New Wheels--8 of them

We are still in Quartzsite, AZ.  The money transfers just came through on Saturday, and the dealership is still doing final prep on the camper.  Today we went to a Southern Baptist Church (no Lutheran church in town) to thank God again for our safety.  They had a potluck at noon and insisted we stay.  Very nice.  We are feeling so much better than a few days ago.  God and the Steamroller and lots of people in Quartzsite have taken care of us.

The new condo-on-wheels is a 5^th wheel—no more travel trailer for me.  It is a 2006 Keystone Copper Canyon Sprinter with a big slideout.  Very clean and beautiful.

The truck is a 2010 ford F250 with only 3500 miles on it.  Used meant $10,000 off.  It was ordered originally for towing so it is all decked out with big power extension mirrors and everything and fancier than we are used to.

Accident aftermath

We have had a horrible few days, homeless, driving a truck that is now questionable, and having to pick through the wreckage for bits of our lives.  We found the “happy camper” frame in five pieces, but never found the picture of us and the grandsons that had been in it.  Broken glass is everywhere and salsa among other things splattered on everything.  We take turns melting down and comforting each other.

The steamroller has helped.  Somehow we were taken over by a local insurance adjuster/collision repair specialist/teddy bear/steamroller of a guy named Roy.  He said, “You two have been through too much to be in that Super 8 in Quartzsite; you need to relax at the casino.”  Next thing we knew, we were in a room at the Parker, AZ, casino, looking at the Colorado River and the mountains beyond, sitting in the hot tub to soak away the aches from the accident, enjoying good meals.  The next day he had us in a class C motor-home toy-hauler (meaning the back is a garage for motorcycles or whatever).  It's just what we needed to store what we could salvage from the wrecked camper and to sleep in.   

It appears that our truck is totaled because the cost of repairs would be more than 60% of the value.  I am feeling a bit skittish about the accident and thinking maybe we don’t want to tow again with the Tundra after it had been twisted and hung up in the air.  We decided to get a new bigger truck.   Quartzsite right now is the best place to buy a camper, because they have more RV dealers per square mile than any place else on earth, and they want to move the campers now because most dealers are just here in the winter.  Today we bought a Ford F250 in Blythe, CA and a 27 foot 5th wheel in Quartzsite--a lot of money in one day.  We fell in love with both at first sight and think we got good deals.  We have always saved up and never financed any vehicle, but this was a bit sudden and we haven't had  time to transfer investment funds--another strange thing for us, to have to finance.  It will take another couple days to get a 5^th wheel hitch installed and the camper set up.  To avoid paying California or Arizona sales tax and just pay Wisconsin sales tax which is less, we have to take delivery in a different state.  So we drove across the bridge from Blythe to have a Notary Public witness that we took delivery in Arizona.  Same thing with the camper—buy in Arizona but show that we took possession in California.  So weird.  The insurance still has not been settled, and we can’t go until that happens.  We still have not hit the flea markets and shops Quartzsite is famous for, so we hope to do that too before we head back to Phoenix.

Accident in Quartzite

Well, here is a blog I never thought I would write.  We left Phoenix Monday morning after the fabulous Packer Superbowl to go boondock in the desert for a couple days and see what all the fuss is about in Quartzsite.  I moved over on I-10 to give room to a DOT truck pulled over on the shoulder.  Moving back into my lane, the trailer started to sway.  I have felt this a couple times before, and it is scary.  This time I could not pull it out; the camper fishtailed and I watched it in my rearview mirror as it flipped over, coming to rest across both lanes of traffic with the truck upright, but hanging up in the air facing semis coming at us with a 75 speed limit.  Truly God was with us.  Everyone stopped; no one was hurt.  Once the tow truck got my truck back on the ground, I drove it away.  The camper is totaled.  The axle was so bent, they could not tow it; they had to load it on a flatbed.  Then we searched through it at the salvage yard, looking for a few pieces of our lives.   I found my computer as you can tell.  When the policeman asked what was of great value in the camper, I looked at my hand and said, “I must have forgotten to put on my wedding ring this morning.”  In the wreckage of the camper, I found the trinkets box I keep my jewelry in.  It had not spilled out.  The rest was jumbled, but there all alone in the top compartment was my wedding ring.  God put it there.

We are fine; no one else hit us.  A few aches are to be expected.  Tomorrow we will go shopping for a new camper—no more travel trailer though.  It will be a 5^th wheel again like our first one.  We have been sorry since we bought this camper that we didn't realize how much more difficult travel trailers are compared to 5th wheels.  Quartzsite is an RV mecca.  There are at least eight RV dealers with big sale and clearance signs out, so we will look carefully.  We do need to clear our stuff out of the wreckage though soon.  The contents of the refrigerator are splattered all over everything.

I didn’t think to take pictures until the camper was pulled back on its wheels.

Thank God with us for keeping us safe.

Tucson 2011

Our first month of four is finished, and we are already a little tired of the dust and dryness of the desert.  Then we landed in Tucson Mountain Park.  Wow!  We are camped amid the saguaro and other cactus, surrounded by mountains and peace.  At sunset we see “purple mountains’ majesty” looming above us.  This is pure Sonoran Desert, the main habitat for the majestic saguaro which grow a foot higher every ten years and don’t develop their iconic arms until they are 60-70 years old.

Teacher friends Alice and Jerry took us to Tumacacori, a ruined mission near Tubac south of Tucson.  We also were in awe of Mission San Zavier del Bac, a restored, still active mission founded around the same time in the late 1600’s by Fr. Kino.  The O’odham native people in the area found themselves subjects of New Spain, then Mexico, then the United States without ever moving. 

A visit to the Arizona State Museum on the U of A campus made chillingly clear what we have been learning in New Mexico, at Chiracahua, and here, how ruthlessly the native people were exploited, massacred, and removed from their ancestral homelands.  We have seen how tribe after tribe was comfortable in their way of life and then forced onto reservations, where the conquerors tried to educate them in foreign ways and fed them poorly.  If the natives had been left alone on their land, the US would not have had to provide for them.  They had been doing just fine.

Teacher friends Joan and Dave took us to the Tucson Gem Show where we were awed by huge geodes of amethyst and other mineral spectacles.  I had to buy a pearl/mother of pearl pendant, of course, since I forgot my jewelry at home for the winter.  Marie in Silver City helped me find some rings and earrings, and we set some stone pendants, so now I have jewelry to wear.  Don teases me that I forgot my jewelry at home deliberately so I could buy replacements, but honest, I didn’t.

The Desert Museum just up the hill from our campground in the desert is a fantastic place to see all kinds of desert life—plant and animal.  We even saw some organ pipe cactus which was great since we have decided not to go to the Organ Pipe Nat’l Monument due to that area being a funnel of illegal activity crossing the border with Mexico. 

The raptor free flight of Harris hawks enchanted all of us.

We crossed paths again with Jean and Ron from the Las Cruces Habitat build, and went out for pizza at the Open Range, a little place out in the desert—way, way out in the desert.  They don’t serve alcohol, so we took a six-pack.  The pizza was huge and loaded with just everything, including a few too many jalapenos, but oh, was it good! 

Tucson and Phoenix get much of their water from the Colorado River, hundreds of miles away.  The water’s ph damages the city’s pipes, so they run the water into ponds where it soaks down to replenish the water table before being pumped up in wells to serve the city.  The ponds are carefully monitored so the water percolates down rather than evaporates.

Saguaro National Park gave us a glimpse of petroglyphs and  lovely walks in  the serenity of the desert.  It is definitely growing on us.  

The saguaro sometimes take almost human shapes.  The native people respected the desert and the saguaro as symbolic of the generations of ancestors before them. 

Southeast Arizona 2011

Chiracahua National Monument in the southeast corner of Arizona is a remarkable mountain treat.  The Chiracahuas rise to over 7,000 feet as a mountain “island” above the desert.  The rock here has eroded in tall columns and balanced rocks.  The Chiracahua Apache lived here under the leadership of Cochise.  Hiking among the columns of rock and cliff views was amazing.  Don again hiked into rough terrain, but when it got really rough, he waited while I scrambled ahead for a ways.

We camped two nights at St. David at a monastery where Mary Jo and Harvey from the Las Cruces Habitat build volunteer the rest of the winter.  Ron and Jean from the build were also passing through, so we all had dinner together to catch up and reminisce about the great time we had in Las Cruces. 

We spent a day in Tombstone where we watched the gunfight at the OK Corral and saw the graves at Boot Hill.  The OK Corral is a reproduction, but the show there explained the events leading to the infamous shoot-out.  The Earp brothers were not universally considered the good guys; they may have fired the first shots that killed some of the area’s questionable cowboys.

We thoroughly enjoyed the Bird Cage Theatre museum.  This bar closed when the mines closed in 1889; it was boarded up for nearly 50 years, untouched.  When it opened as a museum in the 1930’s, everything was intact, even the poker table where a game went on for eight years straight in the 1880’s.  The Birdcage was the inspiration for the Lillian Russell song that debuted on this stage, “Bird in a Gilded Cage,” referring to the girls who served more than drinks to men in the box seats above the main floor of the theatre.  Wyatt Earp met his second wife there, where she offered “negotiable affection.” 

The original "Little Egypt"

We normally don’t do caves—too dark for Don to see anything.  However, many people talked us into seeing Kartchner Caverns, and it did not disappoint.  This is a rare “living cave” meaning water still seeps and all the amazing formations are still dripping and growing.  We had to go through several airtight passages to enter to keep the atmosphere inside consistent.  Don managed to get around with the help of the railings, and he did see most of what the guide pointed out.  Beautiful place.

Next stop:  Tucson

Silver City, New Mexico, January 2011

Silver City is a charming old mining town on the Continental Divide in southwestern New Mexico. We spent over a week there visiting my cousin Marie and her husband Gordon.  They wined and dined us and took us everywhere.  It was so wonderful to spend quality time with them.

Marie and Gord’s house.  Marie is a great cook, so she has a marvelous kitchen.  We hate to leave—it has been such a wonderful visit.

Rose Valley RV Ranch was a lovely place to stay.  Our camper is on the lower right.

The Santa Rita copper mine is a mile across & 1600 feet deep—one of the largest open pit mines in the world.

Marie and I in the Gila National Forest.

The Catwalk is a mile trail following a path of an 1890’s water pipeline for a mining town down the mountain.  The Catwalk crosses the creek on many bridges and clings to the canyon walls.  What a glorious hike!

The suspension bridge.

Don and Gord at the end of the trail.

Great old sycamore trees grace the picnic area at the trailhead.

The Gila Cliff Dwellings were built by Mogollan people in the late 1200’s.  They had to bring rock and mud for mortar up to these caves high on a cliff, as well as water and the food they grew in the valley below on a tributary of the Gila River.  Soot still stains the ceilings, and walled rooms still divide each cave.  The trail winds through the canyon and up the side of the cliff—another wonderful hike.

Between 1985 and 1903 several flash floods took out Silver City’s Main Street and carved out The Big Ditch, 55 feet deep for miles.

City of Rocks State Park is an array of volcanic rock left in clusters that look almost like buildings with winding paths among them.  Wandering and climbing the rocks was like being a child again.

Look at the color of that sky!

We have been doing a lot of rocky hikes, and Don valiantly makes it up and down, over stones and around boulders, through icy patches and dark places.  I guide him and usually manage to help him avoid the roughest parts.  The views and experiences have been worth it as Willy Nelson reminds us, “seeing things we may never see again.”