Arizona (I) - The Overview

We've covered a lot of territory in the past 12 days and Internet availability hasn't been too good in the places we've been. Here's an overview of the parts of AZ we explored; details on some of them will come later, perhaps once we get back home.

After leaving Las Vegas, we headed south, basically following the route of the Colorado River, which still had some water in it. What we discovered was at least one of the snowbird enclaves in AZ. The area around Lake Havasu City and Parker is full of them. These places are huge and have apparently mushroomed in the past few years. There are more RVs, condos, RV parks and the like than you can shake a stick at. We didn't stay long.

We did, however, find a nice State Park: Buckskin Mtn, just north of Parker, which was quiet and had access to some interesting trails into the desert around the park. Our camper van (The "Big Horn") definitely looked odd packed in with all the other fancy RV rigs. Anyway, we hiked, birdwatched and checked out the neat desert vegetation.

Our next move was down to Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. This is in the heart of the Sonoran Desert and had lots of fascinating plants, bird life and such. This area had received some rain and the desert looked like it was going to respond with lots of blooms, unfortunately in a month or two. Obviously a place we will have to come back to, just later in the season. The park was only a few miles north of the Mexican border so we went down for a quick look. Mexico perhaps another year....

Then on towards Tucson. On the way, we encountered a pouring rain for a few hours, something we hadn't expected, and drove by what I could only describe as desert shanty towns. Poverty, neglect and probably a number of other factors combined to produce something you'd expect in a third-world slum.

We really only touched the fringes of Tucson: Saguaro National Park West (really nice), Pima Air and Space Museum (anticipated by me but a bit of a disappointment, more later). The city, however, seems like it might be interesting, having a better reputation than Phoenix which we consciously avoided.

On to Chiricahua National Monument, down in the far SE corner of AZ. This place was very unique. It's what they call a "sky island", hills or "mountains" that poke up out of the desert. The desert here was more of a grassland, but the sky island itself was really interesting, with unusual bird species, neat rock formations and a number of very fun trails to hike on. We spent 3 nights there and took lots of pictures which I'll post later on.

Leaving Chiricahua (lessons on how to pronounce this will come later), we headed north for the first time on our trip. Gradually working our way back home. To do this, we followed route 191 north most of its length in AZ. Along the way: Sitgreaves National Forest north of Clifton (almost 9000 ft in elevation - lots of snow, incredible road), Lyman Lake State Park (cheap, quiet, showers), Petrified Forest National Park (great collections of petrified wood, as you'd expect), Chinle (Canyon de Chelly National Monument - great hike down into the canyon on a beautiful morning.

This finally landed us in Cortez, Colorado, where we hoped to explore Mesa Verde National Park. No such luck. Winter remains in this corner of the state and almost everything is closed. We took the opportunity for a motel, laundry, food prepared by someone else and some time to plan where we could go that wouldn't involve more snow. We think Arches and Canyonlands near Moab, Utah. We will see.