Kartchner Caverns to Deming

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We headed south out of Tucson for Kartchner Caverns State Park. This is one of the few “wet” (still forming) caves in the world that is open for viewing. It was discovered back in the 70’s by two college students who entered via a sinkhole barely large enough to crawl through. They reached the “end” and faced a small hole the size of a fist. They enlarged it to coathanger size, and felt moist, guano-smelling air. They knew there was something larger beyond, but did not have time to explore. They didn’t return for another 7 years. What they found was an untouched and hitherto unknown cave system with a huge column (“Kubla Khan”), zillions of soda straw formations including the 2nd longest in the world, and many many beautiful formations. This was an excellent tour. The cave is highly protected, including what look like blast doors that seal off the interior from exterior air. We recommend this highly if you are down this way. They have an RV campground adjacent, so we stayed the night with about 6 other rigs. No one within 100 feet of us. Pitch black at night until the moon came up. The Milky Way, hurrah! It would appear that the old sci-fi movie “Them” (with the giant ants) wasn’t so far off. This place (and the rest of SW AZ) is home to the world’s largest grasshoppers, beautifully colored. Man, do they make a mess when they splat on your vehicle!

After Kartchner, we went to Tombstone, flying in the face of everyone who warned us about it being a tourist trap. Well, it is. But they do it with such a lack of cynicism that you can’t help but enjoy yourself. Plus, they have an ice cream parlor where I had the best vanilla malt since Swenson’s closed down 15 years ago. They even give you the metal mixing urn so you can enjoy the leftover. Yum. My taste buds still work well for malt and for coffee ice cream. No chocolate. Looks like that’s gone forever. Oh, for another savor of Loni’s niece Noelle’s flourless chocolate cake. Sigh. Anyway, we walked the town (all three blocks of it), saw the re-creation of the OK Corral shootout, which, as it happens, did not take place there but two buildings down in an alley. Hugh O’Brien is turning over in his grave. We got a souvenir newspaper which carried the coroner’s inquest witness statements about the shootout. It’s pretty obvious that the cowboys (3 dead) got railroaded. The Earps, and Doc Holliday (a pathological killer if ever there was one) fired the first shots, and two of the victims were unarmed, while a third threw his hands up shouting “Don’t shoot me!” Shot he was, and killed. A sad day for law and order, even if the cowboys were scumbags.

The next day we took the scooter off the rack and motored 23 miles south to Bisbee, an old mining boomtown, now an artists’ colony. We took the mine tour which was rather neat. You go in on the same mine trolly that took the miners in. Unfortunately, I not only had dead batteries in the camera, but the spares I brought along must have been used as well as they lasted only a few shots. Our guide had been a miner, spending 30 years below the surface. 30 minutes would have been long enough for me to make a career change. The old time miners had it unbelievably rough, working by candlelight, no dust protection (lung disease got most of them), no hearing protection, etc. etc. A shift was 10 hours and they got the magnificent sum of $3.50 a day.

In the afternoon we toured the galleries and fell in love with a couple of artists. Good thing we were traveling by scooter or we might have bought something. We were walking around with our helmets, so we never got a hard sell as they figured we wouldn’t buy. Great lunch at a small café where they baked their own 7 grain bread, made enormous sandwiches, and homemade soups. Thumbs up. I didn’t have room for the berry crumble they tempted me with. Took in the local mining museum, which is associated with the Smithsonian. Good stuff. Had a nice scoot ride back to Tombstone, except for the occasional bug splatter on my visor. We’re cruising comfortably at 55mph, with plenty of oomph left. The Vespa definitely was a good choice.

Our next destination was the Chiricahua National Monument, thanks to the AAA guidebook. I had never heard of the place, but it is a real gem. The place is full of hoodoos which are similar to the ones in Bryce, but of a different composition. A huge nearby volcano deposited white hot ash which, when it cooled, fused into a 2,000 foot thick layer of rock. Eons of erosion did the rest. There are spectacular balancing rocks, shaped rocks, columns, canyons, you name it. We took the scoot up 1500 feet to a trailhead and went on a 8 ½ mile hike to the best of the rock formations. We gained and lost about 2000 feet of elevation and were very tired puppies by the time we staggered out. This is all around 4500 to 6000 feet in altitude, so it wasn’t JUST age. I did find that the scoot likes to understeer, so we slowed a lot for the corners (which had loose gravel now and then, so going slowly was a good idea anyway). The campground is dry camping only, so we relied on the batteries and tanks and didn’t miss a beat. Even watched a DVD we got from Netflix. If anyone is a Ballykissangel fan, you’d like this series which is called Doc Martin. British humor. Love it.

CA to AZ: A Lot of Desert

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We've finally launched on our first post-BigC RV trip. Left L.A. on Thursday the 11th. Actually, we left twice. We got as far as Santa Monica when I remembered I had not disconnected the Camry's battery. Since we'll be gone for 7 weeks, and I'm too cheap to ruin a new battery, we U-turned and motored on back. we finally got underway for good at about 11:30. At least the traffic was light. First stop was Montclair for the Lazy Daze factory where we lightened the wallet for a few more wants, like insulated roof vent covers, another set of ramps, etc. Then it was Camping World in San Berdoo where I had hoped to get the generator's (the Onan in the coach) oil changed. They were booked up, so we'll put that off. This was something I tried to do myself before we left, but the Onan idiots use Torx screws to hold on a cover that hides the drain plug. Bought the right size at the store, but in a screwdriver mode, which is all they had. No joy, the damn things were frozen on and even using an assist from vice grips wouldn't do the trick. Sigh. It should be so easy, but U.S. manufacturers obstinately make things needlessly hard.

After Camping World we headed east on I-10 and promptly hit the Mother of all dust storms somewhere around Indio. Huge winds, no visibility, so we pulled off at a casino to wait it out. The stop sign at the casino was spinning completely around, like Megan's head in the The Exorcist, only faster. After 40 minutes, we could see blue skies, and the wind was down to 30mph, so we pushed on to the southern entrance of Joshua Tree N.P. The campground there (only $7.50 with our federal geezer card) is about 8 miles off the highway, and up in some mountains, so it was dead quiet the whole night. Dry camping, but they had spotless bathrooms, so we didn't have to use our tank. Not much to see there, but a good place to stop for the night. The moon was almost full and the desert at night is weird-neat. Tried to get a T.V. signal, and got 9 stations --- all of them Spanish. Which country are we in?

Next morning we literally rolled (in neutral) back down the road to the highway. Hey, saved us at least a half gallon! Settled down on the I-10 for the cruise to AZ at a liesurely, but economical (all things are relative) 58mph. Sparse traffic and the truckers were entertaining on the CB, at least the ones we could understand. I do believe some of them were using olde English from the sounds. Waited until we crossed the border to get gas, and saved about 35 cents per gallon. A nice fellow came over while we were fueling and suggested we might want to put our T.V. antenna down. Gulp. We had driven all the way from Joshua with it slicing through the air. (Seems to be working all right.) Guess everyone has to do that at least once. I'll start with the routine of hanging something on the steering wheel as a reminder.

We pressed on to Gila Bend where we stayed at Augie's Quail R.V. Park at the magnificent sum of $23 a night for full hookups. The power for the A/C was very welcome. This is a very well-maintained park and, at the price, is recommended. Uneventful night, save for the occasional train whistling in the distance. Off the next morning, we stopped just down the road to get the rig weighed now that we have the rack and the bike on the back. We tip the scales at 12,380 pounds, but the distribution is definitely skewed more to the back: 8900 rear and 3480 front. That's lighter in the front than before, so hanging those pounds that far behind the rear axle is unloading the front end a bit. Steering seems just fine, though, but I bled a few pounds off the fronts to adjust to the lighter weight.

We switched over to I-8 for the run into Tucson and passed a nasty looking rollover in the westbound lanes. Looked like a fatality for sure, and it had the freeway shut down in that direction. Made it to Tucson without incident and we are now ensconced at the Tra-Tel RV Park. It's not much to look at, and is a bit difficult to find (AAA's directions in the camp book are not quite accurate), but at $20 a night for full hookups we aren't complaining. The place is immaculately kept, from the grounds, to the bath/showers, to the wireless internet. We are happy campers. I spent the rest of Saturday watching football via OTA high-def TV. Our new set is a champ, and we pick up the signals without a problem with our wind-tested antenna. Watched Notre Dame handle Michigan, Oregon finally eke it out against Purdue, and USC (ugh) humiliate Ohio State. Stanford (mercifully not shown) blew it against TCU.

Sunday morning we went shopping at Loew's for a helmet lock and other junk, then to WalMart for a few items, then back to the rig with the Sunday paper. We can carry a remarkable amount of stuff on the scooter. In the afternoon, we took a 20 mile hop down to the Mission San Xavier Del Bac, which Loni had seen as a child on one of her parents' whirlwind driving vacations. It's pretty neat inside, with a lot of wooden figurines. The exterior is undergoing renovation/repainting, so there's scaffolding and nets over half of it. Well worth visiting.

Monday dawned with news of the Lehman debacle and ML selling itself. Yuck. Off with the T.V. It also dawned with wind gusts of 30mph or more, so we bagged the notion of doing the 40 miles or so loop of the AZ Desert Museum. We'll save that for hopefully calmer days tomorrow. Instead, we went down to the Pima Air Museum, and got wind blasted on that ride instead. The scoot actually is pretty stable in the wind, so we didn't have a lot of trouble, but it required extra attention. If you like air museums, Pima is a must-see, with all sorts of military craft and even JFK's prop-driven Air Force 1. Excellent lunch at the Thunderbird Grill, after which we took off for the AZ State Museum at the U of A campus in downtown Tucson. Fascinating silver/turquoise jewelry exhibition, baskets dating back over a thousand years, and an extensive history tour of the various Indian tribes that populated the Southwest. Again, a must-see for the historical background of this region.

Tuesday (today) was a little less windy, but still enough for a "challenging" scooter ride. We headed off into the hills to the West to the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum. Nice mountain rode with plenty of twisties and very little traffic. The Vespa climbed like a champ, but cornering is definitely a low-speed operation. It tends to understeer which makes for exciting moments. The Museum is top-notch, very nicely organized, maintained, and staffed. Docents everywhere. We never knew there were so many different cacti. Truly an eye opener of a museum. They even have some desert wildlife including a big rug of a mountain lion, two aviaries (one for hummingbirds), an aquarium (yep, there's plenty of riparian and pond life in the desert), and a reptile zoo. We spent most of the day there, then motored through the Saguaro National Monument to see seas of big cacti. On the way home we stopped and did a grocery shop. We had bags everywhere on the scoot, and everything made it home just fine. Tomorrow we head for Karchner Caverns, Tombstone, and points East. Stay tuned.