We go to the Zoo

We left Pueblo yesterday morning and continued on North on I25. This stretch of interstate runs along the foot of the Rockies. We could continually see the mountains off to the left and then the start of the Great Plains off to the right. As we went through Colorado Springs we could watch snow capped Pikes Peak on our left. Colorado Springs is where the Air Force Academy is located and it's where we started into the heavy traffic. It was four to six lanes wide and moving fast. There was also Monument hill to get over which was another 7800+ peak. But we managed to deal with it all and got up to Denver about 11:00am.

Coming into Denver, the overall brown smog layer is dramatic. It really cuts the visibility and I didn't want to linger any longer than we had planned. But we wanted to go to see the Denver Zoo so in we plunged. I misjudged the exit and left I25 at one exit too late and wound up lost in central downtown. I couldn't get the internet to work but my Garmin GPS saved the day and got us routed to the zoo. Driving in downtown Denver is no fun. The streets aren't especially wide and the traffic was heavy and there were huge buses in the right lane all the way. But the zoo was nice.

I had scoped it out using Google Maps so I knew the lay of the parking lots but when we actually got there the place was absolutely full with almost no parking anywhere. It being Friday there were, as I had expected, several school field trips and their buses had filled any bus parking. I got one of the last places at the far end of the lot but that was good enough. I knew that the admission would be $12 for seniors but when we got to the window, they let me in free because I was pushing the wheelchair. I only paid the $12 for Diane. I pushed her all over the zoo, into the buildings and around the pens and into the gift shop. By the time we were done at 2:00, I'd had enough. But it's a good zoo, very clean and very nice displays. It's a little smaller than Memphis or San Diego but has some different species. No big stars like Pandas or Polar Bears but enough to have a good time. We've never seen so many strollers in our lives. Doubles and triples and people towing wagons besides. It was mostly mothers and kids out for a day at the zoo. I felt sorry for most of the mothers but they seemed to be managing.

From Denver we kept on up the highway to Loveland, CO where we stayed the night at a fancy RV resort. I don't generally like to stay at a place as feature rich and expensive as this but it was the only place around. Good boondocking has been hard to find, although we could have stayed at the local Walmart but elected to have hookups instead. Today I'll stop at a local liquor retailer to pick up some local beer and then we'll head up into Wyoming. Fuel is cheaper up there so I'll get fuel when we cross the border, then it's on up the road.

I want to stop at Guernsey, WY to see the cliffs with the wagon tracks from the settlers wagons and then we'll go North a ways more to camp for the night. At that point, we'll likely be out of cell range for a couple of days while we visit Devil's Tower. Then we'll swing back down to I90 and stay somewhere around Sturgis before going further down to Mt. Rushmore.

On the Road Again

We pulled out of the ranch yesterday at 8:15 into a beautiful day. The temps were in the mid sixties and the sky was bright blue with white puffy clouds. As we passed through Flagstaff the San Francisco peaks were shrouded in clouds. Later, out in the desert, we could see the shadows of the clouds providing a dappled effect on the mesas and buttes. Very pretty day. We've been chasing a cold front across the country and that is a very good thing. It means that the temperatures have been in the 50's and 60's and as long as I babied it, I really haven't had any trouble with the engine getting too hot.

Yesterday we drove as far as Grants, NM, the uranium capitol of America. We stayed in a great little campground called the Bar S. I had my heart set on revisiting the diner we had stopped at on the way West but when we got there, it had just closed. So we wound up at the Iron Skillet at the Petro station near the campground. It was OK, but not what I wanted.

While the day was just super, we started to catch up with the rain after we got into New Mexico. By the time we stopped it was raining steadily. It let up as we left the restaurant and presented us with this gorgeous rainbow.

I was hoping it was an omen for good but the rain returned overnight and we started off today in the rain at 8:00. The rain persisted until we got North of Albuquerque. I stopped for fuel about 20 miles North of town and put in 63 gallons at $4.04 per. The road was good from there, pretty much desert until we got to the Santa Fe area. Then we had trees and hills for awhile until Las Vegas. That's right, there's one in NM too! After LV it was all high plains until the border. At one point we stopped for a break at a rest area and you could see for 50 miles in any direction and not spot anything taller than a small bush. I was waiting for a herd of buffalo to break over the hill.

We did 367 miles yesterday but today we reached a little and went 404. That's more than we really like to do so we'll slow down from here and see some sights along the way. We're staying in a campground on the edge of Pueblo, CO tonight. I would have normally stayed in the Walmart or the Cracker Barrel in town but the temps are going to the low 40's tonight so we wanted power to run our heaters.

The trip so far has been very good with the coach running just great. The roads are decent and the hills are manageable with effort. I'm glad I elected to follow this route back, the stress level is much lower than it would have been if we'd tried the Rockies.

Bumper Crop

One thing about being a visitor to an area is that you don't have any frame of reference to gauge what you're seeing. Since the monsoon season started here effectively about six weeks ago, we've gotten about 5 and a half inches of rain. It has resulted in the growth of large stands of yellow flowers. There are patches of these flowers on the hills that are over an acre in size. Some of the plants are four feet tall or more. Down in the valley it's the same way. There are large patches of yellow flowers but those are a different species, looking almost like black eyed susans except that there are several blooms to a stalk. I though it was all pretty and nice but when my cousin got home last Monday, she said this is the first time in the 15 years in this location that she's ever seen such flowers. Who knew?

I  believe what we're seeing at our elevation is something called Golden Crownbeard or Cowpen Daisy, a member of the sunflower family.

Another plant growing in profusion right now is this Feather Finger Grass.

It's normally 5 or 6 inches tall but right now there are patches of it that are 36" high.

Of course, with abundance comes predators. I spotted this guy waiting for the sun to warm him up yesterday morning.

Yesterday we went in to town to shop for some last minute supplies before we head out in mid-week. We went to Walmart to get some of those modular plastic storage drawers that are so popular with RV'rs. As we often do, we got one of the motorized carts for Diane to drive. As so often happens, it died on us in mid-store. We trudged up to the checkout and an employee finally saw our plight and got us a basket. Why is it that Walmart can't keep their carts in decent shape? If I knew the cart wasn't going to last, I'd just get the wheelchair and be done with it. If I go to Fry's or to Lowe's, the carts are in good shape and work just fine. At Walmart, they're junk. It can be done but Walmart apparently doesn't care enough about their customers to do it. If I take the wheelchair I need a hand-basket to carry the purchases in. But Walmart most times doesn't have them available either. And not in just one store. I find the same problems with Walmarts across the country. I try to avoid Walmart if I can, even though their prices are attractive, but sometimes, especially on trips in unknown areas they are the only choice.

I had to stop at CVS to pick up some prescription renewals to keep us going. They screwed up another one. This time they said my co-pay was $196 for one prescription. I told them I didn't think so and to put it back on the shelf. They said I should call my insurance to check it out. I'm seriously going to look for another provider when I get back home.

As I mentioned, my cousin got back home on Monday evening so we're preparing to depart this week for points East. Hurrah! But today another cousin is coming to visit for a couple of days which will delay us until mid-week. She lives in central New Mexico and is the sister of the gal we've been staying with. I haven't seen her in over 40 years. So we'll stay and visit until she leaves and then head out, probably on Wednesday. Our goal then is to make it to central Michigan to visit our son and his family. We're trying to get there by the 23rd of Sept. I've got an aggressive itinerary laid out for that trip but I don't know if we'll make every stop. For sure there will be some brewery's in Colorado and then the Black Hills area with Mount Rushmore and then a stop in Northern Michigan. I hope to increase the pace of the blog as we see some more interesting places.

Sunrise - Moonrise

I get up most days just at sunrise, I make a pot of coffee and then go and feed the stock. I've locked the cats in the shop/garage for the night along with their food and water and litter boxes so they're fine until I let them out in the morning. Then I go and put one of the border collies in a larger outdoor pen and feed him. The other border collie stays in his pen until evening when I swap them and then I put the second one back in his pen for the night. If I put them together they'd fight like mad but they're just fine with anybody else. They don't pay any mind to Curley or the cats at all. After the dogs, I feed the horses. I take grain and hay to the old retired cow pony and grain and pellets and hay to the young palominos. Then I sit down on the step and have a cup of coffee and visit with the cats and let the day take shape.

Last night I was watching the news and they mentioned the moon. The moon was full last night, the 31st, and it was also full on the 1st. That makes it the second full moon in the calendar month and it is what is called the "blue moon". "Once in a blue moon" refers to an event that occurs only rarely but blue moons aren't really all that rare, although the next one won't occur until into 2015. But it was the right time to watch the moon rise so I took a couple of pictures.

I suppose I should include a sunset picture as the sun is setting on our time in Arizona. I expect my cousin back here on Monday or Tuesday and I'm hoping to get back on the road home by the weekend. I know she'd like me to stay through Christmas but that just ain't gonna happen.

While I've been here I've tried to get a feel for the West and tried to understand the people and reconcile the different themes that I see displayed. I've read a lot. Books and magazines and memoirs. I've traveled about in the state as best I can. Just like in New England or the South, there are conflicting streams and images.

Arizona Highways magazine paints stories of gorgeous rocks and forests and Indian ruins. The sun is always just the right shade of gold and the history is always right around the corner. The only local TV stations are out of Phoenix and they are full of big city importance. Lots of business deals and political shenanigans and pro sports. They broadcast for the whole state but only give you the weather for "The Valley". Prescott emphasizes its cowboy past as a romantic era not to be forgotten while busily evolving into a huge retirement community. The license plates carry the slogan "The Grand Canyon State" but that's all you hear of it, otherwise its ignored, even in Flagstaff, the closest decent size town.

The weather, of course, is very different from any I've lived in before. We went to a garage sale yesterday and it was being run by some folks who moved here from Illinois just a year and half ago. They said they just loved the weather. I can't say that I love the weather. There's a lot of sunshine to be sure but that sun just burns and dries everything out. The humidity level is what makes it enjoyable or tolerable, depending on your viewpoint. Certainly it's nice to have the mornings start cool and refreshing most of the time. But that sun comes up over the hill big and bright and so hot it feels like it'll take the shirt off your back.

The geography is appealing. It's big and open and you can see for miles and miles almost anywhere in the state. I love the broad sweep of the sky. I'm sure that some of that feeling of freedom in the West comes from the wide open view. I had a fellow working for me one time who was from Oklahoma. He was a good mechanic and I was sad to see him leave. He said he just couldn't stand the closed in feeling he got from living in North Carolina. He couldn't see far enough. I guess if you were born and raised out here it would be tough to leave.

But boy, is it harsh. Every plant pulls at you. Only the hardiest native species can live without additional water and most of the time they look like they're dead, just waiting for the next rainstorm. Spring is hooked to the rainfall not the calendar. Stuff doesn't green up until the monsoon season in July and August. There are oases like the Verde Valley with a perennial stream but away from there it's brutal. I drive through the country and imagine those people coming here on horseback or wagon or on foot and I'm just stunned by the fortitude that it must have taken. And to some degree still takes. Not like in the early days, but to voluntarily take on ranching knowing that the only water you'll see is what falls from the sky is just amazing to me.

There are still cowboys out here, but you have to look hard to find them. They're over the hill on the back side of the ranch tending the beef that you and I will put on our table. They have their own ethic that in its finest form is called "The Cowboy Way". They are truly outstanding individuals that remain a strong contributor to the Western way of life. But just like native Southerners, they are getting crowded by folks from other places. If I go in to Prescott, I can see some stores selling cowboy clothes, but I won't see the folks on the sidewalk wearing them. The crowd at Costco looks just like the same group at Costco in Greensboro. People don't speak in a drawl and they don't look at me and tell me I have an accent. The nail salon is run by Thai's and the hotels are run by people from India just like back home. If there were trees and green grass, I could be anywhere back East.

Another thing I found interesting. On the way out here, once we entered Oklahoma we were on Indian lands most of the way. Look at the maps and there are Indian reservations and properties everywhere out here. And most of the reservations now have Casinos. But you never hear or see anything about the Indians relating to their daily lives. There isn't any "Indian news". You can see them selling jewelry along the side of the road up in Sedona or outside the Grand Canyon. You can see their Casinos everywhere, including in downtown Prescott. But nobody talks about them at all.

So it's been an interesting time and a definite learning experience. I've enjoyed my time here. I wish I had come sooner. I wish I could see more of the West. The people I've met have been friendly and helpful. The place has its special demands just like the North or the South do. You need to have a flexible approach to be happy here but maybe that's true anywhere. It's way too complex a blend of themes to be able to sum  it up in a word or sentence. I encourage anyone who has any thought of visiting out here to certainly come on out and try it. And the sooner the better.

Now, That's A fence

When I was growing up in central New York, the house we lived in was located on a corner lot. My mother had a real case about the kids cutting the corner off and riding their bikes across the corner of the yard. So, she planted a hedge of Spirea on the frontage sides. It grew up to be about 5' high and 4' thick. It was beautiful in the late spring when it flowered with its little white flowers. It looked like a snowbank around the edge of the yard. It must have also interfered with the visibility of drivers coming to the corner because one night somebody wrapped a chain around the five bushes in the corner and tore them out. My mother found them dragged three blocks away. She promptly brought them back and replanted them. But the hedge was a lot of work. It needed to be trimmed and occasionally severely cut back. And it bothered the drivers. So finally she dug it all up and called Acme Fence or someone like that to come and install a chain link fence 4' high all around the property. That was the end of the matter and it worked really well and is still there to this day.

Well, out here they have fences as well, and they're not just to keep kids with bikes under control. As I've mentioned before, most of the folks in this rural community keep a horse or two. A lot of them also raise dogs, but that's another story. In the wider area, there are horse and cattle ranches of really immense proportions. Think thousands of acres. And they all need fences. Most places have a fence made up of T-posts driven into the ground and strung with barbed wire. But commonly there are some really strong fences made of steel poles, welded together in a solid piece. They look like this:

That is just a short section at the entrance to a driveway but we once saw one built like this only with four crossbars and vertical post every 8' running along Rt. 89 south of Prescott. It ran straight and true and all painted white for over four miles without a break. Here's one made from 2" square galvanized tubing:

These fences are not prefabricated, they're built on site from pile pipe with a portable welding and cutting rig.

Of course, all fences need gates. The standard entry around here is made from large diameter steel tubing and stands 12'-14' tall.

As you can see, they're often decorated with words or pictures cut from steel sheet. Because the humidity is so low most of the time, rusting is minimal.

If you look carefully, you'll see Curley exploring in the background. And there's more:

The place across the street has dogs that raise quite a ruckus, but he also has this horse who's nice and quiet.

Up on the corner this guy points the way to Blue Ridge Ranch.

This is quite the sculpture. The body is an old muffler. The arms are exhaust tubing. The rope and his gun are re-rod. The face is an old shovel with cut nails for the whiskers, his eyes are lock washers and his hat is an iron pail lid. Even scrub brushes for sideburns.

Pretty clever and one of the best constructions I've seen. The cut sheet horses and javelinas and other animals are available for sale. I've seen them at shops in West Sedona. But some of this stuff are certainly one-off inspirations.

I went to fill up with water this morning. I was fourth in line.

We have a 300 gallon tank loaded in the back of the pick-up and I have to fill it up about once a week. I have to drive about 8 miles into Dewey to a public water fill. If there's nobody there it takes about ten minutes from the time I pull in to when I pull away. There's no valve or counter, just a slot drop a quarter. Drop the coin and the water comes out the hose. Keep it up until you're done.

My cousin leaves NY to start back today so I'm starting to unload our stuff from the house back into the motor home. It'll be at least the weekend after Labor Day before we get going. I'm trying to map out possible routes back. We're coming back the Northern way through South Dakota so we can stop at Mount Rushmore and whatever else turns up.

How High the Sky

I've been kind of a weather nut all my life, ever since I heard my mother say "red sky in the morning, sailor take warning, red sky at night, sailor's delight". I love to watch the sky and guess what the weather is going to be like. I grew up hearing about how the farmers could foretell the weather and all the country verses that helped. And about the woolly bear caterpillar for the winter and whether the smoke from a campfire rose or settled. So I like to watch the sky.

And out here you can really watch the sky. When we first got out here in May, the sky was always clear and blue, day after day. Pretty boring. But with the start of July we started to see clouds most days. Supposedly, the monsoon season starts the  first part of July and it then rains often until the end of September. Well, that's not quite the case as it didn't start to rain until August and then it's been pretty spotty. But it has rained. So far this month our gage has measured about 5" total. You can see in the photo that the tank or pond in the lower right has a good amount of water in it now. I watched a Great Blue Heron fly in for some hunting yesterday. There are no fish that I know of but there are hundreds of frogs.

The clouds are the same types I grew up watching but the weather signs I grew up learning just don't seem to apply around here. I can watch a cumulus cloud like the one in the picture grow and grow but unlike home where it would sweep across the landscape, here as often as not it just sits there and dumps water on one spot. The other day we went into town and from the hill we could see a terrific rainstorm about two miles wide just dumping on the town and blue sky all around it.

One of the things I know I'll miss is the ability to see for a long distance. I can watch storms build and rain on places that I know are 50 or more miles away. At night I can watch lightning from storms over 100 miles away. At home, I'm lucky to see clouds that are five miles away. I see a rain cloud let loose and I go to the radar map to see just where it is and I'm often surprised at how far way the storm really is.

Because of the way the storms develop out here, actually getting rain is a real hit or miss proposition. Many times I've seen it pouring on three sides of us and not a drop hits here. Or we just get brushed by an outer edge and only get a trace. But if it does rain on top of us it comes down heavy, just like in Carolina. And it runs off and creates flash floods and cuts channels in the dirt roads making them even worse than they usually are.

When we lived up North we were used to heavy snow. When we moved to North Carolina we laughed at the consternation that 3 or 4 inches of snow caused. Now that we're in North Carolina we're used to the heavy rainfall. So it was interesting to see the reaction when Phoenix got .8" of rain yesterday. It was on all the news channels. People tried to drive across flooded roads and got stuck. Flash floods closed roads with silt. Dramatic pictures of rain clouds were featured on the news.
All for less than one inch of rain. What a difference. Incidentally, Arizona has a "Stupid Driver Law" whereby if a motorist ignores a road closed sign and tries to drive across a flooded street and then gets stuck, he can be assessed the cost of the rescue up to $2000.

I'm looking forward to getting back home to watch the sun in the morning and smoke from my campfire.

Spider Update

Not that I've had any request for a sequel, but I thought I'd come back to this one time. The other night I went out to feed the animals and as the dogs raced around I saw some movement on the ground. Closer inspection showed that I have my very own tarantula. Here are the pictures.

The one at the top is the new one and the other is a repeat of the picture I published a few days ago. See how much lighter in color the new one is? I think it's a female. She just sat there and posed and I didn't do anything to bother her. Later she was gone.

Yesterday we went out checking out garage sales. We saw quite a few sales but nothing that shouted out at us. After a while it just got too hot to keep going so we headed back home for a nap. While we were laying down it thundered mightily and got real black but we only got 1/10" of an inch of rain.

Between garage sales and thrift shops, Diane's favorite entertainment these days, we've accumulated enough extra clothes that we thought we'd send some home. I did my duty and emptied out a Sam Adams case to get the box. We got it all loaded and ready to go and took it to the post office yesterday. The guy on the desk said they couldn't accept a package in that kind of box. Why? Because it might still contain beer. How stupid is that? No wonder they have trouble.

Oh well, hope everyone is having a good weekend.