OK, we are finally ready to get on the road! Our first hop is the relatively short run to Tuscon. It will be a good chance to get used to the new rig and see how it drives. A tense and stressful time. But everything went well, apart from the steering being twitchy and pulling to the left a bit.
Stopped at the Saguaro National Park West for the night. Lots and lots of Saguaro cacti, plus several other varieties. Saguaro cacti are the ones that look like a person with a tall centre column and two arms. In reality, they come with any number of arms. Sometimes none, often one, and if the water supply is very good they can grow ten or more. At the ranger station, they told us that a Saguaro will not grow arms until they are at least 70 years old, and usually will not grow another arm within ten years. This one shows a common hazard, if you happen to be a Saguaro – birds love to nest in you. We saw how they do it. A bird will fly up and grab a hold on the side of some of the spines and start pecking at the flesh of the cactus. Pretty soon, they have a decent sized crater dug, and another bird (probably the mate) will come along and take over the excavation. While David watched, they had a dug hole about 2cm deep and 40mm around. We guess that the spines have to be spaced a bit wider than normal, otherwise there would be holes everywhere. The one in this twilight shot had more holes than most.
David calls this shot “Family Group.
There are lots of other types of cacti around. Saguaro we have already talked about, and Cholla and Ocotillo in another article.. Here are some Prickly Pear in flower.
Next morning we drove through downtown Tucson (in the RV and towing the car – scary, considering that we were not really used to driving it yet.) Tuscon wasn’t much. Pretty run down looking. Left town pretty quickly and headed for our next stop, Benson.
The plan was to visit Tombstone. Tombstone is about a 60mi detour south of our route, so stayed in Benson, at the turnoff and took the car down to Tombstone and Bisbee. Tombstone is very touristy, with everything linked in to the Old Wild West culture and a 35 second gunfight in 1881 that should never have happened. The photos probably give a better idea of what it is like.
On the way back, to Benson, we were stopped at a police roadblock. They were looking for illegal immigrants and drugs. The young cop took one look at us as we drove up, and waved us through, but Sharman stopped and asked why. “You don’t look the type.” was the reply. “How can you tell?” asks Sharman. After a bit more chat like that, the guy offered to search the car for us if we insisted. “Can we take a rain-check on that?” Good chuckle all round.
At the campground in Benson, the owner introduced us to Passport America. PA offers a 50% discount at participating RV Parks. A very useful scheme. We joined on the spot. The cost is $40 per year, so with typical RV Parks charging between $30 – 45 per night, it will pay for itself several times over. Also met a guy camping there who is heading up to Yellowstone as a camp host in one of the National Park camps there. We hope to meet up with him again when we go there.
Now came our first decent day’s drive – 230 mi to Las Cruces, NM. As with Tombstone, we wanted to make a detour to El Paso and the Mexican border but without taking the RV on a dead-end return leg. El Paso was disappointing. Don’t quite know what we expected, but it wasn’t it. Rather run down and a bit third world. And looking across the border into Cuidad Juarez was even worse. The photo is an open market that we drove past. It looked pretty grotty. We had the impression that it was permanent.
Ever since we left Mesa we have been without any Internet access. No Wireless access at all. David has been suffering withdrawals. Emails backing up, and everything. Nothing happening on the blog, it is starting to be a worry. But, wouldn’t you know it? Where we were parked in the RV Park was in a wireless shadow, so still no access. Perhaps we should mention here that in the US, Internet access is actually pretty much a free commodity. It is common for places like Starbucks, Borders, and (we discovered later) Libraries to offer free WiFi to attract customers. Wish it would catch on in NZ, but Telecom has such a monopoly on the Internet and it cashing in, big time. BTW, there are no usage charges or limits here. People are astounded when we mention it is the norm in NZ. But then David has always said that Telecom is deliberately holding NZ back in the dark ages.
On our last day, we were planning our next leg when we got chatting to a guy parked next to us, and mentioned that we were heading up to Alamogordo next day. He told us that there was a strong wind and dust storm warning out. Expecting gusts to 65mph. That would blow us right over. So we are not going anywhere. Turned out that the Interstate was closed for most of the day and the dust storms cut visibility to less than 50 metres for a while. Just as well that we stayed put for another night.
We are having a great time, all the different sights and scenery, but Wow - the heat! And the locals are saying "Just wait until summer, then it will be hot." We are going to have to be well and truly gone by then...
Next, Alamogordo and White Sands National Monument
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