One of the reasons we checked on the possibility of a Grand Canyon hike was because we wanted an excuse to go see our niece and nephew and their family that live in Arizona.
Each evening we got to spend with the Kelly Klan--Beth, Brian, Max and
Camryn. Beth took these pictures of us and posted them on facebook with
the caption, "We are thrilled with our surprise guests!!! Being retired
and living in an RV certainly has its perks!!" We couldn't agree with
that more!
We got to spend time with them every evening we were in town, and they hosted us for some great meals at their house. We really appreciated them making time for us in their busy lives with such short notice! We had a great time playing with Max and Camryn, and visiting with Beth and Brian. We were also entertained by "concerts" when Max practiced his piano lessons and Camryn sang.
They live in Sierra Vista because Brian works at Fort Huachuca. That gave us a unique option for lodging because Brian could sponsor us into the military campground on base. As civilians, this would be our only opportunity to stay in one of these campgrounds that we have heard about. It's a very nice and quiet place to spend several days.
We had an unusual welcoming committee when we first pulled into the campground. We were still hooking up the utilities, and had the door of the motorhome open. A hummingbird flew right through the open doorway, and then couldn't understand why she couldn't get out through that big windshield. The picture was taken from the outside, showing the bird hovering at the top of the windshield. It took just a little bit of coaching for her to find the open door again. So once again, we should note that no wildlife was injured in the making of this blog.
There is also hiking available without even leaving Fort Huachuca. This picture was taken while we were on a trail in Huachuca Canyon, so you can see some of the mountains that surround the base. On this hike we heard many birds, we smelled a javelina, and we saw this young deer. We have pictures of the fawn, but you will just have to imagine the sounds and smells of this hike for yourself.
We also saw a touch of nature in Beth and Brian's back yard. It seems that a mother bird determined that their gas cooker made a nice protected place to raise her babies. If you look closely to the right of the briquettes, you can see a nest with six tiny eggs under the grate.
Beth and Brian gave us great advice for hiking options, because this is a family of hikers and bikers. Their first suggestion was a hike to Coronado Peak in the Coronado National Park. The visitor's center is a couple miles from the Mexican border, and we hiked south from there.
From the peak we could see the very tall fence that separates the two countries. That's the very straight line that you can see heading from the top left corner of the picture down towards the mountain.
The strangest thing happened on this hike. We heard a faint buzz that got louder and louder until we could see a group of thousands of bees that looked like a black cloud that stretched for around 50 feet. It was one of the scariest experiences considering that we were three miles away from the trailhead, and didn't see anyone on that trail the entire day. Later while we were on Coronado peak, we had the same experience. We have no idea if that was the same group of bees or not. We asked the ranger about our bee sightings. Best guess is that it could have been a colony of bees looking for somewhere to relocate, or it could have been a huge group of Africanized bees. Denisa was more spooked by thousands of bees than the rattlesnake encounter. No pictures of the bees because she was ready to run down the mountain instead of focusing a camera on clouds of bees.
We are ready to head north because temperatures are heating up in southern Arizona. But Sierra Vista is at a higher altitude and enjoys a more temperate climate. While on the hike, when we stopped in the shade the breeze almost felt like air-conditioning. It was a cool hike in more ways than one! This is a picture of Mark doing some international spying from Coronado Peak.
Another highlight of our days here was getting a special tour of Brian's job as an air traffic controller on base. Brian has spent two tours in Iraq, and is now a Department of Defense employee at Fort Huachuca airport. We got to see the radar room, and got lots of explanations from the guys that work inside with no windows. Then we climbed the six flights of steps to the control tower, for the birds eye view of the airport and incoming planes. This airport serves civilian plus military plus different agencies' aircraft. We got to see Air Force planes, a Border Guard helicopter, unmanned drones . . . We thought it was a great "factory tour."
But of course the highlight of our time in Sierra Vista was spending time with family. Denisa's sister and brother-in-law arrived on Wednesday--a few days before celebrating Camryn's 4th birthday. When Connie and Joe picked us up to drive out to Kartchner Caverns, the two sisters had unknowingly dressed alike. The crazy thing is that this isn't the first time it has happened.
They delivered a quilt that Beth had started and Connie finished. The quilt is made of Brian's old army uniforms, fashioned into a flag, and he really liked the finished product.
It was great getting to see relatives while we are on the road, experiencing part of their lives while we wander this great country! As we left Sierra Vista, there were two Air Force planes practicing approaches to Brian's airport so they were flying low over our highway. It was a nice good-bye salute to our time at Fort Huachuca!
While exploring the area around Deming, our future plan was to continue north through the state of New Mexico. We are really enjoying New Mexico! The cacti are beginning to bloom, and some of the colors are stunning!
But the nice part of living in a home with wheels is that our plans can be changed so easy. And that's what happened this weekend.
One of the items on our bucket list is to hike to the bottom of the Grand Canyon (and hopefully back out as well). This is an overnight hike, and there is a very limited number of beds in the lodging available at the bottom. They take reservations 13 months in advance, and they are always booked up. But for some reason, we decided to check to make sure there weren't any cancellations that would fit into our plans. We were shocked to see that they had a cancellation for one man and one woman on April 26, so we booked it immediately. We will be staying in "the dorms" at Phantom Ranch in the bottom of the Grand Canyon on the night of April 26, and hiking back out of the canyon on April 27. All this hiking we have been doing should have been great training for the grand hike!
So even though we promised our feet a break from hiking, we convinced them to go on a short hike the next day--strictly for training purposes. Adjacent to Rock Hound State Park is a smaller day use park just two miles down the road. You can see Denisa sitting in Rock Hound State Park looking at the mountains of Spring Canyon Park through binoculars.
There is a one mile trail to the top of that mountain called Lover's Leap, so we set off with that as our destination. We got several comments and texts about the rattlesnake pictures in an earlier post. We were told that some of the guys wanted more reptiles and fewer flowers in the blog. So today we bring you lizards from the Lover's Leap trail!
And every once in a while, we are lucky enough to get both lizards and flowers in the same picture.
We were hoping to see some of the ibex that call this park home. It seems that the country of Iran gave the United States a few long horned ibex sheep as a gift. That reminds me of the miniature frog that an unnamed aunt and uncle gave our son for Christmas. But what do you do to keep it alive and thriving once you receive a living gift? I wished we would have known about Canyon Springs State Park. Because the small group of ibex have now grown to 300 mountain goat in these craggy mountains in the desert that resemble Iran. We scanned the mountainside over and over on our hike, but never caught a glimpse of an ibex! We did see a bunch of ibex poop on the mountain top. So we must be content to know that we stood where ibex had stood. 
It was a hike with lots of elevation change (in other words it was very steep). There was also lots of loose rock that meant skating back down part of the mountain on our bottoms. We have developed a new term for these rolling little boulders that make ascents and descents so perilous. We now call them "rollders" and we're not great fans of this for a mountainous trail surface.
There was one more lizard siting on the way down the mountain--no flowers required. But notice the layer of beautiful lichen on the rock. You will hear us saying "I'm likin' that lichen!" on many of our hikes these days.
So as we finish our short time in New Mexico and head towards Arizona, we were blessed with a beautiful sunset. The setting sun turned the mountains behind our site into a cool shade of purple,
while painting a beautiful sunset across the western sky.
As we say good-bye (for now) to New Mexico--"Land of Enchantment" we are heading toward Arizona--"The Grand Canyon State". It's Grand Canyon or bust!
Deming, New Mexico has proved to be a nice base for some fun places to explore. One of those areas is the City of Rocks State Park, 29 miles north. We found that New Mexico state parks charge a day-use fee to enter, unless you are camping there. But since we were staying at another state park, we got a free pass to enter other parks. So it's another free day of entertainment!
These unusual rock formations were born from a volcanic eruption many years ago that was 1,000 times greater than the eruption at Mount St. Helen's. In the years since, the earth has been chiseled away to leave unusual formations with street-like spaces between. So that is where the name for the state park came from--Rock City. These boulders are huge, as you can see Denisa strolling down a boulevard in the middle of the "city."
Where the rock structures have eroded, they left interesting divots that made great seating areas. Mark found this rock top with his and hers loungers. But "her" had to get up to take the picture.
It is so fun to climb on these rocks, and Denisa thought this would be a great place for a game of hide and seek. Mark thought it would be even better for a round of paint ball (as long as you didn't use paint). We both thought it would be a really fun place to bring kids. Whatever fun is planned, we thought the blue skies made for great pictures.
All around the perimeter are camping areas, so people can pitch tents or pull their trailers into their own private block of the city. Those areas have no hook ups, but do have lots of ambiance. There is an area with electric and water hookups for RVs, but that would be in the traditional one-site-beside-the-other-in-a-line area away from the rocks. So you give up the ambiance to have hookups.
After playing in the City of Rocks, we found it also had a bike/hike trail that completely circles the city. So of course we had to explore that possibility. The gravel surface meant that you had to pedal continually, and that innocent looking pasture setting was much more hilly than we thought it would be. We got a good cardio workout on this ride! You can see the City of Rocks from a distance of about a half mile in the picture below.
On the bike ride we got a bonus view of the plateau named Table Mountain behind the city. Since we saw Table Mountain near Cape Town, South Africa, we thought we would see how it compared. There was no gondola that would sweep you to the top in four minutes like in Africa. But there was a walking trail that would slog you to the top here in New Mexico.
After exploring the City of Rocks, we still had enough of the afternoon to go to the Deming Luna Mimbres Museum that we had read good things about. This small town museum is run by volunteers, so it is free to the public. We will seldom pass up a well reviewed free attraction, and this one did not disappoint. We found it to be one of our favorite small town museums, and it was huge! Located in the old USO building downtown, it covers two floors. We wished we had gotten into town sooner, because we were almost running through all the rooms in the hour we had before it closed. Their claim to fame is their large collection of mimbres pottery. In case you aren't up on the latest mimbres pottery style (like we weren't before going here), Denisa is standing outside the museum beside a over-sized reproduction of a mimbres pot. These distinctive pots were made and painted by the Indian tribes that inhabited this area almost 1000 years ago. They are categorized by black geometric design and figurative animals painted on white bowls, and the detail that they took the time to paint was fascinating.
The crown jewel of another fun day, was dinner out at a fancy restaurant. Well maybe not fancy, but fun for us. We had been seeing billboards for Blake's Lotaburger since El Paso. It's a small chain of restaurants that started in the Texas/New Mexico area. With a son named Blake, we knew we had to eat there some day. We had been sending our Blake texts of the billboards that had pictures of hamburgers with their latest marketing slogans, "Hot, Single and Looking for Love--Blake's Lotaburger." Today was the day to try one of those hot single burgers! We can report that Blake can make a great hamburger, and we loved the onion rings too.
Our first lesson of today's adventure was to learn how to pronounce where we were going. Even though is looks like Gila, it is pronounced Heela. The main reason to visit here are the cliff dwellings that were built inside the caves high in the mountains, so that was our destination for the day.
But to get to the Gila National Park, we had a long drive up a big mountain. It was amazing to drive from cactus and desert to pine trees and mountains in just a few miles.
You might notice that there are no lines on this winding road through the mountains. We were glad that we only met 3 cars during the narrowest 25 miles.
Denisa gets a kick out of taking pictures of GPS screens that look like this. Mark thinks this is silly, and he purposefully kept going around a curve every time she got the camera focused on the screen. Of course, maybe this just happened because he was following the road pictured in that GPS screen. You might notice that the speed limit on the GPS screen shows 55 mph. There are actually no posted speed limits because there is no way you could drive faster than 40 mph on this road.
We got to the national park in time to watch the video at the visitor center, and then walk 1/2 mile up the trail to where the ranger-led hike started. As you hike the trail, you can see the caves up in the mountain where the dwellings were built.
There are actually 7 caves in a row that were used for temporary protection from the elements over many years by many groups. These dwellings were built during the late 1200's, as the timber used in the process have been dated between 1276 and 1287.
About 40 people lived in the cave dwellings, and no one knows for sure why they left around 1299. It is just amazing that so much of the original cliff dwellings are still standing--protected from the elements by the caves.
The neatest part of visiting these cliff dwellings is that you don't have to just view them from afar; you're allowed to walk within the chambers and imagine life for this group of Mogollons that lived here for a generation.
We had a fun time at the cliff dwellings, and got some exercise on the 1-mile loop trail to get to the caves they are in. But we wanted to explore more of the mountains in this area. So the Little Bear Canyon was recommended to us for a little more exercise. It's a 9-mile hike that starts as a boring walk across the desert plains. It was getting warm and we were beginning to wonder why the two people we talked to had raved about this hike. Then we headed into a canyon with a little creek. As the walls of the canyon got higher, the views got better.
We stopped in a shady place by a waterfall to eat the lunch we had packed.
It was the best meal we had eaten in a long time just because of the views! As the walls of Bear Canyon got closer together, we were in the shade for the rest of the hike.
But the highlight of the hike came when we reached the Gila River!
It was a beautiful blue sky day with stone cliff walls that were over 1000 feet high!
We celebrated our arrival by soaking our feet in the cold river water. Now all we had to do was hike the 4.5 miles back to the car!
After returning to the car, we made another stop at the "Trail to the Past" on our way out of the park. Our feet complained when they found out we were hiking to the pictographs along this short hike, and then on to another pueblo dwelling built into a ground level cave. It is amazing that there are places like this that are almost a thousand years old, and we are allowed to experience them first-hand.
We were both tired for the long drive back to the motorhome. We have both promised our feet that they get the day off from hiking tomorrow. The drive was beautiful as we drove in and out of the Gila National Park and Wilderness areas. We were blessed with a glimpse of a herd of elk along the road as the sun was setting. It was a great day of wandering His wonders!
After wandering around Texas for almost three months, it is time to retire our tattered Texas Road map and move on to New Mexico to find His wonders in a new state.
So we traveled all of 100 miles down the road and landed close to Deming, Texas at Rock Hound State Park. We were welcomed by blue skies and fields of gold as we got closer to our destination.
We had meant for this to be a two night stay to catch up on laundry and explore the state park. But we really like our site here at the foothills of the Florida Mountains. One reason to stay at Rock Hound State Park is the very nice RV sites
that are far apart and pretty level.
They each have a covered picnic
table and cooker, and a great view. This is our view of the Florida Mountains from our motorhome.
We're a little confused by changing to a new state. We moved from Texas to New Mexico by the Florida Mountains. Sometimes, we don't know where we are. Most of the time we don't know what day of the week it is, and we have no idea what day of the month it might be. So we have a calendar on the refrigerator where we write down what we did and where we are. So when in doubt, we can always check the refrigerator to get our location and date. But wherever we are, we have lucked into more wildflowers in the desert, and Denisa is loving that !
We even lucked into the camp host spot that has full hook ups. It costs an extra $4 per night, but that means that we could wash clothes with reckless abandon. For the last 9 days in El Paso we were without sewer hookups, so we had to take very short showers and use paper plates. So it is nice to be able to cook and clean with a more liberal water policy.
Unlike most state and national parks, Rock Hound allows visitors to pick up rock souvenirs, and take home up to 15 pounds of rocks. Since we live in a motorhome with weight restrictions, we won't be taking any souvenirs with us. But the good news is that we seem to have some weight to spare. We don't have any scales to prove it, but with all this hiking our clothes are getting looser. Mark's belt is on the tightest hole, and he'll have to punch a new hole to avoid losing his britches on some hike in the future. No pictures to prove this point, but it seems a good time to sneak in another picture of the beautiful Mexican poppies at our state park home.
Our site is right next to the Botanical Garden trail, and there are some really nice cactus specimens in the park. This agave looks very healthy, and it is sending up the largest shoot that we have ever seen. It's almost as big around as our heads! We would love to stick around to see the magnificent bloom that will come on such a large stalk.
This is a type of "century plant" that grows for many years, then sends up a single bloom bract.
Here's a picture of another plant that is just starting to form that woody stem that will raise out of the center.
Because of all the energy needed to produce this single bloom, when it finishes blooming the plant itself will die. Here's another plant that has finished blooming. The dried stalk is like a tree trunk, and the beautiful agave plant that produced it will turn brown and die. Because we have never been around many of these desert plants, we are fascinated by their lives.
And of course we are still great fans of the famous Engelmann cactus. Here is one in the botanical garden at our state park with its name on the plaque.
And just in case you should think that Denisa is only taking pictures of plants, we'll throw in a lizard. Because he was posing so well, we have twenty different pictures before Mark convinced Denisa that the only reason the lizard was sitting so still was because he was planning how best to run up her leg. So she suddenly decided to move on and quit taking pictures.
We don't have any bird pictures, but we do have nest pictures. It seems that the birds around here don't have any trees to build homes in, so they make do with cacti instead. We found two different bird nests nestled amongst the spikes of two different cacti.
We are really enjoying our home base here at Rock Hound State Park, and we are finding lots of things to do in this area of southwest New Mexico.
