We had another driving day today and finally made it out of
Arizona. The scenery was enhanced a bit
by the beautiful clouds in the sky today.
It rained overnight in the desert!
I woke up in the middle of the night and was sure that I heard rain but
told myself it couldn’t be because of our location. When I got up to check, sure enough, there
were big old drops of water coming from the sky. It didn’t do much in the way of making the
ground wet but did move the dust around on the whale.
The sky was so clear last night and the star gazing was just
wonderful. I found Vega, Neptune and
Uranus and we saw one nice meteor as well.
I have this app on my iPhone called GoSkyWatch which we used to tell us
what we were looking at. It works rather
well but we only have it on one phone so had a bit of struggling as to who got
to use the app and when. We did keep our
ears open for rattlesnakes and fortunately none were spotted. We’ve got outside stereo speakers so Brett
found a nice classical CD which we piped outside and we sat there quietly
looking at the sky. Then it did seem
like a good time to have a celebratory drink.
We wanted Margueritas but didn’t have quite the right ingredients. Instead we made faux Margueritas from
tequila, limoncello and orange juice! We
called them Picachos in honor of our location and they were mighty tasty.
Here is one interesting view of the sky with lots of
crepuscular rays. My mother called these
Jacob’s Ladders.
More art in the wild.
This was in front of a Welcome to Marada sign next to the Circle K where
we got our fuel this morning. Circle K
had diesel for 4.09 this morning while the Chevron across the road was charging
4.39. The Chevron didn’t have any
customers whereas we had to wait in a line to get to the pump. We wouldn’t have had to wait quite as long
except the guy in the camper at the pump was sitting there eating a
doughnut. Brett asked him to move.
Tuscon also put a little bit of effort into making parts of
the highway a little bit prettier. Here
is some artwork near a bridge.
Arizona is celebrating their statehood centennial this year
and these signs are all over the place.
Brett told somebody that they are just young pups as far as states
go.
I took this picture for Lowell to show him that Tucson also
has an “A” mountain. Looks like they are
a little more artistic here as it has some color to it. Wasn’t ASU’s A just white? Lowell said he has a friend from Tucson who
told him that the median age there is death.
We did see a lot of 55+ RV Resorts.
Apparently they don’t like kids in Tucson. And apparently Phoenix doesn’t like Tucson
either.
We saw a lot of land today.
To tell you the truth, if somebody lined up these photos and asked me to
tell them what was where I don’t think that I could do it. But today we are primarily in a valley
(albeit one that is at considerably more than sea level) with mountains visible
all around. Because of this big valley
it was possible to build incredibly straight highways. We measured one 16 mile stretch of I10 that
didn’t have as much as a curve in it.
One interesting change in the landscape happened near a spot
that was marked Texas Canyon. Suddenly
we had piles of these big boulders that looked fairly smooth but tossed
about. We had seen a sign alerting us to
a rest area and wanted to stop to take photos.
The rest area was closed.
Wouldn’t you think that when Arizona put up the sign that said there was
a rest area in 60 miles they might have bothered to tell you at that time that
it was closed?
There does seem to be evidence of more water as we drove
through the area. Not that we actually
saw any water but the land had considerably more plant life and looked more
green from a distance. There were also a
lot of patches of these flowers.
And we can see that some kind of grass grows here. We saw a few cattle today as well. When we got off the interstate to come to the
campground, the roads were marked with “open range” signs.
Here’s a surprise. Arizona
has places where they grow nuts. We saw
several mature nut tree orchards near Bowie, AZ. This one looks fairly new. We stopped at a little stand in Bowie so that
Brett could buy another sampling of “Fresh Jerky”. I’m not sure why it is billed as fresh
jerky. I thought jerky was dried and
therefore could not be fresh.
With such an expanse of open land that has very little
vegetation, there is a high incidence of dust storms. We saw many large dust devils along the way
but no full fledged brown out.
Highway signs alert you to those areas where there might be
dusty trouble.
New Mexico vegetation doesn’t say “hug me” either. This is a prickly pear cactus that is living
right outside our camper. I must
remember to look for it when I go out star gazing tonight.
Our destination for today was Rockhound State Park. We have water and electric and a nice site
from which to see the sights. The park
is a favorite with rockhounds who are allowed to look for geodes and can remove
up to 45 pounds of rocks a day. Brett
went for a walk up the mountain behind our site. He called me while he was out and asked if I
would take his picture. First I had to
locate the man which would seem easy to do because he was wearing an orange
T-shirt but it was not. When I finally
found him he appeared to be about a mile away.
Honestly, I’ve got a medium length lens on my camera NOT a
telescope. But I took his picture anyway
and we now have a shot of the scenery with an orange blob in it that is Brett.
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