Bowie Arizona and Apache Pass Hike

April 25 - 25, 2018:   

After our unplanned 5 day (2 days planned) stay in Phoenix we were finally on the move east again.  Our first stop will be a 2 nighter in Bowie AZ.  Patty does most of the planning for our travel and has chosen to make up our lost time with the unexpected truck work by alternating 1 and 2 night stays on our trip east to Florida.  We like to travel with all 2 night stays but if we need to make up time then we can either travel farther before we stop and/or stay just one night.  By staying just one night we don't get any time to explore and it becomes tiring pretty quick.  This trip east to Florida is more about getting to Florida so we weren't planning on too much exploring anyway. Also, our travel plan is only tentative as we don’t typically reserve sites in advance.  We may change our plans as we go depending on new information.

I usually do a quick check of the travel plans to make sure she/we didn’t miss something or I might just have a different perspective on some of the travel plans.  We debated a bit about taking interstate 20 starting in Texas instead of the slightly quicker I 10.  But we concluded that the Interstate 10 roadway was way too rough in the Gulf States so we stayed with Patty's original plan of I 20.  

Travel to Bowie on I 10 east was uneventful.  The 220 mile trip took us about 4 hours.  We arrived at Dwayne's Mountain View RV Park a little after 2pm and set up in a nice simple pull through.  Mountain View was behind and owned by Dwayne’s Jerky store.  Can’t beat the cost of just $15 a night for a 50 amp full hookup!

Sign pointing to all points everywhere in front of Dwayne's Jerky Store

Our simple site behind Dwayne's Jerky Store

A friendly roadrunner came to visit just outside Patty's window

So for our one full day here in Bowie we decided to hike the Apache Pass.  It is a short hike of just 4 miles round trip.  The information we found said it was just 3 miles but it was a little over 4 miles by the time you see all of the ruins along the way.

Arriving at the Fort Bowie site for the Apache Pass Hike

The Apache Pass hike was a very nice hike!  There were many things to see and the trail was just the right amount of work for us.  However the return trail was a little more ascent than we were led to believe by the park ranger.  She said it was a gradual ascent of about 200 feet.  No, it was more like a 45% grade of about 500 feet!  The downhill side was a more gradual grade with switchbacks. 

The foundation of an old rest stop on the pass

The old Bowie Fort Cemetery.  

Geronimo's child is buried here

Foundation of the original Indian reservation headquarters

An Apache wickiup 

Just a slight grade!

A little more than just 200 feet elevation!

Still going up!

Time for a break!

We decided that this was an Adam's family "IT" cactus!

Picture of the fort in 1894

All that remains from the same vantage point

The Apache Pass is the sandy area we were on in the middle of the picture

There was loads of cactus in bloom too!  Due to its history, geography, and beauty this hike was one of the more memorable hikes we have been on.  It was a great find for our one day here in Bowie AZ!

Now on to Texas and further east!

Sunset on our site in Bowie Arizona

Stay Tuned! 

Phoenix Arizona: Friends and Truck Repairs

April 20 - 25, 2018:  

We left the Yuma area and headed northeast to Phoenix just a 184 mile trip.  Between Yuma and Phoenix is the same thing as between San Diego and Yuma, nothing but loads of sand and rocks.

Gas and restroom break

The one thing I found fascinating is the Gila Bend Solana generating Station that we passed on AZ route 8.  It is the largest molten salt solar generation plant in the world that just opened in 2013.  It is supposed to deliver 280 MW of electricity!  That is enough electricity to power 70,000 homes!!  The plant is HUGE at 3 square miles! 

Gila Bend solar power plant

We arrived at the Royal Palms RV Park around 2pm where we have a confirmed reservation.  Good timing we thought because we had made plans to visit friends Don and Roe for dinner at 4pm.  

However, the park gave us a sight we could not possibly get into.  The sight was supposed to be a pull through but wasn’t; it was a back in for a trailer without slides of about 25 feet long.  The next sight they gave us had a shed sitting on it!  Patty is arranging all of this on the phone with the office while we are driving around the park.  They tell her they will find a site and call her right back. After about 20 minutes Patty has to call back the park to see what was happening with getting us a site.  Now the office gives us a back in site that they said was a pull through but we can fit, barely!  We are actually sitting on 2 sites and our 5th wheel nose is over the sidewalk.  We had at one point 6 people helping to get us into this site, which was pretty frustrating for Patty.  

And this is with us backed up a foot into the site behind us!

OK, now we are in and set up and it is 4pm!  We head out to the truck and Patty said that it looks like the truck is leaking.  I thought it was the AC at first but after we pulled out it became evident real quick that it was not the AC dripping.  We are losing antifreeze!  The truck is not overheating so we go ahead and get to our friends Roe & Don's house and we make arrangements for a rental car right away.  It’s a Friday evening and I know we won’t get anywhere with service until at least Monday and then most likely we won’t see the truck back until Tuesday or Wednesday.  

Don drove me to the enterprise rental place and I picked up a Ford Focus.  We were back to Don and Roe's house a little before 6pm.  We have been through this with the truck before so we knew that we would need a rental car so might as well just get it right away.  Now we can relax and have nice social time with friends and not worry about how we are getting around.  Patty and I will take the truck to the nearest Ford service center, Bell Ford, in the morning.

Our little red Ford Focus (go-kart)

On Saturday, Patty and I got the truck to Bell Ford about 7:30am.  The Ford service agent told me that he probably wouldn’t get to the truck until Monday morning.  He has a small crew without a diesel mechanic on Saturdays.   I pretty much knew that so it wasn’t a surprise.  After that we went back to the RV to finish up our morning routine, check up on the news on the internet and then I did my 3 mile walk intervals routine.

Took these while doing my walk intervals in the RV Park

Somebody has a sense of humor!  350 miles to the beach!  That would be California

At noon we went back to Don and Roe's to attend a Cajun Food and Music Festival in Chandler AZ.  We went with them and their daughter Erica and a couple of their local friends.  This festival is held every year but I believe it was the first time it was held here in Chandler.  Chandler is about a 30 minute drive from their house.

It was a nice day outside in the sun listening to live music and eating Cajun food with some beer.  What can be bad about that!  We really enjoy the dry heat of the desert climate here.  It was around 90 with 10% humidity so it felt great.  We still needed to be in the shade just because it is very intense without any moisture in the air. 

The music stage at the Cajun fest

From Left to right: Don, Rosalie, Patty, and me

Patty and her new stretch handle. We each purchased one here at the festival

They had corn hole set up at the festival

And we can't leave out the smoked dog treats!

A fun watermelon eating contest.  Winner got $100!

I made the mistake of ordering from the wrong food vendor.  I ordered some fried catfish and waited 45 minutes to get it.  They weren’t that busy it was that they were just very unorganized.   I think that they had too much on their menu too.  Yeah, I became a restaurant efficiency critic because I had so much time to watch how they did things!   The fish was great when I finally got it though.  They were cooking everything from scratch.  I watched them cook my fish so I saw how it was made.  It was hand breaded and individually fried in a separate fryer they had for fish.  The problem was that they did this individual attention to each of like 30 items on their menu and there was just 2 people doing all of the work.

We ate, drank some beer, and talked until around 4pm and then headed back.  Sitting in the heat eating and drinking made us all tired so that basically killed the day.  It was fun and we enjoyed it but were ready for some sleep soon.

Sunday we went back to Don and Roe's and we brought lunch.   Patty made some sloppy joes before we went over and we had some slider rolls in the fridge we needed to use, perfect!  Their granddaughter Sammy was in their care so we got meet her.   We didn’t stay too long and headed back to the RV for nap!

Monday Morning just as Bell Ford had promised they called with the diagnosis on our truck.  They did a pressure test on the cooling system and found the water pump was bad, which I expected, and the radiator was cracked, which I didn’t expect.  Anyway, while in there I agreed to have the belt tensioner and the thermostat replaced too.  The truck would be ready for us to pick it up tomorrow, Tuesday afternoon and the cost was $3,600!  That is the most expensive repair I have had done on the truck to date.  Usually the repairs to this truck are around $2,000 and we usually have one of these repairs each year.  Let’s hope this is the only one like this this year!  The truck is now 10 years old and we heavily use it!

Now that we know the truck will be back on Tuesday we made plans to leave town heading east on Wednesday.  Before we leave though we went out to have dinner at a chain steak house we had never been to before, Black Angus.  We went and now we can say that our favorite is still Texas Roadhouse.  Actually, the Black Angus was pretty good.  We both had the prime rib and it was really good.  We just like the atmosphere better at the Roadhouse.  The Black Angus tries to be more high end with its atmosphere, less noisy and no peanut shells on the floor type of place. Also, we only had the prime rib, so we don’t know about their steaks.

So that’s it for our Phoenix stay and now we are headed further east toward Florida.  

Many thanks to Don and Roe for their hospitality and there help with getting the truck fixed!

Stay tuned!

Yuma Arizona and Los Algodones Mexico

April 18 – 20, 2018:  

We are now officially on our way back east.  And back east we mean all of the way back to the east coast, well the gulf coast of Florida anyway.

We are leaving Chula Vista CA and heading on Interstate 8 to our first stop in Yuma Arizona. This is our first time on this part of I 8.  Interstate 8 travels along the US Mexican border and at times is less than half a mile from the border.  In this area you can see the border wall that was built years ago.  From the highway, it sort of looks like a rusty line in the sand.

Driving through a hilly curvy rock pile desert

Then it turns to mostly sand for awhile

California has these very nice oasis-type rest parks in the desert

More sand

We get very close to the Mexican border here. 
That is the border wall in the background

More wall in the sand

We made the 170 mile trip in a little over 3 hours.  We were going to stay at the Escapee Park but decided to stay closer to the west side, closer to the border of Mexico.  Yuma has loads of RV parks but a lot of them close after the winter season.

We found one called the Roadrunner RV Park.  It was OK but way overpriced for what it was.  We were having a hard time finding a place open on the west side of town so we pulled in to the Roadrunner RV Park and didn't see an office or any people so we just parked there looking another place to go.  While doing our research a guy pulls up in a car and introduces himself as the manager of the Roadrunner.  He said he had a spot big enough for us so I guess we are staying here now.  The place looked like a $20 a night sort of place, maybe a little more if they had wifi.  We moved into a tight back in site right on top of the owners motorhome and found out it was $35 a night; and it did have wifi, albeit sporadic at best, still way too much!

On our one full day here we wanted to visit Los Algodones Mexico again.  We were here our first year as full-timers in 2012.  This was also the first place we had ever walked across the Mexican Border.  Since it was our first walking border crossing we always felt like this was the best place.  Now after crossing many places we can see if we still feel this way.

Before we went to the border crossing we had to make a Walmart run.  The closest Walmart was one of those that didn’t have any vegetables so we stopped at a little grocery store very close to the RV Park.  As we were leaving the little grocery, I backed out and was getting ready to pull forward and then boom, another car backed into us!  I couldn’t even see his little car so it scared the crap out us. 

After I wash this there won't be much left

The car hit our bumper on the corner and didn’t even take off any paint.  The little car hit us with his hatchback door completely pushing it into the car interior.  It was a mess!  The guy was Mexican and didn’t speak English but I could tell he was very nervous.  I was in his blind spot so he didn’t see me when he backed up.  There wasn’t any damage to our truck worth noting so I shook his hand and left.  This time it was great to be in a BAT (big ass truck)!

Ok, now off to the border crossing in California about 8 miles away. Yuma AZ is on the California and Mexican Border with the walking crossing on the California side.  There is a large parking lot run by a local Indian reservation.  The cost was $6 which was the most we have paid anywhere to park at a border crossing.  It is just $2 at our favorite place in Texas.  The lot is huge and well organized and since it is after season, plenty of places to park.  

It looks to us like they have changed the crossing some since we here 6 years ago.  Now we have to walk a little farther and the Mexicans are setting up to check us as we come in.  We experienced this in Tijuana a couple of days ago.  It does make some sense as we are crossing into the same Mexican state of Baja California.  The funny thing is that the Mexican border guard was laying back in a chair at the x-ray machine sleeping!  We just walked on past him!  Just past the border entrance there is a public restroom.   The men’s and woman’s entrances are side by side with a guy in the middle who hands out toilet paper.  This guy was asleep too!!  The woman ahead of me just took some off of his lap.

It was lunch time so we went back to the same place we had lunch 6 years ago.  It took us about an hour to find it though!  Of course, I thought I knew where it was so we walked around for about an hour before Patty asked someone giving them a description of the place.  Wouldn’t you know it; it was just a block from the border where we came in!  This place had changed some too but it was so long ago it was hard to say how.

Through the turnstyle and you are in Mexico

Nice lunch place in Los Aldogones

Even live music!

After some lunch and a couple of beers we walked around and did a little shopping.  Los Algodones has a lot more varied stuff to buy than at the place in Texas we go to in the winter, Nuevo Progresso.  The prices here are much higher here though.  We ended up buying some clothes and shoes and some drugs in the 4 or so hours we spent there.

All in all I think I would still say that Los Algodones is the best border crossing we have been too, but not by a lot.  The thing I like the most is that it is fairly clean and spread out with nice places to sit outside and have a drink and or some food.  The border here is also open until 10 pm too so you could have dinner.

That is it for the Yuma - Los Algodones area.

Next stop Phoenix Arizona.

Stay Tuned!