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 one night 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.