Week 15 Southern Arizona

March 5, 2023

2/27- Arrived in Tucson, Arizona today. We passed so many people camping on BLM land here. It is a free place to camp without any water or electric. So many people are living off the grid in an RV to survive in this world that has become so expensive. We are staying at Desert Trails RV Park which is $60 a night. That seems to be the average for campgrounds here. We were fortunate we will able to camp in so many inexpensive places before we left Texas. Now especially as we head into California we will have to start doing a lot of boon docking ourselves and camping off the grid.

Desert Trails is a nice campground for ages 40 +. They have a lot of amenities for all the snowbirds who come down here for the winter. They have a pool hall, library, recreation hall, exercise gym, woodworking shop and more. They also offer a wide variety of classes starting with basket weaving, quilting and music. It seems to be a very active place with lots of friendly people that come back year after year from up North.

Once we got settled into our campground we were off to explore Saguaro National Park. It is home to the nation’s largest cactus, the giant saguaro. We are taking full advantage of our National Park pass to see as many National Parks as possible. Neither of us are desert people and didn’t think we would be impressed by this park but it surprised us. The tall cactus looked amazing as we hiked around the visitor’s center.

We then headed out on a dirt loop around the desert. We had fun doing some off-roading and exploring.

We managed to stay long enough to watch the sunset in the park and get pictures of the cactus in the light of the setting sun. https://www.nps.gov/sagu/index.htm

2/28- Many days on our trip are full of adventures and sight-seeing but there are other days were we need to clean the RV and do some maintenance, go grocery shopping, and do our laundry. So that was the plan for today. It keep us close to the campground most of the day but we had the opportunity to get to know our neighbors and do some exploring of where we were staying. One of the side compartments on our RV had gotten stuck and we were not able to open it. Of course it was the one with all of Frank’s tools. The campground has a mobile RV repair guy who was able to drill a hole and unlock the compartment. It appears a screw in the lock had come loose and was blocking us being able to unlock it.

3/1- Winter weather is being predicted for tonight into tomorrow. We are glad we are staying here one more night and hope that by the time we are ready to leave tomorrow the weather will have improved for our trip to Mesa, Arizona. Today when Frank got off work we decided to head downtown and visit a few RV dealers. After dealing with the winds and a few uphill climbs coming this far on our trip we wanted to see if it was possible to trade our gas RV for a diesel RV. The advantage of a diesel RV is that it is heavier and less likely to be tossed around by the winds and that it has more power going up steep inclines. We were able to find a couple RV’s we really liked but when we looked at the difference in monthly payment it would be double what we are paying now so we will stick with the RV we have.

3/2- This morning we woke to snow. Our Jeep and RV both had several inches on it but since it had been so warm yesterday any snow on the pavement had melted. By the time Frank was done working for the morning and we were ready to head out, the roads were clear.  

We headed up the road to Biosphere 2 were in the 1990’s experiments were conducted there.  The plan was to see if they could construct an environment similar to Biosphere 1 which is our Earth. In 1991 eight individuals went into Biosphere 2 and for the next 2 years they did not leave the environment and no one else entered the environment. They were to survive there on what they could grow and the oxygen given off by the plants within. Then in 1994 another group enter for a six month period. Both times there were problems with not enough oxygen being made and more oxygen had to be pumped in. Also the calorie intake of the individuals was considerable lower than they would have had in the outside world. The experiments were ended and eventually the University of Arizona took over Biosphere 2 to do non-human experiments. https://biosphere2.org/ We enjoyed touring the facility with the help of an app on our phone that broadcasted information as we approached the number spots thought out the facility. Since both of us remembered the experiment and hearing about the individuals who were living inside Biosphere 2 we were very interested to see their environment and how they live. We were able to see the only ocean in Arizona which had been created inside the biosphere.

Then it was up the road to Mesa where we will have to spend the next two days at two different campgrounds since no campground had two nights available for us to camp. Once we checked into our campground we were off to check out Superstition Mountains. The view of the mountains were beautiful. https://www.fs.usda.gov/detail/tonto/specialplaces/?cid=fsbdev3_018739

We traveled up a dirt road to the end where we came upon another short road circular road. Due to the recent melting snow this road was very muddy and just too tempting. We headed off on the road in our Jeep to have some fun in the mud. We took this road four different times in the Jeep, driving fast through the mud and laughing as we whipped around the road. By the time we were done the Jeep was packed with mud.

3/3- Today we were supposed to go visit an old friend of mine from Georgia. Unfortunately life got in our way. She had recently had surgery and Frank was struggling with a cold and we just couldn’t expose her to our germs. So we planned on trying to stop by in the future. We had to be out of the campground we were in by 11 am and couldn’t check into the other campground until 2 pm so we had a couple hours to kill. We spoke with the KOA we were staying at and they let us stay until 11:30 so Frank could finish some work calls. Then once Frank got done working we headed over to the KOA office to refill our RV tank. That killed about a half hour. Then it was off to get gas in the RV and the Jeep which took another half hour. Then we drove down the road to a self-service car wash where we spent $20 and another 45 minutes getting the mud off our Jeep. By that time we were able to head to our next campground arriving at 1:45 pm and were able to check-In a few minutes early. This is another retirement RV park with people 55 and older. It was even bigger than the one we stayed at in Tucson with lots more to do. In the evening after Frank got off work we headed out to look for a portable generator which we hope will allow us to do lots of boon docking in California since campgrounds are so expensive there. Unfortunately both stores we went to were completely out of them.

3/4- Got to Bouse, Arizona today. We are staying at another Harvest Host location which is free for camping but this one had an upgrade to electric and water for $35 a night so we opted to add that for the next two days we will be here. Our campground is on the edge of the Arizona Peace Trails which is over 675 miles of off-road trails. https://arizonapeacetrail.org/

We decided to explore a trail that was about 14 miles long which should take about an hour long and would take bring us up to an abandon mine. It was a level four trail which meant it was a bit more challenging than some of the trails we had done before but we had our water and were looking forward to the adventure. About 45 minutes into the trail we took a wrong turn and ended up on the old stagecoach route between Bouse and Yuma Arizona. Since we were having so much fun we didn’t notice that we had gotten off track until we had traveled a couple miles down the trail and it got tough to follow. We were able to turn around and backtrack and get back on the right trial but with our sidetrack we spend almost 2 hours exploring. We were exhausted when we got back to camp and ready for the night.

3/5- We had planned to do a couple trails today but we were both worn out so we decided to spend a nice quiet Sunday laying around and taking it easy. We were able to listen to our church services on line.  Then did some wash since we will be doing some more Harvest host and boon docking and weren’t sure when we would find another campground with a laundromat.

Once more day in Arizona until we head into California and see what awaits us there.