Montezuma's Castle

We heard of a breakfast place in town called Randall's that was supposed to be great! The speciality was Chicken Fried Steak Verde. Chicken Fried Steak with Green Chili Sauce instead of country gravy on it. The gravy is what makes it good. What are they thinking? But all the reviews! Could they all be wrong?

OK, I had to try it!

Chicken Fried Steak Verde

It still came with Biscuits and Gravy, so I figured I couldn't lose. It was the worse idea in the world that turned out GENIUS! On top of the Verde sauce is cheddar cheese. Best ever! I will be going back before we leave Cottonwood. 

OK, enough about food!

We have been to Montezuma's Castle before, but decided to go back. It is quite a site.

Montezuma's Castle

It is a five story dwelling built 100 feet up into the side of a mountain. The Sinagua Indian tribe lived in it 1100-1400 AD using ladders to get up into it.

Dwelling

Most of what you see is original. In fact even the wooden logs are from 1100 AD. You can see one of the log supports in this picture near the top in the middle of the picture.

Log Support

The dwelling is about 30 feet deep and multiple families lived in it. Closer to the river level was also several more dwellings. These are not so well preserved because they are out in the elements more.

Montezuma Apartments

Another picture of the lower ruins.

Lower Ruins

Agriculture was a major influence for the Sinagua people, so they were always near rivers or creeks. Here is the Beaver creek.

Beaver Creek

My new Nexus 5 Android phone takes panoramic pictures. I had not used this feature yet, but decided to try it on Montezuma's Castle. You put it in Pano mode and take 5 pictures left to right. It automatically stitches them together for you. Here is my first attempt.

Montezuma's Castle Panoramic Photo

Teddy Roosevelt created the National Park System. Since he was here today, Patty wanted to take a Selfie Picture. I instead insisted I take the picture for her! :)

Teddy and Patty

That's it for today,

Love you all and thanks for following us!

Brian and Patty

V-Bar-V Heritage Site Petroglyphs and Prescott

On Monday we went to the V-Bar-V Heritage Site. The V-Bar-V Heritage Site is on the former V-Bar-V cattle ranch. It was acquired in 1994 by the US Forest Service in a land swap to preserve the site.

V-Bar-V Ranch

This is the fireplace that is still standing from one of the old ranch buildings.

Fireplace

You walk down an easy half mile trail that meanders along the Beaver Creek to the Petroglyphs.

Trail to the site

When you arrive you see a wall that is the largest know petroglyph site in Arizona. It is one of the best preserved indian rock art sites consisting of 1032 petroglyphs on 13 panels!

Wall of petroglyphs!

The petroglyphs were created by the Sinagua tribe between 1150 and 1400 AD. The site become part of the V-Bar-V ranch around 1907 and the ranchers protected the site from vandalism until the swap in 1994.

Sinagua Petroglyphs

This is an amazing place to visit. If you ever are in the Verde Valley or near Sedona you must come see these!

Bird Pics

Here is one more picture. As I said, there are more then 1000 pieces, so you really need to see them in person to get the impact. In the past we have only seen a few in one spot. 

Petroglyphs

On Wednesday we had our 5th wheel washed to get rid of all the sand from the Palm Desert wind storm. After that we went to Prescott to see an old friend Todd Wiederman. I worked with Todd at VRSD back in the 90's in the scalehouse and we have kept in touch.

For those that do not know, you pronounce Prescott 'Press-Kitt', not 'Press-Scott'. They will run you out of town if you do not pronounce it correctly. :)

After spending the day with Todd catching up, he drove us around town to show us Prescott. Todd took us to a place called JB's for lunch. Here is Todd, his mother, Patty and me.

The Toddster!

We really enjoyed the day with Todd and appreciated him showing us around and taking us to lunch!

Well that's it for today,

God Bless,

Love you guys,

Brian and Patty

Jerome, Az

The little town of Jerome, Az sits on the hills above Cottonwood.

We noticed there was a mine shaft down below the town we had never seen before.

Little Daisy Mine

We ventured down to the mine. It is called the Little Daisy Mine at the Audry Headframe Park.

Audry Headframe

The Little Daisy Mine shaft is 1900 feet deep.

Mine Sign

They have plexiglass sheets over the mine shaft so you can stand over the mine and look down 1900 feet. Kind of weird for someone like me who acrophobic! 

Standing on the mine

On the ramp before and after the plexiglas is iron grates so you can get a picture without reflection of the plexiglass.

Looking down the shaft!

That's it for today. Thank you for reading the blog. Feel free to leave a message if you would like.

God Bless you,

Brian and Patty

Verde Valley, Az

It was about 250 miles today, from Ehrenberg to Cottenwood.

We made pretty good time and arrived at Verde Valley Thousand Trails at about 1:30. We like traveling on Tuesdays.

Verde Valley

We picked an end site, number C36.

C36

We really like the Verde Valley. There is much to do here. We are staying here for four weeks.

Love you all,

God Bless,

Brian and Patty

Colorado River Oasis RV Park

The Sunday drive was just 110 miles from Palm Desert to Ehrenberg, Az. We got off on Arizona offramp 1, just across the bridge of the Colorado River. We are just east of Blythe, Ca.

This is an RPI Park, so we pay $10.00 a night to stay here. We were originally going to stay 3 nights, but getting back on time we are only here 2 nights, leaving on Tuesday.

Here is our site 124.

Site 124

Actually after I booked the reservation they got out of the RPI system. They honored my reservation and price, but will be a non-member park from now on. No more $10.00 nights for me here. They actually charged $15.00 more for riverfront sites, which is more then double of what I paid. 

The park was almost empty so nobody was in our way of a view. Here is our view out our living room window.

Rear Window view of the Colorado River

I read about the Blythe Intaglios. These are giant Geoglyphs supposedly made by ancient man. We went looking for them. 

Intalglios

Here is a Man Geoglyph. We are not convinced that some high school pranksters in the early 1900's didn't just arrange some dirt and rocks and make these, kind of like the corn field maze phenonomen. 

Man glyphs

Here is an animal one. Maybe a prank, maybe not, but still interesting.

Animal

Well that is all for today. Next stop Cottonwood, Az.

Love you all!

Brian and Patty

We are in Palm Desert!

On April 8th we made the move to the Palm Springs Thousand Trails which is actually in Palm Desert. We will be here for 5 days.

Here is our site #5 at Thousand Trails. We are on the 30 amp side of the park because we can use the JTB power solutions that Bill Gehr installed for the magazine article and also plug into the amp on the pedestal.

Site 5

We prefer the 30 amp side over the 50 amp side because the 30 amp side are pull through sites. The 50 amp sites are tighter back-in sites with more date palm trees and can be difficult to get satellite reception. With the JTB we truly have our choice here, even when it is HOT!

The Sam's Club here has a GREAT Jerky that is only $6.98 for an 8 oz. bag. I have not found it anywhere else but at THIS Sam's Club. We are not members now that we are full timers, but Sam's allows you to buy twice a year with a coupon you can get online. With Patty and I each getting the coupon we can go 4 times a year. I stock up on the jerky when I am in town! :)

Sam's Jerky

When we are in town we make Southwest Church our home church. Nothing compares to New Life of course, but we are still blessed here. We find that it would be a mistake to try and compare our home church to others while we are on the road! We would be missing blessings if we did that! Each church is unique and we need to be open to God's leading.

Southwest Church in Palm Desert

We were leaving to Ehrenberg, Az on the Colorado River on Sunday morning. We normally don't travel on Sundays, but because of us leaving Ventura a week late we are having to make up some time. Southwest Church has Saturday night services so we attended then so we could leave Sunday morning.

Early Saturday evening the winds came up. I don't know if this would classify as a haboob, but it was a terrible dust storm! You could not see 100 yards!

Dust Storm

Sand was just in the air. The wind was blowing each way. It was not necessarily blowing east or west. The trailer was not rocking from the wind. It was weird. The trailer stayed clean inside, so it is pretty air tight. Good to know. In the morning the Asphalt you see on the road was all dirt!

Here is our truck. You can see the road behind the truck is covered with dirt.

Dirt everywhere!

It was a fine dust. As you drove even slowly the dust just blew off. Of course it will take a good wash job to really get rid of the dust film.

As we drove the trailer away, it looked like smoke was coming off of it.

We will have the truck and trailer washed again when we get to Cottenwood, Az.

Well that's it for today.

God Bless you all,

Brian and Patty

The Last four months

The blog has not been updated for the last four months because we have been in Ventura. We decided to try camp hosting at Emma Wood State park. Camp hosting is giving a certain amount of hours of your time in exchange for a free camp site. 

We were to give 20 hours between Patty and I in exchange for a full  hookup site at the Emma Wood Group Camp area. Our host coordinator was on "vacation" for the first month of our early arrival. After about 3 weeks we were informed that she had decided to retire.

It was NOT a smooth transition. It felt like the rangers wanted to change everything the coordinator had setup and the hosts were the casualties of it. We were not appreciated as volunteers. More then once the contracted duties were attempted to be changed including doubling the expected hours worked. Of course I quickly nixed that idea.

We also had a very hostile host that moved in next to us. For some reason she was being accommodated to the expense of all other hosts. The rest of us were having to put in extra hours and do extra duties because of her, yet they would not "fire" her.

Finally after about 2 1/2 months of a not so good situation we decided we needed to move on. We decided we did everything we could to work within the situation but for our sanity it would be better go to a private RV Park. 

The next day I mentioned our concerns to our good friend Bill Gehr (RV Bill) who was getting ready to leave his maintenance hosting position at the San Buenaventura State Beach.  He mentioned that maintenance supervisor Mel was looking for someone to be a caretaker at McGrath State Beach. McGrath has been closed for months because of flooding.

McGrath Campground

The problem is that without much rain the rough ocean creates a berm across the Santa Clara River which does not allow water to escape into the ocean. 

Sand Berm

The water backups into McGrath campground. 

Because it has been closed for months, people were sneaking in at night and stealing copper piping from the restrooms. They find if there is a presence in the park this does not happen. We were asked if we would be that presence.

Within two days we had moved over to McGrath. At the far end of the park the sites are higher and no water intrudes into it.

Here is our site #58 at McGrath.

Site #58

This was an awesome situation! We had a whole state park to ourselves! Full hookups and the maintenance crew was wonderful! God answers prayer!

We had a couple barbecues. Here is everyone at the campfire cooking smores.

Love the Family!

Even our grandbaby Gracie got into the action!

Yum!!

We were scheduled to leave on April 1st, but Patty had to take care of a small medical thing. So we didn't have to drive back from Palm Springs to Ventura, Mel's manager Brent allowed us to stay as guests an extra week in the park. Because McGrath is getting ready to open 40 sites to the public on April 11th, another park host was scheduled to come in on the 1st when we were leaving so we had to move to another site.

Site 115

We really appreciate Mel and Brent accommodating us like they did. We don't think we would come back as campground hosts but we would love to come back as maintenance hosts for Mel!

On April 8th we left Ventura for our next adventure. We arrived in Palm Springs for 5 days.

Palm Springs site #5

We will miss everyone very much but are looking forward to what is next!

We love you all very much!!

Love,

Brian and Patty