Desert Views

The wash behind Gary's house in North Ranch.

The desert is beautiful, in its own way. Most of the plants have to protect themselves from the creatures that live here. And from the scorching heat. They all have thorns, that you quickly developed a respect for. An gental brush against  a fuzzy teddy bear chola and you may require stitches after the emergency doctor removes the hundreds of needles.

Wickenburg is full of strange characters.

The old west city didn't have a jail so they chained the law breakers (mostly drunks) to the town tree. As the story goes; they ran out of tree space so they chained one drunk to a log. He woke up the next morning, picked up the log and walked over to the saloon to start drinking again.

Wickenburg has lots of full size sculptures place around town. This one is more interesting than some of the other. Like the singing cabelero below and the bird and bug at the top.

Back Roads of Arizona

I convinced Sharon, Joni, and Dave that a drive in the desert would be fun....

This is the "good" road. The rest of the trip would be more challenging.

It's hard to tell but those "bumps" in the road are really deap. We took rocks from the side if the road to fill the holes.

This was another example of the good road.

I took a wrong turn and we ended up on a dead end jeep trail. At the end was this ranch house from days gone by.

The desert is a beautiful place. Especially way out, off the road, off off off the trail.

This stop sign was well placed. That's about a two foot drop. If there was no stop sign, you would hit the "dip" at a whopping 5 mph.

Snow in Congress, AZ

Yes, it does snow in the Arizona desert.
We woke up to a snow storm.

New Years Eve started with maybe an inch of snow on Gary's cactus garden. People who have lived in North Ranch for 10 years, say they have never seen snow like this.

Coronado National Memorial

We took the trip up the Coronado Canyon to the top. As you can see from the picture (taken less than half way up) the "road" is unmaintained mountain dirt and full of switch backs. At the top is Montezuma Pass and the Boarder Patrol observation station. What a beautidul place to work.

The trip down the backside was worse. I don't think you could call this a road. It was rutted and full of tire flattening, sharp rocks. The ranger said go slow and it should take about 45 minutes. An hour and a half later, we got back on some of the worst blacktop I have ever driven on. The sholders were all washed away. The two lane road was barely one. Another hour to get back around the Huachuca Mountain range and home to the coach.

This is deffinately why I got the AWD Vue. That was fun all the way.

At the top of the picture , near the entrance to the canyon, there is a thin brown line going off to the left. That is the Mexico border. The mountain in the background is in Mexico.

Mexican food

I really like good Mexican food. Places that don't confuse "heat" for taste. And it doesn't hurt if the plate looks great.

Great company also helps the food taste great. MI Casa restaurant in Benson, AZ.

This is the place. If we had not been referred  here I would never have considered this place. But what a great find. Hidden off the road, behind a chain link fence. We went back for lunch the next day.

City of Rocks

We were going to stay the night in the RV, but decided to just day visit. Pretty amazing campground nestled into the rocks. We could have parked the coach were the car is parked. Not very level, and no hookups. But it is one of the best dark night spots in New Mexico.