Wind Storms, Another Beast & Cottonwood Outings

Two very ball-focused doggies…will you throw it already, says Lewis??!!

It’s been a full coupla days here in the boondocks. On Sunday afternoon the Big White Beluga rolled into town and joined us at our little spot in the wilds. It was a welcome reunion with much dog-licking and happy paw-play (that would be the dogs, not Sue & Dave), and the two “beasts” slotted easily into our spacious pad for the evening cocktail and meal. Very relaxing stuff all-around.

Ominous clouds by the two “beasts” Monday AM

Stubbornly enjoying coffee in the chilly dust storm

But Beluga brought some weather too. The next morning the winds started picking up and some serious dark grey clouds rolled over the mountains. We stubbornly braved the gusts for our morning coffee (which became more like café-a-dirt), but were subsequently forced inside for the rest of the day. It turned out to be a rock n’roll kinda day, with slides in, 50 mph gusts and spatterings of rain, but the show from inside the RV stayed cozy and warm. The event reminded me of the wild spring winds we encountered in New Mexico a few years back. Not much you can do except point your butt to the wind and wait it out…such is life sometimes.

Red rock views from our boondocking site

Today it’s a tad chillier, but the crazy stuff is mostly gone and we’re winding down to our very last cocktails overlooking the valley. By this time tomorrow we’ll have said our last goodbyes to Beluga, given our last adieu to Arizona and be on the red soils of Utah.

The old Fire Station at Jerome

But before I go I figured I’d round-up a few of our favorite outings in the Cottonwood area. This whole valley, part of the Verde Valley (Green Valley) has attracted people since the very first hunter-gatherers 10,000 years ago. With its ready source of water, rich ore and mineral soils it’s seen steady development from early pueblo’s in the 1100′s, mining in the 1870′s to modern-day tourist attractions. Here’s some of our favs:

1/ Tuzigoot National Monument

Yours truly by gorgeous Tuzigoot

Tuzigoot National Monument is an excellent example of an early Sinagua village. Built between 1125 and 1400 it contains more than 110 rooms and sits beautifully on a hill-top ~120 feet above the Verde Valley. It’s just one of the many ancient pueblos in the area, but it was carefully excavated and remains rather well-preserved. Plus the museum has some very nice exhibits too. A really fun outing to learn about early cultures & settlements in the area. Definitely worth the visit.

2/ Jerome

It’s a good cuppa at Flatiron!

View of Jerome from 89A

A historic hillside town sprung from the discovery of vast deposits of copper in the late 1870′s. It grew from mining boom and ~15,000 people in the 1920′s to only 50 people and near ghost-town status by the mid 1950′s. The development of a State Park and pressure to preserve the heritage gave the town another start and it’s now a well-loved tourist stop. The old buildings weave their way up Cleopatra Hill (a fittingly lavish name) and there’s plenty of good food, wine and mining history to keep you occupied. Jerome doesn’t have the cool hippy culture of Bisbee (it’s much more gentrified/touristy than that), but it’s still got some nice appeal. In our 2 trips into town we had some excellent Mexican food at 15.Quince and a delicious coffee at the teeny Flatiron. Worth a stop for sure!

3/ Cottonwood, Verde River & The Wine Trail

The stick is over there, doggie..

Cottonwood is only ~5 miles from our boondocking site and boasts a cool old town downtown, a lovely State Park and multiple access points to the Verde River. The latter winds it way through the entire valley (and far beyond) and provides lots of neat little picnic areas, paddle trips and (most importantly for us) doggie-splash moments. As a nice little side-attraction  for those of us with a nose for grapes, there’s the Verde Valley Wine Trail. There seems to be no end of wine-tasting rooms around town, plus there’s even a winery within biking distance from our boondocking spot…no need to drive, baby!

Paul does a manly pose at Tuzigoot

That’s my quick and rough round-up of the area. There’s plenty more, of course including all of wonderful Sedona (which we visited a few years back), lovely Flagstaff and tons of interesting spots in the surrounding forests, but there’s only so much a boondocker can get around to. We’ve simply loved our winter in Arizona, but we’re looking forward to the next part of the voyage. See you in the red rocks of Utah!

Waaay too much fun at 15. Quince

Cool shadows in Jerome

Tuzigoot glory

The sliding Jerome jail

Cool clouds by “the beasts”

Happy doggies in the wilds

The teeeeny Flatiron Café in Jerome

And some parting sunset clouds

Dancing In The Buff – Cottonwood, AZ

Sunset at our new site

We find ourselves today, yet again, in the boonies. Our new spot is just east of Cottonwood, AZ and has a sweeping view of the valley with afternoon glow to the red rocks of Sedona in the background. It’s a tad closer to the road than we like, but the views and location make it a pretty darn nice spot. Plus we’re all alone…our kinda spot.

View of red rocks out our front windshield

We actually had to work a bit to get here. There’s a rather well-known and fairly easy boondocking spot about a mile away from here but there were over 25 RV’s there when we went to check it out a few days ago…yikes! Right across the way is a gnarly forest service road that bumps and ruts its way into the wilderness. This road is not for sissies and thus no beast goes there. Guess where we are?

Yeah, this is how we like it…

“The beast” soaks in some last rays

We’ve been here several days thoroughly enjoying the higher elevations and thus near-perfect temps. This is the time of year our flip-flop barometer keeps us heading higher and northwards, warm enough to bask in a T-shirt but not so hot that we’re forced into air-conditioning (or so the plan goes). The paws have been frolicking in the grasses, we’ve been on some pretty neat outings (more on that in the next post) and we even…finally…finished our taxes, an event that got us so excited we danced naked around the RV. Well, we may not exactly all have been naked (in fact it’s possible the paws were the only ones essentially in the buff), but the point is we could have. When you’re boondocking and happy, the possibilities are endless.

Sunset views from the rig

Our RV mirror reflects last rays

This afternoon we’re being joined by our buddies Sue & Dave who are celebrating their one-year-on-the-road anniversary. It’s a momentous event and they’re bringing some rather sumptuous food to share with lucky us (love those kinds of visitors!). We will be contributing to the party with a Peruvian cocktail (Pisco Sour) and my famous flourless chocolate cake. This will also mean a reunion of Polly and her bestest buddy Lewis. Lucky dogs! It’s a good thing we’ve got lots of space ‘coz I predict exuberant pooch craziness all around.

I leave you with a few shots of our little spot and will be back to report on dog reunions and outings soon.

Morning coffee view

Early morning visitor at our forest site

Wondering the roads in our neighborhood. At least one of us is naked

Last light

Breezing Through Phoenix, Desert Blooms…And Getting Caught!

BLOOMs in the desert!!

Hiking in blankets of yellow!

We’ve stopped for a few days in Phoenix. This is really just a quick breeze-through and we’ve had no plans other than stocking up, re-charging and getting ready to head north.

We’ve been packing it in too.

On the way here we took ”the beast“ through Blue Beacon for a quick wash (rinsing off several months of serious boondocking dust!) followed by some hand waxing at our site (done mostly by Paul, the hardy stud). Then, once we got here we picked up our mail and (dismay of dismay) I realized I’d been caught turning on red by one of the many notorious traffic cameras in Phoenix back in Feb and needed to take a 4-hour class to dismiss the ticket -> my second ticket (in my life) and I felt like a right fool, but we managed to cram in and get it done. Between that and back-to-back shopping outings there’s really been no time for much else. It’s been a crazy coupla days!

Alas, such is RV life sometimes.

A gorgeous sunset from our site

Despite our packed schedule we’ve managed to enjoy our surroundings. This time around we chose to stay at Lost Dutchman State Park right at the base of the Superstition Mountains. I drove through this area last time we were in Phoenix, but this is our first time staying here. I have to say I am mucho impressed. Lovely, large sites with gorgeous views all around plus excellent hiking right at your doorstep. In fact I think this is going to become our new all-time favorite park in the area.

Studies in yellow

And more…

But the biggest bonus is that desert has exploded into bloom!  The view from our campsite is dominated by the sheer red walls of Superstition Mountain and the entire valley and base is covered in a thick, brilliant blanket of yellow flowers. There are so many blooms, so much yellow that I could easily lose myself and do a photo-study just of that. It’s a crazy and stunning transformation!

The desert bloom is something I look forward to every year, but it’s often a short and fleeting show. Also there’s a delicate balance between blooms and temperature. By the time the blooms come out, it’s starting to get too hot for our paws and the likes of us. By pure luck we’ve managed to catch it perfectly this time around. Temps are getting hotter (Phoenix is flirting with the 90′s right now), but we’ve still got enough cool mornings and evenings to go out and enjoy the show. Sheer perfection!

We’re headed out again tomorrow morning for higher elevations (lower temps) and (hopefully) a brand new rockin’ spot in the boonies. See ya on the other side…

Yellow gorgeousness

Another great sunset

The bloom blanket

Sunrise at Superstition Mountain

A Taxing Time In The Boonies….

A natural beauty beyond words….

Polly and I cast long shadows at sunrise

Our tax dollars at work

There’s no good way to say this, so I’ll just come out and say it -> we’ve been doing taxes. It’s horrible I know, but this time of year for those of you within these borders, it’s a rather inevitable event. What this means is that Paul and moi have been stuck inside the RV slogging through reams of marginally comprehensible tax code in the futile attempt of getting our proper $$ to the government….wherever it is those $$ go. This doesn’t exactly make for great blogging, but it does explain why you haven’t heard from me for the past few days.

But there’s also an interesting twist to all this. For once, believe it or not, I’m not completely dismayed with my tax slog and there’s a few good reasons why.

First is that our mobile lifestyle has significantly simplified our income and taxes. Not only have our income sources narrowed significantly (it’s all investments these days), but going fulltime RVing has given us advantage of several tax benefits that we didn’t have before, the biggest being we no longer have to file a state form (yeah!). They’re not magic bullets and for those of you (like us) that have to file K-1′s (woe be to us all) you’ll still be buried in tax paperwork purgatory, but every little bit sure helps.

View of a prince for the price of a pauper

Biking with Polly at Las Cienegas

Second is that we have a beedin’ fabulous view. We’ve spent most of this Easter week back in the boonies at Las Cienegas National Conservation Area. This time around we opted to try out the Cieneguitas camp area, and we were once again rewarded with utterly stunning views and total, complete isolation. Being here, soaking in this natural beauty, bathing my soul in the wild, swaying grasslands for the princely sum of absolutely nothing, I’m actually rather content with my tax dollars. I wish I could chose where they all went, but this is one contribution I’m very, very happy to make…and working with a view like this is not too shabby…

Just another great sunset

A happy man in a happy place

Lastly I chose to be here. It may not seem like much of a thing for those of you living elsewhere, but I’ve chosen this place and this life. I would go one step further and say I’ve worked very hard to get here….from frugal living & saving money (since the day I started earning), getting debt-free, earning my green card (no easy task), snagging my soulmate (OK, a fair bit o’ luck involved in that one, although I did work for it too…maybe one day I’ll tell you that story ) and ultimately changing our lives to a mobile lifestyle. If the price we pay is a yearly week of tax slog, well then so be it…

A very philosophical post I know, but then sometimes these taxing times make me rather introspective. We’ve got another few days of Turbotax to go, and one big city stop to stock-up and re-charge the rig, but then we’ll be right back out in the boonies to take advantage of our government-given dollars

Have a happy Easter everyone!

Something smells good

Sunrise rainbow

Grass and blue…

A perfect kitty pose

A Walk With Birds, Food & Art -> Patagonia, AZ

Patagonia Lake State Park at sunset -> it was still as glass, but teeming with bird-song

We’ve made it to our most southerly point for the rest of this year. That point is a quirky little community nestled in a  in a riparian corridor (riparian being a rather fancy term for ”by the water”) between the Santa Rita Mountains and Patagonia  Mountains in SE Arizona. It’s an artsy, eco-friendly kind of place that’s very much in synch with the nature around it….and in Patagonia alot of that nature pertains to birds.

A green respite for weary desert eyes

A Gila woodpecker

We headed out here a few days ago to lounge away the week-end in Patagonia Lake State Park. The main draw for us here was the lake -> a 2 1/2 mile long man-made lake that would give our desert-weary eyes a well-deserved green rest and doggie a well-deserved few days of frolicking in the water.

The bonus was the birding, a side-effect I didn’t quite expect (given how little I know about birds) but one that became a welcome addition to the experience. This spot is literally teeming with birds providing an almost constant background song at your campsite. And a stroll along the 3 mile on-site birding trail takes you deep into green trees, relaxing creeks and lots of colorful and pretty specimens fluttering and chatting in the trees. Quite lovely!

Signs of spring on the trail!

But that’s not all there is here. Patagonia is quite the little art and food spot. Within a teeny 3-block downtown area there’s at least 4 art galleries, several restaurants, a yoga studio, a coffee shop and an excellent organic food market (Red Mountain Foods). There’s not alot here, but what they got is all good stuff!

Given such a lovely selection we dug in and engaged ourselves in several excellent outings.

At Birders Haven with Jil&Tom…what a neat little place!

On Saturday our buddies Jil&Tom came by to take us on some birding and sample the fare at the rather iconic Velvet Elvis restaurant. We had a lovely walk in the park, an outstanding lunch with hibiscus-infused margaritas (drool!) and afterwards they took us to a local birding secret “Paton’s Birders Haven” -> a local house set-up with chairs and feeders for anyone to enjoy. We sat for a good hour watching the birds and learning about them from the other folks in the garden. Even for a non-birder like me this was rather a cool experience, and I dare say I learned a few things (who knew it was possible?)

Harshaw Ghost town…at least the ONE building that’s still left here

Road-trip in the Coronado National Forest

The surrounding area also lends itself to some lovely road-trips and a bit of hiking. Nearby Sonoita Creek State Preserve has at least 30 miles of hiking trails, while the Coronado National Forest just south of Patagonia has some lovely driving trails. We completed a loop starting in downtown Patagonia at Harshaw Road, driving past the old ghost town of Harshaw (nothing much left here except for a single house and a rather colorful graveyard), down FS 49 and back along a picturesque ridge on FS 214 to FS 58 to Harshaw Creek Road (FS 139). If you’re feeling adventurous along this loop you can even stop off at FS 4649 and hike or 4WD to the top of Red Mountain. As an added bonus there are lots of excellent boondocking spots along these same roads too. Fun to scope out and plan for future stays!

Afternoon at the lake

The only downer of our whole week-end? The State Park was full to the brink with tons of kids and people. It was almost an assault on the senses after our peaceful days out in the boonies. Thankfully our site was mostly away from the crowds and we were able to find solitude on the trail and our drives, but after a few days of people overflow we both yearned to be back in the grasslands. So, that’s where we’re going. See ya back in the boonies, my friends…

Hibiscus-infused margaritas…yum!!

With Jil & Tom at the Velvet Elvis

The cute “butterfly garden” in Patagonia

Colorful downtown Patagonia

The graveyard at Harshaw

More spring flowers

Afternoon light delight

Polly suspiciously eyes a cow on the birding trail