My Trails

Rain port

Flagstaff has a few interesting tourist sites in and around the city. I have been to most of them on past visits but I find there are reasons to see them again. First of all, the places are fun to experience again, and secondly, I am building my trust back in Honda as I ride all over the area. And so when Richard suggested we meet up and ride to Walnut Canyon National Monument, I was happy to agree.

We decided to meet at Del Taco, have lunch, and then ride a back road the few miles to Walnut Canyon. It was only about 10 miles for me to our meeting place, but Richard and Dianna had a long trip from their home. We had a nice lunch and then headed down historic Route 66 going east out of town.

Route 66 parallels Interstate 40, and because it is not a main route anymore, understandably gets less attention from the maintenance crews. The road was very rough in places where the blacktop was broken and chipped. I was following Richard and Dianna down the highway when all of a sudden I saw them hit a particularly bad hole in the pavement. Richard’s travel mug bounced out of its holder and hit the road with a burst of liquid and flying parts. We came to a quick stop, parked along the road , and searched for several minutes for the missing lid. Richard finally located the lid up a bank and fit the damaged but usable pieces back together. We took it a little slower the rest of the way.

Walnut Canyon is a preserved site of ancient Anasazi cliff dwellings. The canyon is littered with dozens of stone structures built hundreds of years ago under the natural eroded cliffs. The park service maintains a walkway down 240 steps to a circular path where visitors can see close up the places the Indians lived. It is quite interesting to imagine what it would be like to live the way they did.
The problem with 240 steps down is that they must be climbed again to return to the visitors center. The afternoon was hot and I had forgotten to bring my water bottle. We all were feeling pooped by the time we reached the top. We spent a few minutes looking at the displays in the visitors center and then rode back into town for ice cream. It rained on us briefly on our way back but it actually felt good. We skipped Rt. 66 on our return and rode the busy but smooth Interstate highway.

It was a fun afternoon. Good times!

Trash

You never know what you’ll find while out walking in the woods. The other day I discovered an abandoned, family dump area only a few hundred yards from my camp that held the remains of discarded metal parts and tin cans. A lot of the trash was remains of some broken appliance or car part, but most of it was tin cans of the beverage type with two triangular holes punctured in the top (the sight of these always takes me back to another time.)

Probably the only thing that will recycle this boat is fire, but the forest is slowly swallowing up the rest of the trash pile, covering the metal with falling needles and rusting away the once treasured life of the object, and in a few more decades nothing visible will remain. It always makes me think of the answer an archeologist gave when asked how we know so much about past civilization. That answer he gave was: “We dig through their trash.”

When we lived on the farm we had a place back in the woods where all the trash was dumped. Every few weeks we would load up the wagon with discarded cans, bottles, broken plates, and useless trash that wouldn’t burn, and carry it back to a corner of the property and toss it over a bank. In the woods the trash was mostly out of sight and definitely out of mind. It is what all farmers did and probably do today.

I am camped in the Coconino National Forest just west of Flagstaff, AZ. I have my motorcycle back now and it seems to be running fine. After all this time waiting for it to be fixed it turns out that the main problem was just a faulty ignition switch. The good news is that the repairs were all covered by the warranty. The bad new is that this long wait has interrupted my plans for the summer and caused me to rethink what I will do.

It has been quite hot here in Flagstaff this week. The temperature has climbed into the 90’s each day and I would like to find a place a few degrees cooler. I will probably limit my travels this summer to the four states connected at a common point. There are lots of places in Colorado and New Mexico I have not seen, and I’m sure I can find interesting and temperate places to camp. I had planned on doing a lot of traveling this summer, but I have changed my mind. Even though the price of fuel is low, putting gas in this motorhome can quickly eat through my budget.

A campsite

I was getting tired of all the cold and rainy weather near Payson so I broke camp this morning and headed south. Just a few miles from Phoenix there is a recreation area I had read about in another blog and I decided to check it out.

Buckeye Hills Recreation Area lies a few miles west of Phoenix, in the southwest corner of I10 and Rt.85, amongst sprawling desert landscape similar to what you would find in Quartzsite. Usually, this time of year, it would be too hot to camp here. But this year has not been normal and forecast for this weekend is for highs in the 80’s. While I linger here, a couple hours drive from Phoenix, my hope is that my motorcycle will be fixed soon and I can start my migration north.

This camp is pretty nice. There is a loop road with several sites scattered along it, each with a picnic table, shade canopy, and charcoal stand. Some of the sites will accommodate big rigs, too. There are trashcans, pit toilets, and best of all, it’s free to stay here. I think it was built as a day use picnic area but there are no signs for no camping.

The major drawbacks are overcrowding on the weekends, off road vehicles, and a constant roar of fighter jets headed to Luke AFB. When I came in there were several tent campers and a few trailers. I doubt if many more RV’S will come in this weekend – most full timers have moved north by now.

When and if I ever get my motorcycle back from the Honda service center I will blog about the ordeal. The exact problem and time frame to fix it still seems to be a mystery. I was always afraid of a breakdown on my Sym motorcycle because of finding places to get repairs done. Honda dealers are all over the US and it would be easy to find competent, reliable service people. Wouldn’t you think so?

My type of road.

For the last three weeks I have been camping a few miles north of Phoenix, AZ near the towns of Payson and Cottonwood. The temperature is about 10 degrees cooler at both those locations than it is at the lower altitude around Phoenix, and it has been a good compromise between the weather near Flagstaff – still dealing with freezing temps and occasional snow flurries – and the weather in Phoenix that will be in the high 90’s this week. I didn’t intend to drive back into the inferno of the Valley, but here I am parked at my brother Daryl’s house again.

I have done lots of exploring around Payson and Cottonwood on previous visits but that didn’t stop me from jumping on Honda and riding those same roads again. The Payson area has many scenic forest roads that snake below the Mogillon Rim, offering unlimited adventure and fun. Sometimes when I would find myself on a deserted trail, miles from civilization, I would wonder what would happen if my motorcycle were to quit while I was so far from my motorhome and the thought would conjure up some uneasy feelings.

The day before I left my camp near Payson, Richard and Dianna drove down from their summer, volunteer home at the Blue Ridge Ranger Station and joined me to visit a couple historic sites. On a road north of town we walked through the ruins of an ancient Indian village and then a few miles further stopped to puzzle the existence of a waterwheel built high above the Verde River.

After I moved to Cottonwood, my sister Donna joined me for three days of RV practice and sightseeing. On our first trip up to tour the historic town of Jerome, our motorcycle ride turned out to be both good and bad. We had a great time learning the history of Jerome and visiting the tourist shops, but on the way back Honda decided it didn’t want to start after a quick stop at Walmart. After a lot of tries, I finally got it started and we high-tailed it to home. We were lucky that we weren’t stranded without a way to get back to our RV’s; I’m not sure what we would have done in that case.

I decided to take Honda back to where I bought it to let them fix it. Even though it will be uncomfortable to stay here in this heat for a few days, there is a chance my warranty will cover the repairs to my bike and I can be on my way up north without too much damage to my pocketbook. The service department is backed up for a week but I’m hoping they will get it in ahead of schedule.

On the other hand, it is nice to be back in town where I can see Mom and family here in Tempe and Mesa, but I hope my next post will be several miles closer to the North Pole.

No Arms

There was a story told to me by two people camped here at Gunsight Wash about a woman and her son who lived in the desert behind the BLM boondocking area. She was known as the crazy lady. Sometimes people get an unflattering label attached to them just because they are different than what we perceive is normal. This story is based mostly on rumor but here is what was told to me:

Long before this land was BLM, a woman and her son lived in Ajo, AZ. It is not altogether certain if the son got mixed up with the wrong crowd and got into drugs or if he was afflicted by some disorder like severe ADD, but whatever the reason, the mother took her son and moved to a remote part of the desert. No one knows what they lived in or much of anything more about how they lived. The story is that every day the woman would walk her son two miles to the road where he would meet the bus. There are rumors of how they lived but the only fact that can be substantiated is the display of rocks that the boy crafted during their time there.

I wanted to see if there was any evidence of the rock art that still existed so I rode Honda back through the desert yesterday. The people camped there gratiously showed me around and told me what they knew about the lady and her son. Apparently, the son did most of the work of carrying stones, laying them in heart-shaped rings around every bush and tree, making walkways, and building rock gardens. It was probably some kind of therapy activity.

The people that are camped there now are cleaning up some of the trash left. I guess not all the old lady and her son’s activities were making home beautiful. Eventually, the land became BLM and they moved all squatters out.

Ajo was home to the first copper mine in AZ, but since it closed the only thing that keeps the town alive is the tourists driving through to visit Organ Pipe National Monument, and the modern, mega complex located a few miles south in Why, AZ., comprising the headquarters to hundreds of boarder patrol agents. Every day the helicopter stationed there takes off to patrol the surrounding area.

Organ Pipe cactus don’t like frost. They are mostly indigenous to Mexico but some thrive in the south part of Arizona. This is all part of the Sonoran Desert, a place so arid that here the Saguaro have trouble getting enough moisture to make arms. Where I’m camped about the only thing growing is creosote bushes. Everyone says that no one is enforcing the 14 day limit. Even the camp host says that if a ranger comes through and says anything we will just play musical chairs and shuffle everyone up.