Farewell 2016

Weather here has been mostly crummy for the past couple of months; overcast, WINDY, rainy, and cold.  We have had several "dailies" (people who come into the park for a day or two and then move on) who have gone out to ride with us.

On Wednesday the weather was sunny, low winds, and low 60's.  A new couple in the park, Ron and Sally, wanted to go out to ride but were a little hesitant going by themselves (the park map is pretty sketchy).  

We spent several hours cruising around the trails, showing them some of the less-traveled areas.  This photo was taken at Mary Anne's Point.  (I did not name it...one of the Crazies did.)  As you can see, it's a nice day.  Ron is an experienced driver so we could go pretty much anywhere and not worry about them.

Two days later, we went out again on a marginal day.  However, it was the only day left in 2016 we could go.  (As I write this, it's raining.)  Picked up a couple of others who wanted to get out and about.  Cabin fever is raging through the park.

We are packing up to spend seven weeks in Arizona hunting for somewhere with better weather.  I've been watching the weather channels and where we are going isn't much better than it is here. Oh well, different scenery, different people.  

We are planning to meet our friends Steve and Nancy and caravan down to a park just outside Tombstone, AZ.  The four of us will ride trails for 10 days;  Steve and Nancy will return to their home park at Bernardo, NM, and we will go on to Brenda, AZ, for 6 weeks.  By the time we return to Deming, the weather should be better, although it will probably be quite windy.  Ah, spring in New Mexico.  The plan is to remain in Deming until late May and then head to Utah to run parts of the Paiute Trail.

Two months ago, we lost one of Mike's dogs to old age.  Pretty little Bela finally reached the point where life wasn't much fun for her any more. She had the sweetest temperament of any dog I've known; we miss her.

Life at the Ranch

My new ride.

I have been considering buying a pickup for some time, as trailers follow a pickup better than they do a Jeep Grand Cherokee (wheelbase is 24 inches longer).  As it is the end of the year, dealers are willing to be flexible.  Unfortunately, this truck was at a dealer in Tucson, AZ, 220 miles from Deming.  All day run to go over to pick it up and return.  And then two days later,  we made another all day run (500 miles RT this time) to take the Jeep Grand Cherokee to Wyatt in Albuquerque and pick up a new flatbed trailer to haul the two side-by-sides at the same time.  I am tired of driving/riding.  

No more traveling now until mid-January.  We are planning a festive outing to the local truck stop for Thanksgiving dinner.  

Those of you who follow Facebook will see I have dropped out. The election year vitriol was getting me down.  At some point in the future, I may open another account.  The people I care about most all have the blog account link.  

Back in Business

A dear friend from my NCR days saw my post about the laptop and shot me an email.  His new laptop did the same thing and he told me to trying holding down the on/off key for 60 seconds.  Shazam! Laptop restored.  Now down to business.

We returned to Deming over Labor Day weekend to pick up the title to the RPOD so we could get it traded for the new rig.  Of course, I couldn't find it.  No problem, right?  Just go down to the NM DMV Tuesday morning and get a duplicate title and off to Phoenix.  Over that weekend I saw a news report that stated the DMV was converting to new software over the weekend.  Uh oh.

Bright and early Tuesday morning I was sitting on a bench outside the DMV office with other hardy souls, waiting for the office to open.  When it did, I was the first person called for titles.  I stood at the counter for over an HOUR while the poor clerk tried to figure out why he couldn't just print the title.  Mike said I was positively incandescent but I waited patiently.  Finally got it and off we went.

Arrived two hours late to Phoenix so we were pushed to unload everything from the RPOD to the Lance and take off before Phoenix rush hour traffic became insane.  Got lost trying to find the right highway and asked directions (imagine that...).  Finally headed north out of Phoenix to Star Valley where we had reservations.  Needless to say, we were both exhausted.

The new trailer is a vast improvement over the little RPOD.

The next night we decided to walk the dogs around the park.  Since Mike was in the market for a new side-by-side Yamaha Wolverine, he noticed a brand-new one in a driveway.  The owners were sitting outside and we stopped to chat with them.  We had also noticed Kansas license plates.  I asked where in Kansas and Jim (the Wolverine guy) said El Dorado.  Lela, his wife, said she had gone to first grade in Dearing, Kansas.  It is a very small world.


They told us that they spend the summers in Star Valley at the park but their home is in Tonto Basin, about an hour south.  According to Jim, there were really good off-road trails.  He sent us an email with the name and address of the park and invited us to come on down for a week or two.

The next morning, we hitched up and were at the entrance to the park waiting for the traffic to clear so we could pull out.  A car pulled up next to us and honked and honked.  We thought we had forgotten to close a bin or raise a stabilizer jack.  And then I looked over and it was Jim!  He had not given us the phone number of the park so he wanted to catch us before we left.

On home to Deming for some down time and to pick up Mike's new Wolverine. And then we went back into Arizona.  Since it was still hot in the desert, we picked a park in the high country near Clay Springs, north of Show Low, adjacent to a national forest and its trails.  Mike's bright shiny new Wolverine got initiated into the off-road world.

The trails here we could have run in the pickup truck.  Pretty country but not very interesting riding.  After a week we loaded up and headed for Tonto Basin.  

We found the park easily and got parked next to Jim and Lela.  There was a group going out the next day to the top of a mountain overlooking Roosevelt Lake and then down a trail to a picnic area.  (No photos because I accidentally deleted them.)  Five or six rigs and very nice people from the park.  There were several other dogs so Lola, Muppet, and Indy were not out of place.  

A day or two later, another ride organized by Jim, to the Blue Bird Mine the long way.  EEEEKKKKKKKKK!!!!!

And this wasn't even the steep part.

The next day we went out alone and wandered around (no maps). Jim had given us directions for finding the site of Fort Reno, although he said there's nothing there but a sign.  

Another in the string of forts all over Arizona and New Mexico built after the Civil War to attempt to subdue the Native American tribes.

On another trail, from a distance, we thought we saw buildings which might be an old mine so we headed that direction.  Turns out, it is a big outcrop of quartz.

These signs are posted at the entrance to most trails.  It means you are on your own if you get into trouble.

Another day, Jim took us to the trail up Reno Pass.  To get on the trail, you have to thread the needle between a boulder and a concrete post set up by the National Forest folks.  Opening is 68 inches wide, the Wolverine is 63 inches wide.  Doesn't sound too bad, huh?  Well, the trail tilts at a steep angle.  If you don't get it right, the tilt will throw you into  the boulder.  If Jim hadn't been with us and showed us how to negotiate it, we wouldn't have tried it.  (And yes, I was driving.)

View from Reno Pass.

Headed up Reno Pass.

Forest Service blockades the trail.

Jim told us the Forest Service blockaded the trail after a Boy Scout troop (!) did some sort of environmental damage and the trail was closed to let the area recover.  That was twelve years ago.  It's too bad because this trail goes over the pass and back down to the highway.  It would be a good loop but Jim said he's never seen the Forest Service re-open a trail once they close it.

Two additional rides with the park folks:

There was a long ride (60 miles) up Picture Mountain.  White-knuckle in spots but the Wolverine had no problem (Mike was driving).  

This forest fire was in 2005.  Takes a LONG time for the area to recover.

Old cabin in Picture Mountain.

One of the hazards of running the trails - downed trees.

Can you see a horse and rider?  That's supposed to be the picture.

The last full day we were there we were invited on another ride called Big Taco.  It's named for a deep cut made when the highway was built and the trail is close to it.

Another white-knuckle ride and again Mike was driving.

This part was easy.  The scary part came later.

Well, that catches up the blog with the travels.  Life at the ranch is pretty low-key so I probably won't be posting again for a while.

I love technology....

My less-than-60-days-old HP laptop won't boot up....doorstop material.  All my photos for the blog are on it.

We are still in Arizona running off-road trails in the desert and won't return to Deming until late next week.  Then I will have to drop into Las Cruces to the Best Buy store and drop it on their counter.  SO

No new blog posts until I get this resolved.

Bryce Canyon National Park, Zion National Park

As I mentioned earlier, my old PC started exhibiting signs of demonic possession.  It expired the day after I bought a new PC and transferred all my data and photos to the new one.  However....the new one doesn't have Microsoft Word, the application with which I created the original post.  It's taken me some time to find the document and figure out how to get it over to the blog without paying MS another $350 to re-license the Office applications.  (Don't you just LOVE Microsoft?)

Zion National Park

We set out from Panguitch to visit Zion National Park.  Rained on us the whole 70 miles down there and then in the park, it was overcast.  Same problems we have had in every other national park this summer:  too many people, not enough parking, no control over numbers or parking.  On a sunny day this park is stunning but as you can see from my photos, dull, dull, dull when the day is gray.

There is a very interesting tunnel which you traverse to enter the park from the east.  It was completed in 1930 and it’s 1.1 miles long through a mountain.  One of the rangers told me that two teams started at opposite sides and when they met, they were only four inches off.  Remarkable. No GPS, no computers, only really good engineering.  

Can you find the entrance to the tunnel?

Bryce Canyon National Park

Okay, one more national park the next day, Bryce Canyon.  And it somewhat restored my dwindling faith in the park system.  Bryce Canyon is beautiful and well managed.  There were open parking spaces every place we stopped to admire the view and we saw only two huge tour buses during the two hours or so we were in the park.  They police the parking lots and have NO PARKING signs posted with an icon of a wrecker towing a car to encourage people to comply. 

It's roughly 8,000 feet at the end of the road into Bryce Canyon. There is a straight drop for thousands of feet at nearly all the outlook points;  seems like you wouldn't really need this sign but the addition of the lightning information is useful.

Painted Desert and Petrified National Forest

Now, here is why it's taken so long for me to get caught up:

The first time we stopped at Heber City UT this summer (outside Salt Lake), we asked one of the park workers what trailers people liked.  He said the Lance was both popular and well built, and we went into Salt Lake to a dealer to take a look as neither of us had ever heard of it.  (The RPOD was fine when it was just me and the two dogs; with an additional human and two more dogs, it wasn't working all that well.)

I contacted the dealer in Phoenix where I bought the RPOD to see if they carried Lance.  They did.  After numerous back and forth emails and phone calls, we agreed on a deal, with pickup at the end of the summer in Phoenix as we came back to Deming.  The day we arrived in Mesa, it was 106 degrees and trailer A/C isn't designed for this.  After a miserable night, we went to the dealer and dropped the RPOD.

Since, when we left months earlier, I hadn't planned to trade rigs, I didn't have the title.  Back to Deming (329 miles) over Labor Day weekend.  When the DMV opened on Tuesday, we learned they had done a software upgrade over the weekend.  No one knew how to do anything.  Took an hour just to get a duplicate title.  Mike said I was incandescent at the window, waiting and waiting and waiting.

Back to Phoenix (did I mentioned it's 329 miles) and then unload everything in the RPOD and dump it into the Lance.  Chaos.  We drove to Payson to a park and collapsed.  

From Payson, we went to Painted Desert/Petrified Forest, two more national parks on my wish list.  My photos don't do justice to Painted Desert; the colors are too subtle for my camera to do them justice.  

Native Americans inhabited this area for thousands of years.  I would think there had to have been more water available than there is now to support a thriving community.

Route 66 cut across part of the Petrified Forest/Painted Desert.  There is an old Studebaker which was apparently abandoned decades ago beside the roadbed.  

The Grand Canyon, North and South Rims

We arrived at the Jacob Lake Campground to drive the next day to the north rim of the Grand Canyon.  According to Wikipedia, the north rim gets only about 10% of the visitors to the Grand Canyon.  Well, yeah, it's difficult to get to it!

There is a wonderful old, old lodge and cabins perched on the rim.  If I were coming here, I would try to get reservations for one of the cabins.  

The next day we drove around to the south rim, a location I had been quietly dreading given the unmanageable crowds were had encountered at Yellowstone.  What a delight that the south rim wasn't overrun and the Park Service has done an outstanding job managing its visitors.  

We had lunch at the famous El Tovar Lodge which overlooks the south rim of the canyon.  Usually in a place like this, the view is wonderful and the food stinks.  Not so here (just like the Banff Springs Hotel).  Food was great.

The south rim of the park has instituted a system of parking lots and shuttle buses which dramatically cuts down on the traffic and congestion.  The shuttle buses are all free and you can board and get off anywhere along the routes.  Brilliant. And there is one shuttle which takes you into the nearest town which is where we were staying.  Nice to finish the main National Parks with a good experience.

In the next post, you can look forward to Petrified Forest National Park and Painted Desert and an explanation of why it's been SO LONG since I caught you up on the travels.  Stay tuned.

We Return South

We were glad to see the last of Yellowstone and we made our way south through the smoke of forest fires.  Stayed two nights at Vernal UT to visit a dinosaur museum/excavation exhibit and get a software update for the truck.

Downtown Vernal UT

Vernal is a very pretty small town and the excavation exhibit was quite interesting.  The building was constructed around a cliff face where bones were weathering out.  There were problems with the structure and it was not open to the public for several years while the structure was stabilized.

Dinosaur Quarry

On to Heber City UT outside Salt Lake City.  A friend from my Sprint days, Molly Stephens, and her husband Mark, live in Park City.  We met them for lunch one day.

A second day at Heber, we drove down to Salt Lake City to see the Salt Lake City Mormon Temple. A guide told me it took 40 years to complete the temple.  Would compete with some of the cathedrals I saw in Europe.  You can tell the scale by the photos that a nice person in the square took of me on the front steps.  

Salt Lake City is a very well planned and efficient city.  Their public transportation is a trolley system; it's clean, quiet, and fast. Would that other cities take a look at it.

We left Heber City bound for Marysvale UT to scout off-road trails for next summer's travels.  Not much there but we did get some good information.  

Next stop was Panguitch UT, also to scout trails. but we were greeted with a funnel cloud the day we checked in.  The locals were all aflutter as this type of storm is rare in this area.  I took the photo below from the RV park.

Panguitch tornado

We drove up to Richfield UT to talk with an ATV dealer who has a good reputation in the area and he sent us to Fish Lake for lunch.  Very pretty area.  I have been on a quest for a new visor but none of the places we've been had visors, only hats.  YEAH!!!  Bowery Lodge at Fish Lake had a visor!