NM & AZ October 2003 Set # 6

NM & AZ October 2003 Set # 5

Above and below: posing on the edge of a not-so-grand canyon north of the Grand Canyon.

Mr. Peabody's coal train done hauled it away.

NM & AZ October 2003 Set #4

 On the road to Grand Canyon, after Flagstaff.

 Parking lot behind convenience store and gift shop, last stop before El Canyone Grande.

 Same rainbow as previous shot.  I bought a silver necklace for my niece Amanda for her 16th birthday at the gift shop where this rainbow showed up.

End of the rainbow, beginning of Grand Canyon.

This last shot was the first I took after we left the Grand Canyon.

Friday—breakfast precipitated an argument over his fixing of pancakes while I was in the shower after I’d already eaten a PBJ sandwich. Left campsite fairly late, drove highway 180.  Had a big, late breakfast around 1 p.m. after we got on the road, at the Crown Railroad Café in or near Flagstaff.  Biscuits, gravy, eggs, hashbrowns. Total for two meals $12.07. Janice was our waitress.  Huge model train set not working.  We drove on to Grand Canyon, bought some stuff at grocery store (just strawberries for me). Clouds in canyon started clearing when we got there.  Desert View campground dark, rainy, wet, wet, wet.  Lost our reserved campsite to interloper, but got a better one and had small dinner at our new campsite. Just chips, salsa, and beer for me.

NM & AZ October 2003 Set #3

After driving through the aforementioned small towns in Arizona, we made a stop in Sedona to get groceries. Extremely touristy. Camped near Sedona that night, then drove on to Flagstaff, where there's a small observatory at Northern Arizona University. This is a good time to give a summary of food eaten up to this point on the trip, since it also gives a travelogue of places:

Monday, first road meal—pancakes at  truck stop near Johnson City. Second “meal” was peanut butter & crackers and other stuff we’d brought with us at a windy-as-hell rest stop near Fort Stockton.  Next meal was at Crossroads Café in Hurley, NM.

Tuesday—breakfast of bacon & eggs at our Lower Scorpion Campsite. Lunch was apparently a snack, don’t recall what. Dinner was at the Cottonwoods campground, our own camp-made spaghetti. Plus maybe a salad, beer to drink for me, don’t know what JKW was drinkin’.

Wednesday—PBJ at campsite before leaving, then pancakes, etc, at Bear Wallow Café, Alpine, AZ.  Road food later—snacks, and fighting, around Payson.  Dinner was hamburgers and fries cooked at our Cave Springs campsite near Sedona.

Thursday—not much for breakfast since we packed up & moved to better campsite in same campground. Drove into Sedona, got food for dinner and $ at Basha’s.  Dinner was grilled tuna steak (me) and regular steak (JKW), mashed potatoes, and BBQ beans with onion slices on the side.

 Store employee taking break in Sedona.

Highway out of Sedona.

Remember that bear warning...?

Cave Springs campsite, the better one.

Heron near our Cave Springs campsite

Campfire with our chairs.

Northern Arizona University observatory.

NM & AZ October 2003 Set #2

Tuesday:  Gila Nat’l Forest, Apache Nat’l Forest (camped there). Wednesday: On into Arizona: Alpine, Eager, Macnary, Hon Dah, Show Low, Fools Hollow, Heber, Forest Lakes, Kohl’s Ranch, Payson, Strawberry. Left Highway 87, got on Nat’l Park Road #3 between Happy Jack and Flagstaff, near Mormon lake Village.  Camped at Cave Springs campground in Oak Springs Rec Area.

The photos below were taken with my Pentax K-1000, except for the one showing Wooley, aka, JKW, at Continental Divide sign. 

In order of appearance:  JKW relaxing at Lower Scorpion campsite in Gila National Forest; a Mogollon Cliff Dwelling; info about the cliff dwellings; info about bears; a sun-soaking lizard; going over the great divide in Gila Nat'l Forest;  going into Arizona; and a cow bone beside National Park Highway #3 (Lake Mary Highway) near Mormon Lake Village.

NM & AZ October 2003 set #1

Day One, Monday, Sept 29:  El Paso, Ft. Stockton, Las Cruces, Deming, Hurley, Bayard, Gila National Forest .

Coming out of El Paso, general dirtiness, feed lots—lots of feed lots—and dirty lookin’ countryside.  Traffic not bad on I-10.  Big mountains up close to town in El Paso. Had to go through Border Patrol Checkpoint, a permanent set-up like a highway toll plaza.  No problem. “Have a good one,” said rough, professional-looking fellow in sunglasses.  Entered New Mexico without really noticing it. Las Cruces not impressive, junky and dirty looking.  Some barren but pretty mountains around L.C., in between there and Deming. Got off I-10 and onto 180 at Deming. New Mexico folks do seem friendly.  Trailer homes everywhere.  Pecan or some other kind of orchards, too.

180 up from Deming. Good scenery. Big faraway mountains, close-up prairie.  Stopped at Cook’s Peak, 8,500 feet, took a few photos. Then stopped at Hurley at Crossroads Café for dinner. Nobody there but us, at 7 p.m.  But they close at 8. Two friendly women our age were working there. Got a good chili relleno.  Hatch is near Hurley, so I wanted to try something with a green chili pepper. 

Drove to various potential campsites in the dark.  First one had some campers, looked okay to me, but we kept going.  Second one looked, Mesa, looked even better to me, but not to Wooley. He pointed out we could come back.  Third place recommended by policeman we saw at the restaurant, the Forks campground by Gila River, looked not good at all, like a maze of gravel roads. So we travelled on, right up to the Mogollon Cliff Dwellings area.  I thought this was not such a good idea, since it was late, 10 pm or so.  We found a couple of campsites, Upper and Lower Scorpion (very inviting name, right), each with a big paved parking area. Nobody was at Lower Scorpion so we parked there, set up camp, built a fire.

I didn’t like the parking lot aspect of it, but it was actually a good campground, and was secluded—only a few cars passed on the road the next morning, and nobody came and parked in the lot (lots of people showing up there was my worry) until about noon, when a couple came and looked around the campsites and the woman apparently took the only bar of soap that was in the latrine.
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During the morning we cooked and ate breakfast then climbed the small mountain or hill behind the campground and took photos, then packed up and drove to Gila Cliff Dwellings visitor center and went to the cliff dwellings. Ohio women retirees worked there as seasonal live-in (not in the cliff dwellings!) guides/rangers. The visitor center had a different but still friendly crew of two men.  There were no trash receptacles. Signs explained why not: people are expected to “pack out” their own trash.  A good policy!  

Mogollon Cliff Dwellings, New Mexico. Photos by Jeff Wooley.

The Mogollon Indian cave dwellings are in the Gila National Forest in western New Mexico.

Sometime later in the trip, Wooley used his timer setting on his new digital camera, bought for this trip, to record us having dinner next to the pop-up camper. He wore several hats on the trip, or caps, while I only wore one. Or sometimes I just wore a shadow across my face.