Sedona

We went to Sedona today. The country is just beautiful. It really is Red Rock Country. I believe you can click on all these pictures to expand them. They do look more impressive expanded.

This is a view from a pull off a few miles from Sedona. Note that the red rocks are not on the top layer in the mountains but near the bottom.

These home were on the road to Red Rock State Park. Every where you look you see beautiful homes like these. These are the rule not the exception. There certainly is some money in the area. The road is a loop road that comes out again on 89A the road to Sedona. We stopped at the park for some information but didn't go into the park. We drove farther up the road but it turned into a dirt road and since I didn't know at the time how far it went and where it went we turned around and went back the way we came to 89A. We later found out that it is dirt only for a few miles and is a very scenic drive. We intend to go back later and finish the drive.

This is the Chapel of the Holy Cross. It's about 5 miles out of Sedona. What a beautiful location and view from it's chapel.

This is a view in the back area of the chapel. I thought this was a good picture of Peg. As you can see she has quit dying her hair.

This one is called Bell Rock and is about 10 miles further down the road from Sedona. I assume you can tell why they call it the Bell Rock? Every where you go in the area they are working on the roads and building new businesses and homes.

This picture was taken from the airport. It is on the top of a Mesa and as you can see offers a great view of at least part of Sedona. There are a couple other views in the album and of course more pictures of the red rock formations.

Cottonwood

4/22/2007
We drove over to Miami, Globe and Claypool on route 60. They are about 15 miles east of Superior. We went to the Wal-mart for some groceries. The drive over is very mountainous and scenic. We just rested the rest of the day and got ready to move.

4/23/2007
We moved to the Turquoise Triangle RV Park in Cottonwood AZ. Cottonwood is about 15 miles west of interstate route 17 on route 260. It is in the Red Rock Country. We will be here a week visiting the sites. Peggy lost a filling in her tooth and made an appointment with a dentist in Camp Verde. Camp Verde is a small town about 15 miles west of Cottonwood at the intersection of interstate 17 and route 260.

4/24/2007
In the morning we drove over to Clarksdale. It's about 5 miles further west on Historic route 260. We wanted to see where the train left from. There is a four hour train ride through a canyon in this area which we want to take. On the way back we stopped at the Tozigoot National Monument. After the monument we went to Peggy's dentist appointment. The dentist told Peg she would have to have the tooth capped and it would cost $1100.00. She decided to wait until we got home to have it done.

Sign explaining the ruins.

Path to the ruins.

Some of the rooms at this site. Of course they all had wooden roofs and the entrance was from the roof down a latter.

It seems that they don't know why any of these people in the whole southwest left the area and they don't know where they went or what became of them. The people that built this are called the Sinaqua (which means with out water in Spanish). Tuzigoot is Apache for Crooked Waters.

This cactus was in bloom just outside the visitors center. Here is the link to the Tuzigoot site if you want more information.

http://www.nps.gov/tuzi/

Boyce Thompson Arboretum

4/20-21/2007
The following pictures for these dates are all taken at the Boyce Thompson Arboretum State Park near Superior, AZ. We decided to go on Friday as well as on Saturday. The arboretum is 320 acres so we knew we couldn't see it all in one day. On Friday we went with a tour guide and on Saturday we just went around the park revisiting areas were we wanted to take more pictures. They have so many exotic plants from other countries that it is difficult to know what all of them are. Most of them are labeled but not all. So I don't have all of them labeled, like the one below. If you are interested there are many more pictures at my picture album site.

Here is an example of one I don't know the name of but it is so pretty that I included it any way. So many cactus look alike to those of use that are not knowledgeable about cactus.

This one was labeled and is called the Yellow Bird of Paradise. It is a small bush with very feathery leaves.

This one is called the Bottle Brush Tree. It really stands out in a stand of other trees. The first time I saw one of these was in Key West, Florida. They are beautiful.

This one is the Joshua tree. There is a Joshua Tree National Park in California. The following is from the Joshua Tree National Park Site, "The Joshua tree, Yucca brevifolia, is a giant member of the lily family. Like the California fan palm, Washingtonia filfera, the Joshua tree is a monocot, in the subgroup of flowering plants which also includes grasses and orchids. The Joshua tree provides a good indicator that you are in the Mojave Desert, but you may also find it growing next to a saguaro cactus in the Sonoran Desert in western Arizona or mixed with pines in the San Bernardino Mountains." For more information on the Joshua Tree National Park click on this link http://www.joshua.tree.national-park.com/info.htm#tree.

This is an unusual looking tree as seen below.

The Boojum Tree.

This is the flute player they had there for the Arbor Day celebration. He had about 10 different flutes with him and played several of them. They were made from different types of wood. The weather that day was very cool and windy. He tried to play a flute that was made of Cedar but it wouldn't play right. He said that the cedar wood flute is very sensitive to cold. The flute music to my ear is very soothing. It was very nice to be able to walk around the park and hear the flute music in the air. It gave you a sort of surreal feeling. We had brought our lunch to eat in the picnic area but it was so cool we decided to go back to the motorhome and eat it.

Superior, AZ

4/18/2007
We moved from Phoenix Metro RV Park to Glendale and Ron Wickland's lot (D&R's Family RV), waiting until Thursday to have our solar monitor repaired. Ron has something like a car port to park under for them to work on out of the sun and rain. He backed our motor home under it just enough to let our satellite stick out so I could raise it and have my Internet and TV for the night. He also has a 30 amp connection that we could use. So we were able to spend the night there very comfortably. He also brought in an other customer with a bus conversion that needed some work. Naturally at night his gates are locked but he gave us a key, so we were able to go to the Arrowhead Mall on Bell Street, about five miles up the road.
4/19/2007
Ron and his son started work on it the first thing in the morning and were through by 9:30. We left our catalytic heat with him to fix and will pick it up when we go back to Phoenix, May 10th for our appointment with Earnhardt for some hopefully minor repairs. Since we were through so early we headed out for Superior, AZ were we will visit the Boyce Thompson Arboretum on Saturday, which is Arbor day. They are having some special entertainment to celebrate Arbor day. The Arboretum is a world class, 320-acre collection of plants cooperatively managed by a nonprofit Corporation, the University of Arizona College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and Arizona State Parks. We hope to get some good pictures of Cactus in bloom. We are camped at Superior RV Park about one mile from Boyce Thompson Arboretum. It's a small campground right on route 60 so there is plenty of traffic noise. Seem we can't get away from either traffic noise or train whistles. At least it is open so my satellite works.

After we set up at the campground we took a drive further east on route 60 and got these pictures at a pull off just through the tunnel. As you can see it's very rugged country but pretty, at least to me.

It is considered a scenic highway and I agree at least as far as we went. This part of the road was in a canyon with so many rocks all around that looked like they were ready to fall any minute.

If you look close you can see the whole way through the tunnel. We just drove to the top of the mountain. The sign said 7% grade for the next 10 miles. When we turned around to go back down the sign said 7% grade for the next 5 miles. That was what we had just come up. The town of Superior is very old and small. We stop at a Mexican Restaurant for lunch. The only other place in town we saw to eat was a Dairy Queen. I was going to give our plans for tomorrow but we really don't have any plans for tomorrow yet. I guess we'll have to wait until tomorrow. Retirement is great.

Phoenix 4/16/2007

We finally made it to warmer weather. The temperatures here in Phoenix for the next couple of days will be in the upper eighties. We are at the Phoenix Metro RV Park. It's in the northern part of Phoenix just off route 17. The area is growing by leaps and bounds. They have construction every where. It makes it hard to get around with all the road construction and the traffic is typical of any large city, heavy and congested. We are going to Glendale Wednesday to get the solar monitor fixed (Link 1000).

Mt. Taylor

Yesterday (4/11/2007) we decides to go to Gallup. It's just 50 or 60 miles from Milan on route 40. The morning drive was great. The Red Rock Mesas are outstanding. The are a deep rusty red and beautiful, at that time of day the sun was shining on them just right. On the way we tried to find Red Rock State Park but the signs to it are bad and we never did find it. The first stop in Gallup was at Walgreens to get one of my many prescriptions filled. We left it with plans to pick it up on the way back. Next we went to the main post office on 2nd street to get our mail which we had forwarded to it. I had looked up the address on line. However, when we got there we found out it was only a central point for deliveries of mail. Fortunately a lady who was putting some mail in the mail box outside directed us the the correct post office on Aztec Street. After picking up our mail we went to the Wal-mart. Peggy always has to check out every Wal-mart fabric department. She buys more fabric than I buy books. While at the Wal-mart I got a call from Walgreens telling me they didn't have enough pills to fill my prescription but that she had called around town and found some place that did, did I want her to transfer the prescription there. Naturally I ask where? She said "Wal-mart. " I said since that was where I was that would be nice, so I got my prescription filled at Wal-mart. We ate lunch at Cracker Barrel which was just across the street from Wal-mart and then headed back home.
Thursday 4/12/2007
Today since the weather here has been so bad, windy and cold, we decided to go back to the visitor center and view some of the 35 videos they had to view. When we got there at 10 o'clock and ask about viewing some of the videos, they told us that a meeting was being held in the theater and would not be available until 12 o'clock. So we took a drive up to Mt Taylor. What an experience. The man at the visitor center had told me that we could only go so far because part way up the mountain you needed a high clearance vehicle. Well believe me the Saturn is no high clearance vehicle, so I thought I would have to turn around some where on the way up. Well we kept going up and up. About half way up the road turned to a gravel road but a well maintained road, so I kept going. About 10 miles up, not in altitude but in distance, we saw a sign that said to Mt Taylor look out, so we took it. Well we kept going up and the road started to get slick and muddy, the surrounding forest had snow patches all through it. We finally came to a rest area and I pulled off to look at the map we had. The road continued on up and was getting more muddy and narrower, so I decided to turn around. We went back down to the turn off that we had taken and continued on it. The road got narrower and there was more and more snow. The trees still had some snow on them from the snow the night before. The map indicated that if we continued on we would finally get to a road that would take us back to Milan. We kept going and it started to snow. Just ahead two Elk ran across the road, so I stopped while Peggy got the camera to try and get a picture of them, then there were two more and two more and three more. We thought that was all, so I started to drive on, Peggy yelled there's two more. I coasted further down the road and sure enough two more ran across the road. Guess what? Peggy never got a picture of one of them. :-) We drove on and I was getting more nervous, the road was actually getting snow on it and slippery, I sure didn't want to get struck up in these mountains. Finally we came to a dead end intersection. No sign, which way right or left? Peg said left. The road left was wider and better maintained so we went left. After what to me seemed like forever we started down the mountain and we could see the valley below and knew we were on the right road. When we got to the valley it started to sleet in sheets, but the sign said to Milan 15 miles and the road was a black top, "hurray." We finally got home, had lunch and I spent the rest of the evening watching the Braves get beat, but it was a good game. You really don't need a high clearance vehicle but a four wheel drive would be nice.

El Malpais 4/10/2007

I have finally found out why my pictures could not be clicked on and expanded. When I upload them as long as I don't move them they can be expanded. So all of the ones in today's entry can be clicked on and expanded. Now I need to get them so that when they expand they aren't bigger than the screen. I'll work on that in my next entry. I'm going to get this right one of these days. At least now if you expand them you can scroll them to see all of the picture in a better size, unfortunately not all at once. The scenery pictures are so much better blown up to full screen.
I haven't added any thing to the blog in a couple of days because we haven't gone any where. The weather has been so bad. We are having rain and very strong winds. Yesterday was so windy we didn't even stick our noses out the door (4/09/2007). Peggy got her sewing machine out and made her self a pair of pajamas. I tried to get caught up on some of my reading and the baseball season has started so when TBS carries the Braves games I get to watch them.
Since later this week they are predicting higher winds and freezing at night we decided to stay here for another 5 days. "Ain't retirement grant, no schedule". :-)
Tuesday was cold and very windy but we decided to brave it and go to El Malpais pronounced el-mal-pie-EES. It means "the badlands". The west boundary of El Malpais is about 20 miles south of Grants on route 53. We stopped at the visitor center for information and a brochure on the National Monument. Our first stop was the Ice Cave and Bandera Volcano. It is privately owned since it was owned before the area was made into a National Monument. We took the trail to the Ice Cave first. The picture below is an example of the surrounding terrain. It is very rough volcanic lava.
This picture is a close up of the lava showing how porous it looks. Since it is close up the field of dept is limited so the left side of the picture is not in focus but the right side is.

The entrance to the Ice Cave is down about 65 steps into a collapsed lava tube.

The temperature never gets above 31 degrees down here even in the heat of the summer. The ice has the green algae color from the algae being washed down in to the ice from above and them freezing.

After the Ice Cave we could have gone to the volcano but it was a half mile up a trail that rose a 150 feet to the top of the Volcano. The wind was blowing so hard and I didn't think I could make it up the hill so we skipped it. One of the many problems with getting old, I know it beats the alternative. :-) The ticket man gave us a pass to come back on a better day to go to the top of the volcano. On the way back we stopped at what the park calls the Calderon Area. There are a couple of collapsed lava tubes here and some trails to other interesting sites. The collapsed tubes were close enough that I could get to them. Below is a picture of one of them. There are about seventeen miles of tubes in the area and apparently some cavers do explore them.

From there we went back to route 40 and went east to exit 89 and took route 117 south to the east side of El Malpais. The first stop was a BLM ranger station. Adjacent to the National Monument is a National Conservation Area. The National Monument is administered by the National Park Service but the National Conservation Area is administered by the BLM (Bureau of Land Management). They also have a nice ranger station with views over the lava field and tapes you can view about the area. The first stop after the ranger station was at the Sandstone Bluffs Overlook area. The wind was blowing so hard we were afraid to get near the edge of the bluff for fear of getting blown over the cliff. The picture below is a view from the bluffs. The grey area in the middle is part of the lava flow. This is about twenty miles south of route 40 and the lave extends all the way to route 40. There were three volcanoes in the area that contributed to these lava areas.

From there we headed south another 10 miles to the La Ventana Natural Arch. The picture below is from the path into the arch. Note the white sand stone near the top of the mesa. Peggy is in th bottom left of the picture. It might give you some idea of how cold that wind was.

The arch is the largest in New Mexico. I'm looking forward to seeing the ones in Utah. From there we drove further south on route 117 through what they called the narrows. It is an area where the lava flow gets very close to the mesa so there was not much room for then to build a road. We stopped at the Lava Falls area but again unfortunately it was too far a walk to get to on such a cold and windy day. From there we headed back to the motor home, but first we had to stop at Wal-mart for a few supplies. Tomorrow we plan to go to Gallup to see about getting a hair cut picking up our mail, which we had sent there, and seeing if we can find a mall for Peggy to walk in. She has that restless leg syndrome and has to walk every day or she can't sleep at night.