Saguaro Sentinels

Weather:  high: 65    Low: 41

We did not know that Arizona had the Saguaro National Park, we had never even heard of it! Maybe that's why when we went to visit today, on a Tuesday, there just weren't very many people there, which made our visit really great! 

It's 23.9 miles from the Voyager RV Park where we are staying. There are two sections to it--The eastern section and the western section, separated by about 30 miles. The eastern portion is larger and more mountainous, the western portion is lower in elevation and has a denser saguaro (a type of cactus) forest. Most visitors come for the short scenic loop drive (about 8 miles) and short walks during the hot summers. The park ranks in the middle of size rankings, (41 out of 63) so it's not as congested as the bigger, more well known parks. There are quite a few hiking trails there, so Sparky will revisit the park soon to see what those might be like. 

cacti garden

The visitor's center is small, but has a wonderful cactus garden walk beside it and a scenic loop drive as many national parks do, but it it quite short compared to others, about 8 miles and is a very narrow one lane paved drive with many very short pull outs. 

Saguaro (say- "suh- war-o") is a tall cactus variety with "arms" usually.  We learned a lot about saguaro and other varieties today. Saguaros grow very slowly in their first ten years--just a few inches. Branches or the "arms" as Sparky likes to call them, don't start to appear until the cactus is 65-70 years old! When the saguaro is about 35 years old, it starts to flower.

An adult saguaro is generally considered to be 125 years old. It can weigh up to 8 tons and be as tall as 50 feet. This saguaro is a century old in front of the visitor's center at the national park. The average life span of a saguaro is about 150-175 years old. Can you see Sparky standing next to the saguaro? 

The saguaro hosts a LOT of animal life in the Sonoran Desert. Woodpeckers make their homes inside, when they abandon the cactus, wrens, finches, sparrows or owls move in. Hawks use them for resting and perching. The saguaro's fruit is a source of moisture and nutrition in late summer. Other animals like mule deer, jackrabbits and bighorn sheep eat the flesh of the cactus. We saw a section of a dead saguaro and were amazed at how thick the walls were!

The saguaro has radial roots that take in as much water as possible during a heavy rain. The cactus has "pleats" that expand and contract depending on the amount of rain and moisture in the plant.

There are other many beautiful cacti in the desert. Sparky has been learning about some other types as well. There are a LOT of staghorn cholla (say choy-uh) here...They look like dark ropey stems. This one has blooms beginning on it. We imagine that the desert is going to be AMAZING when the cactus begin to bloom everywhere. It's a couple of months yet, to peak bloom we think... February and March would be great months to see the amazing variety of blooms in the desert.The prickly pear blooms in early May, the saguaros in mid May to early June. The stag horn cholla is not a very pretty species...There are other chollas that are much prettier....But when they get blooms on them, they must look a lot better when they flower! Kind of like the ugly duckling turning into a swan, haha.

This is hedgehog cactus....

This is a dasylirion wheeleri or form of sotol...love that name. It's so symmetrical, like the spokes of a wheel or rays of the sun, kind of. It's a beautiful plant....

The Arizona desert--The Sonoran Desert in this area, is really beautiful, even if the cacti haven't bloomed yet. Here are some more saguaro sentinels....

We think this is more cholla. It's a little prettier....

Cactus, cactus, and more cactus....

Sparky likes climbing anything......There are trails among rocks there.

You have to share the very narrow loop road with cyclists, so be careful!

A very fine day, and it was beautiful weather to view the park. We highly recommend Saguaro National Park and will visit the west side on another day.....

See you later!

Dang Those Asian Lady Beetles But Other More Important Stuff

Local flora-turpentine bush!

We are STILL battling those dang Asian Lady Beetles. They must be thoroughly entrenched in the inner workings of the ductwork, AC lines or hanging out in the nooks and crannies of our fifth wheel. Sparky is still spraying, but although the beetles are croaking, more still fly in and around and get in through nooks and crannies in the RV. We can't believe they are here in Arizona, we think they have stowed away in ductwork or the slightly less than airtight spaces around windows and vents and are having big family reunions and baby showers. Sparky has sprayed three times, but the smell of the Raid Flying Insect killer spray is so potent, we have to leave the rig for hours at a time for the smell to dissipate any time she uses it. So it's been used very sparingly, and apparently not enough. We're down from killing more than 50+ a day, to maybe about 20. They are just so annoying and still smell awful just like stinkbugs do. We have a few of those as well. Guess they really like our rig! Sigh......

What's Tucson like? Deserty and dry, LOTS and LOTS of sunshine  but very pleasant temperatures, in the 60's and 70's during the day, 40's and 50's at night...Dew point is 34 degrees, humidity is 43%.  That gives you some idea of how low the humidity is here...Just the opposite from Florida, where the dew point is around 65 or higher with humidity percentage in the 80's currently in southwest Florida. Even though it got colder in the higher elevations, it was very comfortable with just lightweight layers. 

And our first foray out into the mountains and desert after a couple of relaxing days was to drive the Sky Island Scenic Byway, a 27.6 mile drive out of Tucson to Mount Lemmon, in the heart of the Santa Catalina Mountains. The Santa Catalina Mountains are Tucson's most prominent mountains with the highest average elevation. 

The highest point of Mt. Lemmon is 9,147 feet. It is also the southernmost ski destination in the United States. Mt. Lemmon gets over 200 inches of snow annually! The drive was closed as recently as last week due to heavy snow, so we picked a great day to go, as it was open today.

There are MANY pullouts and stopping points along the way to admire the scenery. A visitor's center is located at mile 19.6.

The snow started being visible around 7,000 feet, and the temperature dropped from 71 in the valley to 43 degrees by the time we got to the top.

The vistas were outstanding! The saguaro cactus are everywhere!

Sparky gets excited as soon as she sees snow. (Oh, boy...that means I have to dodge a snowball or two, laughs Eldo.) Yep, Sparky lobbed one at him when he wasn't looking. She got one right back.

Our favorite stopping point on the drive was Windy Point Vista at mile marker 14. See the people on top of one rock overlook to the right? Sparky clambered over there to get on the rock so Eldy could capture the shot from a safe distance, lol.

The geological formations of granite and other types of rock formations known as hoodoos, (much more common in Utah) and the wide variety of habitats from desert to pines were fascinating to see. 

We saw bear signs and deer signs and LOTS of "watch for animals" on the way up. There are numerous hiking trails as well. They looked super rocky and steep. We saw many cyclists in training bicycling up the mountain, and careening back down. Sparky was happy to see quite a few women riding up the mountain. And, we saw locals take their kids up to the mountains to experience snow and sledding. Every little hill in the higher elevations had families with round sled discs sliding down the tiniest of hills, but yet, still a great thrill for them for sure. If it had a slope, or was an icy ditch, there were kids slipping, sliding, and sledding.

There are LOTS of nature and cool things to do while in this area, so we hope to be able to try quite a few! Sparky has heard there are some really neat eating establishments. (Uh-oh. There goes the food budget, but then again, we don't have a food budget, because Sparky hates to cook! explains Eldo.) Looking forward to exploring Saguaro National Park and other places soon...

Sparky is exploring the local flora and fauna. This was a blooming agave plant. Some of the agave varieties are called "shin dagger agave". Sparky found out immediately why while trying to capture the bees on the blooms. OUCH!

Another beautiful day in Tucson, Arizona. It's super windy today...looks like a day for laundry and tire shopping. We have to order four new tires for the RV as we are currently using the spare after a big blowout a few days ago....We bought the RV used so we really don't have a good idea how many miles are on the tires. Time to replace with a new set.  And with that.....We'll see you soon at the Saguaro National Park.

Standing on a Corner in Winslow, Arizona?

Weather:  High: 71  Low: 44  Voyager RV Resort, Tucson, Arizona. Site: 7-235. T Mobile mifi very slow at times, AT&T phone hotspot excellent

No, not yet as far as Winslow, AZ.... It's on our bucket list to go to. Once we get our new set of tires, we will be off on further adventures and we might just go there. Our travels yesterday to get to the Voyager park in Arizona were uneventful after experiencing a tire exploding on the RV the day before. (See previous post). 

Sparky was nervous that another tire would blow, but we got here safe and sound. Whew!

For now, we are staying at a beautiful RV resort, which normally would be out of our budget range for staying for longer periods of time, but with our camping membership (Thousand Trails) to stay in this particular park which is an Encore park, (a related park in the Thousand Trails system), it's 20.00 per night to stay in an Encore park. 

We have saved thousands of dollars with our Thousand Trails camping membership. With that membership, comes older parks, substandard roads within sometimes, narrower sites, older campgrounds, but beautiful locations and sometimes very nice amenities. Thousand Trails will often upgrade bathroom and pools and let the interior roads deteriorate. You have to be prepared if you are going to travel full time in an RV to accept that many many campgrounds have been around for a long time, and a lot of them are in need of upgrades or renovations, especially the electric grid. Because we get to stay for almost free everywhere we go, we don't  mind that. We are not in the category of needing luxurious travel or travel accommodations  (although our fifth wheel IS very beautiful!) We just mean we are on a senior retired citizen's budget and watch our expenses very carefully so we can eat out at wonderful local places and experience some unique experiences to the area we are in, and continue to travel this amazing country. But sometimes it's just nice to splurge a little and spend a little for a beautiful park that is newer and has amazing amenities, like the Voyager RV Hotel and Resort.

Beautiful outdoor lounging areas

WOW! What a park! It's a top rated park in Arizona. First time here, and here's what we know so far....It's huge! It has 1,576 spaces, over 600 RV sites with 100 pull thru, full hookups, a hotel, 16 pickle ball courts, a golf course, and more activities:

They also have an onsite restaurant/bar that is very good and there are many clubs that support a wide variety of interests-stained glass, lapidary, quilting, woodshop, music, hiking, etc. Sparky checked out the hiking. This is serious hiking for the club at this park. It's more like mountain climbing it seems, from the descriptions and the trail led expeditions by the Voyager club members. The hikes are more than 6 miles at a time of hiking trails through the desert and mountains. Sparky would like to try one, but desert hiking is not quite her cup of tea and she doesn't own the required "substantial hiking foot gear".  So she is going to look for some more moderate hikes on her own. Or play pickle ball....

Or use the fitness center....

The bicycling club is for serious road bikers....you have to be able to maintain a speed of 12 mph and with challenging road conditions of spiky cactus thorns, rocks and other possible scenarios, and very high mileage for their weekly trips, Sparky will pass...A Trek bike is not the right bike for these road trips, it's too heavy, and she wouldn't be able to keep up, so Sparky will ride the park for starters and got in 9 miles easily just inside the park yesterday. Roads are great inside the park.

Masks are required indoors at all the different facilities in the park, even if you have been vaccinated and boosted. This Arizona county is not messing around! 

So here we are for almost two weeks....We will get our new tires towards the end of our stay, explore the area, and enjoy the beautiful mountain backdrop behind our RV park. We will keep you posted!

The sunsets are AMAZING.

Until next time.....

                                             Eldo and Sparky 

It Could Have Been Worse....Much Worse....

Before pulling out of the campground, we ALWAYS check our tire pressures on all four RV tires, and they have been consistently ok. We have been debating installing a tire monitoring system, but decided that we were on the fence about it. Many people have had blowouts despite having the sensors installed on their valve stems on their RV rig tires. The system is supposed to warn you of heat building up and impending air loss or when the tires get below optimal pressure. Sometimes the system dings when nothing is wrong, and they can be finicky to get them to work right. We used one on the class A motorhome we used to have years ago and they were a pain in the patooty. But that is all about to change. 

We enjoyed today's journey through the Hill Country of Texas. We passed through beautiful El Paso, with some AMAZING infrastructure. Their bridges and overpasses are a sight to behold! They used salmon and sage colors in their concrete work....They had lizards stamped across bridge facades....Mountain peaks along side cement walls....

They had artwork painted into the concrete embankments....

They had beautiful pedestrian and overpass bridges above the interstate.....Wish more cities would think about making ugly concrete be more beautiful and reflective of the culture of the area.

We got to within 5 miles of our KOA campground choice in Lordsburg, New Mexico, when we blew a tire. Eldy saw the rubber flapping in his side mirror and the tire smoking and rubber flapping in the wind. It was obliterated. It looked really bad. The debris damaged the fender a bit, but we weren't sure if there was any damage underneath to the jacks or the slides. We have no clue how it happened. We could have run over something in the construction zone just in the last 5 miles or it just blew. 

We quickly pulled off to a safe shoulder at the exit near a gas station and called our tire emergency service. We had a good spare and it shouldn't have been a problem, but it was. The spare is located under the RV and it takes a special tool to insert through a tube in the side of the rig to unscrew the tire and lower it down. We had never seen the tool for the spare, and proceeded to tear the rig apart looking for it. The tire emergency guy said he couldn't get the spare unless we had the tool to "unlock" it. We never did find the tool. The tire service guy left for another job and said he would check back with us later. (He never did). Next possible solution was to buy a new tire. We would just take the blown tire off and put a new one on and worry about the spare later. Think anybody would have the right size tire to replace a blown RV tire? Think again. After calling tire places all over the area, no tire and we were told good luck finding one. We put in calls to tech support from our dealer and the tire people (to try and figure out a way to release the spare) and they had some untenable solutions like cut a hole beside the tube and patch it later. It was getting dark, the sun was setting. We were preparing to spend the night in the rig with no solution in sight when two gentlemen came walking up to us.

They were dressed kind of strangely, in long khaki heavy duty garments. Eldy and Sparky were leery. We thought maybe they were from some kind of cult, dressed the way they were. But they seemed very friendly and offered their help. It turns out they were brothers from a local monastery dressed in work hassocks. We thought, well, why not? Nobody else had been able to help. One brother said that the other brother was the patron saint of mechanics. (!!!) Sparky thought, yeah, right. She still wasn't sure about these guys. She asked a little more about them. They were from the Our Lady of Guadalupe monastery, in Silver City, on their way home. They had tools, they had a truck, and they went to work. They got the spare off using an adjustable  wrench tool, and got it off within less than a minute by laying underneath the spare and using the wrench to turn the shaft to lower the tire. They used a big bottle jack to jack up the rig, and managed to get the mangled tire off with a great deal of difficulty, because the lug nuts were unevenly torqued from the last time the tires were serviced.

They got the new spare on, and we were good to go at about 5:30PM. We didn't get both their names, but we would like to send a prayer of thanks to the two brothers from the Our Lady of Guadeloupe Monastery, who came to our aid with smiles, (they never stopped smiling!) and didn't want to accept any payment. They said we could buy their coffee, The Abbey coffee, so we will! Here is a link to their site if anyone would like to try their coffee....https://www.abbeyroast.com

Sparky just about cried tears of joy at this wonderful example of kindness and generosity from two strangers who stopped by and were late for vespers, to help us get back on the road to our destination, just minutes away. It could have been so much worse. Our slides still work, our jacks still work, and as far as we can tell, the damage is cosmetic to the side of the rig. People sometimes get thousands of dollars of damage from tires blowing---suspension damage, damage to the RV, and months of waiting for parts and repairs. We were blessed to have been so close to our final destination that we were within minutes of where we needed to be. We were blessed to find a safe place to pull off to the side of the road where no cars were whizzing by within yards of where we had to park and where the guys could work with the tire. We were blessed with a visit from our guardian angels from the monastery who just happened to pass by us and stopped to help us, and blessed that it did not happen in the middle of the interstate in a big city.

Thank you to all who expressed concern and offered tips on Sparky's Facebook page....We are good to go (we think!) tomorrow to Arizona. But first, we are going to have a mobile tech come out to our site in Lordsburg, New Mexico, at the KOA, which is where we landed for the night, to inspect underneath the RV and make sure wires and other important stuff is ok before moving on. Next, new tires are going to have to be ordered, and the lug nuts re-torqued properly. And that is all, for now, because it's been a really stressful day. Life is good, people are still amazing, and thank you, Lord, for watching out for us today and sending us two amazing young men who worked so hard to help us fix our tire.....And isn't it an amazing blessing that two angels of the Lord helped us in the town of LORDSBURG?  We were truly blessed and grateful. And now, time for some wine!

Bye, Bye Conroe, Hello...Lake Medina

Traveling Days....Weather high: 41   Low: 28 (!!!) 

On the road again....Before we get into where we are headed, just wanted to say how cool many of the ranch gates are there in Texas....There's a LOT of state pride here, Texas flags are EVERYWHERE! And Texans seem to be very territorial. They have their big and small ranches and farms earmarked with gates--some are ornate or reflect the personal interests of the owner....This one has a row of cowboys parading across the top of the gate, and the owner's name proudly displayed underneath.

Some are plain....

And some are in between....We saw the very best ones today, much more elaborate, driving north towards Bandera, TX. 

After a delightful three weeks at Lake Conroe, Thousand Trails RV Park, we headed north towards the northern part of Texas to another Thousand Trails park called Lake Medina.... We are there for just one night, just passing through....We are doing the hop, skip, and jump journey...a night at this campground, a night at that campground, averaging about 300 miles a day to get to another longer stay at parks in Arizona, our remaining winter destinations. It's about a 1100 mile trip total to get from Lake Conroe to Tucson, Arizona.

Lake Medina was a big park, 380 sites, and lots of big live oak trees hanging low. Be watchful upon driving through and picking your site! The staff is super nice, friendly and helpful. Be aware that GPS might send you down Park Road 37. (or 35, we can't remember!) Super winding and narrow road. There is a far better way coming in on highway 16. Call the park for directions if you are a nervous Nellie, lol. 

Old barn on the Lake Medina property

our site

There seem to be fewer sites with full hookups than there are sites with just water and electric from what we could see on the park map. They do have the honey wagon (sewer pump out) that you can schedule to come to your rig, but it's 20.00 each time. A whole section of the park borders on Lake Medina. We didn't have time to check those sites out, but there are lots of sites to choose from throughout the park. The sites were pretty level, comprised of gravel, and again, LOTS of deer hanging out. 

Can you see the buck's antlers?

People feed them regularly, even though they are not supposed to, as the deer are getting sick and the DNR is concerned about their welfare. We saw several bucks in the one night we were there. 

We drove 344 miles with extremely windy conditions from Lake Medina to an overnight park stop called Saddleback Mountain RV Park in Balmorhea, TX, easy access off I-10, mile marker 212. It's a small park, 46 pull thru sites, but a VERY nice overnight stop. All sites are very roomy with plenty of space between you and your neighbor. They are gravel and very level. Hallelujah!

There is a restaurant BAR and steakhouse on the grounds, key word, BAR, key word TEXAS, key word SMOKERS, key word LOCALS. The smoke was so thick we turned around and walked out. When Sparky explained with an apology that it was a bit too smoky for us to eat there, a lady at the bar hurled an insulting remark on our way out. They were definitely an unfriendly bunch at the Saddleback Bar and Grill. Mixed reviews on Yelp.

Sparky took a quick tour around the campground learning some species of cacti with her "Seek" app. Bunny ears cactus....They look a lot like Micky Mouse ears, too!

This is desert agave.... or sometimes known as the century plant because it takes years for a blooming stalk to form....

Buckley's yucca....

Pancake prickly pear cactus....Those spikes are so sharp! OUCH!

We feel like we are already in Arizona, with all these cacti and mesas and buttes and plateaus...but not yet...

Stay tuned, we will be there in two more days! See you on the road!