We decided to make a trip back to the Sedona area this May. We’re in Prescott this weekend, so I’ll safe those pictures until tomorrow but I’m the meantime, here are some of my favorites.
Sedona in spring
Sedona in spring
We decided to make a trip back to the Sedona area this May. We’re in Prescott this weekend, so I’ll safe those pictures until tomorrow but I’m the meantime, here are some of my favorites.
Hot Springs NP
Woke up in Clear Springs Park outside of Texarkana (which I thought was slang for an area, but is an actual town in that area). The park was not on the Rand McNally but we woke up to this beautiful lake. I also saw a town called Arkadelphia which for some reason, I found funny
Next stop was Hot Springs National Park. Fun fact. It’s heated geothermally and therefore doesn’t stink. You can even drink the water,(and we did) but it’s 131 (avg) degrees. They even have to chill it for the pools. Another fun fact, none of the original bath houses have any kind of outdoor facility. 700,000 gallons go through the several different springs/day. The hot springs used to join into the creek but mixed with some sewage from the town it got stinky so they buried it under the road. It’s now a closed circuit with little contamination. Most of the indoor pictures are from the visitor center which does not operate as a bath house anymore but was pretty fancy at one time. Only a few of the bath houses still operate as bath houses. Ringo got to have lunch with us in the old bathhouse converted to a brewery.
We were going to try to make it to Natchez trace State Park but we’re stuck on 40, sitting still for the past 1.5 hours. Kinda wish I’d gone into the spa. At least my hours of sitting still would have been relaxing.
Carlsbad caverns
Carlsbad caverns were found in the late 1800s when a rancher was investigating a fire. The smoke turned out to be bats leaving the cave. It became a park in the 1930s. It was ranger Joseph’s 3rd tour so he wasn’t polished but we got all the typical cave tour highlights: drapes, straws, stalagmites and tights, cave bacon, popcorn, bats and blackouts. I think the cool thing is the big room. It’s 4000 feet long and over 600 feet wide with lots of features. Only 5% of the cave is still growing. We are heading towards hot springs np today, a lot of driving.
White Sands National Monument
We got stopped by border control randomly mid New Mexico. They took one look at our camper piled with bikes guitars and a doodle and waved us on.
White sands was pretty cool. We watched the beloved park video then took a nice couple of short walks.
Fast fact: white sands is home to the oldest human footprints in North America. Link to ancient footprint info:21000 year old feetsies
Then we went to Three Rivers Petroglyph site which has the largest concentration of petroglyphs in the southwest. 21000+ I narrowed it down to my favorites, but there are a lot of shots.
For the record, I decided that this was either a game that they played like a scavenger hunt at a birthday party or an Easter egg hunt type of thing … Or perhaps it was more like getting tagged and each one of these symbols is somebody’s sign. Either way. It’s super cool 1500 years later.
Featured
Leasburg Dam Las Cruces NM
We have spent the last two nights at Las Cruces. We arrived late the first night, but had all day yesterday to explore and have some much needed idle time. Each site has their own pavilion perfect for playing guitar
We spent the morning on the pine tree trail in the organ mountain desert peaks national monument. Nice four mile hike. The pine trees have a really nice bark pattern.
We had picnic lunch at the base of organ mountains and went back to the campground to play some music and relax. We did take a short walk to the Rio (not-so) Grande. (this-time-of-year)
Tucson: Saguaro national Park
We left The lost Dutchman State Park after work and arrived east of Tucson and in the Saguaro Park at sunset.
Fast Saguaro facts, their roots are only 4-6 inches deep but grow outward in every direction about the height of the trunk. A saguaro grows very slowly 1inch/10 years. It usually starts arms around 100 years. The biggest ones are anywhere from 175-200ish years old.
Luke is in Tucson seeing his family over the holidays. We didn’t realize that there are 2 sections of Saguaro NP and his family’s house is on the eastern side which turned out to be about an hour away. We were supposed to eat dinner with them, but given our late arrival we had to wait till morning.We ate dinner at the campground. The Gunter homestead is quite amazing. Here are a few pictures of the day.
Now for random stuff I saw in the past 24 hours that made me smile.
Phoenix
We spent the evening at the Lost Dutchman which is the mountain South of Phoenix that looks like this.
Today was a blah work day and it didn’t help that my co-worker was sleeping on the job. You can’t even find his head.
Last night we got this little treat.
After work we had dinner with Alaska and Kaylin.
Best of all… Tomorrow is Friday. Wahoo!
Featured
Goodbye Sedona. I’ll miss you.
We upgraded our campground view ( at check out ) for trailhead parking. It was the best office view so far.
After work we took a hike on Margs draw which took us right up to Snoopy Rock.
On our way to Lost Dutchman outside of Phoenix. Ringo was very interested in the trout jerky
Sedona take two
Drove the half mile up to the trailhead (it was lunch, don’t judge) and grabbed a quick beautiful lunch walk.
After lunch we were heading to the Bellrock trailhead. But got side tracked with a cool house and a long walk. Then we had dinner at a fancy Mexican restaurant in dirty hiking clothes.
Austin Semi Sabbatical 