoths, tapirs, bison and horses along with  the weapons and tools of the Indians.  It was a bit disappointing, as there was only a cairn with a plaque on it in a little parking area.  Apparently there are plans for more information in the future.   Since that didn't take long we drove to San Pedro House, on the river east of Sierra Vista.  It was the site of the main ranch house for the Boquillas Land and Cattle Co.  We did the 3 mi interpretive trail.  There were a couple of natural ponds, created from oxbows in the river. 

 Pond

Saturday we did the 2.5 mi return hike to the Presidio Santa Cruz de Terrenate.  It was the earliest fort in Arizona built by the spanish in 1775  but only occupied for about 5 years, before construction was finished due to the climate, isolation, inadequate supplies and Apache raids.   Before returning to the parking lot, we went down to the railbed below the Presidio to see if we could find the trail across the river to the north end of the Fairbank loop we had done the week before.  It turned out we were further downstream from the crossing than we had thought.  We did see a few relics from the time before the railway was decommissioned.

Chapel wall

Monday, we moved to High Chaparral RV Resort in Arizona City, just south of Casa Grande, a bit removed from the intersection of I-10 and I-8 between Phoenix and Tucson.  The sites were nice and wide, but a little strange. Our site is between the two yellow signs, but the neighbour's lines run to the shared utilities which is in the middle of our site.  

Once we got set up, we went over to find our friends Rupert, Helen and Keri, who had told us they would be here for a while.  We enjoyed catching up on happenings since we met them in Quartzite a couple of years ago. 

On Tuesday, they drove us into Casa Grande, and then Mesa on a shopping expedition and treated us to lunch. 

Wednesday, we picked up some groceries and Joan prepared dinner for us all with the last of the ribs we bought in Benson on New Years Eve.  We had a good evening together.

On Thursday, we all piled into our truck, and drove to Biosphere 2, about 70 miles away north of Tucson.  Biosphere 1 is the Earth.   The Biosphere is quite interesting.  It was constructed in 1986 to research and develop self-sustaining space-colonization technology.  Between 1991 and 1994, 8 people (4 men and 4 women) were sealed into the glass structured Biosphere to measure its use as a sustainable, survivable environment.   From 1996-2003, Columbia University reconfigured it to do a variety of experiments, including the effect of CO2 on plant life.    It has been leased to the University of Arizona since 2007, who are using it as a large scale laboratory to quantify the consequences of global climate change, since the composition and climate of the various sections of the Biosphere can be changed to simulate various scenarios.   

Exterior structure

Interior structure

Intensive Agricultural building

The bulk of our time there was spent on a tour guided by one of the staff, who explained the structure and its purposes, in the Intensive Agricultural test area, the Rainforest, Savannah, Marsh, Desert and Ocean sections.  

Rainforest

One  of the interesting features is the Aquaponics test area.  Aquaponics uses fish in a top tank to provide nutrients, bacteria, and water that circulates down through several levels of plants, before returning to the fish tank.  This takes about 1/10th of the water to grow plants than simple addition of water to plants in soil. 

Aquaponics

Another feature of the structure is the two 'lungs'.  These were built to handle the expansion and contraction of the air in the biosphere, as the temperature changes inside.  They primarily consist of a 4 ton rubber diaphragm supported by a 12 ton aluminum disk. 

Lung portion

After the tour was over, we headed to the B2 Cafe for some warming food, as it was a quite cool day.

On the way back to the trailer, we stopped at the Tom Mix Monument on Hwy 79.   Tom died at this location in a car accident in a construction zone in 1940.  He was the star of 291 western films, all but 9 of them silent between 1909 and 1935.

Tom Mix Monument

Week ending Jan 12, 2017 Huachuca City, Douglas, Patagonia Lake, Sierra Vista

Friday, we went back to Fairbank, but parked across the highway at the road to Little Boquillas Ranch and the Southern Pacific Railroad Depot foundations, a walk of about 5 miles return.   On the way out, we were surprised to see a pickup driving up the rail bed, near the road. After talking pictures at the ranch, we had lunch at a concrete slab picnic table built on cinder blocks.  

Blacksmith Shop

Ranch house

 

Saturday we decided to head to Douglas, which is on the Mexican border south of Willcox.   We stopped at Bisbee on the way, at a viewpoint overlooking the open pit copper mine just past town.  We had missed this on our visit to Bisbee in 2014.

 

Our next stop was the San Bernadino Ranch Historic Site which was the home of Sherriff John Slaughter. 

 

We did a self-guided tour through the 6 buildings on the ranch. 

Then went past the duck pond, based on a spring which was the reason for the location of the ranch.  We were lucky a family noticed an owl in a tree by the pond. 

 Great Horned Owl

Then we went up a little hill where the US Army built a small fort in 1911 to defend the border during the Mexican Revolution.   We got a good view of the fence along the border with Mexico.  Given the number of border patrol trucks we saw on the drive to the ranch, this area might be a priority for Trump's wall. 

Border Fence

Back in Douglas, we planned on visiting the Air Museum at the Douglas Airport, but it was closed (on a Saturday?).  It was a women's pilot training center.  Amelia Earhart received training here.  Eleanor Roosevelt had something to do with getting it created.

Then we stopped at the Hotel Gadsden, which has a beautiful marble staircase, and stain glass windows in the roof of the lobby.

Hotel Gadsden

From Douglas, we drove north to the ghost town of Gleeson.  It was a prosperous copper mining town from 1909 until the the 30's and was closed by 1953.  We stopped at the Jail Museum, which was purchased and developed by the son of the owner of the main store in town.  He has created web site of the history at http://www.gleesonarizona.com .  At this point, all of our information indicated that the road from gleeson to Tombstone was unpaved, but the museum guy told us it was paved.   The 15 mile drive through the hills was quite picturesque, and is about 30 miles shorter than the route the GPS recommended.  

Monday, we drove through Sonoita and Patagonia to Patagonia Lake State Park ($15/vehicle).  The lake was created by a dam on Sonoita Creek.  It is an important birding area.  They have birding walks two mornings a week, and have a board in the visitor center where they track the last date each species of bird and animal has been sighted in the park.  There was a warning about a mountain lion in the area.  We did the 1 mile walk along the lake to where Sonoita Creek comes into the lake.   We spotted several ducks, and several types of birds, as well as  a group of cows.  There is a feeder that a lot of birds enjoy. Unfortunately, the flock of pyrrhloxia flitting back and forth wouldn't sit on the feeder long enough stay in focus. 

There was a birding group looking for the resident  Elegant Trogon. There was a cormorant out on the lake.  We did get decent shots of the following birds, but aren't sure what the 'wren' is. We would need a side view of the head to confirm what it is.

Northern Shoveller

Ladder-backed Woodpecker

Wren?

Then we got a permit (free) to enter the Sonoita Creek State Natural Area adjacent to the Park.  We did the 1.6 mile, 300 ft elevation Outlook Trail, which loops around to the top of a little hill overlooking the lake.  On the way up we had to encourage a cow to get off the trail, so we could continue, and  on the way down, a calf was lying on the trail.  

Cow Trail

Small section of Patagonia Lake from Overlook

There are miles of hiking trails in the Natural Area.   From the outlook, we could see Nogales, about 10 miles away.  We decided that it would be a good idea to go to the Dairy Queen there.  We discovered that the Dairy Queen was being remodeled.  Instead of going to the next nearest Dairy Queen, 5 miles south in Mexico, we got shakes at the McD's next door.  On our way back to our highway, we noticed that the railway crossing ahead was closed.  One of the barriers was leaning on the cab of a  semi.  The semi moved forward slightly, and the barrier fell between the cab and the trailer.  A train was whistling steadily as it slowly approached the crossing.  It looked like it might stop, but the semi wasn't on the tracks, so it carried on.  We were around the corner before the barriers lifted, so we don't know if it cleared itself okay from the truck.   We stopped at the historic marker for Camp Crittenden.  It was an small army post to protect people from Apaches in the Sonoita valley. 

Wednesday, we drove into the visitor center in Sierra Vista to pick up the booklet they call the Historic Treasure Hunt - Sierra Vista's Unique Story.  The booklet is an important part of the tour because less than half of the structures described are still there. One of the most interesting ones is the McDonald's Restaurant.  It is famous for being the first McDonald's with a drive-through window, added on Jan 24, 1975.  The drive-through was added because soldiers from Fort Huachuca were not allowed to wear their fatigue (work) uniforms in the business in town at the time.  This enabled them to drop by and pick up food without going into the restaurant.  It worked so well, that now almost every stand-alone fast food restaurant has a drive-through window.   We were also amused to notice that the DQ downtown is closed for the winter season.  There is another one that is open on the highway.  On the way back to the truck we stopped in at the Philadelphia Baking Company of Arizona.  In addition to having a selection of baked items, they have an extensive menu of sandwiches. Joan had a sweet potato loaf, and John had the buffalo chicken philly cheesesteak.  Both were quite tasty. 

Week ending Jan 4, 2017 Benson to Huachuca City

Friday, we went for a walk behind the park to the water tank.  It was a bit of climb up to the level of the tank, but from there the trail went along a ridge between the washes that flow (when wet) down both sides of the park.  The ridge trail took us out to about 1.75 mi, at which point it returned back down the wash on the north side of the park.   The branch that came down was different than the one we walked up a few days ago.  No hares today, just a few little birds.  We did see one large group of sparrow type birds enjoying something on the edge of the wash, but they flew away before we could close enough to get a pic.  

Trail markers showing off arch building skills

 the ridge

Mountain from the ridge

Nest?

Saturday, we did a loop around the park, until it started sprinkling.  John took pictures of all the desert plants in little gardens around the park, as many of them were labelled.   After lunch  we went to Safeway to get some ribs for supper.  We hit the jackpot, finding a 'buy 1 get 3 free' deal on slabs of frozen ribs.  We saved over $90 on the price.  We also found the BBQ recipe chicken pizza that is one of our favourites.  We have been keeping an eye out for it since we came south.

Sunday we did another walk around the park and checked out the clubhouse.

Monday, we moved all the way from Benson to the north end of Huachuca City, about 30 miles.  The rates at Quail Ridge RV Park are $75/wk for full service.   

On Tuesday, we drove to the San Pedro River, and did a 2.5 mi walk to the old location of Millville.

Millville

It was the location of the stamp mills for the silver mines in the Tombstone area from 1879 to 1886.  The mines were too far from the river to get water to do the separation of the silver from the ore.  The mill was eventually made obsolete when the mines became flooded, and voila!, they had a local source of water.   There are also 2 petroglyph sites.  These are thought to be done by Hohokam people who were desert farmers in this area from about 2000 years ago until 1450.

  After completing the walk there, we went to the Murray Springs Clovis site, which had a .5 mi interpretive trail.  This is one of the oldest archaeological sites in North America.  The site is on a narrow deeply cut wash running into the San Pedro.  This is only one of several Clovis Sites in the San Pedro River area, more than any other area in the United States.  Clovis sites are locations where ice age artifacts have been located, including a bison kill site.  This area of Arizona was south of the ice sheets that covered most of northern North America.  There were many good interpretive signs on the trail, particularly one about the bison kill, and the processing of the animals after the kill.  It described how the archaeologists had matched flakes of spear points found at the kill location with the points found at the encampment. 

 On our way back to the RV park, we couldn't find the visitor center, to find out about getting an escort to the Fort Huachuca museum, so we phoned them, and got a number for the lady who arranges for the escorts.  She returned our call promptly and she left us the forms to fill in at the reception in City Hall.  She sent an e-mail to the 3 escorts she has available.  

On Wednesday morning, she let us know that one of the escorts was available on either Thursday or Friday, so we selected Thursday, and sent an e-mail to the escort to let us know what time and where we could meet.

Then we went to the ghost town of Fairbanks. 

 Post Office

It was the main railroad station in the Tombstone area, created in 1881 when the railroad was built along the San Pedro River.  By 1882 it was one of the biggest cities in the west with a population of about 15,000.  In 1901 the land was bought by the Boquillas Land and Cattle Company who evicted all potential land owners.  Rather than leave their homes to the company, many of these people destroyed their homes with sledgehammers.    From the townsite, we walked north to the cemetery,

and then further up the valley to the Grand Central Mill location, one of the 7 mills along the San Pedro River near Tombstone.

Grand Central Mill area

 Then we returned to Fairbanks by looping over the river and following it back to town.  

San Pedro River

When we got back, we had received an email from John, the escort who will take us into Fort Huachuca tomorrow, so we called him back and arranged to meet him at the gate on Thursday at 1:30.

We met up with John, our escort to the Fort, and got our passes to go in.  We went to the Fort Huachuca Museum, which covers the history of the area in addition to the fort itself.   Fort Huachuca was established in 1877 to keep an eye on the Apaches that traveled up the San Pedro River into Mexico to raid the larger establishments there.   The fort was built on the shoulder of the Huachuca Mountains, as the location had a view of a tremendous area up and down the valley, had fresh water and an abundance of trees.  It was used as a basis for the campaign against Geronimo until his surrender in 1886.  In 1913, the 10th cavalry, the Buffalo Soldiers, arrived and stayed for 20 years.  The camp was closed between the end of WWII and the Korean War.   After the Korean War it was determined, due to the climate and distance from urban centers, to be an ideal place for testing electronic and communications equipment. In 1971, the post became the home of the U.S. Army Intelligence Center and School.    For over 50 years, the fort has been an integral support in the Army's Unmanned Aerial Systems program due to its unrestricted airspace and training resources.

Buffalo Soldier

Indian Scout

Drone