It was very cold for us west coast types last night. By early morning, temperatures were down near freezing so we malingered drinking Irish Cream-fortified coffee in the trailer until about 10:00 before wandering outside to prepare for departure. My shorts and T-shirt regular attire may be a bit too comfy for temperatures in the 40’s.
By about 10:30 we were ready to go and we split from Justin’s Diamond J RV. After passing through some poorly delineated and striped construction before hitting I-10, we jumped on the freeway and headed east. About an hour and a half later, we turned off I-10 and headed south on AZ-90.
Twenty miles later, we pulled into the Quail Ridge RV Park just north of Huachuca City near Sierra Vista. Huachuca City is the location of Fort Huachuca, home to the Buffalo Soldiers who did most of the fighting in exchanges with the Apaches during the U.S, government’s efforts to eradicate Native Americans that stood in the way of whitey’s land grabs during our alleged Manifest Destiny. The program was bullshit but it was effective at wiping out the indigenous population. Strangely, it wasn’t the fighting but disease that capped the locals. Old movies about big campaigns of white cowboys slaughtering the Apaches are thrilling but mostly inaccurate since black soldiers did most of the work.
Now Fort Huachuca now has strange balloons and antennas pointed south, perhaps in an effort to detect pesky immigrant Mexicans that were clever enough to get over the ugly sheet pile wall visible a few miles to the south. Those too stupid to operate ladders would seem to be the only folks stranded south of the wall. If Trump has his way, all of those poor ingrates that are challenged by ladder operation will be obliged to stay within the borders of Mexico. The rest can flood over, just like before we wasted 18 billion dollars. Ain’t we twits?
Nice things about this part of the world are the abundance of birds, which makes me happy and we have found a restaurant that has good tamales. We will be visiting the tamale joint tomorrow.

The terrific weather we have enjoyed here in Tucson for 6 days changed for the worse today. Very little clear sky was visible first thing this morning. The temperature dropped about 25 degrees from yesterday’s balmy sunshine and by midday the rain had started.
We got in a stop at Costco for liquor because we are departing for points east tomorrow morning. It seems the further we go east in the U.S., the more bizarre the liquor laws become. We stocked up here in Arizona where liquor acquisition isn’t so expensive or problematic. We also pulled in for fuel where the lower temperatures and blasting wind challenged my commitment to wearing shorts. Brrrr. Off to Sierra Vista tomorrow.

Sabino Canyon was our destination today. Accordingly, Sabino Canyon is northeast of Tucson, we are camped southwest of Tucson and there are no limited access highways to cross town. As the crow flies, it is about 20 miles between Sabino Canyon and Justin’s Diamond J RV Park but, due to the tortured terrain and the unique nature of Tucson roads, it takes about an hour and a quarter to cross the gap.
The drive is worth it. Sabino Canyon is a federal site so our Geezer Pass got us in the parking lot for free, a $5 savings. We quickly popped over to a ticket booth and paid $10 a head for a trolley ride into the canyon. The trolley can be exited or re-boarded at any one of nine stops along the creek running down the bottom of this stunning desert chasm. The local rock formations are made out of gneiss, a particularly stripey sedimentary formation that looks very shiny after the water buffs it up some.
Today we were quite fortunate to see a large roadrunner with snazzy plumage right in the trolley boarding area. Even better, we got to see some coatis doing coati stuff near the creek bottom. They are interesting little critters that have a fuzzy tail with dense fur, long rear and short front legs and an overall appearance of a combination lemur/weasel/raccoon/cat. We were lucky again today as we heard long-time residents stating that they have been in Sabino Canyon zillions of times but today is their first coati sighting.
We used our new GPS to cross through central Tucson stopping off at a T. Joe’s to purchase chow items that are probably bad for us but very tasty. The city streets here have been laid out in such a fashion that motorists heading generally west are required to go east, south, north and make many turns before being allowed to drive home. It is very strange, to me.
We took some snaps of the wildlife and the terrain. Check ’em out! Click here

Saguaro National Park is geographically divided into two distinct sections. A few miles north of our current campsite southwest of Tucson, the western portion or Tucson Mountain District of the park spreads out along the western slope. The eastern or Rincon Mountain District is about an hour’s drive through Tucson from the western portion. Our focus for today was the Rincon Mountain District.
We intended to use our new GPS to find the route from our RV park to our destination across town. When starting the unit up for the first time after purchase, I found myself completely incapable of operating the device and the User Start-Up Guide had nice illustrations but absolutely no information about how the pricey gizmo works. Failing miserably at my initial efforts, I accessed the internet and, after considerable clumsy searching, found a operation manual that could be downloaded to my laptop but not to the GPS because I couldn’t operate it. After quite a bit of reading, I had progressed to being able to access some functions but not reliably. Therefore, I figured we were ready to go.
We arrived at the Rincon Mountain District after about an hour of city street driving in Tucson. Due to the weird configuration of Tucson roads, any persons wishing to travel from east to west or vice versa across town are obliged to use city streets with frequent, signal-controlled intersections because there are no east-west highways. The same goes for north-south except for those that can access Interstate 10.
The Rincon District of the park has an eight mile one-way loop road through a cactus forest and the scenery is stunning. Desert birds are abundant and we spotted some fuzzy scurrying critters that moved so fast we couldn’t identify them. Saguaro, barrel, prickly pear, cholla and Ocotillo cactus are everywhere. The massive rock formations are magnificent. Peggy and I stopped about halfway through the loop and took a stroll on the Desert Ecology Trail. It is a short loop through flat (mostly) ground and they don’t even need to post signs telling the idiots to stay on the trail because the flora will force them back quickly. Everything out here has nasty spikes, leathery skin and fierce appearances. It seems pretty plain that cowboys who worked in Arizona mast have had thick chaps or real prickly legs.
Despite my almost complete inability to operate anything more sophisticated than tweezers, I was able to fool our new GPS unit into returning us to our RV park and it only took about an hour even though we never missed a turn and didn’t have to hang a U-turn anywhere. It was almost magical.
We took a few pictures. To see them, clickhere

We never seemed to really get going today. We drove the trash over to the park dumpster and gave it a whirl. We took a stroll into the desert surrounding the park. We gave back scratches to some of the local dogs. We were boring.

Today our wanderings took us into Tucson’s Desert Park, a gorgeous example of Sonoran desert with an amazing variety of cacti and birds. We spotted a new bird today – a phainopepla which is also called a silky flycatcher for those with pronunciation problems. We fooled around in the park, just south of the western Saguaro National Park unit west of Tucson, for a couple hours before driving into town to shop for food.
The contrast between where we are, out in pristine desert with spectacular nighttime skies, and Tucson is dramatic. There is almost total silence here and there is very knotty traffic in town. I’m delighted to be in this part of the world.
Got a few bird pix. Click here

We did not get a lot of stuff done today. About the only things we performed today were I put up the slide-out stabilizers and we drove into the Tucson Camping World.
At Camping World, we bought a new GPS system for our truck and a plastic soap thingy for Peggy so she can keep the soap from wandering off its shelf in the shower. We were quite dull. The good part is that we have excellent satellite reception and terrific wifi here at Justin’s Diamond J RV Park. Between satellite TV, Netflix and Amazon Prime movies, we are well supplied with good stuff to watch.

We were up pretty early, for us, and split from Yuma quickly this morning. On the way out of the park, we passed by the park clubhouse where the Idaho Yodeler was wowwing the probably small crowd with his caterwauling. It was a frightening sound. I initially thought something was wrong with the truck.
We got back on I-8 eastbound for another long haul across a predominately featureless landscape with the exception of the jagged but pretty mountains visible on both sides of the highway. After more than four hours of uninhabited desert terrain, we pulled into Tucson where we headed into Justin’s Diamond J RV Park southwest of the city. The Diamond J is a very well tended desert park with shade trees, full hookups, paved main roads, speedy wifi and lots of birds and silence. It is quite nice. There are lots of Saguaro cacti near here, letting us know we are in the Sonoran desert.
The lady at the desk, Christine, seems to be from an oriental country because she speaks pidgen so fast that it is almost incomprehensible to me. She is very nice and took care of all our needs and questions, quickly. We have very nice views of mountains and mature shade trees from our camping spot. We set up for a week’s stay and then promptly climbed into the Barbarian Invader for cocktails to reward ourselves for making the successful drive across terrain where a breakdown would be not only inconvenient but possibly deadly.

Gathering up all our stuff and putting it in its designated place preceded our departure from Stagecoach Trails in Shelter Valley and the Anza-Borrego State Park. We drove south on S-2 to Interstate 8 and then headed east. The part on S-2 is a squirrely drive over some little rock ridges and through some very scenic desert with jagged, gorgeous mountain ranges making up the horizons.
In Ocotillo, we connected up with I-8 and started the descent to below sea level through the massive Imperial Valley, home to abundant crop land, gigantic wind turbines, irrigation projects and a funny odor. We blasted through El Centro at right about the California speed limit of 55 mph for trucks towing trailers, prolonging our enjoyment of the strange smells.
After a couple hours, we arrived in Yuma, Arizona, another area of extensive agriculture and the piquant odor of animal shit. We set up at a campground called Yuma Lakes which seems to only have one small pond but lots of birds enjoying the wet spot in the middle of a scenic but hellish desert. The pioneers who originally came through this landscape must have been some tough hombres because there is no water other than the currently very skinny Colorado River, poisonous snakes, nasty bugs, vegetation that has prickly defenses against contact and rocky, broken terrain.
We took a spin into Yuma to get a new tail light bulb for the truck which only took two long stops at parts stores to acquire. We filled up the fuel tank and stopped at In-N-Out for some double-doubles before heading back to Yuma Lakes. We won’t be in this locale for long. We did note that we would probably miss an opportunity to see one Robert “Buzz” Goertzen, called “The Idaho Yodeler,” at tomorrow’s non-denominational church service at the park. Drat!

We made another 30 mile trip from our RV park through Anza-Borrego State Park and into the town of Borrego Springs, primarily to get fuel since we are bugging out tomorrow. We didn’t expect to see any wildlife because we were traveling at midday but had just skirted Tamarisk Campground at the south end of Yaqui Pass when eagle-eyed Peggy spotted some Desert Bighorn Sheep. We shot a few pix of the endangered critters before continuing on our quest for diesel.
Once we got to Borrego Springs, we decided we had enough time to do some exploring so we passed through town and took the very twisty and steep S-22 west. The bottom mile or two is pretty straight and flat but soon the 10% grades and 20 mph corners start as the road screws itself up the side of some very steep rock mountainsides. Very close to the top of the grade is a pullout where there are magnificent views east over the town, the park and the surrounding desert. Way out at the horizon we could see the azure blue but grossly polluted Salton Sea glistening in the sun. It is pretty spectacular.
After seeing the big picture, we started back down the couple thousand feet into Borrego Springs when Peggy spotted a larger group of endangered Desert Bighorn Sheep. We pulled over along the edge of the cliff but soon others spotted us and they stopped, too. Two groups we were chatting with indicated they have been coming out here since 1969 in one case and 30 years in another and had never seen the elusive critters before. After much ogling, we continued into town where we filled up the tank and then went for a tasty lunch at a place called the Red Ocotillo. Nice outside and inside dining, pretty good food and about $50 for two lunches, two Negra Modelos and tip.
We returned to Stagecoach Trails, dumped the tanks, disconnected the water and poured drinks. Tomorrow morning we go!
We got some sheep pictures. Click here