Back to Tucson

I needed to fly out for a business trip so we went back to Tucson since it has an easy to use airport. I refused to take any pictures of snow and ice in Spokane Washington. Scraping the car and walking on ice was not fun!

John spent the week fixing up the RV. We had a chip in the windshield that he got fixed. He bought a couple of new batteries. Our old RV had 2 batteries while our new one only had one. We weren’t able to last a day without needing generator power with only that single battery. John spent a LOT of time trying to solve a problem with insulation in the back section of the RV.

Back in 2012 when we visited Tucson, we found a mine among the hills behind this RV Park. I searched for it during our visit last month but never found it. It took a 3 hour hike (total), but I found it. I just thought it was cool!

“The Wall” along Mexico

I’ve been reading a book on global warming (yes, I believe things are getting warmer). One of the issues the author discussed was that habitat fragmentation is a second major environmental issue. As things get warmer, species need to move to a better habitat. So it’s already a problem that ‘nature’ is limited to different parks and reserves that aren’t necessarily connected. Adding a wall makes things all the worse.

Here’s the ‘wall’ at one section. This section is taller than normal (~15’) and its five miles long. The good part is that they have openings in the wall to allow water through that also allows for small animals to move back and forth. However, larger animals have to travel 5 miles to get around this wall. What would they do if the wall was longer?

Apparently, there are people in the Border Patrol that do nothing but repair the wall. People cut through the wall all the time. Again, this is just a small section.

This part of the wall is designed just to keep out cars. There really aren’t any major problems with immigrants crossing in this area. There have been drug smugglers here at the park so now they can’t drive their vehicles across. With all this talk about the wall, most of these people are found with other methods. Cameras, towers, infrared, and other methods are used. None of the people I talked to felt that a “wall” was a modern response to these issues…just old-fashioned and limited thinking.

BTW, I was an illegal alien or at least my foot was.

Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument

Last time we were here was in February, which is spring for this park. In January the only thing we found blooming was the ocotillo. This plant (not actually a cactus) is interesting since it looks like dead sticks until it rains when it takes only 48 hours for the leaves to come out.

The organ pipe cactus is found in only a small area in the United States. It is only found in the very south. Matter of fact, it was around 20 miles into the park before we saw the first one.

Every day we were there we saw a fire burning in Mexico. We heard this was farmers burning their fields.

Desert view

The desert had a spring. This is nice, but it took us around 50 minutes to drive here.

We did a lot of hikes.

There were several mines and abandoned buildings in the area. What a view!

When they dug, the tailings were moved out to this path and dumped into a hill.

The signs said it was gold, silver, and copper mining in the area.

3:10 to Yuma

The movie was about getting an outlaw to Yuma for a trial. Today the Yuma Territorial Prison is barely still there, but the museum is good with restored buildings that survived and some that have been rebuilt.

  

I loved this lace that a prisoner made when he wasn’t trying to escape.

These cells were small and lodged 6 prisoners per cell!

 

Troublemaker!

Odds and Ends

I did quite a bit of geocaching in town which meant I was all over town. At one point I saw what I thought was this decorative rabbit in a yard before it suddenly ran away. Later I saw a coyote in the distance.

Houses in Quartzsite can be fun. There can be art, scrap wood & steel, and even a pyramid as decorations.

Yuma had several fun things to see on the route into town. This is an atomic cannon (there were two of them). Apparently shooting atomic weapons was a cool thing to do.

There was a little church (there are lots of these around the country). Plus, this is a “bridge to nowhere”. At one time it crossed a river but now it’s just sand below and the road was rerouted years ago.

Just to make the people in winter jealous…here’s a picture of the walking path I was on this week.

Quartzsite – Bizarre and Fun

Numbers-wise, Quartzsite has a bizarre population. They say the population is 3,500 here in the summer and 250,000 in January and February. It’s one thing to read that, but it’s another to see it and understand the implications. The town doesn’t have any real ‘chains’ except McDonalds. There are no Lowes, Walmart, Best Buy, etc. Since most of the year the population is so small, why build a store here?  Some small stores and restaurants make it through the year living off the profit from winter months. Others open only during the winter months.

The appearance is bizarre. During the summer, there are a few permanent building scattered around town. Mostly there are what looks like open fields. Come winter, the RV parks fill up and tents go up for a major flea market along with gem shows.

Of course, the fun part is the bizarre people and things to do. The town is known as the home of Hi Jolly. As an experiment, camels were brought here to see how they would do in the desert. The experiment was cut short by the Civil War. Anyhow, one of handlers was called  Hajj Ali. Locally, he was called Hi Jolly. The town built him this pyramid when he died.

Since I used to work for a company that made wheels, here I am by a statue.

Randomly, there are two jets as a memorial.

This is a 1,000 year old ironwood tree.

Celia’s Rainbow Garden was started as a memorial for an 8-year who died from cancer. More people built memorials to their loved ones and it grows. There doesn’t appear to be any rules to this. Just add a sign, maybe some plants, statues, or rocks. These memorials show personality!

There’s even a small ‘town’.

The two Belts are by the World’s Largest Belt Buckle.

Talking to Paul, the Naked Bookstore Owner, was the highlight of our visit (or at least the most memorable). He knows a lot about books and has some wonderful stories including a performance at Brown University and Bette Midler. Don’t watch this at work! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K69he7qsLiQ

Superstition Mountain

Some pictures of the mountain that seem to live up to its name!

A Major Challenge

Back in February 2012 we visited Lost Dutchman State Park in Apache Junction Arizona. We listed this as our best hike, not only for the hike we did then but for the possibility of the larger hike we couldn’t finish when we ran out of water and time.

The big hike at the park goes 2 miles to a point called The Basin (above). That’s as far as we could make last time. The full hike is 3 miles to The Flat Iron (in the middle of the picture below) with an elevation change of 3000’. That is a LOT of climbing. Plus, from our campsite we added another 0.6 miles to the trailhead so it was a total of 7.2 miles.

We had plenty of water this time (2.5 liters each) plus snacks and started at 9:30 am. And we made it!!! This was the most difficult trail I’ve ever done. It’s not just a hike, there is climbing up rocks with no discernible trail.

The good news is that everyone helps each other on this trail. There is plenty of encouragement and help with the route plus even physically helping each other over rough spots.

By the end of the hike, our legs were like spaghetti. My arms were exhausted from bracing myself on the climbs and getting back down the rocks. We both hurt a lot the next 2 days, but we did it!

The views are amazing at the top. Is it worth it? Yes, if you are young and in great shape it would be worth hiking this several times. For us 50+ people, once is enough!