The rest of the road trip

We drove to Arizona after Joshua Tree National Park and headed to Tucson, as we had never visited before. Tucson is a cool small city with the University of Arizona, lots of good food and nice hiking in the surrounding areas. We visited one of Erik’s former students Adam, who took us on a fantastic hike in the mountains above the City.

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We also visited the Desert Museum, ate tons of good food, and hung out at some of the college student bars.

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We headed south from Tucson to Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument which is on the border with Mexico. This was a park we visited on our cross country trip from Miami and loved it. We got a spot in the campground for the entire week to include the Thanksgiving holiday. Our camping spot included a ramada to help with the shade. The hood of the car had to be kept open to discourage pack rats from making a home in our engine.

We hiked every day, cooked yummy food and enjoyed using our new dutch oven over charcoal. The Thanksgiving meal included turkey cooked in the dutch oven, stuffing, mashed potatoes, green beans and pumpkin pie. Not a bad line up for cooking while camping!

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After Thanksgiving, we returned to Tucson briefly to replace our tent which finally wore out from our road trip from Miami, and numerous car camping trips. We made it last as long as we could, but with duct taped poles, broken shock cords and finally irreparable broken zippers, we decided it was time. Thankfully, the local REI had a used tent for 50% off that we purchased and works perfectly. It was only used one time before it was returned by the previous owner who returned it because it wasn’t the right size for them. So happy that we basically got a new tent for half price. It even came pre-seasoned with campfire smell! We moved on to Madera Canyon which is in national forest land south of Tucson. This was birdwatching mecca. We hiked every day and saw some neat birds that we don’t see in Washington. One evening, a coatimundi joined us in our campsite. A coatimundi is a bizarre looking racoon/monkey like animal that neither of us have seen before.

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While in Tucson, we saw a brochure that advertised Arizona’s wine regions. Arizona wine? We had never heard of such a thing so had to check it out. We headed north and got a campsite SW of Sedona which was within walking distance to three wineries. The wineries were super laid back, had music and really nice outdoor spaces to sip wine and hang out. The wine was also pretty decent.

Our friend Dan who has his boat moored in the slip next to ours lives in Arizona, so we took the opportunity to meet up with him. He suggested the Valley of Fire State Park in Nevada. This park is located east of Las Vegas. What a cool place! We camped around these huge rock formations, did some fabulous hiking in cool scenery and saw some petroglyphs. So glad we got to meet up with Dan and check out a new place.

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On our drive out of the park, we saw a bunch of Big Horned Sheep. Another first for us.

After Valley of Fire, we headed back into California to visit Death Valley National Park. We visited this park on our cross county trip from Miami, but our trip was cut short due to my spraining an ankle while hiking. This visit we went to the north end of the park which was new to us. There was snow in the forecast in a few days, so we only stayed two nights. Not wanting to miss out, we crammed lots of stuff in one day. We hiked around the circumference of Ubehebe Crater which was formed by a volcanic type steam explosion. Then down to the bottom of the crater and back (we just couldn’t resist). Then off to another hike through a slot canyon, topping the day off with a visit to some big sand dunes, relaxing with a beer. Pretty exhausting, but worth it.

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We put lots of miles on our hiking boots. These used to be dark brown.

Given the snow in the forecast, we decided to make headway towards home. We stopped in Bend, Oregon as we had heard lots of good things about the town. Bend had some nice breweries and food and we walked around town and along the river as the wet snow was coming down. We spent some time in the outdoor hot tub at the hotel, running back to our room through the snow in our flip flops.

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After clearing snowy mountain passes, we made it over the Cascades and back home to Anacortes. It was a great trip, but it is always nice to get home.