Roosevelt Lake

Arizona will illustrate precisely why daylight saving time is a good idea. And yes I know all the facile, glib reasons why no one wants to do it anymore, but just because the collective memory is as short as that of a goldfish doesn’t mean it isn’t a good idea. Why is daylight saving time good? Because in Arizona which would be on Mountain Time if they weren’t goldfish is on Pacific Time right now and it is daylight around 4:30 in the morning. Lying in bed with the back door open overnight I enjoyed cool night air with the air conditioning turned off. We planned an early start so I set the alarm on my phone to 5:15.  However an hour before that I spontaneously opened my eyes and to my horror the horizon was lighting up already.

Here’s the thing: at lower elevations the summer sun is too hot for outside work for most people by ten in the morning. To take advantage of the cool morning air Arizona should get out of bed at four and be at work at five. Or out fishing or gardening and by nine everyone should be indoors until late afternoon and go  to bed at dark which in these longest days is around 8pm.  Which is not to say double summer time like they used in World War Two would necessarily be a bad thing in this crazy desert state but I doubt anyone could get that idea off the ground.

Luckily we are retired and on our own schedule so we get up early and exercise and walk Rusty and do household chores as early as we like to prevent heatstroke and we leave Arizona to go to work as normal at eight and swelter their days away.  But it is weird to watch, an entire state sleeping away the only bearable hours of the day.  Anyway we were driving through Mammoth around 6:30 after a fretful night’s sleep. It grew cool around ten and we threw open the doors to the cool night air. It turned out we were sleeping in a park dedicated to the memory of miners and their families. The Mammoth copper and silver mine got its name from the vast quantity of ore they located in 1870 or thereabouts. They created an aerial tram and sent the ore over to the one street town where they built a smelter to process the ore.

Then they filled the truck with water and sent it across the river to supply the miners in their isolation. Today the town is a wreck as far as we could see, poverty and trash lined the Main Street. I have to say I was a bit surprised as we saw a sign to Main Street on the Highway and we dutifully followed it, myself harboring a dog walking and photo taking fantasy. Not here.

We drove through and decided to seek more salubrious surroundings up the road. The park made for a nice overnight stop and despite some traffic noise and one drunk guy careening up the street on foot talking to himself around nine pm we spent a peaceful night. The highway sign makers have a sense of humor, no doubt:

The entire landscape here is made of rock, rolling mountains sparsely dotted with small green bushes hiding from I mediate view the true nature of this desert landscape. Mesquite provides a little shade and lives on no water so even though the hillsides are green they are still traditional desert, inhospitable to the ill prepared.

We stopped at a mountain overlook and I stepped out of the van into the arms of the sort of historical marker that makes my head spin.  I tried to imagine Brigadier General Stephen Kearny with an “army”of three hundred men led by the legendary scout Kit Carson making their way over this pass in 1846 on their way to win California for the US. The whole story is far too complicated to tell here but Kearny’s short life (54 years) was packed with wars alarums and political imbroglios from the War of 1812 to the first US occupation of Veracruz where Kearny got the yellow fever that soon killed him, lacking as they did he blessings of vaccination. His biography makes a good read, but all he got as a memorial in California like his boss President Polk, was a street named for him in San Francisco unlike his colleagues and rivals Frémont and Sutter and Stockton much more widely honored.

Once again Layne managed to surprise me by suggesting we stop a while and make tea, so we did. Since our travels through Mexico she has embraced the concept of slow travel. These days we find ourselves able to approach sunset with no concerns about where to find a place to park and sleep. Most new van lifers start out worrying about where to sleep and so forth but we have left that anxiety in our mirrors. It was never a real worry for us, however nowadays we are more likely to enjoy the challenge of finding somewhere to sleep and take satisfaction in being successful, much like our impromptu stop in the sad little town of Mammoth. El Capitan Pass, 4900 feet and lovely and cool:

And no, I don’t miss riding a motorcycle, not yet at any rate. Gannet2 and all her comforts suit me just fine.

From the pass we wound down the mountain side to Winkelman, an intersection where Highway 77 joins Federal Highway 70 and takes you down the valley even further to Globe, the county seat of Pinal County at 3500 feet. Elevation I have suddenly found is as important in summer as it is to anticipate winter snows in the mountains. Life lived in a van puts you close to nature which means using nature to cool or heat your life, and elevation equals cooler temperatures.  Yes, I know it’s obvious but suddenly it becomes quite important!

We stopped in Globe where Safeway provided some fresh fruit and vegetables and milk and more importantly a reason for Rusty to get a quick walk.  Globe was apparently named for a lump of silver that was mined in the area and looked like a globe. Fair enough I suppose in light of the fact people named places for the oddest and most apparently irrational reasons as they created too many places to name. Globe is supposedly becoming a destination for outdoor loving gentrifiers but it didn’t grab us too much, not least because we restrict ourselves from indoor activities and groups to continue avoiding Covid. I think there are prettier towns though perhaps in winter when there are people and activities it might be more appealing than the summertime rolled up sidewalks in the heat. We are choosing not to sit indoors in restaurants and coffee shops  which self imposed Covid rule limits our ability to mix it up and get a proper feel for a place.  especially if it’s too hot to sit outdoors. Mask wearing in Arizona is non existent and it’s still a shock to the system after Mexico where Covid is monitored, measured and taken seriously by the population. With Layne’s immune deficiency Mexico is much more suitable ironically with everyone masked and lots of outdoor seating. Globe, as glanced:

I had the thought that instead of buying Twitter Elon Musk could fully fund every hunger program in the United States.

Much to our own surprise we had developed a plan for the rest of the day, as by now it was just past ten in the morning and we didn’t have far to go. Arizona’s largest lake named for Teddy Roosevelt lies to the northwest of Globe and is apparently a place of many visitors in winter and on weekends. On a Tuesday in June with a forecast afternoon high of 94 we lived in hope we might find a site Ming the 350 spots set aside for camping by the National Forest Service at Windy Hill. Layne saw a lot of campers as she peered down from the road, but I saw a lot of white roofs on picnic table shelters and for once I was right. 

It may be we don’t have this place exactly to ourselves but if there is someone here, other than the camp host near the entrance, we haven’t seen them. We paid our senior ticket $12:50 - half price - for a campsite and had our pick of spots.  We chose one overlooking the water hoping for an unobstructed breeze which is what we got. It’s not the time of year for fire rings and they made that message abundantly clear:

The lake as seen under the noonday sun. I am looking forward to some of the spectacular desert sunsets we might get to enjoy.

The Road To Cascabel

Layne was up for it, Rusty enjoyed stops in the wilderness and I enjoyed picking my route through the washboard. We were back on the road.

We spent Monday morning faffing about doing useful things on the outskirts of Tucson. First we went to a shop, one of the few in town that does alignments for larger vehicles. Jack Furrier’s crew did a nice job and I am happy with the way my steering wheel points, and I feel confident the wheels are aligned. I want my excellent new Michelin tires to last as long as possible. We put them to the test after we stopped by a dermatologist to give Layne her check up. Van and wife in good order we set off for points north.

I wanted to stop by the Titan missile museum, a converted Cold War silo and we drove a few minutes out of our way hoping a hot June day would put visitors off but sure enough there was a crowd, all unmasked on the tour in progress. We passed and drove on hoping that by this Fall Covid will be in abeyance at last, and we will feel free to mingle once again among the precaution-free. 

Our goal was Clarkdale in central northern Arizona to meet a friend, but to make it more interesting I chose to delete highways from my mapping search.  Arizona is not over loaded with alternatives to interstates and the best alternative I found instead of going straight to Globe from Tucson, was by way of a dirt road that connects Benson to Mammoth.

North Cascabel Road winds through the desert and what starts and ends as paved road becomes good old fashioned dirt for 33 miles in the middle. That stretch alone took us more than two hours, averaging 15 mph while in motion with photo and dog walk stops along the road.

And I can tell you the services at the other end were good enough to convince us to stop for the night, beer tortillas and a place to park.  But to get there we had some driving to do.  We turned off I-10 at Pomarene and drove north. Sure enough the pavement ran out, no reprieve there.

Rusty was ready for a walk and there was a signboard to read. It turns out the land north of the cattle grid is a mixture of publicly an privately owned but is used by hunters as long as they follow the rules which amount to common sense and don’t shoot people, especially not in their homes.

You can read the rules for yourself. We managed not to shoot anyone or get shot, we dumped no trash and failed to start any fires, controlled or otherwise.  We were model citizens. We stopped to photograph something on an empty stretch of road, as most of it is. Wouldn’t you know it, a car pulled up alongside and asked if we needed help. When reassured we were okay she smiled and said “Welcome to Cascabel!” at which point we realized a third car entering from a side road was also blocked. Far from being empty we managed to attract passers by like iron filings on a magnet.  

Rusty mooched around but spent most of the drive sitting on his cushion ignoring the rocking and rolling and crunching of dirt under the wheels. He used to be quite nervous when the van made noises underway but he’s driven over more topes than most of us have had hot dinners so he’s an old hand. 

Actually the funny thing about driving this road was the number of Mexican style topes we rumbled over as we passed through the village of Pomerene right off the Interstate.  It’s a bit of a joke for us seeing these ghastly reminders of the worst aspect of driving Mexico.

Anyway we rolled up the dirt checking out the countryside, the frequent dips into dry riverbeds, the arroyos, each one accompanied by a warning not to drive through flood waters. You’d think it might be obvious but I guess not.

It was endless that dirt road and after our busy morning I think we both got a bit tired before we reached the paved section again.  The views kept us going, the winding rod, the valleys, the dry river beds, it was The West and we were in our wagon train of one.

The scenery was a mixture of farmland with irrigation, ranch land with cows, scattered homesteads and small power lines joining them all up.

We did see signs opposing a plan to build a large power line system with huge pylons through the San Pedro Valley. Naturally I’d liked to have read more but the Internet connection around here on Verizon is what it is and that also explains my difficulties uploading photos from this remote area!

We regained a sense of nomadic travel with this short and not terribly difficult afternoon drive. We hit a few spots of soft sand and as I felt the Promaster wiggle I engaged the front wheel drive lock and we 

laughed together at the familiar sensations of self recovery while remembering the places where that electronic switch saved our backsides when we were exploring down south.  It was fun, and it still is.

We started in Cochise County where the dirt was slightly graded and thus built our confidence that we could drift along up to twenty miles per hour the whole way…until we hit the Pima County line and the road deteriorated into washboard and lumpy rocks and slowed us down considerably. Then at last we reached the Pinal County line and Mr Macadam’s great tar invention came to our rescue and expedited our return to civilization.  We were ready.

Not without the occasional washout in the arroyos which are anxiously awaiting rain in the mountains so they may do their worst in the valleys.

Globe was our target, a mining town turned tourist center, but as we passed through Mammoth, home of the Huns Motorcycle Club, I’m reliably informed, we decided to pause at  San Pedro Park, a lightly shaded unpaved slope with picnic tables, a monument to the. Infers of the region, but no ether trash cans nor toilets. Also there are no “No Overnight Parking” signs, indeed there are no signs at all.  

Tuesday will be time enough for Globe and some other place to stop for another night that we might arrive on time in Clarkdale.  This is living, as modest as it is, driving, stopping, making plans and changing them. And sitting out in the warm desert breeze with my dog, listening to my wife asleep inside our home while watching the stars and the occasional car and knowing tomorrow we will do more of the same.