SouthWest Exposure X
^{Across America, 2005}

Thursday 20 October 2005 - ACROSS UTAH!
_{Wah Wah Pass to Bear Summit UT}

LATE MORNING we bestir ourselves and drive up to the saddle above Wah Wah Pass, viewing desert valleys on both sides, filled with fog, the occasional craggy monolith poking out from the mist. We consider staying here for another day or so but we have many miles to go. So we'll have to come here again, oh yes, maybe on the Great Basin NP to Rocky Mountain NP to Yellowstone NP trip we've planned for the nebulous future.

We leave behind that shot-up rusty late-1930s coupe that was dragged there for target practice, as evinced by the attached cable and multitu­dinous bullet and shotgun holes. More slopes, more basins and ranges. Wah Wah Valley — is this where the guitar effect pedal came from?

We take a little jog over to the site of the old mining town of Frisco, beneath San Francisco Mountain, a fabulously rich silver camp of 125 years ago. All private property: no trespassing. And time is not on our side. Next time we're through here, we'll return to trespass, and forgive those who trespass on us, at least if they're our neighbors.

Another oldies station jostles us as we roll across southwest Utah. We traverse the Escalante Desert and slide through Milford, a tidy but decaying wide town. From a distance we see skyscrapers but they're grain elevators. Onward lies the interstate and probably a laundromat session. The Escalante's early fog has pretty much evapo­rated, puffy white clouds hanging over the blue mountains ahead. The mighty Hurricane Cliffs and Cedar Breaks and Zion Park are off in the distance, but not in our path.

BEAVER, UTAH: We pull into Beaver, on the interstate following under the long ridges running from Utah's southwest corner up to the Salt Lake desert. From Beaver we look straight up and the snow-covered ridges and spines of the Tushar Mountains, with some peaks over 12,000 feet. We'll cut between the Tushars and the Hurricane Cliffs as we head for the next valley, which leads down to Arizona. But first we must spend money.

We thought we were just stopping in Beaver for some gas and maybe a lube. Self-serve gas but with an old attendant to wash windows and check oil and tires — and the tires look bad. In fact, of the RVs seven tires (two front, four rear, spare) six are totally or almost shot. A couple are factory originals (1995), a few are merely ancient (1998). We guess we got our mileage out of *THOSE*, eh? And all the shocks are blown out. It all cost US$1925. (George threw in the labor and oil-change free, a US$345 break.) Yow. We'd expected to get four new tires by now, but this is a shock. WE'RE SHOCKED! SHOCKED!

Maureen: That's almost three months' worth of healthcare insurance. Good thing that we decided to chuck that this morning.

Oh yes, we decided earlier today to self-insure for healthcare, for the upcoming year anyway. Pay US$8000+ to the Kaiser-Permanente HMO? Nope. We read that California may soon enact a state health insurance system that'll run the private insurers out of business. Let's hope so.

Beaver is thus a cusp: some changes, decisions finalized, etc. We'll self-insure; keep the RV for a few more years (run it till it drops); carve some more graven idols. Maybe we'll have to go to India after all.

LATE AFTERNOON: We finally get out of the shop (Sinclair station near the north-end onramp), wardrive Beaver but get no connexions, and start to leave town. Oops. There's a major injury accident on the interstate, and no other through roads. We decide that doing the laundromat thang would be cheaper and more useful than sitting in stopped traffic with the engine running for hours.

The laundromat takes forever (of course) but it's half the cost of a similar scrub in the Great North. (HINT: If ya gotta do the wash, do it at an RV park.) Sunset approaches as we finish. We take off southeast, climb up the mountains in the dark to Bear Summit, somehow manage to find a side track, and pull in to another cowpie meadow. Don't go walking around tonight. Mars is bright in the sky, will make a closest approach in a couple weeks. It's not a flying saucer. At least, that's what they want us to believe.

Friday 21 October 2005 - INTO ARIZONA!
_{Bear Summit UT to Vermillion Cliffs NatMon AZ}

UTAH: A cold frosty frigid morning at our Bear Summit camp off Little Creed Road. The coyotes sing. Then the cows sing. Then the hunters sing by on their ATVs. Then we leave. Into historic Panguitch. Our last visit here was in 1996; we faultily remember it as MUCH smaller. Many brick houses, some of them large rambling items with multiple sections and entrances for those large polygamous families.

We poke around some gift and Injun Stuff shops; Maureen snags some pelts. Desert marmots take the sun at their hole dug in the middle of a side road. A new-rock station powers us along the highway along the Sevier River between plateaus and past turnoffs for Bryce and Cedar Breaks and Zion. We roll down through dramatic redrock canyons into Kanab. Visible for miles in the distance are the White Cliffs, the Yellow Cliffs, the Vermillion Cliffs of Utah. We reprovision in Kanab, sniff out a WiFi and communicate, and proceed south to Fredonia. We try to sing Hail Fredonia.

ARIZONA: Fredonia is across the Arizona border. Crossing into Nevada, the first thing you'll see is a casino. Crossing into Arizona from Utah, the first thing you'll see is a liquor store. The next sights are micro-mesas, too small for Coyote and Roadrunner to play games. The big ones come later.

And later we crawl up the Kaibab Plateau, pass the hamlet of Jacob Lake (gateway to North Rim, Grand Canyon) and down towards Lees Ferry on the Colorado River above Grand Canyon NatPark. Off to the north are more sweeping rocky rims, Vermillion Cliffs NatMon in Arizona, the last public land before the Navaho Res. And here we stop for the night, on a deserted side-road perfect for an extended stay. Next time.

Saturday 22 October 2005 - TOPPING ARIZONA!
_{Vermillion Cliffs NatMon to Wupatki NatMon AZ}

BEFORE NOON we leave our roadside squat under the Vermillion Cliffs and we cruise along eastward, mostly parallel to the Grand Canyon with great huge red cliffs to the north and great huge purple cliffs up ahead, past balancing rocks and unbalanced rocks (and unbalanced tourists, no doubt), high scrubby sage desert all around us.

On NPR we learn that in the current Rolling Stone concert tour, a defib­rillator is kept backstage. For whom, I wonder? And Brixton, London, England is facing a major problem: SQUIRRELS ON CRACK! (Great name for a band, eh?) Dealers bury their stashes in gardens and the rodents dig them up, then go looking for more. Consider all the implications...

At Lee's Ferry (no connexion with Harper's Ferry) we are in the bowels of the earth, overlooked by great red cliffs, and we're at the head of the Grand Canyon. Wait... bowels, head... what's the metaphor here? CORRECTION: This is actually Marble Canyon, not Grand Canyon, but... same thing.

AFTER NOON: Cheap lunch at Lee's Ferry in Ric and Maureen's Rolling Roadkill Rotisserie, while the Fitzwilliams String Quartet saws away at Shostakovich's First. Could be worse, eh? [Maureen laughs.] Oh yeah, we got a pile of good books and music CHEAP in Kanab yesterday, at the thrift shop across from the visitor info center. Highly recommended.

Then we're across the Navaho Bridge and back in the Díne Nation, souvenir shops lining the desert highway. And us with no cash. Bother. In the arid immensity of the Rez, under looming redrock cliffs, we pass little clusters of water tanks and houses, hogans, old house trailers covered with tires to keep the roofs from blowing off. Spiky crests on the cliffs look like blooded altars and temples.

Down below in a wash, a guy is herding his sheep, riding his ATV. Navaho traffic jam, says Maureen.

Old US highway 89, the Montana-to-Mexico throughway, splits at Kanab. The newer route runs north over moderate terrain and crosses the Glen Canyon Dam to Page, Arizona. The older route, which we're on, runs south through Fredonia and Jacobs Lake and Lee's Ferry and joins with the newer route some miles south of Page. Our route is twistier and steeper and somewhat shorter and considerably more scenic. Most truck traffic goes the other way. Good riddance.

The road takes us up into higher greener ranchland, then back down into lower scrub. Near the junction to Tuba City and the Hopi lands, we pass through extensive colored badlands with what look like mud volcanoes. (Check the geology books on that.) We're washed over by Hopi Radio playing nothing but original doo-wop and rockabilly oldies.

CIRCA SUNDOWN: We hop over the Little Colorado River which contains enough water to keep the trucks out. (An overweight truck bypass runs across the riverbed during dry seasons.) We stop at the Cameron Trading Post; good Injun Stuff is now quite expensive. We cross the great dry scrubby Colorado Plateau, a mile high and dull. The tall San Francisco Peaks raise their volcanic cones ahead of us.

We pull into Wupatki National Monument with all its wonderful ruins and black lava pumice soil. Beyond is the typical cinder cone of Sunset Crater, source of this recent volcanic debris. We campered here a decade ago (11 May 1995) in Spud I, full of animals. This is far enough for tonight. The sky is inky, First Venus and then Mars are high and bright. The Milky Way buckles its swash across the sky. The air is silent. Except for us, of course.

Sunday 23 October 2005 - DAY EIGHTY!
_{Lazy Layover at Wupatki Nat'l Monument, AZ}

Outside, black sands and white rocks and scattered junipers and blue skies and mountains. Inside, rest and relaxation, doing our projects, reading, speaking very little. What's to say? Later, thunderstorms hovered over the San Francisco Peaks and the wind blew hither thither and yon. Later still, that dissipated. Ho hum.

Gosh, I wrote more Travel Guides: PREDESTINATION vs FREE WILL & MERCHANDISING & LOST IN THE OZONE AGAIN & FUNERAL RITES & PORTABLE MUSIC & FORBIDDEN KNOWLEDGE. Now why would I do that? And we heard an amazing neo-bluegrass band live in the NPR studio, Nickel Creek. Look them up.

Our little campsite off a forest road just outside (south of) Wupatki is nearly perfect. Almost level, no traffic, the lights of Flagstaff hidden behind the peaks so the night sky beams down unobstructed. There are nearby ruins to explore. Flag is near enough for convenience, far enough to be untroubling. Not too many cowpies; close enough to Flag for NPR. We're here in the right season too. No blizzards for a couple months yet, hopefully.

Monday 24 October 2005 - SKIMMING ARIZONA!
_{Wupatki NatMon to Happy Jack AZ}

MIDMORNING: We roll out to see the Wupatki NatMon ruins and try not to get ruined ourselves. Earlier I busily tried to recreate (from a copy of our gas-stop log) a trip through these realms nine-ten years ago. A good start. Now we stroll among the splendid ancient red sandstone masonry of just a very few of the many out-in-the-open pueblos in Wupatki NatMon.

These aren't cliff dwellings, which constitute only a tiny fractions of the SouthWest archaeological sites. Most ancient peoples built their stone homes on preferred hilltops, or atop cuts and gorges or even out in open lands. All such can be seen here.

NOONISH: We're swooping past craters near the center of Wupatki NatMon, recent cinder cones, lots of pumice and ash, basalt chunks but what are these white chunks? In front of us is the valley of the Little Colorado and beyond, the long austere rim of the Hopi Mesas. And further to Black Mesa, and beyond to the navel of the world.

We are reminded that the last time we paid for a campsite was on our last night in Canada. Sometimes the better things in life ARE free. [Maureen laughs.]

We see the impressive Wupatki Ruins and the very nice displays at the Visitors Center. We learn that the Wupatki area sat at the cusp of three major cultural areas, Hohokam and Mesa Verde and Sinagua, and seemed to be a nexus trade and meetings. Most ancient SouthWest sites contain 20-25 pottery types, but here over 110 have been found, many from far away. Just don't pick up the shards, y'all.

AFTERNOON: We loop around to Sunset Crater and the lava fields only 800 years old, still sharp and fresh and intimidating. We climb through highlands towards the San Francisco Peaks. This feels like an outcropping of the Cascades. Is this Oregon South? The same high forested volcanic landscape; except here, when you clear the trees and look off into the distance, you see the Painted Desert and immense mesas.

Back onto Highway 89 headed south, and immediately past the federal lands boundary are high-elevation housing developments at 7000 feet and thereabouts. Drop a little into even more developments, and pass the office of InfoMagic. I bought a lot of data CD-ROMs from InfoMagic ten years ago; one of the first inexpensive suppliers of public domain software on CD. Wow, am I *taken back*! What a flash!

And into Flagstaff. Sign on a liquor store: CASH FOR GUNS. Gosh, are we in Arizona now? We sniff a good WiFi hotspot — BEST WESTERN comes through again. Email from Marsha: Sure, we can stop over in Tucson on our way to Bisbee, just watch out for the construction stuff, the swim­pool isn't finished yet. Well, why not? When do we come back for it?

And some reprovisioning, and we're outa town. Down the Lake Mary road, past Happy Jack AZ, and we find a little side road and another, and we're in a meadow that's not *too* thick with cowpies, not as dense as some we've been in. And this is it for the night.

NIGHT: We haven't fallen all the way off the Mogollon Rim yet. It's coldish up here, high 30s or low 40s. And the Moon is half-full, and next to it is Saturn, and then a Geo Metro. But I digress. Coyotes sing wild complex songs. Chupacabras sneak by, prowling for goats. UFOs whiz overhead. Just another Arizona night.

Oh yeah, I should mention that we got lazy a few weeks ago and no longer bother to compress the cabover sleeper when we take off to drive. Now if any of the stuff we stash up there falls down, it doesn't land on our heads. But every night, Maureen puts up the windshield screens to block external vision and light. She crawls around the small cab space, manipulating. This must resemble working inside the Mir or ISS or Spacelab, except with gravity.

Tuesday 25 October 2005 - SWOOPING ARIZONA!
_{Happy Jack to Dripping Springs AZ}

MORNING: We roll off the highlands through layers of limestone, and down the Tonto Rim through layers of sandstone. And the forests crawl all around, but thinner and brushier and drier. We're dropping down into the higher (Upper Sonoran) desert again. We are well of east of, but probably at about the same elevation as, Sedona, with similar rock formations (not quite as dramatic) and land cover.

After our Del Taco burritos in Payson, we definitely drop off the rim through groves of mesquites and opuntias, and then down into drier country with saguaros and ocotillos. And as we get lower, the air gets murkier. Don't know if it's due to fires (there were prescribed burns back the other side of Payson) or just smog from Phoenix overflowing the mountains, creeping up the passes.

AFTERNOON: Now we come to Punkin Center AZ in the Tonto Basin, just past RAMBO REALTY. Buy land or he'll shoot or torture you. We heard a few days ago that Stallone is making an eighth Rocky movie, and that he will be the only person who ever watches it. Maybe he needs ROCKY MEETS RAMBO. Or ROCKY JR VS RAMBO JR. Or ROCKY & RAMBO MEET GODZILLA & SON OF KONG or RAMBO DOES MOTHRA! Ewwww...

We're deep in the Tonto Basin, heading for (Theodore) Roosevelt Lake. Tonto is Spanish for idiot. What does that say about the populace here? I mean, it's one thing to live in Normal Illinois, and it's quite something else to move to Moron Arizona. This stretch of highway is sponsored by MAD AS HELL RANCH. Hmmm...

Along beautiful Roosevelt Lake below Roosevelt Dam are many cheap but non-tempting campsites. Too crowded, fine if you've got a boat and you want to float around in the sun, but not for us now. Just beyond the lake we climb a recently-rebuilt steep grade to quaint Globe, yet another Phelps-Dodge town. Then through Globe and climbing up the other side -- at the bottom of the FM bands we get a radio program in a mixture of English and Apache.

Then over Pinal or El Capitán or Whatever Pass and HO! There's Dripping Springs Road! We locate our previous off-highway squat-camp site. Last time we were here was 22-23 April 2004. The javelina head is no longer nailed to the tree next to our parking place. Some trash and shotgun shells and a mutilated tire etc. lie about, but we can stand it for the night. Tomorrow: TUCSON!

CONFESS: Today I only managed to write a couple more Travel Guides: DEITIES and RELIGIONS for TRAVELERS & TRAVELERS AS SUPER­HEROES. And we're working on fleshing-out our recoveried memories of our pre-2000 travels but those won't be done for a few more days. Don't hold your breath.

Wednesday 26 October 2005 - TO MARSHA'S!
_{Dripping Springs to Oro Valley AZ}

Coyotes but no owls in the night; something like whip-poor-wills in the early morning. Sunrise gives the saguaros and golden chollas bright haloes, turns the pancake-cacti opuntia into a crowd of lit faces, but doesn't improve the horse- and cow-pies any. And pencil chollas and palo verdes and so much greenery climbing the grey-brown fractured hills, and the blue-misty valley and hills beyond to the southeast. Rake up around the coach and it's a pretty nice place to stay.

LATE MORNING: Depart from Dripping Springs camp, down into the steep deep gnarly canyon of the Gila River. Sahuaros and all the other plants I've mentioned recently are swarming all around us. Steep mountains before and beside us. Blue skies and puffy clouds overhead. A pretty gorgeous day. Too bad the radio reception isn't better.

And where the canyon walls are narrowest and sharpest, there's The Shores Recreation Area right alongside the river, a couple dozen sheltered campsites with precisely two spots that are actually right *on* the river. Keep this in mind for camping next time. As it is, Maureen wants to lay around here for a couple hours, relax before heading into the hustle and bustle of Tucson.

EARLY AFTERNOON: We're back on the road. At Winkleman we pass the junction of the San Pedro River's flow into the Gila River and drive upstream along the San Pedro. If it had a bit more water we could boat upstream, all the way to Naco and Bisbee. Right.

We're getting into familiar country; there are more and more roadside shrines, memorials for traffic fatalities. I should research ROADSIDE SHRINES, see if anyone has done books, studies, photo collections, anything about them. I thought of that on our Mexico trip; ought to follow up sometime. (See the results.)

I am reminded that on our Mexico trip I logged my wonder at the social status of Mexican army recruits — are any classes or tribes or regions or groups more likely to service. I received no responses and forgot to follow up. So I guess I'm in for some more googling. (See the results.)

Between Winkelman and Mammoth, we pass through an old scattered sahuaro forest. Back on the newly-rebuilt highway grade the other side of Globe, we saw many sahuaros with supports, wood rein­forcements at their bases. I wonder if maybe when the hill was cut away for the road, sahuaros in the path of devastation were plucked out and moved upslope. Transplanted sahuaros usually don't survive well, but maybe a trick has been developed involving those supports. I should research road projects and transplanting sahuaros. (See the results.)

At Mammoth we turn away from the San Pedro River to loop around the north and west sides of the Catalina Mountains to come into Tucson along these paved roads. If we weren't committed to a familial visit, and if we didn't mind driving on 60 or 80 miles of gravel, we could continue along the San Pedro's banks along the Catalinas' east flank, down to Benson on the interstate where we'd pick up pavement to Tombstone and Bisbee. But alas, that is not to be. We won't see the San Pedro again for a couple days. Not that we'd actually see any water. The San Pedro is a rather dry river, flowing underground, stealthy. But don't blame human depredations — it was an EARTHQUAKE that swallowed the river.

Past Oracle AZ and BioSphere II (see my earlier report), a long steep slope. And on NPR, a report on the devastating health problems caused by Indian Fry Bread (see FryBreadLove.Org). 70% of Papago (To'hono O'odham) adults have diabetes. *SEVENTY PERCENT*! Fry bread (flour, water, yeast, lard, mixed into dough and fried crispy) is NOT a traditional food. After the US conquest, flour and lard were cheap surplus foods provided to the sequestered tribes. Humanitarian aid? Right.

EVENING: And then into Oro Valley. Many maniacs on the roads here — people passing on the left while I'm signaling for a left turn, etc. But we reach (alive!!) the residence of Marsha and Dave and Bruce. Tomorrow will see the digging of the pool. So we'll have to come back later to try it out. But we have wonderful chats and dinner and computer sessions and more chatting, and no further details need be recorded.

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