Getting Lost

“Now we follow US Highway 89,” my intrepid navigator announced, full of confidence.  We droned out of Prescott on a course of steady due north, as the crow flies and whatever other cliché you care to name. The road looked interminable.

My intrepid navigator announced she felt sleepy and took her self off to bed leaving me alone with Rusty who, at our lunch stop in Prescott had also announced the day was wearing him out.

We had spent the morning driving from Roosevelt Lake, Arizonans largest body of water, and we had left early in the morning after our usual burst of video exercise. We drove alongside the lake admiring the views.  It’s not the ocean but the water does provide a nice contrast.

We even saw a number of sailboats in mothballs in the hard for the summer months. None on the water actually sailing.

The drive through the mountains had its own fascination, the pine forests for which this countryside is famous, with trees growing at high altitude. We stopped for some refreshing tea for the driver and a walk for the chief security officer and it was 73 degrees. When I had told Bruce of our plans to drive north he had shaken his head at my temerity planning to enjoy driving Arizona in summer and warned somberly of the dangers of heat. He has a point, but have all we need aboard Gannet2 to live comfortably hot or cold, as we have already survived temperatures from below freezing up to 112.  This kind of mountain heat we enjoyed, the lower altitude heat we suffered with no apparent peril, just discomfort.Van Life isn’t always just right, some days it’s tougher than others but we aren’t easy to be dissuaded.  

The pleasure of living on wheels allows us to move at will and. If we d9nt like where we are, we have no mortgage.  Prescott offered some shopping ,6 wide wanted to follow up on as we made our way north to Clarkdale so we stopped. Lunch was Thai food which we ate aboard Gannet2 at a wooded trail head behind Costco. 

Then we drove round the corner into the busyness of the parking lot and left Layne to wander her favorite warehouse. Rusty and I found a stretch of open woodland above the Costco parking lot which we wandered until he got bored. I was not bored playing around with my new camera.

Most of m6 photographs from the Keys were made with two self contained bridge cameras by Panasonic, a large FZ1000 with a massive telephoto lens and a smaller LX100 with its own built in lens. The self contained cameras are convenient and versatile even if they do lack some of the versatility in photo making that interchangeable lens cameras allow. I am lazy and I hoped the cameras could survive the rigors of life on the road however both were showing signs of wear, moisture on the sensor and failing electronic buttons such that I  gave them to Bruce the engineer to play with and ordered myself the equivalent cameras by Panasonic with a few lenses which I now have to change to a comodate different views.  Sigh. It sucks to be lazy. I took these with my GX85 rangefinder style camera with a fixed 25mm lens. Now you know. Who cares? Right?

Back on the road we drove north pit of Prescott until Layne told me to take Highway 89 to Clarkdale while she refreshed herself with a nap. I was enjoying the drive across the plains and yes I know it’s flat desert type stiff but I like looking out the window as we ambled north at an economical 55mph. Thee were tons of passing spaces for those needing to burn gas. 

These photos I took with the larger G95 by Panasonic with the 12-60 mm lens that comes wit( t(e camera.  Panasonic makes a line of Professional lenses that cost the earth but I doubt I shall buy those as no one pays me (nor should they) for my hobby. These seem to do fine for my van life online life. I’m not making huge prints to hang in my mansion.  

We drove up Highway 89 for a while and I wondered where Clarkdale was. Finally I woke from my stupor and activated my Google map which showed some weird route I could decipher.  That was odd as there was, as you can see, but one road.  Huh? About the time I was thinking about waking Layne 8 saw a sign pointing to Interstate 40, Los Angeles to the left and Flagstaff to the right. This can’t be right.”Layne…Layne…LAYNE?” I pulled over and together we studied what was going on.

The short version was we overshot the train off for Clarkdale/Cottonwood and trundled north of miles out of our way. So we turned around and trundled back south. Luckily, we kept telling each other, we are retired and have no appointments or anybody to yell at us. 

I missed Mexico on this stretch of the drive, the magic third lane especially.  Cars were driven by people unable to pass. The speed limit is a gas guzzling 65 mph and around here it seems like a suggested limit with no cops to enforce it.  The road is flat and straight and properly marked but these intrepid Arizonans could not bring themselves to cross the dotted line.  I got tired of pulling over to let them by so they could burn five dollar gas much faster but I wished we were in the land of the magic third lane where I pulled onto the shoulder and the capable Mexicans passed freely down the middle. No drama, no road rage, no tailgating, no impatience. And you will be surprised to learn no crashing.

Eventually we got back to the missed turn and we went east on 89A up the Prescott Valley toward Mingus Mountain which separates Jerome,Clarkdale, Cottonwood and Sedona from Prescott. Apparently in the 1880s Joseph and Jacob Mingus ran a sawmill around there…OR William Mingus was prospecting around the mountain a decade earlier. Or something like that, so I guess no one is really sure.  I think I can say with certainty jazz is not involved. Probably.

Naturally it started to rain as we climbed the beautiful pine forested mountain.  The specks on the windshield annoyed me especially as we haven’t seen rain in quantity in months.  This gentle sprinkle wasn’t going to solve and drought issues but it tested our new Michelin Agilis three season tires from Hermosillo and we failed to slide anywhere.  My rather slow speeds may have helped us stay on the road as well.

We are planning a return trip to Jerome while we stay with Kathy so I am looking forward to a walk around the former ghost town resurrected as a tourist destination.

That rain! Obscuring the famous fire station on the hairpin bend…



The red rocks of Sedona on the horizon.

Rusty taking a break. He’s coming /ask too of course.

Our mooching dock base for the next few days. Rain is cooling temperatures and bringing fresh air to the town set at 3700 feet. After Clarkdale we are planning a tour of the Navajo Nation which will be even higher elevation and probably require blankets!  For now Rusty gets to enjoy a proper home. 

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.