Month: March 2019

Christine spent a few nights in a great AirBNB in Tempe while I flew north to see Mott the Hopple! Before I flew out we got to see the incredible “Electric Desert” exhibit at the Phoenix Botanical Garden. This video summarizes it well, and the photo link below has some of our videos. I’m looking forward to see what Klip Collective, the company that does these sorts of shows, does next. The Heard Museum in Phoenix is also recommended if you want to learn more about the area’s Native Americans and their art. We also checked out Don Parks collection statues and stuff and got to meet Don.

When I got back to Phoenix I did an amazing AirBNB experience in a biplane, a Stearman, used for training in WWII. Wow!

Then on to Sedona area for a week. We found an incredible free camping area along Forest Rd 525 in the Coconino National Forest, about 25 minutes from town. There were at least 100 RVs, vans and a few tents scattered along this road camping.

Sedona is incredibly beautiful with all the red rocks everywhere. There must be more hiking trails per square mile around Sedona than anywhere on earth. Highlights for us included Baldwin Trail, the Plataki Heritage Site, and the West Fork Trail. We also went to the historic copper town of Jerome (we did a great history tour of the town), and treated ourselves to fantastic massages at Page Spring Cellars winery.

Then on to the Hopi Reservation for a full day tour with “Hopi Tours“. This was very interesting and informative, and highly recommended if you want to learn more about the slowly dying Hopi culture. Most parts of the reservation require you to be with a registered tour guide, and Micah our guide was fantastic. Photos not allowed in the villages, but we could take some of the petroglyphs site. Many homes on the Hopi reservation do not have water, sewer, or electricity.

We were there the day of the bi-annual women’s “basket dance”, where some of the village women wear traditional ceremonial clothes, dance, sing, and throw out a variety of items. Traditionally they would throw handmade items like woven baskets and pottery to the crowd, but now it looks like they just did a huge Walmart shopping trip and bought as much cheap crap as possible. There were lots of plastic laundry baskets, plastic kitchen items, junk food, toilet paper, children’s toys, and more. Around 8 women busily danced around tossing baskets mostly crap to the 500 or so onlookers. Our guide said there was still a good amount of traditional handicrafts in the mix, but we didn’t see any. It was fascinating to observe, and I think we were the only tourists there. They do their ‘dance’ every couple hours from dawn till dusk, tho we only watched about 30 minutes of the late afternoon dance. It reminded me a lot of Mardi Gras parades in New Orleans, where everyone is trying to grab the throws from the floats, most of which are even more useless crap, with 1% good stuff mixed in.

Photos:

• Phoenix area
• Sedona area
• Hopi Reservation (some pics are from the internet, as we could not take photos)

After Casas Grandes, MX, we drove to Bisbee, AZ, a 7 hr drive over terrible roads, tons of construction, and a mountain pass in a blizzard. Bisbee is a picturesque former copper mine town, and the Queen mine tour is highly recommended. After Bisbee we drove to Tombstone, which is basically a Hollywood Western theme park, and quite fun for a 1/2 day. The re-enactment of the shootout at the OK Corral is silly, but fun. We though the most interesting museum in town was the the Tombstone Epitaph newspaper museum.

Chiricahua National Monument was stunning! One of the best hikes I’ve ever done! See photo link below.

We then drove to Tucson to spend a few days at a friends house, do hiking around lots of cool Suguaro’s, and biked a good part of the Tucson loop bike path. The Titan Missile Museum was fascinating (Christine got to turn the launch key!), and the Degrazia art gallery was worth checking out.

After Tucson we planned to head to New Mexico, but decided that it was still too cold there, so headed west to Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument instead. I went to an interesting talk by a Border Patrol agent on what its like to protect the border in this part of Arizona. He said about 1/3 of the arrests were drug runners, and 2/3 illegal immigrants, but that these days many of the illegal immigrants are ‘give ups’ (people who walk across in large groups and immediately surrender, and ask to apply for asylum. Clearly the US needs to figure out a better long term strategy for dealing with the 10s of 1000s of asylum seekers.

Photos:

• Bisbee/Tombstone
• Chiricahua National Monument
• Titan Missile Museum
• Saguaro National Park, Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, and Tucson

We spent a bit over a week hanging out in the state of Chihuahua Mexico, mostly at our friend’s house in Casas Grandes.

Casas Grandes is the home of a UNESCO World Heritage Site called Paquime, which was a short walk from my friend’s house. While there, we went down to the town of Chihuahua, and got aboard the “El Chepe” train to visit the Copper Canyon.

Most households in town seem to have 1 or more big dogs (usually German Shepards) and 1 or more small dogs (usually Chihuahuas). It’s a very relaxing place to hang out and stare at the desert.

If you want to take the train to the Copper Canyon, the best time of year is supposed to be September, when the canyon valleys are much greener and the waterfalls are flowing. We took a first class car one direction, and a regular class car the other direction, and actually liked the regular class better. Half the price, same size seats, and many more snack options from vendors wandering through the train.

Photos of the Copper Canyon train trip are here.

Photos of the Casas Grandes area are here.

Photos of the city of Chihuahua are here.

The first real stop on our 2 month road trip from New Orleans to Grass Valley was Big Bend National Park, right on the Texas/Mexico border along the Rio Grande. February is a great time to visit this amazing park, when the wildflowers are all in bloom, and it’s not too hot. Most days were a high of around 70, and a low of around 40.

Big Bend is a rather complicated park to camp in, as only about 50% of the regular camping spots are reservable, the rest being first-come-first serve. At peak season (Feb-April), the park is 100% full 7 nights a week, so its tricky to get a spot, as spots are gone by 10am. So a lot of people stay in an RV park just outside the park the first night, so they can drive around the unreserved sites at 9am, looking for people packing up, and grab their spot.

The park also has about 50 amazing ‘backcountry’ camping spots scattered around the park on gravel roads, many of which require 4WD, and all of which require a reservation made “up to 24 hrs” in advance. The rangers will tell you what day a given spot is suppose to free up, so you can come back and try to claim it the day before. The first ranger tried to tell us most of the roads were too rough for a Sprinter, but we drove down a couple of them, and decided they were fine. The second ranger was willing to reserve us an amazing backcountry spot (see photo link below).

We ended up doing 2 nights in first campground, 4 nights of back country, and 2 more nights at the last campground. While it is pretty hard to find a campsite this time of the year, the park still feels very empty. At our backcountry spot, we could see no sign of civilization for as far as the eye can see. The week we were there the wild flowers were in full bloom, apparently one of the best wildflower years in a long time.

It’s very easy to cross from Mexico into the National Park (you just wade across the Rio Grande), and we heard that 30+ illegal immigrants were caught in the park while we were there. It seems like it would be very hard for them to get anywhere though, as there were lots of Border Patrol vehicles and checkpoints outside the park.

We also spent one night in Terlingua, a small town of artists and misfits, which is definitely worth a visit. They let us stay in the parking lot behind the bar/restaurant for free.

Photos are here.