Still in the mountains outside Wikieup, AZ.

We have been in the mountains outside of Wikieup, AZ, for about 10 days.  We love it here.

We are camped on a spur off of a seldom-used road.  The entire spur (about one mile in length) can only be traveled by high clearance 4WD vehicles, and that is all we have seen on it (average about one/day).

We came into it on the side where the road is still fairly decent.

Here is a photo of us from the main road.  See us?  Toward the right, toward the bottom.



We are planning on staying about another week, and then driving to Las Vegas.

And why Las Vegas?

The answer is because we are doing something on this road trip that we have never been able to do before.  We are going to pick up our oldest grandson, Ian, at the Las Vegas Airport.  He is flying in from Seattle to go camping with us for a week!

It will be his first time with us when we boondock camp, so that will be fun for us--to show him how we do this life.

Ian is a camper and hiker.  The school he attends now does this kind of thing regularly (as their physical education activity I believe).

Anyway, we started planning this trip with him early last summer.  Can't believe it is only a week until we see him.

We are so excited.

Here are a few photos of our hikes in the area, and our activity when we take a hiking "rest day."

One sort of fun aspect of the spur we are on is that there is a gate at one end of it.

About 10 yards from the gate, though, the fence has been destroyed, apparently fairly long ago.  So the gate serves no useful purpose. 




The gate and the destroyed fence are visible here:

We are forever running into fences and gates on our hikes, since a lot of public land is used to run cattle.  Often the gates are somewhat difficult to open, being secured with wire around them and the fence post.  We carry a small crowbar for this purpose, and usually need both of us pushing at the same time in order to get the wire back so the gate is closed again.  

This gate, though, is the easiest one we have ever had to deal with, and wouldn't you know it, but after the first time we realized we didn't even need to open it.  We just walked around it through the large hole in the fence.

But everybody who comes through the spur in a vehicle dutifully obeys the two faded "Keep Gate Closed" signs.  They open the gate, drive through, and then close and attach it again.  Kind of nice.