Boondocking in the White Mountains of Arizona

SILVER FIRE

 

We had been planning a trip to Arizona anyway, but this Silver Fire as seen from our front yard was not a wildfire to ignore! It was over 80 miles away, but still very imposing!

 

 

We packed The MotherShip, filled our bird feeders and headed off to Arizona!

Our first stop is only 2.5 hours from Truth or Consequences, but it is a great little boondocking campground at Datil Well, just off Highway 60 west.
$5.00 a night for non-geezers and $2.50 a night for geezers! It gives us a chance to "settle in", put things in proper places. Seems we always leave in a bit of a frenzy, so having a nice cool place in the mountains to stop and re-organize a bit makes it nice!

BOONDOCKING 101

I have always been a fan of boondocking, tucking myself away in some corner of my world, like I spent my early camping days. Chuck.... not so much. He has always preferred campgrounds. But I think RVSue and I have changed that idea a bit. Datil Well is step one... It's a campground BUT it's dry camping! NO UTILITIES, but they have good clean pit toilets and a place to refill your water jugs.

Last year, we took our first positive step towards boondocking more often!

 

We had a big metal box welded to the frame of the MotherShip!

 

 We then installed our Honda i200eu generator and 2 propane tanks.  Chuck had the generator converted to propane because he didn't like the idea of carrying gasoline around with us everywhere!

 

Propane is definitely the way to go for us, it lasts a very long time. We are still on the little tank and it has been a week now since we left home!

 

After we left Datil Well, we went up to I-40 and camped at Homolovi State Park near Winslow AZ.

$25 for full hook-ups. We wanted to fill our water tanks and use their dump station. I understand the ruins there are worth the visit, but we got there late and left early.

 

One sad note, as we got close to Flagstaff, we saw an elk doe carcass on the road. I have been wanting to see an elk for years.....  but not this way. Bummer!

 

Finally we got to Sheilah and Chuck's home in Paulden. They have quite a farm going there! BIG garden and fruit trees and bee hives and lots of yummy things from the garden. I am sorry, we were so into visiting after so many years.... I forgot to take pictures! But Sheilah decided to try and make Navajo Pizza like we had in Bluff Utah. Her daughter Alana came to visit with her two sons so we got busy in Sheilah's kitchen.  Sheilah made the frybread while Alana and I loaded on the tomato sauce, cheese, onions, avocado, asparagus, & elk meat! YUM!

All 7 of us pigged out on amazing Navajo Pizza!

 

If any of you would like to learn how to make fry bread, here is a link to an earlier visit to Shiela's kitchen where she taight me how to make frybread!

http://phunnyfarm.blogspot.com/2008/10/az-day-2-and-navajo-tacos.html

 

When we left Sheilah and Chuck's great company, we headed to Camp Verde to meet our old friend John.

We went to a very fancy campground where John used to workcamp! Distant Drums come complete with pool, spa, laundry facilities, and gym with a high price tag too! Distant Drums was $39 per night but well laid out and a fun Casino across the way!  John tried hard to get off work... but as it turned out, none of his co-workers would cover for him at his current workamper job in Apache Junction and (as much as we love you John)we didn't want to get involved in Phoenix traffic or heat! So we left Camp Verde after one night of leaving the Yavapai Apache some of our hard earned $$$ at the Casino!  We headed east down highway 260 through the mountain towns of Strawberry and Pine on to Payson and Star Valley. We ended up in a beautiful pine forest in the White Mountains.

 

 

We are tucked away comfortably, lots of room to play!  We took Young Road off of highway 260 and within the first few miles found this lovely site!

 

 

 Doogie Bowser and Radar love being off leash and raising the dust level in the forest!

I think they would both add a huge hip hip hooray for being free of campgrounds into FREE campgrounds!

 

In fact, it's so nice here, at noon temp is all of 74 degrees, the trees are gently blowing in the breeze and we have the whole place to ourselves! We have decided to stay one more day!  YaY!

 

So that's it from the crew of the MotherShip, Geri and Chuck with our K-9 kids DoogieBowser and Radar!  I sure hope we boondock like this more often!  Thank you RVSue for being such a good influence! For those who have never read her blog...   take note! rvsueandcrew.net  She writes a fun blog about her life choice of life, living in a Casita and boondocking full time!

 

 

 

Leaving RVSue and Utah too!

I have been working on this blog for several days, BlogSpot is not co-operating! It is not letting me resize my photographs like it usually does. Grrrr!

Therefore, if you want to see the photos full size, PLEASE try clicking on it and the photograph should come up. I apologize and IF I can figure this glitch out, I will come back and resize all the images for you!

Geri

 

Leaving RVSue and Crew and Utah!

 

We had a great time.... checking out all the restaurants!  LOL! Sue loved our favorite from the Twin Bluff Cafe, Navajo Pizza - A normal Italian style pizza placed on top of Indian fry bread! Yummy!

 

Chuck loves this! Can you tell?

 

We spent 3 days at Sand Island with Sue and then moved up to Cadillac Ranch in Bluff Utah. Two of our good friends, Tim and Diana manage this campground. It's small, a bit close together, but we have never been sorry we stopped here. Cost is $25.00 per night with FHU (full hook ups) a nice shower and laundry onsite and the views are wonderful!

This year we had a special treat at Cadillac Ranch, near sunset, a flock of white face black Ibis flew into the pond at the park! Unfortunately I did not have the 300mm zoom lens on.... but you get the idea!

 

 Chuck and Sue visited the Bluff Fort while I dogsat for Bridgette and Spike!

Both Bridgette and Spike were overjoyed when Sue came home! Separation anxiety? Not much!

 

Sue isn't much for posing, but then neither am I, so we both snuck a quick snap sneaky photo of each other!

 

 

 

CAMO LIZARD!

Can you spot the lizard on this tree?

 

If you look close below, I have outlined him in red!
He/She/It was 10 to 12 inches long!

We overnighted in Chinle again, in the Cottonwood Campground at Canyon de Chelly National Monument.  The road from Bluff, Utah to Chinle is just jaw dropping beautiful! It looks totally different

depending on whether you are headed nort or south on Highway 191.  On this day, we hit the scenic roadway right after a rainstorm had passed over. Wet rocks are much more colorful than dry rocks and it was amazing!



This above shot was the beginning of a steep downhill curve and I was yelling at Chuck to slow down and still managed to snap this image through the window! The one below is just layers of colors dressing the earthmother! Shot this one out the passenger window.

 

 Below is the storm that had just passed over, giving the rocks their colorful beauty!

 

 

Always remember when driving on any Native American Reservation, it is open range... horses, cattle, sheep, goats ALL have the right of way. Please drive accordingly!

Datil Well Recreation Area Campground

We discovered this nice campground just off of Highway 60 in western NM. Just a mile or so out of
the town of Datil and down a short dirt road you will see the Visitor Center and campground on your left!

 

 A whole lot of history happened around here!

 

 

There area scenic mountains all around the campground area,

 

The sites are well spaced with a lot of foliage spaced in between. There will be $300,000 worth of improvements taking place here this year. The only problem we had was finding a level area for the MotherShip but we were assured that leveling the sites was high on the list of repairs as are showers. The pit toilets were nice though.

 

There are well marked hiking paths throughout.

 

We liked it so well, nice and cool temps, we stayed 3 nights and with our geezer pass it was $2.50 a night!
$5.00 for those of you too young for a geezer pass.

 

However, Radar was missing RVSue and the crew and so were we! It was a fun week.

 

We will be heading to Arizona to visit some good friends in the next few weeks. I promise a good blog!
Meanwhile that is it from the MotherShip Crew: Chuck, Geri, Radar and DoogieBowser! Thanks for stopping by!

Sand Island, Utah - Petroglyphs and Camping

Just a few miles south of Bluff Utah, you will find a sign on your left announcing Sand Island. It doesn't tell you what it is, just turn left there! You will find a rock art panel easily as big as the one we found on Potash Road in Moab!

From a distance, it is hard to tell how large this panel really is. It extends from the far left behind that big rock to the far right, beyond the frame of this picture.

Remember you can click on the photos to enlarge them to full size, making seeing the rock art easier!

Of course, graffitti is always a problem!

The one thing I have never seen, even in the petroglyph books, is that pair of "oars" top center! Maybe that is modern graffitti, I haven't a clue!

Probably the most amazing thing about Sand Island Petroglyphs is that for many years they were hidden from sight by the pesky tamerisk trees. Non-native, these plants take over everywhere in the Southwest where there is water! Utah is trying an experiment with a worm that feeds on tamerisk (or salt cedar) and it seems to be working! The worms actually cleared out the tamerisk from in front of these petroglyphs, petroglyphs that many folk had forgotten about.

3 strange figures at the top. Human or Alien ???

From a distance, it was hard to tell this panel existed. The fence it below was the clue! There are still some tamerisk trees trying to make a come back here.

The second part of the panel...... this panel was well protected by the rock overhang.

 

Twin Rocks, landmark in Bluff Utah! Also one of the better restaurants sits under the Twin Rocks....  Twin Rocks Cafe and we heartily recommend their Navajo Pizza! Chuck and Sue loved the classic pizza ! Instead of the usual pizza crust, they use Navajo fry bread and YUM!


 

    Our Sand Island camp site!

Hope you enjoyed the petroglyphs from Sand Island. There is a vey nice campground here, right on the river. It is a BLM campground and the rates were very reasonable. $5.00 a night for Seniors and $10.00 a night for you youngsters!There were bathrooms provided throughout the campground. RV Sue had the best campsite, right on the San Juan River watching the float trips go by! We said our sad goodbyes to Sue yesterday... :-(   she is such a very special friend! We will see you on down the road Sue, we love you too!
Crew of the MotherShip signing off for the night!
Chuck, Geri, DoogieBowser and Radar!