Rio Casino, Las Vegas, Nv

We moved up to Las Vegas today. It's a nice place to hang around for a couple of days. There is another big tent in much of the parking lot. It's for a Cavalia circus/horse show.

Didn't really accomplish much today. So, another sucessful day.

We met brother Ernie for dinner.

Monday:

We drove out to Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area West of Las Vegas. Here are a few pictures of the place.


Ernie's doggies like to get out and run. Walter is shown at left. A Chipmonk on the right.

These birds were making a racket that sound very much like chickens by one of the trails we took.

The weird creatures on the left were in the Visitors Center. The top one has things figured out. he just rides the big lizard around the cage.

The rocks have an interesting "grain". The park had a "forest" fire in 2005 that burned most of the flatlands.

Ernie's doggies awaiting our return. The park has both pytroglyphs and pictoglyphs as shown above right. There are five outlines of hands in the picture.

Another look at the burnt desert. A wild burro begging from the motorists.

The entrance sign to the park. While the rocks are all good looking, not that many of them are red? The gray and buff rocks out number the red rocks.

Tuesday:

Ernie departed early this morning. Lou and I bought day passes for the bus and rode downtown to look around at the casinos on Fremont Street. We also dropped by the Post Office to see if our mail had arrived. It hadn't. It normally arrives within three work days but the holiday delayed its arrival.


We also rode the length of the strip on the bus. The buses are double decker. You get a great view from the top front seats that we had. It also helped to be ten feet off the ground, above traffic. A view of the Las Vegas Strip at night and a sunset as seen from there.

Wednesday:


The Cavalia Show tent was behind our parking space. When we visited the Wynn Casino, we spotted this practice rescue from their fountains. There is a conference of Homeland Security Folks in town for a convention?


Our campsite at the Rio Casino. On the right you see the Cavalia Tent behind us.


From our RV we saw a semi nude chippendale looking guy in the driver seat of the RV ahead of us. It was actually a reflection from one of the Rio buses.

Our day passes were still good so we rode down to the post office to get our mail. Success!

When we returned to the Rio, we prepared for departure. Traffic was very light. We headed down I-15 and then over to Palmdale on Hwy 18. Traffic was pretty heavy in Victorville, but OK once we were out of town. Were planning on spending the night here at Wal-marts. We might get ousted though because were the only RV here?

Riverside,Casino, Laughlin, Nv

We made our way to Lauglin stopping at the Riverside Casino for the night. We contributed our couple of dollars to the casino and had a nice breakfast before heading on to Las Vegas. Brother Ernie is there so we'll meet up again.

Time is sure confusing here. You would think that modern technology would improve things, but here is another example where it makes them worst. We don't wear watches, we only use our cell phones. They're usually very accurate, but not here. Time zones change at the border here so on the Arizona side, it's an hour later than here in Nevada. And of course, the strongest signal is always from the other side of the river so time is always incorrect, whichever side you're on. Oh well, who needed to know the time anyway?

Dead Horse Ranch SP, Cottonwood, AZ

Wednesday:


We moved North to Cottonwood, Az just South of Flagstaff to the Dead Horse Ranch State Park.

We had dinner in old Cottonwood at Conchos, a Mexican restaurant frequented by a flock of peacocks.

Thursday Jerome:


We took a morning walk to bird watch.


On our walk we passed a creek and a river that meander through the park.


We had lunch at the Jerome Palace dining on Haunted Burgers. These were the best, and most pricey burgers we've ever had. Jerome is an old mining town turned tourist trap much like Bisbee, possibly a bit nicer.

We happened across a cat that looked very much like Mr Milo.

Friday Sedona:

We decided to stay in Cottonwood due to the Holiday weekend being upon us. Moving to Sedona would have been too much work and there would likely have been a difficulty getting a campsite. We haven't been there yet.

We drove up about noon after our leisurely morning of breakfast, flying the RC planes, and taking a long walk along the river. It's only about 17 miles away. Sedona seems to be highly over rated. There were crowds of people, scads of tourists traps with very high tourist prices on everything. Even the gas prices rose 40 cents just because it was a tourist trap. We got hungry and looked around for a restaurant. Nothing looked good. Again the prices were ridiculous. $14 for a taco and enchilada lunch? That ruined my appetite so we stopped by Burger King. They didn't raise the prices based on the geographic coordinates.


Some views of Sedona.


Sedona, like almost every other city in the country has a bunch of fiberglas statues around town each painted by different artists. Their choice is the Havalina (a piglike beast found in the area).

We drove up Oak canyon. This is a nice place, lots of trees, nice looking rocks and could be quite enjoyable , if it weren't for all the development. The campgrounds are right on the highway. our site in Cottonwood is much nicer than anything we saw. The views around Sedona are spoiled everywhere by houses and shopping centers. We didn't have time to explore any trails but I'm not sure you could find anyplace to hike where you didn't hear traffic and see the buildings, and worry about trespassing.

All in all, there are other places just as pretty and much nicer. We'll probably return sometime with more time and see if the first impression is totally correct.

Saturday:


There were sill flowers along the trails in November.
We're off toward Las Vegas. No hurry though, so probably won't get away until noon.

Chiricahua National Monument

Monday:

We made our way the rest of the way around the mountains to the Chiricahua National Monument. Our RV is "29 feet" going on 30.5 feet. It also sits very low. Neither of these factors made finding a campsite easy. There are two washes that disect the campground roads making it difficult for long rigs. The sign at the entrance to the campground said no longer than 24'. Anyway, after a look around via the toad, we brought the RV in to a campsite on the good side of the draw. We'll have to go out against traffic to avoid the washes. Another drawback to this location is the trees in the sites we could get to. No Satellite, little cell phone signal. Even considering all this, it's a good campsite. We registered for a free shuttle to the top tomorrow and will take the 4.5 mile Echo Canyon trail back down. This should give us a good view of much of the place. We'll have to return to see the rest. There is more. It's much warmer here than on the other side of thr mountains at Cave Creek.

Tuesday:

We almost missed the shuttle. There was a mixup with the sign up list. We signed up to be picked up at the campground. The shuttle starts at the visitor center. Fortunately, Lou spoke to our neighbor and they were taking the shuttle them selves. They hadn't signed up yesterday and neither had the other two passengers. They happened to mention that we were taking the shuttle so the driver stopped by the campground anyway. Anyway, we made it to the top and took our 4.3 mile hike down Echo Canyon.



There were of course characters to be seen. Above left we saw a lage bird, on the right and Indian with head dress beside a cowboy.

Some big rocks here!

Nice forest as well. The hike down went through several environments. Lou loved this pond.

After our return, we enjoyed our lunch at the visitor center and then decided to break camp and head North. We stopped for the night at a rest area North of Casa Grande on I-10.

Cave Creek Canyon, Portal, AZ

Saturday:


Moved South to a Stewart Campground, Cave Creek Canyon, SE of Portal, AZ in the Coronado National Forest. Beautiful area, high rocky cliffs and peaks on both sides of the forested canyon, by a nice creek. Our campsite is the only one in Stewart campground that could take our size RV, have a clear area for solar and satellite, and is right by the creek. There is another campground about a 1/4 mile away called Sunny Flat that easily takes large RVs, and more than half the sites are clear for solar and satellite but all are quite a ways from the creek, so we slipped into this nice site (#6) at Stewart campground. No cell phone here so again it's nice to have the Datastorm. We'll probably stay here a couple of days before continuing South to Douglas.

We drove up FR42 a ways and hiked a trail into the wilderness for a couple of miles and returned.

Sunday:


Nice scenery here!. We especially liked our place in the creek.


More good scenery. Good mix of rugged cliffs and forest. We didn't see much in the way of wildlife, but, if a butterfly can be considered wild....

A trophy shot from the top of one of the mountains. I wasn't the only thing there though. How was he able to get to the top with those short legs?

There were even some flowers to be seen. Lou enjoys a rest by the creek. The leaves floating in the creek were interesting.

The creek kept appearing and disappearing along the trail. Here the water is on top, like a creek should be. There was a bush that had leaves like holly that had these spotter red ball on it. It was the only one like it to be seen. All the other similar plants didn't.

We had the camp all to our selves last night.

Monday:


We made our way to the American Museum of Natural History, Research station shortly after 8am. They really weren't open but the caretaker opened the gift shop for a look around. Not much there but on our way in, a large doe with a red bandanna came running up. Her name is Molly and she was bottle fed here. They trying to keep her around home so the hunters don't get her. They're all over the hills right now. She's much like a very friendly dog. She very much misses the students since they left. There were also two very nice cats to pet as well.

After our short visit to the Research Station, we broke came and headed to Douglas. We mailed some letters and took a look around the shops downtown. We had lunch at the Grand Cafe. It was recommended and was worth the visit. We each had combination lunches the included Chile relleno, enchilada, tamale, rice and beans with a salad. Very good while very different from our normal haunts.

Silver City, NM

Before we departed our camp, we took a morning walk along the river to the North after which we flew our RC planes around the meadow again. This is a very nice campground since we were one of only two campsites that were occupied. It is fairly large with somewhat dispersed campsites but wouldn't be as nice when it was full with all the ATV folks buzzing around.

We headed down highway 180 to Silver City.

We stopped at the Silver City RV Park because it was in the Passport America book. They don't accept Passport America and it would appear they only listed to draw people in. It was only $21.50 without the discount so we stayed anyway.

We had lunch at the Golden Corral again. It's a good thing they aren't near our home! We had lunch at the Golden Corral again. It's a good thing they aren't near our home!

We did our shopping before going to the park so one task was to cook up stuff while we had power. I started pork , sauerkraut, and potatoes in the crock pot and grilled the remaining pork chops for the freezer. Meanwhile I was baking the sausage. We live by utilizing the microwave as much as possible so we'll be stocked up. Lou took care of the laundry while I cooked.
The campsite had a very high sewer connection so I used the macerator again. I've been wanting to make up a good adaptor to connect the garden hose connector to the 4 inch threaded inlet for the sewer. There was a nice hardware store a couple of blocks away so i made the adaptor. Now no worry of an escaped hose.

I was under a tree so couldn't get the Internet so no updates tonight


Our departure from Silver City was delayed by a mishap. We had just finished fueling the RV on our way out of town when a lady in this red Blazer backed in to the left tail light of our toad. It took a while to get the police report completed and repair the light so we're staying at Walmart tonight.


Seems like 30 feet would be enough clearance? I installed a temporary tail light which I got at Walmart so we can wait to repair it until we get home.


Our "campsite" at Walmart provides a nice night time view of the city.

FS Campground, Luna, NM

We rose before the sun and left our spot on the highway. We stopped in Springerville, AZ for breakfast at the Safire Restaurant, the local old timers spot. Nice breakfasts.

The Tourist Information Center was open after breakfast so we picked up some info and asked a few questions. We then headed back toward New mexico on South on Highway 180. We happened upon a nice looking Forest Service Campground with big trees and a stream, things we haven't seen to many of through most of New Mexico. We'll stay the night at least.


We took a walk South along the San Francisco River which flows right by the campsite. We also enjoyed the sun for while. Nice camp!


Our campsite near Luna, NM right by the meadow. We hiked the trails either direction from the campground along the river. We had a nice large meadow to fly our RC planes.