The Wedding Cache, End of Hiking, September Travel Plans Made

From Coconino National Forest near Flagstaff, Arizona:

It’s still definitely summer here at 8,100′, although the daytime temperatures rarely exceed 81° or 82°. There hasn’t been any rain for several weeks, ever since the very-timely week of moisture that came through the area just in time to help battle the Museum Fire back in late July. Everything is covered in dust again, both inside and outside the rig and it’s a constant battle to keep things wiped down and swept up. But when we look at the weather in other parts of the U.S., we feel blessed to have been here this summer where temperatures have been moderate and the skies have been blue.

Andy’s still hiking from time to time, as long as it’s downhill both ways! 🙂

It had been awhile since I had gone geocaching. According to the geocaching app, there were only three caches that were located within what for me is walking distance from our campsite, and I’ve already found all three of those. There are many more that are hidden in places that are just a short drive away. I saw an interesting-looking one on the app that was located not far from the trailhead on Snowbowl Road, just about a ten minute drive from our campsite, and I talked Andy into going with me to look for it.

According to the notes in the app, the cache was hidden by a couple near the location where they had been married a year earlier, in celebration of their first wedding anniversary. It was a .3-mile walk from the trailhead, and then a left turn up into the trees and rocks. The GPS coordinates got us to the general area but then we had to search high and low among all the boulders and fallen trees. I finally found it hidden among the roots of a huge downed pine tree, covered with some smaller pieces of wood.

Hard to see, but there’s an ammo box geocache hidden in there.

The cache was an ammo box (one of my favorite containers to find because they have lots of room for swag), and it was in great condition. I signed the log and left a plastic bunny that I had found at another geocache when we first arrived here (I know this bunny has some pop-culture significance, but I don’t know what it is). In return, I took a crocheted heart from the cache.

I left the bunny and took the crocheted heart from the Wedding Cache.

When I got back home I read the tag on the heart and found that it was one of thousands that are being scattered around the world by an organization called The Peyton Heart Project (peytonheartproject.net). The hearts each have an uplifting, encouraging message written on the attached tag, and are intended to be a morale booster to anyone who might be considering suicide or self-harm. The organization was founded in memory of a kid named Peyton who took his own life after being bullied. They are always looking for volunteers both to crochet the hearts and also to distribute them. If you’re good with a crochet needle, check them out. NOTE: For those who don’t know how to crochet, they also make the hearts by just wrapping yarn around a cardboard heart-shaped template.

After we found the geocache, we did some more hiking on the Viet Springs trail, looking for an old cabin that was supposed to be down there. We found the memorial boulder at the fork in the trail, but we didn’t go far enough to get to the cabin since it would have been even more of a strenuous uphill return climb, and the hubby isn’t as used to hiking as I am.

I was still enjoying my daily morning hikes through the forest around here–that is, until my last hike on Friday morning. I chose one of my favorite routes that should have been quiet and peaceful with a good chance to spot some deer (along with the cows that are now scattered throughout the woods). But as I hiked along, I noticed that there were more campers and four-wheelers than usual along the trail, even for a Friday morning. I  also came across a guy cutting up firewood with a chainsaw. Not exactly the peaceful, quiet hike that I was anticipating.

Summer thistles are starting to fade now, but still colorful.

But things got a lot less “serene” when I was about a half-mile from our rig on my return. I saw a red pickup truck in a small clearing off the trail, and there was a young couple kneeling on the ground next to a tree, and at first I thought they were setting up a tent because it looked like he was pounding in tent stakes. But as I drew nearer, I saw that they had a deer carcass strung up by its hoof to a tree, and they were butchering it on the ground.

Hike ruined.

Now, I know that people have hunted wildlife for ages in order to feed their families. I don’t eat meat anymore, but I get it. I have brothers who are avid hunters, and I grew up in a culture where hunting was celebrated. What I failed to realize was that the archery hunting season had opened Friday morning, and that’s why there were so many people in the woods that day. All I could think about was that deer, strung up to a tree, being eviscerated right on my hiking path. It was probably one of the deer that I had seen so often on my walks, possibly one that had visited our campsite on multiple occasions.

I see deer in the woods on almost every hike, and they occasionally visit our campsite.

So now, I’ve lost all my desire to hike through the forest here. I feel like we’re camped in the middle of a hunting ground–which we are. Hopefully most of the hunters are only here for the weekend and they’ll head home today. But there will be some who will remain here, and then next weekend is Labor Day weekend, which I’m sure will bring even larger crowds into this area, riding their four-wheelers with their weapons, looking to bag one of “my” deer. The whole thing has left me depressed and unsettled.

We were already planning to start traveling again in September, but the opening of hunting season has set the wheels in motion, even though the weather is still nicer here than it will be anywhere else we go. But yesterday we did some research and made some travel plans.

We’ll be pulling out of here on September 3, the day after Labor Day, and heading to New Mexico. We’ve made reservations for three nights at Bluewater Lake State Park, located off I-40 near Prewitt, New Mexico at an elevation of 7,554′. We chose this location for several reasons: (1) we’ll have electrical hookups so we can run the air conditioner if needed, (2) there are showers and a dump station onsite, (3) there’s a lake, and (4) we’ll only have to pay $4/day for the electricity since we still have an active New Mexico State Parks annual pass. I wanted a site with access to electricity and water so that I can spend one day giving the rig a deep cleaning after being in this dust for so long. Only 14 of the 149 sites in this park have electricity, so reservations were essential even if there was a $12 fee just to make the reservation on the online system, ReserveAmerica (such a ripoff!).

After our three nights are up there, depending on the weather, we will most likely head up to the Durango, Colorado area to do a little boondocking in the San Juan National Forest. Or we might decide to just snag a first-come first-serve site at the same state park where we’ll already be. No need to plan TOO far ahead! 🙂

September travel plans, subject to change according to the weather.

We have thoroughly enjoyed our stay here in the Flagstaff area this summer, and are already talking about coming back here next year. But who knows, a lot of things can change between now and then, including weather patterns. This year there was an above-average amount of snow and rain in the winter and spring here in the Southwest which made everything very lush. That could be very different next year, and temperatures could be much warmer. We shall see!

Tomorrow is our official 1-year anniversary of our full-time RV lifestyle! One year ago tomorrow, we moved out of our sticks-and-bricks house and into our RV, and then parked it at nearby Tombigbee State Park just outside of Tupelo while we finished emptying the house for the closing three days later.

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We’re home! #Maggie rules the roost, #Molly will hide until the sun goes down. #rvlife #fulltimerv

A post shared by Suzanne Hight (@justcallusnomads) on Aug 26, 2018 at 2:40pm PDT

This year has flown by like a rocket! We have absolutely no regrets about our decision to downsize and live on the road, and cannot wait to see what the future holds for us!

Thanks for taking time to read our blog! Feel free to share it with family and friends who might be interested in full-time RV living. If you want to keep up with our adventures, please subscribe. And you can also find us on Instagram at Instagram.com/JustCallUsNomads if you want to keep up with us between blog posts.

Safe travels!

 

Hello, 911, We Need a Rescue

We’re just starting our fifth full day in our latest campsite on Forest Road 151, just north of Flagstaff, Arizona. We couldn’t have asked for a more perfect place to park for a couple of weeks. The view of Humphrey’s Peak over the pine trees above our rig is magnificent, although the snow is starting to melt now for the summer. We’ve seen lots of deer and squirrels (we especially like the long-eared Abert’s squirrel), and a huge variety of bird species.

On Friday, our first full day in camp, we took a walk up the road to check out the surroundings and to look for a geocache. We found ourselves in a beautiful stand of aspen trees that are just starting to leaf out. We also encountered a single deer, and then later a herd of 8-9 crossing the road ahead of us.

Beautiful stand of aspen trees on Forest Road 151

We found the geocache in the ruins of an old house where only the fireplace remained. The cache had been placed there originally in 2010 and was last logged as found in October of 2018. The setting was in a clearing in the aspen trees, and the ground was covered in yellow dandelion flowers, so it was a beautiful place to search.

The area where I found geocache #36 off Forest Road 151

Saturday was a day to do chores and run errands. We started out at the Supermat Laundromat, which wasn’t as crowded as I feared it might be on a weekend morning. We usually refer to Yelp for recommendations on laundry facilities when we get to a new town This one was highly recommended–and we agree. We were in and out in just over 90 minutes to do three large loads.

Next, we headed out to lunch at Cornish Pasty Co., based on a recommendation from some vegan RVers that we follow on YouTube. Note that it’s “pasty”, not “pastry”. A pasty is a folded pastry case that holds a savory filling, usually meat and vegetables. If you’re from the South, it looks like a fancy fried pie, but it’s baked. And they have a whole list of vegan options. We selected the Vegan Cubano pasty, made with seasoned jackfruit, vegan ham and cheese, spices and a dill pickle. We also got an order of their baked fries. The entire meal was both filling and delicious–in fact, I couldn’t finish mine, but Andy took care of it for me.

The Vegan Cubano pasty at the Cornish Pasty Co.

After lunch, we hit Walmart for our weekly grocery haul, and then headed back to the rig. We were both so full from lunch that we didn’t even eat dinner.

On Sunday, I decided to do some hiking on the forest road that starts right across from our campsite, FR 9005L. I passed some really nice vacant campsites along the way that looked inviting, but the road is a little too rough to drive Lizzy down, at least for my comfort level. When I came to the intersection with FR 9216Q, I turned right to explore some more. I came through some beautiful Ponderosa pine and aspen forest. In some places a lot of the aspens had either fallen or had been taken down by the loggers. I found one old pine that was striking with it’s twisted pattern and burn marks. The colors were so vibrant in the sunlight that it was impossible to walk by without taking a photo or two.

Twisted, burned tree trunk on FR 9216Q

The road eventually became a narrow path which led up a hill, and when I got to the top I found a wide open meadow that afforded an almost unobstructed view of the San Francisco Peaks. I could even make out the ski lifts on the slopes.

Awesome view of the peaks from my hike on FR 9216Q

After soaking in the view for a few minutes, I turned around and headed back to the rig. On the way back down the hill, my right ankle twisted slightly on an uneven rock and I fell to my left knee, scraping it up in the process. It was just a little scrape, nothing serious. But when I was almost back to camp, I suddenly realized that I no longer had my sunglasses, which I believe were perched on top of my baseball cap when I fell. I was pretty sure that they must have flown off my head at that point, so I decided that I would do the same hike the next day to look for them.

And that my friends, is where the story of this blog really starts to get interesting.

Read on.

Yesterday morning, as usual, I got up about 5:30 AM when the cats decided it was time to be fed. I had my breakfast and coffee, checked email, and read for a little bit. When Andy got up at his usual time of about 8:00 AM, I made up the bed and got dressed. I told him I was going to go back and look for my sunglasses and asked him if he wanted to go with me. He’s not usually very keen about hiking in the morning, and told me he still needed to eat breakfast and go through his morning routine. I told him I could wait for him, but since he wasn’t really interested in going, I decided to go ahead and leave.

Before I left, as usual, I told him exactly where I was going, even showing him a photo of the road marker for the turn to FR 9216Q. I packed up my cellphone, some toilet paper, my ID, and a bottle of water, grabbed my trekking pole, and headed out, telling him I’d be back in about an hour. When I left, he was still eating breakfast.

I completed my hike as planned, although I didn’t find my sunglasses. I stayed on the trail except for a couple of times when I ventured off for maybe 30 yards to look for them in the the same places I had stopped on the previous day, but I was never out of sight of the trail. I also make it a habit to leave “bread crumbs” along the way–rock cairns, arrows formed from sticks or stones, etc. to guide me on my return hike–and these were all still in place from the previous day’s hike.

On the trail to look for my sunglasses, while enjoying the beauty of the forest

When I got back to camp about an hour after leaving, I found the RV locked and Andy gone. I had not carried my set of RV keys with me (why take a chance on losing them?), so I was stuck outside until he got back. I figured he had just gone for a short walk up the road, so I decided to check in via text:

Me: Where are you?

Andy: On my way back!! I went way up the road. Thought I would meet you. Guess not. I’ll be awhile. 45min or so.

Me: Thanks for locking me out. 🙂

Andy: Thought I’d meet you. Sorry!

So I decided to just hang out on in a lawn chair on our front porch, watch a little Hulu and work on my tan until he got back.

Hanging outside the locked RV, wondering when Andy was going to show up

But he never showed up so I texted again:

Me: It’s been an hour. Are you lost?

Andy: I believe so. Can’t find a map these little roads. Right now I’m at 9216G & 9217N.

Me: Sh**. Stay put.

Andy: K

I did a quick Google search to see if I could locate a map with those road numbers, but the only map I could find didn’t show roads that small on the map. So I grabbed my pack and my trekking pole and started out down the road. Along the way, I texted and then called him, giving him instructions on how to use Google Maps to drop a pin with his location, and then text it to me. Evidently he didn’t have good cell coverage where he was, because it took awhile for his texts to show up on my phone with the coordinates.

Once I received his text, I clicked on the link and his location (supposedly) popped up on my phone with directions, showing it would be about a 19-minute hike to his location. I let him know I was on the way, and he let me know that his cell phone was about out of juice so he would need to turn it off for awhile.

I started hiking as quickly as I could, following the directions on Google Maps, but soon all it said was “Re-routing”. I stayed on the forest road, and when the map said to turn onto a different road, I left my usual stick-arrows on the ground to guide me back out. I hiked the entire distance to the coordinates he had given me, but he wasn’t there. I yelled “Hello!” several times, but did not get a response.

By that time, my own phone was losing battery power, and I switched to Low Power Mode. I knew I had to make a decision before I lost power altogether–keep looking, or call for help?

I decided to call for help.

Forest Road 9216Q becomes a small dirt-bike trail, where I slipped and skinned my knee

I called the Coconino National Forest office in Flagstaff and told them what was going on. I gave them the same information that Andy had given me regarding the forest road intersection where he was located. They asked for a physical description and his phone number, which I provided. After all that, they said they were transferring me to the Flagstaff Rangers office.

Of course, when they transferred me, I had to give all the same information over again, plus a little more. They assured me that this happens all the time, and that since the weather was so good, everything would be fine. And then he told me that he was turning this over to the Coconino County sheriff’s department since they were the ones that actually did the search and rescues. He said they would call me back shortly, and I let him know that my phone was almost out of juice.

Just about two minutes later, I received a call from a dispatcher at the sheriff’s office, and for the third time, I went through all the same information. She was very nice and helpful, and said that they were getting ready to send someone out, and that a deputy would meet me at our campsite. I told her I was still on my way back to camp and would be there in about 10-15 minutes.

A few minutes later, she called me back and asked if I had heard from Andy. I told her I had not, but that his phone was probably off because he was about out of battery power. She said that they needed him to call 911, because that’s how they would pinpoint his location. They had tried to leave him a voice message, but his voice mail was full (doh!!). I told her that I would try to text him again, which I did.

Me: Sheriff’s dept has been called. Stay put.

Me: My phone is about out of juice.

Me: R u there?

Andy: I’m in low power mode now. I’m building a fire ring just in case. Don’t you get lost too.

Me: Sheriff said you need to dial 911 so they can locate you.

Me: I’m back at the rig, climbed in the window. Stay put they’re on their way.

Andy: I have not moved.

Me: Call 911!

Andy: That will be the end of my power.

Me: I told them that and they said you need to do it!

Andy: I called, they are on the way. I hope!

Andy: Turning off my phone.

Me: Hang tight, love you! ❤

Andy: <thumbs up>

So, yeah, by then I had made it back to the rig and it was after noon. There was one window slightly open, but I was afraid that it would not provide enough ventilation for the cats as the afternoon temperatures rose. Also, I really needed to charge my cellphone so I could stay in touch with the authorities.

So I decided to crawl in the window. I was able to push it further open from the outside, but the window is so high off the ground that I needed something to stand on. I first tried standing on our little folding table which I had set in the seat of one of our folding chairs. The table broke, not surprisingly.

So next, I decided to check our outside storage compartment (a.k.a. the “basement”) which fortunately was not locked.  I found the folding table that Andy planned to use for some of his jewelry work. Of course it was buried under a lot of other stuff which I had to unload, but I eventually got the table out and was able to stand on it to climb through the window over the dinette table (glad there was no one around to witness that little scene!). The cats were totally freaked out by my not-so-graceful entrance, but they were fine as the temperature inside was still in the mid-70s.

Once inside, I opened some more windows to get the ventilation going, put my phone on the charger, and then settled in to wait. I got one more call from a deputy letting them know they were on their way, so there was nothing more I could do at that point.

Finally, after about 30 minutes, I saw a sheriff’s department SUV pull in to our campsite, and I walked out to meet him. As the deputy stepped out of the vehicle, I said “I’m the lady with the missing husband.”

He said “Not anymore, you’re not”, with a grin on his face, and pointed with his thumb to the back seat.

He walked around the vehicle and unlocked the back door, and Andy climbed out with a bottle of water in his hand. His first, and hopefully last, experience of being locked in the “cage” of a law enforcement vehicle. Of course, that’s the one time that I don’t have my iPhone in my hand to take a photo–Drat!! He was fine, just a little embarrassed. The deputy was very nice, gave him a short lecture on hiking safely, and then shook our hands and left.

By then we were both starving, so over lunch we compared notes on the experience. For whatever reason, he had decided to go for a walk and meet me on my way back, since he knew the road I was taking. However, somehow we missed each other along the way (maybe one of the times I stepped off the trail to look for my glasses?), and he wound up going way beyond where I had hiked out to, thinking he would eventually meet me. When he didn’t, he turned around to come back, but on the return trip he got disoriented and missed a turn somewhere, winding up who knows where.

We have some new ground rules now.

• Neither of us leaves the campsite without letting the other know where we’re going.
• Neither of us goes hiking without a bottle of water, a fully-charged phone, and the keys to the vehicles. Those are the basics, but we’ll add other things to that list as well, such as a lighter (Andy carries one already), a pocketknife, snacks, and toilet paper (for me).
• If we go hiking alone and for whatever reason, deviate from the planned route, we will text or call the other to let them know.
• If we’re both away from the rig, the last one to leave makes sure that there is proper ventilation for the kitties.
• When we go hiking, we pay close attention to every twist and turn of the trail, leaving markers along the way for the return.
• And this from the deputy–as soon as you know you’re lost, call 911 so they can pinpoint your location.

So, everything turned out well in the end. We both got to see a lot of deer while we were out in the forest, and we both learned some valuable lessons from the experience. After all, something like this can happen to anyone. On the previous day when I fell and skinned my knee, it could have been a more serious injury, and in that case, all these ground rules would apply to help make sure that such a situation ends well.

And we both got plenty of exercise yesterday! We’re supposed to get a little bit of rain today, so I think we’ll both just stay here in camp, read a good book, watch a little Hulu or YouTube, work a Sudoku puzzle or two, and count our blessings!

Thanks for taking time to read our blog! Feel free to share it with family and friends who might be interested in full-time RV living. If you want to keep up with our adventures, please subscribe. And you can also find us on Instagram at Instagram.com/JustCallUsNomads if you want to keep up with us between blog posts.

Safe travels!

 

Fun in the Desert, Agua Fria National Monument, Back to the Forest

Wow, didn’t realize it had been ten days since my last post! Time to catch up!

Yesterday was moving day, and we’re in a new location now, but first I’ll share some of what we’ve been up to for the past ten days at our camp on Bloody Basin Road BLM land near Mayer, Arizona.

First of all, we got some maintenance items taken care of. As I mentioned in an earlier post, we almost lost our sewer hose (a.k.a. the “stinky slinky”) when the homemade storage pipe came loose from the underside of the rig while at the dump station. Andy decided to replace the old one with some PVC pipe which should hold up better to the rigors of travel. It took a little ingenuity, but he got it done (as he always does).

Handy Andy installs PVC pipe to hold our stinky slinky under the RV.

I did quite a bit of geocaching while we were at the Bloody Basin camp. There is a person or persons who go by the handle Cactusart Kids who have placed hundreds of caches in the area. The ones I found were all in tins of different shapes and sizes, most had swag for trading, a few were pretty rusty, but in every case it was a fun hunt and not too hard to locate. I’m still pretty new to geocaching, so I appreciate the ones that don’t totally stump me. I did have to be extremely cautious, though, as it’s rattlesnake season, and digging around in the rocks can be a little iffy. I saw one live rattler in the middle of the road as I was walking back from a hunt, and another rattler was run over by a vehicle at the entrance to our campsite. Just a little something to add a “thrill” to the hunt (sorry, Mom!!).

My very first time to see a rattler in the wild, and fortunately it was in the middle of the road.

On Saturday, we drove through a good portion of the Agua Fria National Monument, which is just across the interstate from where we were camped. The Monument is comprised of 70,900 acres, including the 55,200-acre “Perry Mesa Archaeological District”, listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It takes its name from the Agua Fria River which flows through the Monument, and features one of the most significant systems of prehistoric sites in the American Southwest.

Agua Fria river flowing by Horseshoe Ranch in Agua Fria National Monument

Our goal was to reach the Pueblo la Plata archaeological site, located about eight miles from the entrance to the Monument. That was probably the roughest eight miles that our little Tacoma pickup truck has ever traveled. Not only did we have to go up and down steep inclines, but the road got progressively more “primitive” the further we drove.

Epic view on Road 9269 in the Agua Fria National Monument.

When we finally reached the turn-off to the pueblo site, we decided to just park the truck and hike in. It was about a mile-and-a-half to the archaeological site across the top of a mesa, so it was a fairly flat hike. The pueblo site itself was less impressive than I had hoped, as it’s pretty much just piles of rocks that at one time made up the walls of the homes and other structures where people lived. Over time, the dirt and clay “mortar” has washed away, and now there’s a lot of vegetation growing around the stones, so it’s a little harder to see the outline of the structure. But it’s there, you just have to use your imagination a little bit.

Remains of Pueblo la Plata. They had a beautiful view!

And about 20 yards away is the rim of the canyon where Silver Creek flows by, which was their major source of water at the time. The view from the top of the canyon was really stunning, and worth the hike.

Andy on the edge of Silver Creek Canyon near the Pueblo la Plata

We made several trips to civilization while we were camped at Bloody Basin. I drove to Mayer one day to pick up our mail, which contained some unexpected good news–the dentist office in Yuma that we visited is refunding almost half of what we paid them for Andy’s crown and my filling. Our dental insurance paid more than they expected, so we got a nice chunk of change back. Hooray!! We also had a laundry and grocery shopping day in Prescott Valley, so we took advantage of the trip to have lunch at Chipotle. And on Sunday, we drove south to Anthem to pick up a package from Amazon at the Amazon locker in the Chase bank lobby (we love Amazon lockers!!), and stopped by Starbucks for some free wi-fi and a treat.

So, yesterday (Monday), we hit the fourteen day limit at that particular BLM campsite. As you might remember from our previous post, we have ordered a new mattress (HALLELUJAH!!) for the RV, and it’s scheduled for delivery to the Prescott Valley Fedex facility this Thursday, so we need to stay in the area. We were considering just staying put for a few more days as the BLM doesn’t actively track how long you stay in most of these boondocking spots. After we had breakfast, we got on the computer and started looking at spots where we might want to move to later in the week, all around the Prescott Valley area. Since we also needed to dump the tanks yesterday, we finally decided that since we had to move the RV to go to the dump, we might as well just relocate at the same time.

So we picked out a US Forest Service campground located between Prescott and Prescott Valley where they have eleven campsites that are first-come, first-serve. We decided to take a chance on there being a spot available at the Hilltop Campground, and if not, we would just cross that bridge later. All the reservation sites were gone, as we expected.

So we packed everything up and pulled out of camp around 11:00 AM yesterday. We stopped in Cordes Junction to dump the tanks and fill up on propane, gas, and fresh water, and then made the short 35-mile drive to our new campground. And sure enough, there was one campsite available that we were JUST able to squeeze our rig onto–and this is just another example of why we decided to keep the small RV for now instead of trading up to a larger one.

Our newest home in Hilltop Campground (USFS) near Prescott AZ

The campground does not provide hookups, but they do have vault toilets as well as drinking water available. Each site has a picnic table and a fire-ring, and the sites are asphalt pads. There’s a camp host on duty to keep things clean and orderly. The sites are $18/night, but with Andy’s America the Beautiful lifetime senior pass, which cost us $10, we get half off the camping fee, so we’re paying $9/night.

The elevation here is 5,682′, about 2,000 feet higher than where we were, so the vegetation and climate are very different. We’re surrounded by Ponderosa pine and hardwood trees, and the temperatures are about ten degrees cooler. The humidity is still low, and the trees offer protection from the wind, making it very pleasant to be outside. The one downside to the trees is that it makes it harder for our solar panels to charge the batteries. We may wind up depending more upon the generator for a few days. We’re supposed to get a little rain today, but otherwise the weather looks to be beautiful while we’re here.

So our plans for the rest of the week include picking up our new mattress, finding a place to dispose of the old one, doing some hiking and geocaching, visiting downtown Prescott again, and generally enjoying this beautiful location. We have always loved the Prescott area–in fact, when we were living in Glendale we were considering buying property in Prescott or Prescott Valley, but wound up moving to Tupelo, Mississippi instead to be near family for awhile. We are still seriously considering making this area our final retirement destination once we get off the road, whenever that may be.

Sunset at our camp on Bloody Basin Road

Thanks for taking time to read our blog! Feel free to share it with family and friends who might be interested in full-time RV living. If you want to keep up with our adventures, please subscribe. And you can also find us on Instagram at Instagram.com/JustCallUsNomads if you want to keep up with us between blog posts.

Safe travels!

Blog Changes, Geocaching, Drive to Crown King, RV Mattress Upgrade

Welcome back to the blog! You may notice a slightly different look this week. I’ve made a few changes that I hope you’ll enjoy.

• I’ve added a new page to the blog called “Where We’ve Been“, which is a chronological list of the places we’ve camped since we hit the road on September 1, 2018. The page is accessible from the menu.
• I’ve added a tag cloud to the sidebar, along with a “Recently Posted” section that lists the five most recent posts in case you want to go back and catch up. NOTE: If you’re reading the blog on a small device like a smart phone, the sidebar is actually located at the very bottom of the page you’re viewing.
• I’ve changed the header photo to show our campsite on Vulture Mine Road south of Wickenburg. We enjoyed it so much, I wanted to feature it more prominently on the blog.

We are currently parked on Bloody Basin Road BLM land just off I-17 between Phoenix and Flagstaff, Arizona. It’s a beautiful area with lots of little pipeline roads which make great hiking trails through the hills. And there are plenty of geocaches hidden in the area, which makes it even more fun and interesting to explore. So far I’ve hunted for four and found three, but there are plenty more to be found. These have been good caches with lots of trade items stored inside. According to the logs, some of them haven’t been touched for well over a year. The ones I’ve found so far have been stored in Christmas tins, so the tops had almost rusted shut, but the contents were nice and dry.

Contents of a geocache off Bloody Basin Road in Arizona

While out exploring we’ve found some things that were not so nice. Someone dumped some old furniture by the road and the animals have pretty much torn it up so white stuffing is scattered everywhere. There was a tire lying in the middle of the road, still on the wheel. And believe it or not, there is actually a boat out here–it’s been stripped down and left on a downslope off the side of the road so that it’s only visible from one direction.

Old stripped-out boat someone dumped by the pipeline road

People who do this kind of thing are responsible for the BLM’s recent decisions to restrict all access to public lands in certain areas around Cottonwood. Those areas have become so trashed and overused by off-road vehicles that it will take several years to be restored. There have recently been several large groups of full-time RVers who have taken it upon themselves to hold large “clean-up” events where they go to a trashed-out area and spend several days hauling out debris, working directly with the BLM and local authorities to have the trash disposed of properly. Many times it’s the locals that are leaving their trash, but if RVers want to continue to have access to these free camping sites, we almost have no choice but to clean up the mess left by others.

Furniture dumped in the desert off the pipeline road

OK, rant over.

On Wednesday, we made the 23-mile drive on Bloody Basin Road from our campsite up to Crown King, an old mining town in the Bradshaw Mountains. The road is dirt and gravel, and most of it follows the old abandoned railroad bed. In some places the road is wash-boarded and bumpy, and there are plenty of one-lane stretches that go straight through the rock. But the scenery is spectacular as you climb about 1,400′ in altitude to get to Crown King.

Enjoying the view just outside Crown King, AZ

The town of Crown King is small and quaint, with a general store/post office, a fire station, saloon, a few restaurants, several cabins and AirBnB’s to rent, a church, and housing for the few permanent residents. The day we went it was pretty quiet, but the guy who runs the general store told us that they often get hundreds of visitors at a time on the weekends who ride up on their ATVs and 4×4 vehicles. It’s a beautiful setting in the pine trees, and we enjoyed just hanging out on the deck, snacking on chips and cream soda and homemade fudge.

Antique store and saloon in Crown King

The drive up to Crown King took us about two hours, and the drive back down took about an hour and a half. That includes stopping to look at scenery and take pictures. I put together some video clips and photos from our excursion and posted them to our YouTube channel–there was just no way that still photos could capture how bumpy the road was or how vast the landscape is. It is well worth the drive if you have a high-clearance, dependable vehicle, and you go on a sunny day. I would not try the drive in a passenger car, or on a rainy day.

In other news, we finally got around to making a major upgrade to our RV–we’ve ordered a new mattress. This RV was never designed for full-time living, and the mattress began to sag and compress pretty quickly after we moved in. It has become very uncomfortable to sleep on, and we desperately needed to replace it.

Unfortunately, it’s an odd size known as a “full XL”. Additionally, the bottom right corner is chopped off to allow easier access to the bathroom. Therefore, we couldn’t just buy a mattress off the shelf, but instead we had to order a custom-made one. We placed the order yesterday (Friday) from MattressInsider.com, and will have it shipped from their manufacturing facility in South Carolina to the Fedex hub in Prescott Valley where we will pick it up. The estimated production time is 7-10 business days, and the shipping time will be 3 days. That means we’ll be in this general area for at least another three weeks, which we had already planned on anyway. I can’t wait to get our new mattress!!

On Thursday we drove over to nearby Cordes Junction at Cordes Lakes to locate a dump station (for future reference) and a water dispensing machine. While there we stopped in McDonald’s to use their wi-fi so we could back up our iPhones and download the latest operating system update. The only two places we could find to dump our tanks near here are both small RV parks, and they charge $20 for the privilege. But you do what you have to do. We’ll need to dump the tanks on Monday.

And that’s what’s going on in our world. We need to make a run to the grocery store this weekend, so we’ll be driving up to Prescott Valley. In the meantime, we’re enjoying our stay here in this beautiful area.

View of the area where we’re currently parked on Bloody Basin Road

Thanks for taking time to read our blog! Feel free to share it with family and friends who might be interested in full-time RV living. If you want to keep up with our adventures, please subscribe. And you can also find us on Instagram at Instagram.com/JustCallUsNomads if you want to keep up with us between blog posts.

Safe travels!

The Blooming Desert, Hiking, Geocaching, Wickenburg, Vulture City

Good Monday morning, everyone!

We just spent our tenth night here at our campsite on Vulture Mine Road just south of Wickenburg, Arizona. This spot is on BLM land which means it’s free camping, and it has quickly become one of our most favorite places we have ever camped.

Birds-eye view of our campsite on Vulture Mine Road

The scenery around here is just stunning, especially since there was so much rain over the winter months, resulting in what’s known as a “superbloom” when there is an abundance of wildflowers and green grass in the desert. People flock to the desert  from miles around to enjoy the beauty that lasts for such a short time. In fact, in California, the crowds were so large in Lake Elsinore that city officials had to temporarily close the wildflower viewing area when local facilities and infrastructure became overwhelmed. We have been so fortunate to be able to camp here at this exact time of year to be able to hike though the flowers and enjoy the beauty in peace and solitude.

Poppies among the saguaros in the Sonoran desert near our camp

We’ve done a lot of hiking over the past week, exploring the area in the hills and mountains around us. From the main road, there are lots of small gravel roads leading back into the desert that are used mainly by off-road vehicles and hikers. Many are marked with BLM signs with road numbers so you can report your position if you run into any trouble. We usually hike about 30 minutes in and then 30 minutes out, which gives us a good workout since a lot of the route involves uphill climbing. We’ve encountered rabbits, ground squirrels, lizards, one snake (non-venomous), and lots of different bird species. Yesterday, we suddenly found ourselves right next to a swarm of bees in a creosote bush–not sure how we got out without getting stung, but that was much more intense than our encounter with the snake!

I’ve done one geocache hunt since we’ve been here, and it was a fun one. It was located about 1.3 miles from our camp, as the crow flies, so about 1.5 miles on foot by the road. I found the cache in a palo verde tree, in a metal yard-art sculpture of a vulture. On the back of the vulture was a metal box containing the log and a bag of tokens that geocachers swap. I left one of my mini-dominoes and took a little plastic frog.

Geocache on Vulture Mine Road is a sculpture of a vulture. How appropriate!

We haven’t spent a whole lot of time in Wickenburg yet. The day after we arrived here, we drove in to McDonald’s to meet some of our friends from Phoenix who were passing through on their way to Las Vegas–that was fun! We’ve been to the grocery store (Safeway) a couple of times, to the laundromat, the post office, and a local Mexican restaurant called Lydia’s La Canasta for lunch. All these places are located right next to each other so there was no exploration involved. We do plan to spend a day checking out Wickenburg this week to see more of the historic sites and possibly the museum.

On Saturday we visited Vulture City, which is the site of the old original Vulture Mine community. According to one of the plaques at the site,

In 1863 Austrian Henry Wickenburg discovered gold, legend has it, while retrieving a vulture he had shot. The Vulture Mine went on to become one of Arizona’s richest gold mines and sparked the development of Arizona and the city of Phoenix. In the 1880’s and 1890’s, Vulture City’s population grew to almost 5000 people and featured a large stone assay office, miners’ dormitories, houses for company officials, a mess hall, a school, a post office, and an 80-stamp mill. It is estimated that the Vulture Mine produced more than 200 million dollars worth of gold and silver. The exact amount is unknown due to theft or “highgrading” for which some 18 men were hanged.

The mine was closed in 1942 during WWII by executive order from President Roosevelt, as being non-essential to the war effort. However, it was re-opened in 2014 and is currently back in production, in a much more modern mining effort that is, of course, closed to the public.

Inside the small museum in Vulture City, called Vulture’s Roost

But many of the original buildings are still there and available for tours. This area was purchased by an English developer who has invested about $2 million so far into restoring the old buildings which had fallen into disrepair. You can see Henry Wickenburg’s little house, the Assay Office, the bunkhouse, kitchen, dining hall, vault, post office, a gas station, and of course, the brothel. There’s even the hanging tree where 18 men were hanged for various offenses. There’s also a small museum with various photographs and artifacts from the site.

Vulture City, site of the old Vulture Mine, is being restored and is open for tours.

They charge $15 for the self-guided tour, which I think is a little steep for what you get to see, but it is an interesting way to spend an hour or two, if only to chat with Gary and Joyce, the couple who manage the site. They are actually miners themselves and own a small copper mine not far from here, which they work by hand. Joyce makes jewelry from the copper and stones that they retrieve from their mine. We love meeting people who have stories to tell, like Gary and Joyce!

So, what’s next?

Technically, there’s a 14-day limit to camping on BLM land, but we haven’t seen any evidence of enforcement in this area. If the weather never changed, we could stay here indefinitely, we enjoy it that much. But there are other sights we want to see, and we can already tell that the flowers and grass are starting to wilt and turn brown, so we will most likely be moving on by next weekend. Our next destination will be north of here, and higher in elevation–we just don’t know exactly where that’s going to be yet.

Thanks for taking time to read our blog! Feel free to share it with family and friends who might be interested in full-time RV living. If you want to keep up with our adventures, please subscribe. And you can also find us on Instagram at Instagram.com/JustCallUsNomads if you want to keep up with us between blog posts.

Safe travels!

 

Weather Report, More Geocaching, Saturday in Mexico

Pilot Knob BLM LTVA – Southern California, just west of Yuma, AZ

Happy Monday morning, everyone! I just watched a beautiful sunrise and realized once again just how fortunate Andy and I are to be able to leave the rat race behind and enjoy the simple pleasures of life. Hope you are also living your dream, or at least taking steps to get there.

We’ve been keeping up with all the crazy weather around the country this past week. Yes, it did snow in California and Arizona, even in Phoenix, Scottsdale and Tucson; and a lot of roads were closed in Northern Arizona due to icy conditions and heavy snow. We’ve also been watching reports of the heavy rain and flooding in my home state of Mississippi around Tupelo, as well as the tornado that touched down in Columbus, MS. It seems like this winter has been especially harsh in a lot of areas.

However, we chose to winter in Yuma precisely because of the weather. We’ve been here since December 27 and in that time there have only been three days where there was any significant amount of rainfall. The nighttime temperatures have never gone below about 38°, and the daytime temperatures are usually in the 60’s. Last week when it was snowing in Phoenix, the highs here did dip down into the 50’s with the winds averaging about 15 MPH, but that’s as bad as it got. Yesterday it warmed back up, and this week highs are going to move into the 70’s, possibly getting up to 80° by Thursday.

Rain moving toward our camp. It looked a lot more dramatic than it actually was.

In fact, it may start to get warm enough that we decide to pull out and head north to higher elevation. When it’s 80° outside, the inside of the RV can start to get pretty warm even with the awning out and the windows open. Our travel plan has always been to “chase 70°”, so we’ll let you know what we decide to do.

Not a bad forecast for the next couple of weeks.

That’s the beauty of this lifestyle. Don’t like the weather? Move your house somewhere else. 🙂

I took advantage of the nice weather to do some more geocaching last week. There are so many caches hidden in this area! I picked up three in about an hour, getting some good exercise along the way. Two of them were hidden in tree trunks, but one was located at this site that appears to be a place for meditation or a memorial of some sort. It’s a pile of white quartz stone (plentiful out here in the desert) with concentric rings made of dark rock and more quartz. There are statues of angels, Mary and Jesus  placed around the site, along with a walking path to get to the center. I’ve reached out to the local “About Yuma” Facebook page to see if anyone knows anything about it, but so far everyone seems stumped.

One of the most unusual sites where I’ve found a geocache–lots of quartz

On Saturday we made a return trip across the border to Los Algodones for lunch and a little shopping. I found a cross-body bag to replace my current one that is too small, and had a lot of fun bargaining with the shop owner. He asked $40 for the bag, I offered $20, and we settled at $22. Of course we hit the pastry shop to satisfy Andy’s sweet tooth.  We also visited the candy store to restock our supply of Damy candy. A 100-piece bag sells on Amazon for $12.90, but we buy it in Mexico for $4/bag. We bought three bags since we don’t know when we’ll be back in Algodones. This is the best candy ever (that isn’t chocolate).

The candy store in Los Algodones where we stock up on Damy

After shopping, we returned to Restaurant El Paraíso for lunch, where we enjoyed sitting on the patio in the sun, listening to the Mexican cover band playing Elvis and Jimmy Buffet, along with some south-of-the-border standards. I had the fish tacos and Andy had a combination plate with chile rellano. The margaritas were on point as usual, and we thoroughly enjoyed our lunch.

Another fun lunch in Los Algodones

After lunch we walked over to where they were having a taco street festival so we could get some freshly-made churros for dessert. So good!  We munched on our dessert while we stood in line for just over an hour and a half to get back across the border into the US. We spent most of that time chatting with a nice couple from Alberta, Canada who are also wintering here in the area. Fortunately it wasn’t too hot and the time passed quickly with the strolling musicians entertaining us while we waited.

No huge plans for this week. We have a mail shipment that arrived at the Yuma post office this morning which contains the last of the documents that I need to complete our tax return, so I should get that taken care of this week. We both have dental appointments tomorrow–I’m getting a filling replaced and Andy’s getting a crown (no, not in Mexico, but in Yuma using our COBRA dental insurance). I’m planning to do some housecleaning and purging in the rig…yes, we actually brought things with us that we don’t need, so I need to lighten the load a little bit.

Meanwhile, we’ll keep an eye on the weather forecast and see how the upcoming heat wave affects our plans. We may be pulling out of here in the not-too-distant future!

Stay tuned!

You can also follow us on Instagram at Instagram.com/JustCallUsNomads for up-to-the-minute news on where we are and what we’re doing.

 

Dead Batteries Again, Geocaching, Maintenance

It wouldn’t be RV life without something in the rig breaking or malfunctioning, but we didn’t expect it to be the house batteries. We just replaced them a week ago.

New batteries installed to make boondocking more comfortable

As I mentioned before, since we’ve been boondocking in the desert, we’ve been running the generator for an hour in the morning and an hour in the evening to keep the batteries topped off. The battery meter on the control panel (granted, it’s not the most reliable indicator) never went below 3/4 before we would run the generator.

Until yesterday.

For whatever reason, we did not run the generator yesterday morning as usual. At lunchtime it was still reading 3/4 and we still did not run it. We know it’s not good to let the batteries discharge below 1/2, but since it was still at 3/4, no alarm bells were going off. We knew we would be running the generator in the evening because I needed to use the microwave when making dinner.

We ran the generator for at least an hour while we had dinner, letting the batteries top off. Then, as we got ready to do the dishes, Andy turned off the generator for the evening, and the rig immediately went pitch black. Totally dark. No little LED lights. Nada. Nothing.

We grabbed a flashlight and checked the breakers in the fusebox, and everything looked fine there. We restarted the generator and all the power came back on, so we knew it wasn’t a breaker or a fuse. We just weren’t getting any power from the batteries.

Andy dug out his volt-meter from the storage bin and checked the voltage on the batteries. They both read 11.95, when they should be over 12. So it was obvious we were going to have to let the generator run all night to have lights, water, heat and refrigeration.

I’m not sure what we’re going to do this morning. Right now it’s about 6:30 AM and Andy is still asleep, but when he gets up we’ll try the batteries again. If they’re still dead, we will most likely make a return trip to Camping World in Tucson to try and get this issue resolved.

It just doesn’t make good sense–the rig was working fine on batteries just before we ran the generator at dinnertime. The generator should have topped off the batteries so they should have had even more charge an hour later. But instead, they were dead. Something just isn’t right. And yes, for those RV geeks out there, we did check the battery disconnect switch (a.k.a. the “store/use” switch”), and it was set to “Use”.

So stay tuned to see how this turns out!!

Otherwise, we’ve been thoroughly enjoying camping here in the desert on BLM land. On Monday, I finally went on my first geocache hunt and successfully located the cache inside a large fake rock, which also housed a live scorpion! I didn’t have any trinkets with me to swap, so I just signed the log book.

My first geocache find was inside a fake rock

Yesterday (Tuesday), I went on my second hunt and found the cache inside an old microwave oven that had been left in the fork of a palo verde tree. This time I had come prepared, as I had picked up some mini-dominos from the Dollar Tree on Monday afternoon when I went Christmas shopping. I left one of the dominos in the cache and removed a little Christmas ornament.

My second geocache find was inside a microwave in a tree!

If we wind up staying here for a few more days, depending on the batteries, my next geocache hunt will be for a cache that’s rated “micro”, which means the container is very small, at least in relation to a fake rock and a microwave oven. It will be fun to try something a little more challenging now that I’ve gotten my feet wet. There are lots of geocaches registered in the area, so I’m hoping we can be here a little longer.

Yesterday we also got notification that our new solar equipment has been delivered to our friends in Phoenix. We’ll be driving into Phoenix on Friday to pick it up, and possibly staying in Phoenix for a few days, depending once again on the battery situation. We should have our plans firmed up by later today.

Andy spent the last couple of afternoons doing some maintenance on the rig. First he replaced some weather-stripping along the over-cab area on the passenger side where it had come loose and was sagging. Then he did a thorough inspection of the roof and re-sealed some areas where the caulking had cracked or deteriorated. Water is the enemy of an RV, and we want to make sure that we don’t have any leaks that could lead to rotting wood or mold.

Handy Andy taking care of preventative maintenance on the roof

Not much else going on–I did drive into Marana on Monday afternoon to do a little Christmas shopping, and I also finally pulled out my ukulele and started trying to teach myself a few songs. Just need to get some callouses built up on my fingertips!

Sunset on 12/11/18 was especially spectacular!

And we’re still enjoying the most beautiful sunsets ever here in the Arizona desert! I also enjoy the gorgeous sunrises, but I’m the only one in the rig that’s awake to see them! 🙂 I’ve shot a few more timelapses with the GoPro and will try to put together a compilation video in the next few days.

Keeping our fingers crossed on the battery situation!

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Happy Holidays, everyone!