Seven Days

March 26th, 2023

I am down to my final 7 days here in the sunny desert of southwest Arizona. The 2nd of April I will be done with final preparations before hitching up and heading northeast. My first destination will be near Prescott, Arizona, where I will spend a few days hiking around area lakes and enjoying a change of scenery, pine forest rather than the scrub, gravel, and sand of the Sonoran desert.

My hikes have changed a little here over the last few days. It has warmed up, and 2 of my 3 trails drop through a number of brushy washes, where snakes will be coming out. I spotted one crossing the trail directly in front of me a couple of days ago. My remaining path is on a gravel flat with very little cover near the trail. It is less likely that I will get a surprise walking it.

This has been my first winter where daily temperatures have stayed in the sixties and low seventies. In some ways, I have missed the cold and snow of the north, but being here for 5 months, is at least more stress free. I haven’t had to spend time studying maps to determine my next destination while trying to be sure of an available campsite. Along with that goes the worry about where to get fresh water and where to dump my trailer tanks. Here, I have a familiar system and know exactly where everything is at. Plus, I don’t have to pack and hitch up every few days. There has been lots of leisure time.

I made my first trip into Mexico to visit a dental hygienist and feast on some shrimp tacos. It is interesting that you can park in the United States, and walk a short distance into Mexico. When you cross that imaginary border, you know instantly that you are in another country. The streets are narrow and the sidewalks are covered with vendors selling all manner of items and calling out “almost free”.

You know this is not the U.S. by observing the wiring on the street corner to the left. The town caters to U.S. citizens trying to save money on eyeglasses, dental work, and pharmaceuticals. I had my teeth cleaned for free, as I had a coupon. Normally that would cost $25-30. My friend bought a number of antibiotics and skin ointments for which you would need prescriptions on our side of the border. He paid well under $100. Of course it is anybody’s guess whether they are the real thing.

I have a general plan for my 2023 travels. After a few days at Prescott, I will head northeast to Petrified Forest National Park. Then I will cross into New Mexico, stopping here and there for a layover night at one of the Indian Casinos or a Crate and Barrel, slowly moving to Interstate 25, where I will enter Colorado and head north to visit my son near Boulder, Colorado. After that, I will trend north and west into Wyoming, where I have a campground reservation in June for a week in Grand Teton National Park, followed by another in Yellowstone.

Years ago, I used to visit Yellowstone a lot. I did a number of backpacking trips up on the Beartooth Plateau, outside the northeast entrance to the park. After a week or so of backpacking, I would drop down to Cooke City for a room with a hot shower, pizza and Pepsi, before visiting the national park for a couple of days. My first visit to the park was in May of 1977. I stayed at Old Faithful Inn for several days, four of which were chain days, i.e. you couldn’t leave without chains for your tires, as it snowed about 10 inches each day. The wildlife viewing, it being the early season, was outstanding. More visits occurred in the late 70s, up through 1988, when they had the summer of huge forest fires. I left the area right as the fires started burning. Earlier that year, a group of us spent a week cross country skiing the park. A few years passed after that, as my time was taken up caring for my boys, with their baseball and soccer seasons. My last trip was in 2005, when we did some whitewater rafting on the Snake River. So it will have been 18 years and from what I hear, it will be much more crowded and some things have changed. We are loving our national parks to death.

I have no exact plan after Yellowstone, other then I will move into Montana and then over to Idaho. I may loop back into Wyoming by September for a final backpacking trip in the Wind River range, and then back to my son’s before cold weather hits. I have been thinking about travelling down to the Florida panhandle for a few days rather than going straight back to the desert. I could cross to Minnesota, Wisconsin and Upper Michigan before turn down towards Detroit to visit my older son and friends there, before heading south to Florida. Or, If the weather gets cold, would have to go straight south from Denver, crossing Texas and Louisiana. Either will depend a lot on the weather, and price of fuel.

Next time I post, will be from the road…