11/10/07 - 3/1/08 Snowbird Journal - Part 1 |
2/28/08, Roper Lake State Park, AZ -
Here in the Gila Valley in southeastern Arizona the late February weather is finally turning warm. For the second year in a row Arizona has endured a cold winter. Cold by their standards anyway. We aren’t really complaining about the cool weather in the southwest. After all, it beats 
the awful winter weather we left behind in central Oregon. Regardless, we welcome the daytime 70’s we are now getting at Roper Lake State Park outside of Safford.
You may be wondering how we made our way from Portland to this obscure corner of Arizona. Although our snowbird adventure began in November, we need to pick up our story in September when Steph & I fell in love with a mini-ranch outside of Prineville, OR, the rockhound center of the state. We bought it & moved in by late October. But winters do get cold out in Oregon’s high central desert, so we headed south in early November.
Our first mis-adventure came literally right out of the gate. Our street is a one-lane gravel road with a shallow ditch along side paralleling our fence. In taking care to avoid the ditch as I swung Gypsy out onto the road, I failed to clear the gate post with the back end. And I couldn’t see Steph’s frantic waving or hear her yelling. Post over, gate down, electrical connector on trailer ripped off. Departure delayed while we propped up the post and gate.
The drive down through Bend, Klamath Falls and northern California was pleasant under sunny skies. At dusk we pulled into Lake Shastina Recreation Area, a few miles outside of Weed. I’d stayed there before & it is a nice spot to spend the night, usually. A chill wind was blowing and it only got stronger during the night. As we prepared to depart in the morning, we found the slideout would not retract. AGAIN! I know just what to fix when this happens, but crawling under the rig in the howling wind with the temperature in the 40s was not how I had expected to begin day 2 of our adventure.
Things got better & we had a fine 3 week visit at my daughter’s place in central California's Diablo Range. We were off the grid the entire time & we put up our wind turbine to help get through some cloudy days. Unlike the first time we tried it out, we got plenty of wind, though a lot of it was blowing so hard & gusty, it put the turbine in self-defense mode, ie, feathered. But it helped us get through & it also proved that the tower I built would hold up in a storm.
As we departed & reached the last miles of the canyon road down out of the Diablos, Gypsy blew a tire. We had to run on the rim until we could safely pull off the narrow road. By then the remnants of the tread had wrapped around the axle & wedged against the leaf springs. We fought it, but there was no way we were going to get that tread off without help. Luckily the AAA guy who came out was determined & after hacking the steel belts apart, he finally yanked out the stuck chunk. A 2 hour delay, but we made it to Pismo Beach as planned, arriving well after dark.
We spent a week, enjoying daily beach walks & generally good weather. Our first day beachcombing the tides were just right to reveal sand dollars by the hundreds. We collected 50 or 60. While in the area, we also visited the monarch butterfly sanctuary just down the road. Tens of thousands of butterflies winter over here before scattering in the spring. Quite a spectacle.
Our next stay was at Hot Spring LTVA just north of the Mexico border & 15 miles from El Centro. Along the way we were alerted by numerous Ventura drivers that we were dragging something behind the trailer. Fearing that our bicycles came loose & were wrecked, we found a place to get off the freeway. Fortunately it was just a sewer hose that had slipped part way out of its tube holder. We also stopped in Lancaster to have our shredded trailer tire replaced & we spent the night in Adelanto in the southern Mojave. Next morning I was back under the trailer in frigid winds repairing the slideout again. Déjà vu.
We spent 4 weeks at Hot Spring, dipping in the 105° mineral waters almost every 
afternoon. While soaking, we met Rich & Rosanna from Bakersfield who have become good friends. We also got acquainted with several folks from British Columbia, members of a surprisingly large contingent. The road to the spring from our site passed by a burrowing owl’s digs & we saw him standing guard outside nearly every day. We found small agate & jasper pieces scattered about during our daily walks, nothing spectacular, but a few nice ones. We also rockhounded at a few nearby locations while in the area. And we found that after the lettuce fields just down the road had been harvested, we were allowed to pick any remaining heads. We came home with bags of lettuce a couple of times. Again we put up the wind generator (Windy) & it helped us get through a couple of stormy spells.
Next stop Wiley Wells LTVA southwest of Blythe, CA, only 50 or 60 miles as the crow flies, but about a 3 hour drive. This campground is in the heart of a well known rockhound region & we visited several locations while there. While hiking around nearby, we found a desert 
tortoise shell (deserted) & added it to our souvenirs. After 2 weeks we moved on just over the Arizona border to the Dome Rock BLM lands overlooking Quartzsite. We camped a short distance from Rich & Rosanna who had arrived earlier. We enjoyed dinners at each others & went rockhounding with them a couple of times. Quartzsite was quite a zoo, since we arrived at the peak of the annual snowbird migration. We did our shopping, laundry, and other mundane business in Blythe rather than brave the Q crowds. We ventured into Q for a gem show & a couple of the big swap meets though. As before, Windy made the difference when stormy weather came through.
We bade our friends farewell & headed for Tucson, with plans to take in the mega gem show. We went by way of Gila Bend to avoid Phoenix traffic & arrived mid-afternoon. But we
were turned away at Catalina State Park, already full. Following their directions we drove back across the northern suburbs & wound our way through the Tucson Mountains to Gilbert Ray Campground at Tucson Mountain Park, making camp at dusk. We liked this campground & stayed a week, enjoying the electrical hookup after more than 2 months of dry camping. This park is set in cactus heaven, with an amazing variety growing in profusion. We were constantly on guard while hiking around.
The Tucson Gem & Mineral show was mind boggling, with hundreds of suppliers all over the city. More rocks, gems, fossils & tools than we ever imagined. We bought a few rocks for lapidary work, some tools & a few finished samples & Steph attended a wire wrapping class. Gilbert Ray had a 1 week stay limit, so we moved back across town to Catalina, 
arriving early in the day to make sure we could get in. We enjoyed this park also, nestled up under the Santa Catalina Mountains. One morning we heard a ruckus from near the bathrooms & saw 2 park rangers chasing a skunk. It headed our direction & hid under a big class A rig across from us. They finally flushed it & it came right at us, running under Egor before doubling back to the other RV where the rangers finally corralled it in a trash can so they could haul it away.
This brings us to Roper Lake, our destination after Tucson, where we’ve stayed for almost 3 weeks. There is a hot spring here also, which we enjoy most days. We went rockhounding one day over near the New Mexico border, returning with a trove of chalcedony & some fire agates. We’ve spent some of our time here grinding on a few of our rocks & Steph has practiced wire wrapping some finished stones. We have a resident roadrunner that we see
frequently. It roosted one night in the tree outside our window. We’ve also seen a cardinal in the tree, a great horned owl nearby & a northern harrier hunting over the marshy areas. The real bird treat has been the yellow headed blackbirds, hundreds living around the lake. Late each afternoon they flock in great numbers in the nearby trees, their heads & breasts glowing as they face the late sun. Periodically they launch into the air en mass with a great rush of wings, then as they circle & swirl overhead the air is filled with the whirr of hundreds of wings working in chorus.
And lo, it is warm. After almost 3 months of temperatures in the 50s & 60s (mostly), today it was 80! We're now starting to think about our homeward journey. We have 6 weeks to go with some new places to visit along the way, but the winter season is behind us.
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