Archive for Places to go
April 8, 2008 at 9:43 pm · Filed under Places to go
The Airstream is back on the road! We’re starting off easy, with a 200 mile drive to Deming NM to visit one of Emma’s favorite parks: Rock Hound State Park. It’s a beautifully scenic hillside park at about 5,400 ft altitude.
We got a short campsite with an overhang, which presented a fine opportunity to inspect the Airstream’s underside belly pan. For once I didn’t have to bend over to get things out of the rear compartment, either. But Emma found the concept of her bed hanging out in space to be disconcerting. Eleanor suggested she could sleep up front in my place, and once that idea was proposed Emma was not interested in explanations about why it made no difference where we were parked. So I get the back bed tonight.
Being a short drive, we had plenty of time in the afternoon to go for a hike and rock-hunting foray. This park is loaded with jasper, which you can find and take home (up to 15 lbs). Even if you aren’t interested in rocks, the views are spectacular in all directions.
The plants here are telling us we are no longer in the Sonoran Desert. We are now in the Chihuahuan Desert, which extends into Texas. No more tall saguaros, but there are lots of nasty sharp lechiguillas to watch out for along the trails.
We’re all tired. The past few days of packing up and finalizing the house have taken a toll on us. We could use a few good nights of sleep. For a couple of days we will take it as easy as possible. I think the Big Bend portion of the trip will rejuvenate us.
Our coordinates tonight: 32 °11’13.76″N 107 °36’47.13″W
April 2, 2008 at 9:13 pm · Filed under Places to go
I woke up this morning knowing that yesterday’s long walk on the beach without sunscreen was a terrible mistake. The tops of my feet are burned, as is my neck, and for half the day I couldn’t turn my head to the right without risking a spasm. It was a real temptation to spend the day in bed reading a book (currently Tom Miller’s “Trading With The Enemy,” a book about Cuba) but I couldn’t find a comfortable position so I ended up standing, and if I was going to stand up I might as well get dressed and face the world. Plus, Adam and Susan were making pancakes on the griddle of their Weber Baby Q.
To conserve the water in our fresh water tanks for doing dishes and washing vegetables, we are showering in the campground showers nearby. This campground has two sets of showers, one modern and spotless, and another set in a concrete row that seem as original to this 50-year-old business. We use the old ones, because they are close and we like the creaky rusticity of them. Water dribbles out the showerhead without much pressure, and the showers themselves are simply concrete rooms with openings at face height for ventilation. Anyone passing by could easily look in, but there’s no one here to be a voyeur. The floors are clean and the water is hot, and that’s more than I can say for many US-based campgrounds.
Communications have been much better than I expected. I hadn’t considered the wide availability of wi-fi at Mexican campgrounds. With wi-fi, I was able to use Instant Messaging to talk to friends and family. Adam pointed out that I could also use Skype on the laptop to make phone calls, and after setting up my Skype account appropriately I made five calls back to the US for about 50 cents. With email, IM, and Skype, I’m beginning to see that the cellular phone I set up is probably not going to get used at all on this trip. I’ll keep it for emergencies.
Our day consisted of so little that I am hesitant to even mention it. We walked old Kino and revisited the bakery. We collected seashells on the beach (great shelling here — I started a collection of pink conch shells). We had communal dinner under the awning again. We read books, and talked a lot. I slathered aloe on my feet and took Tylenol. Except for those last two items, it was a great day. We are only a short step away from becoming complete beach bums.
Tomorrow David and Ari and little William will head back home to California. The rest of us are going to leave on Friday. We’ve completely abandoned the idea of heading further south to San Carlos or Alamos, since those destinations would require 100-200 miles more driving. Those towns will have to wait for our next trip.
We will come to Mexico again. The people have been universally friendly, kind, and helpful. The camping has been superb. The fresh food has been exciting and inexpensive. We’ve learned things and gained confidence. I can see a longer trip in our future, because there is much more that I want to explore.
But there is no need to dwell on our departure at this point. We have an agenda of nothing much to do, and one more day to do it in. We will spend one more day savoring the freedom of that, and then think about what’s coming up next.
April 1, 2008 at 8:34 pm · Filed under Places to go
We have begun to enter vacation mode. Although we are still loosely connected to the rest of the world via cell phones and Internet, we are all trying to ignore that and succumb to the illusion that we are far far away from all concerns of our working worlds. It’s pretty easy to do, with the palmettos around us swaying in the sea breeze and nothing on the horizon but green sea water and craggy purple mountains. There is “nothing to do here” and for me that’s fine.
This morning I woke up with no plans other than to take a long walk on the beach, which I did with Adam. We walked barefoot on the sand for about three miles, north from old Kino to Kino Nuevo, and back again. About halfway up the beach, we met with the rest of the crew, who had driven up and were playing by the water with a public cabana as their base of operations.
This beach is very good for shelling. Whelks, scallops, clams, cockles and many others are easily found in excellent condition (unbroken). I have a feeling we will be going back to Arizona with a jar full of the best specimens.
I forgot to put on sunscreen before the long walk and got a good burn on my neck, feet, and lower arms. When I get a sunburn I always feel completely drained, which was a good excuse for a nap in the Airstream while the others hung out in the central patio we’ve set up.
The patio has become the center of our little encampment. We eat all our meals there, talk, read, and wear funny hats. It’s like a social club, but with more sand. Each night the grills come out and we make a communal meal (usually several different things). Tonight Eleanor made a variety of little thin-crust pizzas, Ari cooked snap peas and rice, and Susan & Adam grilled up some marinated tofu with peanut sauce.
For hours each day the kids circle the Airstreams as they play complex made-up games, and occasionally drop in for a quick bite before disappearing again. A few friendly dogs keep visiting, looking mournfully and patiently for food scraps that they never get. Then as the sun comes down the temperature drops into the upper 60s, and at dusk it’s time for a sweatshirt. (With the Sea of Cortez here, it’s much milder weather than a few miles inland.)
This sort of relaxation leads to appreciation of very simple pleasures. The ambitions discussed this evening were along the lines of, “Let’s go back to the bakery tomorrow,” and “I want to play in the water again.” I am thinking of a bike ride around town at some point, and perhaps some writing if I feel inspired, but otherwise this is a chance to take it easy for a few days. Our adventures may be limited in excitement but exactly what we need to re-energize for work that lies ahead.
Our location: 28 °49’22.67″N, 111 °56’42.96″W (plug these coordinates into Google Earth if you want to see where we are).
March 31, 2008 at 11:51 pm · Filed under Places to go
So far we like Bahia Kino. The road to here is hard to find at the moment due to a badly-marked construction detour in Hermosillo, and we apparently just missed a horrible invasion of college students on spring break, but right now Bahia Kino seems worth a visit.
Our campground, the Islandia, is older but has more character than the ones down the strip in “Nuevo Kino.” We are in the old town, on the beach but a short walk from all that Kino has to offer, which is not much. There’s a place for agua purificada, a Super Mercado, a Telcel outlet, a Pemex station (fuel), a park, a bakery, and a sidewalk bar that sells frozen treats.
The campground is landscaped with palm trees and little bushes, with birds twittering and the sound of the sea surf just a couple hundred feet away from our campsites. We found three sites together in the center of the park and cobbled together enough of the services to get all of us hooked up. For the three of us there are two 30-amp electrical outlets, 2 water spouts from which extremely low pressure water dribbles out, and three sewer holes.
There are also a couple of 15-amp outlets but our electrical testers revealed an open ground on those, so we’ve piggybacked David & Ari’s trailer onto ours instead. We haven’t bothered to connect to the water, favoring our fresh water tanks instead, and are using the outdoor showers a short distance away. The campground doesn’t seem to advertise wi-fi, but it is here anyway, and it works inside the Airstream. (However, I can only receive email — I can’t send, at least not yet.) For all this, we are paying $18 per night, relatively cheap.
It doesn’t take long after arriving for the vendors to show up. The first guy on a bicycle was selling handwoven baskets made by native Indians. He was pretty successful, selling both Eleanor and Susan a couple of baskets at about $4-8 each.
After getting settled in our first task was to get pesos and fuel. The ATM machine will give up to 3,000 pesos at a time, and since virtually everything here is cash only, including fuel, I went for the max. Filling up the Armada swallowed over 600 pesos right away.
We wandered the quiet, dusty streets of Kino for a while, just to see what there was. Ari and I headed over to the Telcel store to get my pre-pay phone activated. It turns out that it was already set, except that calling to the USA was blocked. To get it unblocked, I had to provide my name, address, and age — for reasons unknown to all. Without Ari as translator I would have never gotten it done.
I don’t plan to make any calls to the US except in case of emergency, since the cost is roughly US$2 per minute. I believe that incoming callers would see a nasty surcharge on their bill, too. The best way to call home is to use a calling card from a pay phone, or to drop in on one of the streetfront telephone stores which offer discount rates. Given that we have good Internet in the park, I could also use Skype.
The bakery downtown was a nice find. We always have a soft spot for fresh baked goods. We picked out a few goodies and then across the street Eleanor and David were enticed by a guy selling fresh scallops out of the trunk of his car. In the USA this would be bad news, but here it’s pretty typical. The scallops had been harvested this morning. We bought a kilo (2.2 lbs) for dinner. The seller also insisted that Eleanor and David try a raw scallop, which was perhaps not the wisest thing to do, but to be polite they both nibbled the scallop and pronounced it delicious. I snapped a picture of David trying the scallop which I was going to entitle, “The moment you got sick,” but fortunately he didn’t.
Buying fresh stuff is fun and easy here. Wandering down the beach, Eleanor and Ari found that the fisherman had just come in with lots of some unidentified fish. Not knowing what it was, they brought the kids over to see the process of fish being filet’d, and bought a bunch of that too.
So the kids had “something fish” for dinner, and we had scallops with a sauce Eleanor whipped up, and everyone had squash with onions, and treats from the bakery for dessert.
Our presence seems to be attracting curious passers-by, or perhaps people are just friendly. We’ve been visited by a vacationing 4th grade teacher from Santa Fe, an old lady collecting cans (she sat down with us and had a long conversation in Spanish with Ari), and a couple of vendors. Everyone, including people we randomly encountered in town, has been enormously friendly and pleasant. They are all town boosters, assuring us that there is no point in going on to San Carlos (because the beach is rocky there), and that everything we could possibly want is in Bahia Kino.
They are winning us over, because we are already unwinding and settling in. It looks like the group may vote to stay here all week, just walking the beach and watching the pelicans, and relaxing under the awnings with a book.
March 19, 2008 at 10:52 pm · Filed under Places to go
Some of the nicest hiking and birding in the Sierra Vista area can be done in the canyons beyond Ft Huachuca. Although Ft Huachuca is an active military base, US citizens can enter and get a temporary car permit to access the hiking trails behind the base. That’s what we decided to do today.
Not many people seem to do this, at least at this time of year, and since it was a weekday, we had the lovely Garden Canyon to ourselves. There’s a pair of well-documented spotted owls living there, but today we had no luck spotting birds.
The hike we chose from the canyon is called Scheelite Canyon Trail, and it is very steep. Over about 0.8 miles we climbed a considerable amount, although I’m not sure how much. Much of the trail was as steep as climbing stairs. Birding tours rate this hike as one of the most difficult, and we were doing it with a 5-year old and a 7-year old, both of which did very well.
Even though we saw few birds (and no owls), we did see some other interesting signs of a life. A fox skulked away from us in the forest. We saw only his outline as he retreated up the canyon. A bit later I got a good closeup of a gecko stalking a Daddy Longlegs. Later when reviewing pictures on the computer I was surprised to see how scaly the gecko’s skin appears up-close. (Click on the photo to get a better look.)
Signs of humans were there too. There’s a lot of unauthorized border crossing around the Huachucas, as there is along most of Arizona’s border. Some are coming here to illegally immigrate, others are “mules” carrying marijuana. However, it would be a foolish “mule” who would choose this route, leading down a steep canyon and ending up directly in a US military base.
Apparently a few have tried. We spotted their tell-tale signs: an abandoned pack of caffeine tablets, empty plastic water bottles, an old blanket dropped in the leaves. If this were a popular route we would have seen literally tons of trash, but the very few bits we saw suggest that the drug smugglers have figured out that hiking into Ft Huachuca is extremely stupid — or perhaps ecologically minded birders are cleaning up the trash as they find it.
Ft Huachuca’s “eye in the sky” keeps a lookout for border crossers too, at least the airborne variety. A huge radar-carrying aerostat has been floating here since 1987. It has been a constant presence over our heads for the past couple of days as we’ve hiked and driven around the Huachuca Mountains. On the drive through the base to Garden Canyon you’ll pass right by the turnoff to the aerostat site.
Tomorrow we’ve got to head back to Tucson. Appointments are pressing on Friday, and all of next week. Emma will resume karate for another week (yes, we bought more lessons, since Eleanor was able to negotiate a flexible schedule with the instructor), and we have indications that we might finally get our kitchen countertops installed next week. I’m not exactly holding my breath on that, but it would be extremely helpful to the schedule if it could be done.
March 18, 2008 at 11:54 pm · Filed under Places to go
This area of southern Arizona is a hot birding spot. Although it’s a low time of year for birds, since the winter birds have gone and the summer birds aren’t here in great numbers yet, along the San Pedro River area and in the canyons of the Huachuca Mountains there are still plenty of birds to see.
Traveling around the country we’ve become more interested in birds. I never really cared much about them in the past, but now it’s fun to see the variety of species the live in North America, and to try to photograph them. To really do a good job I’d need a much longer lens than I have, but I catch a few halfway interesting shots from time to time with the 200mm zoom. Today I wasn’t trying too hard because we were just having a nice time walking along the river with the kids.
A fire near the Dragoon Mountains, north of our position, cut our hike short. The smoke began drifting to the south and put a haze in the air, as well as apparently discouraging the birds. We never found out what caused the fire but it was still burning hours later.
Seeking clearer air, we drove up Carr Canyon Road into the national forest. There are three canyon roads that lead into the Huachuca Mountains. Carr is in the middle, and undeniably the roughest. It’s a single lane of very rough dirt, riddled with potholes and twisting so tightly that even long pickups can’t make the turns without taking two passes. It’s a challenging drive, and occasionally scary, since none of the road has any sort of guardrail and the drops are intimidating.
Six miles up the road, if your kidneys survive the pounding of the seat belts, is a nice national forest campground (Reef Townsite) at 7,200 feet. But no Airstream is going to go up there, unless it is under 12 feet long. I could see coming back there to tent camp in the summer. At that altitude the temperature would be perfect, and there are a lot of very interesting-looking hiking trails.
In the photo you can see Eleanor ambushing the girls with a tiny snowball on one of the trails. There was very little snow up there, but they all managed to find some and have fun with it. In the background you can see Sierra Vista through the smoke, about 3,000 feet below us.
Brent turned on the radio in his truck and of course we heard Mexican music come through. This close to the border, it’s no surprise. Listening to it always feels fun and it put Brent in the mood for a Mexican beer, which led to Eleanor suggesting Mexican dinner at the Airstreams, which led to a shopping trip for fresh tortillas and other ingredients.
My job was to wrangle the girls (or at least keep an eye on them) while Eleanor and Brent shopped. The girls seemed to have far too much energy left in them, but that made them interesting photographic subjects, at least until I was apprehended by the management of Food City and told that the store “absolutely” did not allow photography.
That sort of thing happens regularly to me. Unless I see a sign specifically advising me that cameras are not allowed, I assume it’s up to my judgment to decide whether to bring one into a situation. Most of the time it’s perfectly OK, and other times I know better (and don’t take photos), but once in a while somebody gets bent out of shape over me taking a photo in a situation where I felt it wouldn’t be a problem. That’s one of the minor risks of photography.
Really, if you only take pictures when they are specifically approved, you’ll miss a lot of good shots. I figure if I don’t get busted by an authority figure at least 3-4 times each year, I’m probably not using my camera enough. Last time was in Hawaii in another store where I was preemptively warned not to take photos of the erotic netsukes (miniature sculptures). That was in November, so I’m fulfilling my quota of socially-incorrect photographic conduct.
We have discovered another dark side of having a home base: it’s too easy to leave things there. Not long after we headed off yesterday, Eleanor remembered she forgot her crock pot, and I realized I’d forgotten my cell phone charger. It’s a good thing we are heading back this week. I’ve started a list of things we might forget to do (or pack) so that we won’t repeat these mistakes when we leave for the summer.
February 25, 2008 at 8:36 pm · Filed under Places to go
First off, I’ll end the suspense. I got killed in the poker tournament. Went out early, after about 90 minutes. Leigh went out halfway and Brian finished fifth, which means that none of us got a penny. Oh well. I had a very interesting time and didn’t regret the experience.
Adam and Susan came by for the last few minutes of the bloodbath and then we shuttled down to the Atomic Testing Museum (on Flamingo, just a short walk from The Strip) to explore the fascinating and occasionally bizarre history of atomic testing in Nevada and other places.
You might think that the museum is dull, but I can testify that it is really very good, with top-notch exhibits. Well worth the $12 admission (cheap, by Las Vegas standards) if you are even a little interested in the topic.
The pirate-actor-stuntman I met on Saturday night at the home game arranged for Adam, Susan, and I to get a VIP spot for the 5:30 pm show “Sirens of TI“. This is the big pirate show that they do outside by Las Vegas Boulevard every night. There’s always a huge crowd out there, and so VIP spots are really a huge bonus.
Sadly, wind prevented them from running the show. The show features a lot of pyrotechnics, and so they have had to cancel several performances lately.
Our program for the last few days has been to walk around a bit and then find a coffee shop in one of the hotels to sit and have a chai latte. In the big hotels, this costs about $5.50, but the people-watching entertainment makes it well worth the price. From my minor survey over the last three days, I’ve 
decided that that the chai latte is best at The Venetian, 2nd best at Paris, and the new Wynn — although a beautiful hotel — runs a distant third. It’s an utterly irrelevant comparison, but in a place where superlatives rule, and excess is considered normal, such minor comparisons are sometimes the only way to tell where you are.
I have done what I came here to do, and it’s time to head back. On Monday I’ll make the drive down to Tucson and re-join the family on the house project. The news I’m hearing from there suggests we may have to push back our departure from Tucson as much as two weeks. This is not welcome news, but all is not yet finalized. We’ll know more soon.
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