Category: Southern Arizona

Fruita to Blanding

Dianne and I each have our personal list of things to bring for a four-week camping trip to southern Arizona.  Combined, we pack food, tent, food, air mattress, food, hiking boots, food, packs, food, cameras, food, clothes, food, laptops and more food.

Did I mention food?

My favorite wife grew up at the base of Donner Pass and was greatly influenced by the tragedy that ensued there.  She always packs enough food to make sure that we don’t end up like those pioneers who in 1846 found themselves trapped in the mountains with only each other to eat. 

Instead of resorting to cannibalism as they did, Dianne always packs enough sustenance to survive weeks away from a Kroger’s.  We had two 30-liter food crates and a pair of ultra-light coolers stuffed with edibles in boxes, cans, bottles and plastic wrap. 

There was no way we could carry all that and still have room for our beer and wine supplies.

We spent all Sunday morning and half the afternoon whittling stuff down until it would finally fit into the space available.  Around mid-afternoon, we were off, motoring down I-70 and into Utah.

As always, we stopped at one of our favorite rest areas just east of Crescent Junction.  As I backed out of our parking space, I heard an ugly grinding sound coming from under the truck. 

I stopped, took a look and discovered there was a large protective piece of the truck dangling down, scraping along the pavement.  It was a plastic cover that bolts beneath the transmission and transfer case.  Along with new blinker fluid, I had just had the transmission and transfer case oil changed at the local Nissan dealership.  I guess the high school dropout who did the work didn’t tighten the bolts when he replaced the cover. 

I hope he remembered to put in the oil.

Rather than trying to crawl under the truck in the rest area parking lot, I figured we’d just continue on.  If it was still attached when we got to Blanding, we’d deal with it there.   

The plastic part was still dangling when we got to our lodging in Blanding.  Tomorrow, while I was researching a story about Edge of the Cedars State Park, Dianne would find a mechanic to either take the dangling cover off or bolt it back on.

Blanding to Bluff

Monday morning, we drove to Edge of the Cedars State Park where I would research a story for Utah Life Magazine.

The park consists of some small ruins and a fabulous museum of Anasazi (Ancestral Puebloan) artifacts.  Here are a few photos of what’s there. 

While I was interviewing folks at the museum, Dianne found a mechanic who put the truck up on a lift, removed the dangling plastic, and tightened up some other bolts that were loose. 

Our business in Blanding completed, we headed on to Bluff where we had Navajo tacos at the Twin Rocks Trading Post…

…and spent the night at the Recapture Lodge where one fellow guest was a Tesla owner who is apparently not too happy with Musk.

Dead Horse Ranch

From Bluff, we headed across the Navajo Nation to the Verde Valley of Arizona, stopping along the way for more Navajo tacos at the Cameron Trading Post.

Our destination for the next four nights is Dead Horse Ranch State Park. It offers some nice campsites for RVs, which we enjoyed on a previous trip with our old A-frame trailer.

This time, we were tent camping, so we chose the Blackhawk “rustic” loop. And rustic it was.

The campsite loop has only two water spigots, both of which are inaccessibly located behind other campers’ sites. To fill our seven-gallon jug, we have to find an empty RV site with a water hookup in another loop and fill up there. And the only restrooms for all of us tent campers are down in a neighboring RV loop, several hundred yards away. Bio-breaks require advance planning.

The sites have canopies over the tent platforms, but no shade over the picnic tables and no windbreaks. We set up our tent in a gusting breeze, which allowed me a chance to use numerous expletives.

For two days, we hiked around the park, and one night drove into town for dinner at a winery famous for their wines named after a mythical vampire creature that sucks blood out of livestock.

Taking a break from treading trails, one day Dianne and I drove up to Crown King – an old mining camp high in the Bradshaw Mountains. Decades ago, a neighbor friend of my Dad’s had a cabin up there, and during hunting season, they would load up guns, beer and whiskey and head up there to hunt deer. No animal was ever harmed.

I occasionally got to up with them. Every night, we’d head for the Crown King Saloon for burgers. While the adults enjoyed even more adult beverages, I wandered around the place, carefully studying the saloon’s artwork.

Among other things hanging on the wall of the saloon back then was a life-size, self-painted portrait of an attractive lady, naked from the waist up. I was maybe a dozen years old back then, so naturally this caught my interest.

Now, 60+ years later, the painting no longer hangs inside the saloon, but they do still serve a pretty good burger.

White Tank Mountains

From Dead Horse Ranch, we headed down to the White Tank Mountain Regional Park west of Phoenix. For me, it provided a return visit to a place I visited frequently as a kid years ago.

We booked a site in the park’s Willow Campground, which is primarily designed for tent campers.

The park offers a large number of hiking trails. The first one we tried was the Waterfall Trail, which lead to a pool below a dry pouroff.

A food truck offering Chicago dogs awaited us back at the trailhead. Of course, we had to try one of those Second City treats.

Based on the photo, our friends who are actually from Chicago say this dog lacks a few of the necessary accoutrements to make it a genuine Chicago dog, but it’s not a bad imitation considering we bought this in the middle of the Sonoran Desert.

We hiked more of the park’s trails, some leading up into the mountains capped by antennas and microwave stations…

…and others out onto the flats where windmill-fed ponds attract birdlife.

We had a little excitement in camp when this little buzz worm was seen crossing the road, heading towards our friends’ camp.

A ranger was called…

And soon the little guy was sitting in a bucket, ready to be transported to another location where he could slither away unharmed. We rarely ever see a snake in the wild, so this was a real treat!

By this point, we had spent a week camping in our tent and we had laundry to do and groceries to buy. While our friends continued to bunk in their tent, we upgraded our sleeping arrangements with a night’s stay at the Quality Inn in my old hometown of Youngtown.

Yes, after 10+ years of camping in a trailer, we’ve grown soft.

Organ Pipe

With clean clothes, fresh ice and cooler filled with food, we took off for Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, which sits along the Trump Wall in southern Arizona.

We had a lovely tents-only campsite with a sandy pad for the tent and a cover over the picnic table.

Days were pleasantly warm and the ocotillo were beginning to blossom.

We hiked to the remains of the old Victoria Mine…

…and on through the desert…

…to the Lost Cabin Mine.

From our campsite, we viewed incredible sunsets…

…and saw Border Patrol agents at work.

On our last day at Organ Pipe, we headed into the old copper mining town of Ajo to stock up on food and ice.

Tomorrow will be the beginning of our adventure down El Camino del Diablo – the Road of the Devil.

Day One

The entire reason for this trip to Southern Arizona was to drive this old route through the desert.

The road is labeled as a rugged, high-clearance, four-wheel-drive route. Our original plan was to tackle it in our Subaru Outback Wilderness…

…but there was no way we could fit all of our gear in the Subie…

…we took the truck.

The 130-mile roadway begins back in Ajo on a road that skirts the tailings of the town’s copper mine.

The first stop was Bates Well where Henry Gray, last of four generations of ranchers, lived until his death in 1976.

We soon reach the boundary of the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge. A permit is needed to travel beyond here. Nearby sits a Border Patrol Station.

We signed in and continued on our way down the Camino, which was nicely graded out here to facilitate Border Patrol activities.

Several primitive campgrounds lie along the route through the wildlife refuge…

They aren’t much, but they do offer picnic tables…

…and flat ground to roll out the sleeping bags.

The difference between eastern and western campers is that easterners like our friends prefer to sleep in a tent at night…

…while we prefer to bunk outdoors where we can watch sunsets from our sleeping bags…

…and gaze up at the Milky Way after dark.

Our first night’s campsite lies near Papago Well. The blue flag flying above the tank informs anyone out in this parched desert that water is available here.

It may not be of Evian quality, but it can save the lives of folks, whether they are here legally or not.

Day Two

After devouring a delicious breakfast prepared by the cooking crew…

We headed back to the Camino.

Today, we passed Camp Grip, another Border Patrol Station. As I look at the facility, I wonder how badly does a Border Patrol officer have to screw up to get stationed out here.

We soon come to the grave of prospector Dave O’Neill who died around 1916. He was buried here by two friends. Two weeks later, when the friends ran out of tobacco, they remembered that O’Neill still had his tobacco with him when they laid him to rest. Of course, they returned, dug up the grave and retrieved O’Neill’s stash.

The custom is to place a token on the grave to honor the deceased. I brought along some Colorado pins for that purpose.

We continued onward, passing paloverde trees in bloom…

…gazing south at the Trump Wall climbing over mountains…

…and keeping an eye out for traffic cops enforcing the speed limit.

Portions of the Camino route traverse wash bottoms and stretches of deep sand. In these areas, the Border Patrol will drag tires down the road to smooth the sand.

Anyone out here illegally crossing the road will leave footprints in the sand. (These, however, are ours.)

Driving through some of these areas required engaging four-wheel-drive and motoring through nonstop. Stop and you’re stuck!

El Camino soon merged with another road, which was prominently labeled “Do Not Enter, Not a Public Road.” It was a construction road for building Trump’s border wall. We legally continued forward on the merged roads.

We soon reached Tule Well, complete with a windmill-filled water tank…

…an abandoned building…

…and a Boy Scout memorial atop a nearby hill.

While there was camping available here, we chose to head seven miles up to a campsite on Christmas Pass.

The road started out nicely…

…and then got a bit more interesting as we neared the pass.

The campsite was lovely and came complete with picnic tables…

…and ocotillo in bloom.

While there was plenty of mistletoe hanging off a paloverde tree, there was no Santa on Christmas Pass.

Day Three

We followed our friend’s 4Runner down from Christmas Pass to the Camino and turned toward Yuma, trail’s end.

Heading up the Camino, we passed roadside memorials…

… and saguaro cacti propped up with 2x4s.

We soon entered the Barry M. Goldwater bombing range…

…and tried not to get too nervous about the plane circling overhead.

Along the roadway stood pretend tanks…

…more pretend tanks…

…pretend rocket launchers…

…and signs warning us not to pick up any “unexploded ordnance.”

Our goal here was to get to the tenajas in the Tenajas Atlas mountains. These plunge pool tanks hold water for both the local wildlife and the those pioneers who followed El Camino del Diablo out west.

A short walk up a less-than-friendly trail and wash bottom lead to the first tank.

From here, we continued into Yuma and checked into the Super 8 Motel we had pre-booked. We’d have showers, a comfy bed, a flush toilet and waffles for breakfast.

Tomorrow, weather permitting, we will head off to the Kofa National Wildlife Refuge, which lies northeast of Yuma and south of Quartzite.

Heading Home

Weather permitting, we were next planning to head out for a short week of camping in the Kofa Wildlife Refuge. Unfortunately, the weather gods did not cooperate. We had been dealing with strong winds for this entire trip and it didn’t let up . Rather than bail, we decided to endure one more night in a motel room (real bed, TV, in-room coffee and flush toilet 15 feet away) and hope tomorrow would offer a break from the breeze.

We awoke to find the wind is refusing to abate. After careful consultation with our alter egos, we did the unthinkable and whimped out. Instead of the hills, we set off for home, gazing at the Kofa Mountains as we blew past on our way north. We’ll make another attempt to camp here, we promised ourselves, sometime in the fall.

We had a motel reservation in Prescott. As we headed in that direction, we were greeted with snowfall.

Come morning, cars in the motel parking lot were blanketed with an inch or so of the white stuff.

We drove through more snowfall on our way through the mountains as we headed in the direction of home.

Our final night on the road would be spent at La Posada Hotel in Winslow.

The hotel was designed by Mary Colter for the Santa Fe Railway, and while a bit pricey, it’s become a favorite of ours.

The rooms are beautiful…

…with classic Southwest touches.

For us train buffs, tracks run by the back of the hotel, which also serves as the local Amtrak depot. We didn’t see the Amtrak train (it was probably late), but we did catch several freight trains rumbling by.

Inside the hotel, the “somewhat unusual”interesting” paintings by contemporary artist and La Posada owner Tina Mion grace galleries…

…and there’s a museum with train displays and artifacts…

…plus world’s largest (26 feet by 36 feet) Navajo rug.

The Turquoise Room, the hotel’s restaurant, offers delicious cocktails, which of course we sampled…

…plus dinner, which for me featured a gourmet steak (yes, there’s a filet mignon hidden in there).

At night in the hotel lobby, classical guitarist Khent Anantakai plays tunes and tells tales about his life . We now own both of his albums.

Come morning, we stuffed luggage into the truck and headed to the Turquoise Room for breakfast where I enjoyed coffee and a bowl of Chorizo Breakfast Hash. Very tasty.

Then it was off across the Navajo Reservation…

and on to home.