Not the kind of lottery that makes a fellow rich in Trump meme bitcoin. On our second try, we won the lottery for a Grand Canyon National Park Backcountry Permit. Looks like we may be hiking down to Bright Angel Campground sometime in November.
Time to get our backpacks out this fall and do some training. Julia has never backpacked before.
I’ve blogged about this area of the Mississippi River between Dubuque and Bellevue, Iowa on several previous occasions. We’ve always liked the summer vibe here: breweries, music, farmer’s markets, the slow pace, and the lower cost of living.
We are winding down our multi-day stay in Cedar Rapids. I don’t have any particular fond memories of this city, which is also known as the City of Five Smells: Captain Crunch cereal, cooking oats, ADM/Cargill food processing, the Cedar River, and wastewater treatment.
However, it was a lifelong home for my grandparents and great grandparents. It’s where my dad lived his final days and where my mom has chosen to live for church and friendships.
During our stay, we took a day trip to Mount Vernon to buy my mom some local honey and to walk the campus of Cornell College (the Iowa Cornell). We (Julia and I) also managed a beer at Big Grove Brewery, a lager house. My amber lager was quite good.
We also toured the Czech Slavic museum. My great grandmother was Bohemian and part of the large Czech community that formed in this part of Iowa. The clock tower goes off every hour from dawn until dusk. The characters represent different types of Czech workers/members of society.
There is a lake here, but it isn’t viewable from our campsite. However, the price is right with the 50% Senior Pass discount. We are close to Drs Moines and in a holding pattern to get to Cedar Rapids for an available campsite.
On our first day here, we ventured to a nearby brewery not worth mentioning. It’s never a good sign when the oatmeal stout is translucent.
Cedar Rapids is where my mom lives, so we will be there for several days this coming week.
We did get in our first campfire of the year last night and saw our first fireflies.
Look closely for the flashes.
The drive from Oklahoma into Kansas was mostly on two lane highways and without any breakdowns or unpleasant surprises. We pulled into Hillsdale State Park in the early afternoon and took Callie on a walk around this huge park with multiple campgrounds.
Then we headed into town for some Kansas bbq at Poppa C’s.
On the next morning, there was a beautiful quiet sunrise.
We spent that day relaxing. Julia rented a kayak for a couple of hours.
We picked up supplies at a local grocery store. I’ve never seen an entire aisle dedicated to bbq sauces.
Early the next day, we dumped tanks and were headed to Iowa.
Canton Lake is a Corps of Engineers dam project about ten minutes from the sad little town of Canton, Oklahoma. There’s a Main Street, but most of the businesses are closed, and many of the buildings are falling apart.
We read online that the town has lost about 30 percent of its population in recent years due in part to dwindling economic opportunities. Someone did paint a nice mural.
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| The lake is the attraction |
On the other hand, the COE campground and our lakeside campsite was really nice with full hookups and decent shower facilities for $12.50/night with our Senior Pass.We spent two nights here. By the end of our stay, temps were hitting 100 with added humidity, so it was time to move on.
We had a rough travel day to this campground east of Albuquerque, New Mexico. Somehow, our steps wriggled off the retaining pin and dropped down during travel. It could have been worse. We noticed it at a gas station and spent about an hour bending the steps back into place, sufficient to get them folded in and stored again
Then we devised a temporary solution to tie them off with trimmer string and a couple of wire twists. After the temporary solution, we made it to the campground, which was at best just okay.
The good part was that an unusual cold front came through and allowed us to relax comfortably outside and then sleep with the windows down. We both slept a solid eight hours before waking up to a beautiful dawn.
We left early the next morning for Oklahoma..
Our first night of the trip was spent at Elephant Butte Lake State Park in New Mexico. We arrived on Sunday afternoon, and there were a lot of hung over, badly sunburned campers preparing to head back to work after the weekend.
We had a delightful meal at Bigfoot restaurant. Green Chili Cheeseburger with a fresh salad and a 1614 dark ale on tap from New Belgium. Then we made the short drive to Truth or Consequences brewery for some live music and a Dark Skies Oatmeal Stout.
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| Elephant Butte Lake |
Tucson's summer is well under way with highs hitting the low 100's on a regular basis. It's easy to settle back into our summer rhythm of getting up early for walks and pickleball, while enjoying the evenings as things cool down. Tohono Chul Botanical Gardens are about 15 minutes from our house. We are members, and have been enjoying local music on the weekends.
We are making final preparations for our trip north, and I had a new mobile rv mechanic out to evaluate why my propane fridge keeps losing its flame. It took him about 45 seconds to diagnose the problem, and then another hour to address another fridge problem that had gone unnoticed and was unrelated to the propane.
After removing the housing to gain access to the burner, he found that the lighting electrode was 5/16" away from the gas instead of the 3/16" that it's supposed to be at. Additionally, it was bent, which is interesting. The previous owner claimed not to have ever used the propane feature of the fridge. If he was telling the truth, it had been bent for at least a couple of years. It's not something that just happens to that degree through usage, I guess.
Anyway, even when the fridge operated under shore power, it was losing its battle to stay cool during the afternoon heat when temperatures rose into the low 90's during our trip to Silver city. So I purchased a double fan set on Amazon when we got back but couldn't figure out a great way to mount it because it was too big. The tech said that two fans were overkill, and that we only needed one. In fact, the factory fan was half the size of one of the Amazon fans. When the tech went to mount the fan in the upper vent compartment, he discovered that the factory fan wasn't operating/dead. So, in theory, that explains why we were having trouble with the fridge warming up during the late afternoons. The solution was to separate the two Amazon fans, and to wire one of those fans to the fridge thermostat in place of the dead factory fan. Zip tying was involved in the mounting process, but the tech made it work, He used a lighter to make the area hot enough, and the fan activated and was moving a lot of air.
Just as he was packing up to go, I asked the tech to look at one other problem we were having. The Lance has a front awning, which we will probably use when it's not windy. The awning works fine. However, the awning has a light switch inside the trailer which is right next to the light switch for the light above the kitchen table. Unfortunately, the awning light switch has a short, which knocks out a fuse for all of the lights in the front of the trailer, including the bathroom lights. Twice, I've accidentally pushed the awning light switch and caused our inside lights to go out.
I thought it would be an easy thing for him to tighten up a wire or something to fix the short. Unfortunately, this last task for the tech doubled my tech repair time. It wasn't the switch. It wasn't the wire in the awning itself. It wasn't the wiring in the converter. We ended up on the phone with the Lance factory troubleshooting. It was their conclusion the problem resided in a circuit board under the bed, containing a relay that wouldn't close. Those things are expensive, and we weren't going to have it by the time of our departure anyway. What we ended up doing is shutting off the battery power, which fortunately closed off the open relay, allowing us to change the fuse and get the lights back on in the trailer. The tech made the awning light switch inoperable so that I couldn't accidentally turn it on again.
The tech looked at me and said, "Well, if there was one thing in your trailer that doesn't operate, I guess having the awning light not work isn't the worst thing in the world. If you want me to replace the circuit board when you get back in the fall...." Um, no. The Scamp didn't even have an awning. I think I can get along without having an awning light on the Lance.
The real test will be the long trip to the Upper Midwest ahead. Having a fridge that operates with propane gives us a lot more flexibility for nights without electric hookups.
About 15 years ago, I stumbled upon a songwriter named Sam Baker who had released an album called "Cotton." I liked almost every song, not because he was a great singer or a great musician but because he was a great songwriter/wordsmith.
One of the good things about A.I. is that I can use it as a starting point to find out about subjects that I've lost track of over the years. As I dug in deeper, I learned that Sam's story was much more interesting than I knew.
From Wikipedia: "In 1986, Baker was traveling by train to Machu Picchu in Peru when a bomb placed on a luggage rack above his head by the Shining Path guerrilla group exploded, killing seven other passengers including the three people who had been sitting with him. Baker was left with numerous injuries, including brain damage, a cut artery, and blown-in eardrums. His injuries required 17 reconstructive surgeries. He has a constant case of tinnitus and the fingers of his left hand were left gnarled. He did retain enough dexterity to grasp a guitar pick and over time, re-taught himself to play his guitar left-handed."
My favorite song on his "Cotton" album was "Mennonite." Sam doesn't have much of a recent YouTube presence, but that song is on his channel.
This was the last of our longer hikes in the Silver City, New Mexico area. Jack's Peak is a 9 mile out and back trail to the top of a mountain distinguished by a large set of antennas. The trailhead is about 20 miles southwest of Silver City along Hwy 90. There is a large parking lot for Continental Divide hikers, and there is also dispersed camping here.
Compared to earlier hikes at higher elevation north of Silver City, we did this hike on a warmish day without very much shade. Additionally, the gnats were driving us (especially Julia) crazy. It was one of those hikes where reaching the top seems impossible because the antennas were looking too far away for the trail mileage indicated. However, just as we were thinking that the trail was going to end before the top, a shoulder appeared, and up, up, up we went for the final push.
We are now back home in Tucson, enjoying a wonderful May with comfortable temperatures and desert blue skies. At the same time, we are planning our summer trip to the Upper Midwest, which will be mostly spent with family and friends in Iowa and Wisconsin. I'll blog about our travels from time to time. Hiking in the Gila is something that we hope to repeat next year.
This trail was very close to our RV park in Silver City, so we hiked it several times. It's a 5.8 loop trail east of town. Very little elevation gain, but a great spot for Callie to burn off some energy. There were also petroglyphs to find.
A few miles north of Pinos Altos, New Mexico, the Little Cherry Creek trail begins. Distance is 8.4 miles (in/out), and elevation gain is 1450 feet.
After our hike at Catwalk Recreational Area, we were both hungry, so we drove up to the Alma Grill for lunch. It was a bustling place with lots of characters, staff and customers. I had the best chile rellenos ever, and Julia loved her huevos rancheros. There was delicious melted Mexican cheese on everything.
As we finished up, an old rancher asked if their coffee was fresh. The waitress said with a big smile: “No, it’s not fresh, but we have coffee.” The old guy thought for a moment and ordered it anyway.
I was ready to head home for a nap after our filling meal, but Julia had other ideas. We were headed to the ghost town of Mogollan. This was a booming mining town in the 1890’s, but only a few people remain. It’s all private property so one can’t really explore the buildings. Two or three businesses remain but none were open during our visit.
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| Understatement: Road narrows |
Now, the real reason for including the ghost town in this post is to remind myself never to go visit this place again. The road up and down is a one lane road that is falling off the side of the mountain for significant stretches. There are few places to turn off, which means that someone is going to have to back up if meeting traffic.
We only met one car going up and none going down. If there was a pot of gold waiting in town, it might be worth it. But you can see from the photos that there is no pot of gold. Did it for Julia. Won’t be back again.
Not the kind of lottery that makes a fellow rich in Trump meme bitcoin. On our second try, we won the lottery for a Grand Canyon National P...
