10/31/07 (Wednesday): Happy Halloween! This will be a quick blog (not too many bells and whistles) because I'm making use of an internet connection at a local coffee shop (and I should leave when I've finished my latte). Also, I haven't downloaded my pictures yet.

We arrived safely last Sunday. We had a wonderful trip across the country, and I still have some pictures from our travels that I want to show you, but I'll do a catch-up blog for that. The campground is lovely--it sits in a canyon with a huge lake at the bottom and high mountains all around. There are 100-year-old olive trees everywhere that were planted by an entrepreneur who also started orange and avocado groves. The trees are still bearing. In fact, Wiley now wants me to find out how to preserve them (it has something to do with soaking them in brine). The deer wander freely in the campground and are not shy at all. In fact, I almost got run over by one yesterday morning--it ran down a hill and leaped down from a hill right in front of me. Scared me witless! There are also a lot of rabbits and birds. We put out the hummingbird feeder and had black-chinned hummers within an hour!

Wiley slid down a hill face first on the way to go fishing at the lake at dawn Monday, our first day. It was steeper than in looked in the bad light. He got 3 stitches in his forehead and skinned his hands and knees, but he's fine. The good that came out of his accident is that we found a great hospital and clinic which we'll be able to use for the rest of the season.

We're having a meeting with the campground managers tomorrow (us and two other workamper couples) to discuss our duties and schedules. The people are wonderful--one of them is going to lend us his satellite dish because we can't get any channels with our antenna. So far, some of the duties we've discussed sound really fun. We'll be taking out the motor boat to re-stock the mid-lake privvies and check lake water levels. We'll also be cleaning restrooms (Wiley) and working in the gatehouse (me). They're also interested in having us do some interpretive programs with school children. There is not much activity in the campground in the winter, despite the great weather, because swimming in the lake is the big attraction of this campground.

So far, the only downside of this job that we've found is that we're in a canyon and don't get a cell phone signal. We've ordered a land line and dial-up internet (there's no wireless or broadband either). The dial-up is slow, but we'll have access to the office computers after hours, so we should still be able to blog.

That's it for this time--hopefully I'll be able to do another post soon.

10/27/07 (Saturday): We're in California! Tonight is our last night on the road. Tomorrow we'll be in our new home. We're in Indio (click this link to the map). We've come 2,185 miles so far. When I blog next time, I'll post the spreadsheet tracking our gas and other expenses.







We started the day at a little cafe in Rock Springs, Arizona (population about 35). Wiley ordered 3 pancakes. The waitress suggested that 1 would be plenty, but he opted for 2. Get a load of these pancakes! He couldn't even finish one!









It was a pretty uninteresting trip through yet more desert. This sign caught our eye! If you'd like more information, I happened on this website. Check out Wiley's Well -- it's pretty interesting.









As we got closer to California, the smoke from the wildfires became visible (and we could smell it). The further west we got, the grayer the skies got. The ground looked different in this part of the desert, too. It wasn't so rocky and there were fewer plants.








We also saw a convoy of Service Master trucks (a disaster clean-up company), and this busload of firefighters heading west.











We only made one stop (other than the usual pit stops) at Joshua Tree National Park. The park is famous for Joshua Trees, but we were in the Southeast end, and the Joshua trees grow in the Northwest part of the park. We took a nice, short hike to an oasis, though, and we plan to go back to see the Joshua trees. These are cottonwood trees, which grow down in a canyon where there is an oasis by a year-round creek.




The skies were just gorgeous. It was so wonderful to see clouds again!











They're actually calling for showers tonight, which should help with the wildfires.












Also in the oasis were these absolutely huge California Fan Palms. Impressive!

















This is not my picture--it's a picture of a Joshua Tree on a poster in the visitor center. They're pretty interesting plants, and I look forward to seeing them.















That's it for tonight. We want to get an early start tomorrow.

10/26/07 (Friday): I've gotten behind in my blogging--we're having such a good time playing tourist! So, for all you blog-deprived fans, this one's a huge one!

Tuesday's Adventures: We headed for Casa Grande National Historic Monument. It's located in the flat plain of central Arizona in between the Gila and Santa Cruz rivers, close to Coolidge and about 15 miles from the town of Casa Grande. The structure was once part of a collection of settlements scattered along the Gila River and linked by a network of irrigation canals. During spring, the monument is sometimes the hottest place in the whole USA, and even in winter, daytime temperatures can reach 80°F.

These are the well-preserved ruins of an ancient Hohokam farming community. The most striking ruins are of the Great House. (A modern shelter was built over the ruins to protect them.) They date from around 1350, and are still used by Native Americans today for ceremonial and religious events. It's one of the largest prehistoric structures ever built in North America. Its purpose remains as much a mystery as the people who built it. Archeologists have discovered evidence of wide-scale irrigation farming and trade which lasted over a thousand years and ended about 1450. No one knows what they called themselves, but they're now remembered as the "Hohokam," an O'odham (modern tribe) word meaning "Those Who Are Gone."

It is believed that the Casa Grande was a kind of astronomical observatory. The four walls face the points of the compass, and some of the windows are aligned to the positions of the sun and moon at specific times.









These were some impressive ruins. These ancient people were excellent builders. The walls were very thick. Many of the wooden beams were still intact. There were several stories with numerous interior rooms. All in all, it must have been a fairly good life!

Wednesday's Adventures: We headed out early Wednesday morning toward the little town of Camp Verde, Arizona. Our first stop was a tour of Ford Verde State Historic Park. Fort Verde was important in the Indian Wars of the 1870's and 1880's. Arizona was still a territory at this time. Three of the five original buildings still stand. We toured the commanding officers' quarters, the married officers' quarters, the bachelor officers' quarters and the surgeon's quarters. Although they seemed pretty primitive, it was apparently a desirable assignment at the time.


From Fort Verde, we headed to Montezuma's Castle. This is one of the best preserved cliff dwellings in North America. It had 20 rooms in several stories, nestled high in a limestone. The dwellings are over 1,000 years old, and demonstrate that these ancient people were brilliant survivors in an unforgiving desert landscape. I tried something new and made a short video to overview the ruins. I hope it works--it may take a few minutes for the video to load. Click on the arrow to start.




The entrance traverses a flat scrubland down into a valley formed by Beaver Creek - a small stream that was a reliable source of water all year round and thus a good locality for the Sinagua people to establish a home. It was quite a relief to escape the desert heat and dryness. The walk to the ruins was shaded by Arizona sycamore trees. Since 1951, visitors have not been permitted to climb up to the ruins due to their unstable condition, but there were very informative signs and a park ranger to answer questions. Here's another short video of Beaver Creek as it looks today.



We skipped a stop at Montezuma's Well, a rare desert spring, in favor of taking in Tuzigoot ruins (which is Apache for crooked river). Where Montezuma's Castle was a cliff dwelling, Tuzigoot was built on a mountain ridge. Like the people who lived at Montezuma's Castle (which is a misnomer, by the way--Montezuma lived in Mexico, not Arizona), the Tuzigoot belong to a pueblo culture known as the Sinagua. The pueblo consisted of 110 rooms in two- and three-story structures. The first buildings were built around A.D. 1000. The Sinagua were agriculturalists with trade connections that spanned hundreds of miles. The people left the area around 1400.

There was one final adventure after this very full day. We had a flat tire! Fortunately, we were not pulling the RV, and we were right next to a big parking lot where it was safe to change to the spare. Unfortunately, we had to drive 45 miles (and we were already 50 miles from our campground) to Flagstaff to get the tire changed. Discount Tires in Flagstaff replaced the tire at no cost (thanks to our road hazard insurance). We at dinner at a Chinese restaurant and drove almost 2 hours to get back to camp. Exhausting, but it would have been a lot worse if we'd had the trailer behind us!

Thursday's Adventure: We slept in in Thursday after the strenuous previous day. We decided we didn't feel like making the 3-hour drive to see the Grand Canyon--we'll catch it on the way back East next Spring. Instead, we decided to go panning for gold. We bought a pan ($12), parked in a nearby bait and tackle shop, and headed off to try our luck in the nearby Agua Fria River (which is dry most of the year, including now). No luck at all!




Someone told us we might have better luck in Prescott, so we drove about 35 miles north to Lynx Lake Recreation Area. This place was worth a visit just for the cool shade and green trees. We hiked down the Lynx Creek trail to the creek, which had a few pools of water remaining. We only found two tiny flakes of gold, but it was a lovely day.

Whew--I told you this was going to be a long blog! Hope you enjoyed reading about it as much as we enjoyed doing it.

We head out tomorrow for the final stretch to California. We plan to be at Lake Piru by Sunday afternoon. We spoke with the ranger there this morning, and the fire stopped on the other side of the lake from the campground. We're looking forward to settling down for the winter--having fun every day can be tiring! Talk to you again soon!

10/22/07 (Monday): The fun continues! Today we explored a little piece of the Sonoran Desert. First we went to the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum. This is a really neat introduction to the desert. It's mostly outdoors, part zoo, part botanical garden, part hiking trails through the desert. The Sonoran Desert is the only place in the world where Saguaro cactus grow. This desert looks like what everyone imagines a desert should look like. It's the desert of cowboys on horses and cartoon cactuses. We learned a lot from the docents and signs.

Next we went to Saguara National Park, where there's an 8-mile drive through the desert. It's gorgeous country, but I can't imagine how anyone ever managed to live here.

Many of the saguaros had these holes in them. They're made by woodpeckers, but are used by many other kinds of animals. We saw a cactus wren making a nest in one of them. The holes don't hurt the cactus--it makes a kind of a callous around the hole so that it doesn't lose water.

There are 50 kinds of cactus in the Sonoran Desert, and lots of wildlife. I thought this agave looked like it was sprouting an asparagus!





This ocatillo is not a cactus. Most of them we saw didn't have any leaves at all, just thorny branches. But within 48 hours of a rain, they sprout leaves!












The Boojum cactus took its name from Lewis Carroll's "Hunting of the Snark." According to the sign, the person who discovered the cactus named it for a desert plant in that story.










These are Cholla cactus. there are several varieties of them.





The Sonoran is the only desert in the world that has two rainy seasons, and yet it only gets about 12 inches of rain a year. Summer temperatures go over 100 degrees almost every day. I was surprised that the ground is not sandy; rather, it's quite rocky.

Tomorrow we head for Phoenix. We stop on the way at the Casa Grande ruins. We'll stay in the Phoenix area for several days because there's lots we want to see there, including the Grand Canyon!

10/21/07 (Sunday): Yesterday we drove all day and the campground (near Albuquerque) didn't have WiFi. Now we're in Arizona, just outside Tucson. Check out the map. For those of you following us on the map, we left I-40 at Albuquerque, NM, and dropped south on I-25 to Los Cruces, NM, where we picked up I-10. We're getting really close now! We're staying in Tucson for a couple of days to check out Saguaro National Park and some other places. But that's for the next blog!

First I want to tell you about our visit to Chaco Canyon, New Mexico. I'm going to take the lazy way out here, and rather than tell you what I learned from the signs and on our guided tour, I'll ask you to read the history at this web site: National Park Service, Chaco Canyon Website. Now that you know some of the history, here are a small number of the pictures we took on our excellent guided tour.





There was a 16-mile road into the park, the last 13 miles of which were unpaved. We were so glad we'd dropped the RV off at the campground! It took us over an hour to navigate that awful, cratered, washboarded road!! I had a headache and every tooth in my mouth hurt after that road.







This tiny "river" cut the canyon. It's almost dry right now, but apparently in some years it's got a lot of water in it. The only trees we've seen for hundreds of miles have been in little ravines that must have some water seasonally. As you can see, the trees are starting to turn.








The canyon walls are a pleasing pink color, and the ruins blend right in.
















This is what's left of the "great house." According to our guide, theories about it's role in the Pueblo Indian's life are changing. The whole area has been "dug" by archaeologists since the late 1800's, but as technology improves, theories change. Currently (at least according to our guide), the theory is that it was a trading center and spiritual place, but few people actually lived here.





There were some petroglyphs, and there was also some old grafitti.



















I forgot to mention -- we crossed the Continental Divide near Albuquerque! As I'm sure you already know, the Continental Divide is the line that divides the flow of water between the Pacific Ocean and Atlantic Ocean. Rain or snow that drains on the east side of the Continental Divide flows toward the Atlantic Ocean while precipitation on the west side drains and flows toward the Pacific Ocean. (However, some rivers empty into the desert and don't end up in the oceans.)

The continental divide runs from northwestern Canada along the crest of the Rocky Mountains to New Mexico. Then, it follows the crest of Mexico's Sierra Madre Occidental. In South America, the Continental Divide lies along the Andes.

Every continent except for Antarctica has a continental divide.

As we approached Arizona, the terrain became steeper and there were fewer ranches--we're definitely in the desert now. We've seen lots of cactus and mesquite trees.










We stopped for a couple of hours at a ghost town, which was very interesting. A couple from Ohio bought it a few years ago from a 1960's hippie guy, who'd actually lived there!







Steins was built in 1849, deep in Apache territory. It was named for Maj. Enoch Steins of the U.S. Cavalry, who was killed by Apaches in 1875.





The railroad built a watering tower and the town grew to a population of 1300. Steam engines needed to refill their water frequently, especially after long upward grades. There was also a quarry whose stone was used for building the railroad. Outlaw Black Jack Ketchum was captured and hung here.




The town died after the water source dried up and the railroad left. Most New Mexico ghost towns were mining towns, but this was a railroad town.

The town had a school, church, two brothels and several bars, a boarding house and a number of homes. When the railroad left, they moved people in rail cars to other railroad towns. They could only take what they could carry, so there was lots of stuff left behind. The houses still had beds made up with linens, clothing hanging on the walls, pots and pans in the kitchen, and an old Sears catalog in the outhouse!






The next blog will probably be full of pictures of the Arizona desert and cactus. But for now, like this tumbleweed, I'd best be moving on. Peace to you and yours!

10/18/07 (Thursday): I hardly know where to begin this blog. Today we went to Petroglyph National Monument. We've come so far, experienced so many different things, and still I can honestly say that we've had another fantastic day. I always knew we lived in a wonderful, diverse country, but I'm still flabbergasted by all our new adventures.






I'm going to break with tradition, and not try to explain these petroglyph pictures. I'll just give some history of the park and leave it up to you--what do you see?


A petroglyph is a picture or symbol carved into a rock (as opposed to a pictograph, which is painted). The petroglyphs we saw were mostly carved into basalt boulders that faced west or south on West Mesa, about 25 miles northwest of Albuquerque.



The escarpment where the petroglyphs are located is 17 miles long. It was formed by a series of volcanic eruptions about 150,000 years ago. The first two eruptions caused large flows of liquid lava, which followed the courses of ancient arroyos. Subsequent eruptions created cinder cone peaks.


Later, tributaries of the Rio Grande eroded the sand beneath the basalt caprock, and huge pieces were strewn along the face of the escarpment. After the boulders are exposed for many years, they develop a black "skin." The petroglyphs pierce this skin and reveal the white or gray coloration of the rock below. They're carved with stone tools.


There are over 20,000 petroglyphs, dating back hundreds of years and were mostly carved by the Pueblo people, although some were carved by Spanish shepherds. They include animals, insects and geometric forms. A quote I saw by a Pueblo elder sums up what I felt: "Each of these rocks is alive, keeper of a message left by the ancestors. . . . There are spirits, guardians; there is medicine. . . ." William F. Weahkee, Pueblo Editor.


The Park Service is not certain what all of the petroglyph images represent, and, in fact, says that sometimes "it is . . . not appropriate to reveal meanings of some images. American Indian tribes have different versions of meanings. For them, any one image may have complex or multiple meanings that depend upon the placement of the images." Whatever that means! Anyhow, most of the interpretive signs didn't even attempt to explain the images, which is kind of a shame, because it was really hard to tell what some of them were.


There are some simple crosses on some of the rocks. Historians believe these simple forms were Native American symbols of north, south, east and west. The more complex cross figures were carved by Spanish sheep herders and are Christian symbols. Another good sign explained that the petroglyphs that were "filled in" were older than the outline figures. They were carved by Archic Indians as long ago as 1,000 B.C.


Some of the later petroglyphs included plants, seeds and agricultural icons, because the Pueblo Indians were involved with agriculture, unlike the Archaic Indians, who were hunter/gatherers.


















We hiked three trails in the Boca Negra Canyon portion of West Mesa, and then we drove to another part of the park where there are trails up the cones of 3 extinct volcanoes.












Wiley didn't find the petroglyphys nearly as interesting as I did, but he enjoyed the volcano hike a lot. Can you see him on the very top of the volcano, looking like he's about to fly off?!













The whipped cream and cherry on top of our super day was spotting this ladder-backed woodpecker and having a roadrunner run right up to our truck and peer up at us. It's the first time we've seen either of these birds.












Just one more adventure in the continuing saga of Joyce and Wiley's great adventure!