Oct 18 2009

Unwanted guests

And now, we return to our regularly scheduled program of home life in Tucson, AZ. We are back at winter home base, 12,000 miles and four months after departing Tucson at the beginning of summer.

The Airstream is tucked into its bay and connected to water, sewer, and electric. We’ll be clearing out half of the stuff in it, partly to clear space for future guests who will stay there, partly because we need those things in the house (like my office equipment, Emma’s books, and Eleanor’s sewing machine). A summer full of gifts, treasures, and miscellany needs to come out, be sorted, and dealt with, and we’ll do that over the next couple of weeks.

As we planned, the house was ready for us when we returned. Everything we needed was still in place, so our first night back was a matter of moving some food and the computers. I needed only to turn on the air conditioning (it was well into the 90s when we arrived), light the water heater, and plug in the Internet modem — ta-da! — instant home. Clean sheets on the beds, fridge already cooled down thanks to our wonderful neighbor, and …. uh … what are these tiny black pellets in the kitchen drawer? And hey, look, they’re in here too.

In fact, they were all over the house, concentrated in the kitchen and bathrooms. Rodent droppings. Looks like we had a visitor or two while we were gone. That meant a serious program of cleaning for two days. Hantavirus is a possibility in Arizona, and we don’t want it. Good thing we left very little food in the house (and it was all sealed tightly). The critters ate part of some scented soap in Emma’s bathroom, chewed holes in a bag of soup mix, and not much else. I doubt they were here for long, since there was no water available.

But finding unwanted guests was the worst thing about coming back. We were greeted enthusiastically by all of our great neighbors within minutes of showing up, and that made a huge difference. You can pull in after a long trip feeling tired, hungry, grumpy, and stressed about all the unpacking work that has to be done, but with a few people who are happy to see you waiting by, it all feels much better. Carol swept the dust off our front doorstep, Mike had some of our recent mail, Tom received a book for us that came last week via UPS, and Kevin was keeping an eye on everything with his trusty peacekeeper in reserve. Frank and Joanie swung by within an hour to say “welcome.” You can’t beat neighbors like we’ve got.

Oh, sure, there are a few weeds in the backyard, but I’ll deal with those once the heat ends. No rush. Right now we need to give ourselves time to make the adjustment again, from 200 highly mobile square feet to 2,000 completely stationary square feet. It’s harder than you might think. Everything changes, from daily habits to traffic patterns. What you do each day changes. The places you go, the things you think about, what you buy at the store, the clothes you wear …It’s a shock to the human system, like switching from a life as a suit-bound Wall Street executive to a Red Cross workers in Ethiopia. We’re all adjustable but still, big life changes take time to absorb.

Speaking of rodents, we have a few others in the back yard. Pocket gophers have apparently been a long-time feature of this particular property, at least according to one neighbor. Over the past two years, as I have carried on my campaign to eradicate the invasive grass, they have flourished under my neglect. Now the backyard is riddled with mounds and holes. They even pop their little furry brown heads up during the daytime and toss dirt into the air.

I have a destination in mind for those gophers and it’s not Disneyland. I had thought that there was no need to remove them until we got more serious about making our backyard something other than the wasteland it is at present, but now I’m re-considering. In the meantime, they are providing a useful service. They have burrowed under our composting bin (it has no bottom) and tunneled through our rotting vegetables. This introduces air and soil into the compost mix, which speeds decay. I looked in the bin and found that everything we left in there last winter had decomposed, except for a few late items that simply dessicated before they could break down. It’s “gopher-assisted composting,” a new concept that may be more palatable than vermiculture. I’ll re-start the pile with some water and fresh greens.

Useful or not, a supply of traps seems to be in order. Anyone who potentially carries hantavirus is not welcome to inhabit our house or our silver guest house in the carport. We would prefer that visitors coming to Tucson this winter be capable of walking on two legs and using the bathroom rather than our kitchen drawers for their ablutions. It’s not a lot to ask, is it?

Oct 15 2009

Walnut Canyon National Monument, AZ

We’ve been chased by weather for the past few weeks. It seems that lately every time we leave a place, it gets inundated with horrible weather. We fled the upper peninsula of Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Wyoming, and Colorado, each time two steps ahead of cold rain, storms, and even snow. The weather we have experienced has been very fine almost consistently, despite the fact that we have been running on the ragged edge of winter in these northern states and higher western elevations. We’ve been lucky.

As I mentioned, traveling in the shoulder season also means fewer campsite choices, but there are still options. We wanted to visit Walnut Canyon National Monument after leaving Petrified Forest. There’s no campground at Walnut Canyon, and the Coconino National Forest campgrounds closed over the weekend, but there is a Cracker Barrel restaurant and a Wal-Mart just a few miles away in Flagstaff. That’s what I meant yesterday when I talked about flexibility. There’s always a way, even if it is perhaps not the most glamorous. So from Petrified Forest we drove directly to Walnut Canyon, hiked the 0.9 mile Island Trail (with 240 stairs up and down), and then continued on to Flagstaff for the night.

Walnut Canyon is a remarkable ancient cliff-dwelling site, with literally hundreds of ruins in a relatively small area. The Island Trail brings you past 24 cliff homes, many of which you can enter. The trail is a little strenuous if you aren’t in shape because of the 185 foot stair climb at nearly 7,000 ft elevation, but most people seem to handle it just fine.

We’ve seen a lot of cliff dwellings over the past couple of years, but they still inspire a tingly sensation of ancient mystery for me. For hundreds of years, people lived here in these lofty rock homes. They struggled hard to build houses of stone where mountain goats would struggle to walk. They farmed squash and corn in a climate so dry and soil so sparse that large trees cannot live. Generations of people, raising families communally, experienced all the drama of our modern lives, rich with stories … and hardly any record of their experience survives. I can only look at the stone alcoves and wonder.

The park closed at 5 p.m., before we had time to see everything. So in the morning we towed the Airstream back over to hike the Rim Trail (flat) and complete the Junior Ranger program. (Emma now has over 50 badges, nine of which were acquired this summer. We’ll do a full inventory when we get back to Tucson.)

We could have lingered in Flagstaff, or detoured north to the south rim of the Grand Canyon, but we’d already made the decision to head home. From Walnut Canyon it is an easy drive to I-17 and then down, down, down from Flagstaff off the rim of the Colorado Plateau. Farewell, high elevations and chilly weather. In less than two hours we bottomed out at 3,400 feet and then climbed back up to 5,000 in the town of Prescott, AZ.

We are still at moderately high elevation but we’ll continue downward soon enough. We are making one last stop before we return to home base. Prescott is where our friend Rich C now lives. We traveled with Rich for months back in 2006 while he was full-timing and searching for a new home. He found a new life in this funky western town, and has built a small business downtown making art prints and selling his photography. We haven’t seen him in over a year, so it was time to drop in and check on things. As a bonus, our gruff and itinerant friend Gunny also happens to be visiting Prescott, so it’s a reunion of sorts.

The final trip segment is now determined. We’ll spend two nights here in Prescott, then drive 222 miles to Tucson (with a brief stop in Tempe for an extra bag of frozen Swedish meatballs from IKEA). Our summer travels began on June 17 and will end on October 16 — almost exactly four months on the road. The total mileage will come to about 12,000 (including side trips and unhitched travel), of which about 85% is towing miles.

If you are looking for grand conclusions, you might be disappointed. Although our travels will cease again for a little while (perhaps six weeks, perhaps longer), I don’t see this as an end at all. We are simply switching gears for a little while. I can’t conclude my thoughts because I don’t see a conclusion yet. We are still traversing the Maze of life, still trying to grow bigger in relation to our surroundings, still trying to understand the world. At most, we will pause to reflect, but the long walk through The Maze will continue. I’ll keep writing, too.

Oct 14 2009

Petrified Forest National Park, AZ

There is always a way. Keep that in mind when you travel. When you have little time off (say, a long weekend), and many things you want to do it’s easy to get worked up when things don’t go exactly to plan. In the Tour of America blog I always emphasized the importance of flexibility, because only by being flexible could we deal with the many unexpected events that travel threw at us.

In other words, we had a choice: we could go through life on the road constantly being disappointed by things … things we couldn’t do, things that went wrong, things that made life a little harder … or we could roll with the punches, think creatively, and look for alternatives. “Always look on the bright side of life.” This has been particularly applicable to our overnight stays lately. To get to the places we wanted to be, we’ve had to work a little outside the box.

On Monday we drove from Cortez CO down through the Navajo Nation on Rt 491 about 100 miles to Interstate 40. As drives go, Rt 491 is not especially fantastic but it is not bad. The Navajo Nation is sparsely settled, with a few small towns that hold most of the population. Along the road you’ll see scattered homes and small farms, and almost every home has a traditional hogan beside it.

If you look closely you might see small hand-lettered signs for “Indian Frybread” or other items for sale, but it’s not until you reach I-40 that the big-time tourist traps start to appear. There are several along I-40, including Geronimo’s, Chee’s, and Indian City. You can get authentic Navajo rugs and other crafts in these places, but beware … if you see a rug (not a wall hanging) that costs less than $200, it’s probably not a true Navajo rug. They are meticulously hand made and quite expensive, even in the small sizes. $600 for a 3×2 rug is not uncommon, if the quality is high.

Our goal for the day was Petrified Forest National Park. For drive-by park visitors, this has to be one of the most convenient in the USA. You just exit I-40 and there you are at the Visitor Center. The entire park is a drive-through, with pull-outs or parking lots at all the interesting spots. Almost all of the parking lots are big enough for any RV. If you have a full day, you can putter down the 28-mile road, stop at half a dozen good places, and exit the park at the southern end with time to spare. That puts you on Rt 180 which brings you northwest to I-40 again.

There is a little hiking to be done in Petrified Forest. We’ve done most of the hikes before, but somehow managed to miss the “Long Logs” and “Agate House” trails from the museum/visitor center at the south end of the park, so we did those this time. Both are well worth the short walk (about 3 miles in total on level ground), but don’t be surprised if there’s a strong breeze. There’s not much to block the wind here, and it seems to be windy more often than not.

Along those trails are the best concentrations of the beautifully agatized ancient pine trees that give this park its name. You’ll also see a partially restored home (dating from about 1100 AD) made from blocks of petrified wood — that’s “Agate House.”

When you see all of the incredible and colorful petrified logs, the temptation to pick up a tiny piece as a souvenir is strong — but don’t do it! The park is amazing because people have been restrained enough not to loot the logs, and so they are still lying there at your feet as if you were the first person to discover them.

Besides, the fine for taking a piece, no matter how small, starts at $325, and every visitor to the park gets a “snitch sheet” for the express purpose of turning you in to the authorities! (If you want a big chunk, wait till you get up Rt 180 to the town of Holbrook, and you’ll find “Bob’s” has an incredible amount of legally-collected petrified wood for sale.)

There’s more to the park than just petrified wood, too. You’ll find some fantastic concentrations of petroglyphs at Newspaper Rock, and the remains of a small Ancient Puebloan settlement, called Puerco Pueblo.

For RV’ers, the minor challenge of Petrified Forest National Park is that there is no campground anywhere in the area. You have two choices: just drive through and continue to your destination elsewhere, or spend the night at one of the two large gift shops at the southern entrance of the park. Overnight parking there is free there, but if you want them to turn the electricity on you need to buy something in the store. Since there is no traffic in or out of the park at night, it’s beautifully quiet for sleeping.

That’s where we ended up for the night on Monday. On Tuesday we towed the Airstream back into the park for a second shot at some of the places, then had lunch in the Airstream, and finally departed to the west. I’ll describe our next stop, and the dodge we had to invent to make a national park visit possible, in tomorrow’s blog.

Oct 12 2009

Chasing 72 degrees

Full-timers often say they are “chasing 72 degrees,” meaning that they follow the weather around the country to maintain that perfect summer day as often as possible. Normally that’s our plan as well, but it’s harder than you might think. If you’ve followed this blog for a while, you know we often run into unexpectedly hot or cold weather because the timing is never perfect.

Lately we’ve been chasing 62 degrees, with freezing nights. We spent too much time in September getting across the midwest, and as a result we arrived in the higher elevations west of Wyoming, Colorado, and Utah in time for fall. Rather than head to lower elevations, we’ve taken advantage of the shoulder season and enjoyed relatively uncrowded campgrounds and trails.

But the late season is putting a cramp on our activities. At night we’ve encountered temps as low as 18 degrees, which forces us to burn a lot of propane (and hence buy a fresh tank every four or five days). Morning hikes have been chilly, and the sun is setting early. Seasonal stores and attractions have shorter hours. Evening Ranger talks have ended.

The big limitation of fall is that some campgrounds are closing. We were considering visiting three Flagstaff-area national park sites (Sunset Crater, Wupatki, and Walnut Canyon) but the only camping nearby is at National Forest Service sites in the Coconino NF. Those sites close for the season today, October 12.

This is happening all over, as overnight temperatures dip to freezing. So we’ve decided to skip those three national park sites this time, and start working our way toward the low desert. Eleanor and I realized this morning that we’ve been deliberately delaying our return to Tucson only because we have a house there and we know that once we arrive, we’ll settle into a homebody routine. Ironically, if we didn’t have a house, as in years past, we would already be in Tucson at a park enjoying the dry 85-degree days because we would know that in a week or two we’d continue on.

Well, we are not going to delay much longer. Last night the catalytic heater refused to light. It has been getting increasingly balky over the past two weeks, taking longer to light and occasionally going out if not run on the maximum setting. These are symptoms of the catalyst pad being “poisoned” by contaminants. Since this heater has been used only infrequently over the past eighteen months I suspect bad propane may have killed it. Dust can also terminate a catalytic heater prematurely, but we have had a dust cover on it. When we get back to Tucson I will have to investigate “an authorized Factory Service Technician” as the owner’s manual suggests. I suspect that catalytic heater service technicians are not on every corner.

We used the furnace instead, so we weren’t cold last night. I just hate listening to it cycle on and off in the early morning, especially when it comes on every five or ten minutes. That’s a sign that we need to move somewhere warmer. If we were going to skip the house I’d aim at Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument in southern AZ, but the lure of suburban life is calling us. It is time to chase — and overtake, for a while — 72 degrees.

Oct 10 2009

Exploring the Green River, Canyonlands NP

Staying a third night at Horsethief campground turned out to be a good move. Eleanor’s back was not ready for backpacking, but just a short distance from the campground was a 12.9 mile dirt road (Mineral Road) that led through BLM land to Green River just west of where it enters Canyonlands National Park. This road is favored by mountain bike touring groups. They start at the Rt 313 end (8 miles from the Visitor Center of the park) and cycle to the edge of the canyon, then get a ride back.

The sad thing is that they see the least interesting part of this long dusty road. It rolls up and down across a fairly featureless scrub plain with almost no canyon views until the very end. But just a few feet further, the road becomes an adventure, zig-zagging down into the river canyon to the banks of the Green River. In the photo above, you can see us starting the trip down.

This road is much easier and more civilized than the Shafer Trail, and easily twice as wide in most places, but there are still a few tight and “interesting” spots to keep you awake. It might look smooth and easy from the picture, but that’s deceiving — 4WD is a very good idea and don’t expect to go more than about 8 MPH at any point. Still, it’s a drive almost anyone who is not terrified of heights can make.

At the bottom you have a choice: left to follow the river, eventually to enter Canyonlands and the White Rim 4WD road; or right one mile to the Mineral Bottom boat launch. We tried left and explored along the river for a while, then turned around after a few miles and went to the boat launch for a picnic. Rafters launch here for multi-day trips. A few miles from this point, the Green and Colorado Rivers meet in a confluence and then begins some of North America’s greatest whitewater rafting, so I’m told. The group we saw departing was off for a week, heading all the way to Lake Powell.

Once back, we decided to check out the Gemini Bridges, also near the Horsethief campground. No 4WD needed for this trip, since it’s just a typical dirt road most of the way. The Gemini Bridges are a pair of natural sand stone bridges that you can walk over (or beneath if you approach by a different route) — well worth the trip off pavement to explore. The hike from parking lot to the bridges is only a quarter-mile or so.

We left the Canyonlands early this morning, spurred on by the need to get to Cortez CO (150 miles away) before the post office closed. Before departing Cortez I felt the need to pick up some diesel and ventured into a Shell station that I shouldn’t have. Normally I check carefully before turning into a station but in this case the sun was right in my eyes and I couldn’t determine the situation clearly until we were committed. Of course, it was one of those impossible arrangements for trailers, and we got wedged in between some pumps and the building.

What to do? Well, first, may as well fill up. So we did that, and evaluated the situation while the pump was running. There was no chance of proceeding forward, and no room to back up. We’ve been in tight spots before, and one thing I’ve learned is that you never panic, and always remember that other cars can be moved. Eleanor got out and started negotiating with a guy parked behind us so that we could carefully back up into his space. Then another parked car moved and we were able to start see-sawing back and forth to straighten the trailer a little.

To escape, we needed the cars in the middle pump aisle to clear out entirely. This was tricky because the gas station was very busy, and clueless people in little cars kept zipping in and out. Meanwhile, the owner of a Porsche Cayenne seemed intent on not merely washing his windshield, but detailing his car right there at the pump. Once he finally cleared the aisle, Eleanor stood blocking the entry. I maneuvered the trailer a little more — veeeeery carefully — to both get a better starting position and to intimidate anyone foolish enough to try to slip past me. A little more negotiation ensued, and soon the next car left. Vroom! We were outta there.

And of course as we drove through Moab, we passed at least three other stations with wide open spaces for big trailers and diesel fuel for five cents less per gallon…