We saw the fireball!!

While walking home from our daily morning swim about 5:30 a.m we looked up and saw what appeared to be a July 4th fireworks rocket, a big one.

We wondered if it was a meteor.

Well, today's paper had the story.  It was a meteor.  We just happened to catch it--out at the right time and facing the right direction.  It was extraordinary!

The story in the paper included several videos of the meteor.  They were obtained from peoples' doorbell cameras!  This photo does not do it justice.  It was much more spectacular.

Our photos are used for a State Park Campground

Cool!

https://www.campgroundviews.com/listing/beavertail-hill-state-park/

An hour from home.......and nobody around for three days

We took another three day/night camping/hiking trip.

What we have been doing is camping in a remote spot, and then hiking to see if we can push further into the wilderness with our Quail and Rat (i.e., with our small Teardrop camper and Toyota 4Runner).

We had found a spot on one of our previous hikes, and decided to go there.

Get this.  When we left it, we checked the clock and were back home, in our driveway in exactly ONE HOUR.  And over the three days and nights we were in our spot, NOBODY came close to us.  Because we were on a hill, we could see a segment of the road that led to the spur we were on, and in that time saw only 4-5 OHVs.  That's all.  And nobody on our spur.

In other words, we were as alone with the desert as it is possible to be.

Quiet, dark nights.

Here are some photos showing what we can do with our Quail/Rat.  Doing this kind of thing creates a lot of "desert pinstripes" (i.e., scratches) on both units, but we don't care.  That is what they are for.  And those desert pinstripes mean that virtually no one else, except those in OHVs, will come close to us.

 

We spent a year getting this combination together, and it has exceeded our expectations.  We can get to places almost unimaginable, even in our "Turtle" (i.e., Ford 350 Dually/Slide-in Lance camper, which can get to places that virtually no other camper can get to).

Here is our site:

We are in a Cholla Cactus Garden.  We have to watch our feet, but it is absolutely beautiful.

Look hard.  We're there!

We are in this photo at the base of the hill in the middle.

Here are four photos from our site:  North, South, East and West.  

Can you believe it?

Vicky gets up early in the morning to fix us coffee and breakfast.  She likes to do this........honest!  

AND I HAVE MY JOBS TOO!  One of them is to say: "Wow!  This coffee is great!"  And the other is to say:  "Wow!  This breakfast is GREAT!"

(We all have our strengths).

We had some nice hikes.  One reason we get up in the dark is so that we are not hiking in the heat of the day.

This particular desert has a feature of our favorite deserts in that one can hike cross-country.  Some deserts are impenetrable. 

In the afternoons, we sit and look at the desert.  No sounds except the wind and the birds.

Is this heaven?  No, it's the desert.

On our hikes we found another spot, even deeper into the wilderness, where we will go next. We can't wait. 

700 hikes

From January, 2012 to now.   Not walks.....hikes.  With backpacks, GPS, etc.  Over 3700 hundred miles.   All over the country.....in almost every state west of the Mississippi, and all through the South.  28 states in total.

To paraphrase Roy Blatty in Blade Runner:  "(We)'ve seen things you ..... wouldn't believe."

Here we are on our 700th hike:

What we learned camping/hiking three days and nights in the Quail

We have three long trips planned with the Rat (Toyota 4Runner) and Quail (Teardrop that always follows after) in the next 2 1/2 months.   We are going to go to the Mojave National Preserve, Death Valley, and the Grand Canyon---each of them for two weeks or so.

So we thought we had better take a camping/hiking trip in this setup to work out any kinks.  

We learned a lot.

We camped and hiked three days and nights on a spur off of a side road in Peralta Canyon.  In those three days, not one single vehicle, hiker, or mountain biker came by us.  It is almost impossible to believe we could get this type of isolation and only be one hour away from home.

To illustrate how unbelievable this is:  We left our camping spot late Saturday morning.  In an hour and a half we had driven to a car wash and cleaned our units, driven home, and had unpacked EVERYTHING.  We are that close to quality hiking and camping in places where no one else is around.

It was like we were the only people on the earth.  Quiet, peaceful. A great way to spend Valentine's Day.

As a mountain biker we ran into on one of our trails today said:  "Today is why we live here!"

We kept copious notes of everything that occurred to us, and everything we learned.

We know how to travel/camp/hike in the Turtle (Ford 350 with the Lance Camper).  We should know how to since we have driven all over the country, more than 55,000 miles, and have spent, in total nights, a bit under three out of the eight previous years living in the Turtle.  (That in itself is something so hard to believe that neither of us can quite wrap our brains around it)

But the Rat/Quail is a different animal (yuk yuk).  The main difference is that it is much smaller.  The sleeping area is quite small—44 inches by 74 inches.  We have learned that we can’t have extra blankets or clothes because then there is no room for us.  After some trial and error we got it down right.  Extra blankets start off as pillows.  Other extra blankets start off as padding under the sheets.  

We learned that the inside of the Quail is about 10 degrees warmer than it is outside.  Our body heat does that.  That is an important finding because it shows how different this type of camping is from tent camping where the tent itself provides no insulation.  We can also open our windows a bit to make it not feel stuffy and still keep the warmth.

Vicky has learned that she can easily get up and fix us coffee in our outside kitchen in high 30s weather and enjoy it.  I (Dan) try to do all I can for the joint effort, but this part of things is what Vicky does, and she enjoys it.  If she didn’t, we would work something else out.  There is something very ZEN about fixing coffee and breakfast in the dark, with the only light being the small lamp that comes on when she opens the kitchen door.  

We learned, or re-learned, about the importance of low sodium V-8 Juice.  We each drink one every day, usually on a hike.  We became smitten with V-8 years ago while cycling in Death Valley.  We were hot and famished--actually we were close to being dangerously overheated.  A guy stopped, gave us water, and he had a can of V-8.  We shared it, and have been fans ever since.  We believe this man has had a good life, as his Karma will carry him through.

We learned that we can fit some more storage area into the Quail.  We will be making some trips to Home Depot.  There is some unused space that we will be able to use.

We learned we can sleep really well in the Quail.  The mattress is very good, it is comfortable.  We learned what we need to do to make night-time trips out of the Quail.

We learned that we made the correct decision to upgrade the basic Quail by having an on-board battery and LED lights.  

We learned that the meals we have been able to create without refrigeration are filling, tasty, and nutritious.  When we are at home Vicky cooks with raw ingredients, so we weren’t sure how we would deal with not having a refrigerator.  But if one is careful you can get healthy and tasty stuff that requires little time (Thank you Vicky!!).  We aren’t eating Pork N Beans out of can for dinner and oatmeal packets for breakfast.  Food is important to us, and is one of our pleasures.  We can eat well out of the Quail.

We learned that we made the correct decision to get the absolute smallest and lightest Quail we could get.  We built it this way for being able to access very remote areas, because in those remote areas we may not always have a great deal of room to maneuver.  Having a small and light unit is helpful.  In addition, we can always quickly and easily disconnect the Quail from the Rat and turn it around manually.  Being small makes this more doable.

We learned that we can load the Quail and the Rat with everything we will need for a two-week trip to the most remote parts of our country.  We are not overloaded.  It is easy to find everything we need, we have plenty of space for 30 gallons of water.  We pack smartly, and label containers.  We know exactly where everything is. 

We each have our “responsibilities” and it works well to just trust the other person to do their part.

We learned we are ready for anything and anywhere.  Bring it on, desert!

Some photos of our experiment in the Rat/Quail.

Vicky's "kitchen:"

See Vicky?

Our Quail is in the middle of this photo:

See Dan?

Vicky hiking.  We hiked 15 miles in three days.  The hikes were great. 

Our hikes in Peralta Canyon:

Keys for the Rat/Quail camping

This is for real.  These are the keys we need for our vehicle (Rat) and teardrop (Quail).  And for the various locks we have so that we can leave our units unattended for extended periods of time in remote areas of the desert, which we do.

We've never had any problems with theft, unlike when we are back in "civilization."  But the difference is that if something would happen in the desert we could be stranded.

So we are extra careful, as we are extra careful about everything when we are out and about.  For example, we always carry two (for real) devices for summoning help via satellite.  We are not dependent upon having a cell signal (good thing because much of the time we don't have one).

The Quail has a separate key for the doors, for the kitchen/galley, for the storage container, and for the roof rack.  And then we have three keys for two locks for the hitch and a boot for the Quail so it can't be towed.   That's just the Quail, and then we have various other locks for the car, devices, etc.

Currently one of us carries an entire set at all times (for example while hiking), and the other carries only the subset that we need to gain access to our Rat and Quail.

Everything we have that requires a key makes sense to have when you are totally dependent upon just yourselves, but, my golly, what a set of keys!   

Dry run for the Mojave National Preserve, Death Valley National Park, and the Grand Canyon

We have three major camping/hiking trips planned in the next 2 1/2 months.

The first is to the Mojave National Preserve, a huge desert area that we have been to many times.  The beauty of this place is in large part due to the fact that nobody goes there.  It is not like a National Park where there are places where people can park, walk 5 minutes, take photos, and then leave.  There are no "photo spots" there.  There are no lodges or motels or hotels.  There is a (very nice) Visitor's Center and campground.  That's it.  Other than that, you are on your own.

Consequently, no one ever says "Hey!  Let's go to the Mojave National Preserve!"

...well, except us.

and, in fact, this is where we have asked our children to mix our ashes together and spread them after we die.  We want to walk through eternity in the Mojave Desert.  It makes us very happy to think this way.

As we said, we have been there many times in our "Turtle" (our Ford 350 Dually with a Lance Camper).  Although it can get to many remote places, and places where campers usually cannot access, there have been many roads that we couldn't explore because that rig is too large, wide, and heavy.

The Turtle:

But now we have the "Rat" and the "Quail"  (our Toyota 4Runner and our off-road Teardrop).  Now we can go anywhere.  And we will.

The Rat and the Quail:

The second place we are going this spring is to Death Valley National Park.  Once again, we have been there many times in our Turtle, camping in dispersed areas that are not accessible by most vehicles or RVs.  However, we could tell that as well as our Turtle can get us into remote areas, it is limited by its size, length, width, and weight.  Last April we took our 4Runner to the back areas of Death Valley and loved it.

That trip was cut short by notification that our home had sustained wind damage.  So this year we will be planning on being in the back areas for about two weeks.  We will take the Rat (4Runner) and the Quail (off-road Teardrop).  One of the areas we hope so much to see is the Saline Valley, an area that even our rugged 350 Ford couldn't get us to, and a place that we have looked at longingly for several years.

The final trip this spring will be back to the Grand Canyon, a trip that was cut short last fall because a windstorm destroyed our tent and equipment.  Now, though, we have the Quail, which is built for just this kind of thing.  We will, once again, hike the rim of the Grand Canyon in areas that can only be accessed by rugged vehicles like ours.

Because we have only taken one one-night trip in the Quail, we decided to take a "dry run" in it this coming week.  We are packing as if we are going to one of these longer trips, but are actually only going about an hour from home.  We will learn a lot, and that's the goal.  (and, in fact, we anticipate having a lot of fun camping in a place where we anticipate almost no one else being, and taking many fun hikes).

We make lists, review them.  We have to plan food that can be easily prepared over a propane stove.  We need all of our medicines.  In Death Valley we will not have any place to restock water, so need about 35 gallons of water for two weeks.  For our practice run, today we bought several gallons of water in the size of container that fits well into the plastic containers we will use on our long camping trips.  While checking out at the grocery store, the woman behind us asked, curiously and good-naturedly, "Was there a sale on water?"

It is exciting to be planning for these adventures.  We anticipate finding places on them where we will perhaps not see a single soul for several days.  Just us, the desert mountains, the stars, the coyotes serenading us at night, interesting and beautiful hikes, and peace.

Below are photos that show our previous camping spots in the Mojave National Preserve, Death Valley National Park, and the Grand Canyon:

We are not easy to see in some of these photos, so look hard.  We are in all of them.  In the Rat/Quail this spring we will be even more difficult too spot!!!

 Copper Cove, Mojave National Preserve:

Death Valley National Park:

The Grand Canyon:

Camping and Hiking on my birthday....with buzzers......who always wave!

On Forest Road 172 in the Tonto National Forest…….an hour and 15 minutes from home.

Once again we find that we can have wonderful camping and hiking very close to home (32 miles).  There was a price to be paid for that ease of access this time, though, which is that there were more people in the area than for places that require more of a drive, especially on Saturday.  

But that is a small price to pay because in these places that are close to home the people who are here are almost exclusively ones who are in “buzzers” (our term for OHVs).  So they buzz by our camping spot several times a day, but within a minute they and their noise are gone, and it is once again quiet.   It is a total of maybe 15 minutes a day of disruption.  That’s all.  So what?  And they only do this from about 9:00 in the morning to 3:30 in the afternoon, so the mornings, late afternoons, and nights are totally quiet.

Saturday was is an exception, though, because there were a lot more people out in this area.  But we still had no problems sleeping or enjoying ourselves.  There is also a lot of target practice in these areas—guys come out with their families, set up a target against a hill, and have fun making noise.  That was also mostly on Saturday.

This weekend was possibly a bit unusual though because it was Super Bowl weekend.   On Sunday we saw only a few people.  Saturday may have felt unusually busy because everybody crammed their weekend time into one day.  Who knows. 

On one of our hikes we chatted with a couple of guys in one of the buzzers.  I asked how much he paid for it:  He said $28000 right off the lot, but then he added a lot to it.  And that was for a two-seater not a four-seater.  Wow.  That's getting close to what we paid for the 4Runner, and while the 4Runner can’t do these roads as fast as a buzzer can, there aren’t many roads buzzers could do that we couldn’t do.  The guy just loved his buzzer.  Isn’t that great?  And we told him that we have seen a lot of them and everybody in them was smiling and having a good time.  He agreed.  To each his/her own.

And here is something we have spent some time trying to figure out.  We have some theories, but that’s all.  People in buzzers virtually always wave to us.  It is kind of like it is the culture to greet other people in this way.  It’s very nice, and we like it.  Leisure World is sort of like that—people wave to us when we are cycling for example, or when they walk by our home if we are on our front patio.  But even in comparison to LW, people in buzzers throw up their arms in a wave consistently.  So do most people in pickups, and then slightly less so people we see in sedans.  There is something about the vehicle that correlates with waving to people who you’ll never see again.

We think it is because, in general, the people in buzzers are happy doing what they do.      

We took nice hikes.  Some were on the rough Forest off-roads where the OHVs go, some were in washes, some were cross country, and one was completely unique.  

And I had my birthday party here!  I got to put in a request for my dinner, so chose hamburger tacos.    And carrot cake for my birthday cake.  The way Vicky makes carrot cake it’s like getting delicious fruits and vegetables (fat free cream cheese, nuts, home-made apple sauce instead of oil, lots of carrots——YUM!) and call it a treat.  The recipe calls for 1/2 cup of nuts.  She put in 5 cups.  OLD MAN HUMOR ALERT:  I think she got “carroteed” away with nuts.  da-da-ching.  I love her.

And I got the coolest gifts.  Here they are before I unwrapped them.  One was wrapped in a real-man’s paper, complete with hunting guns, etc.  The other with a bunch of bears doing ballet.  My wife obviously thinks I’m a gurly-man.

My long cycling shorts now have probably 8000 miles on them, and they are worn.  She got me a new pair.  It is important to look cycling chic when we are using our $400 tandem riding around Leisure World, especially when we are wearing our Flying Nun green hats.  And then she found a Saturday Evening Post that was dated my exact birthday.  Not only that, but she also found one with her exact birthday.   Both of us were born on Saturdays--proof enough that we were meant to be together.

And she gave me one of our two remaining Whidbey Island wines, from the winery that was right next door to our Whidbey Island home.  A nice memory.   Sangiovese is the grape that is used in Chianti when it is produced in Italy.


Here I am eating tacos in our favorite Mexican restaurant (i.e., the desert):

But I have to say that being 72 hits me.  Turning 70 hit me, but now I am “in my 70s.”  I don’t want to be in my 70s.  I want to be in my 30s.  Or, better yet, 8, although there would probably be a law against being married to Vicky if I was.  Wouldn’t matter.  I’d just break it if there was.  

Our hikes:

What we find is that as soon as we get away from the main roads we can hike in solitude.  

One of our hikes was particularly interesting.  In the distance from our camper, cut into the hills, it appeared as if there might be an old railroad line.  For one of our hikes we decided to try to get to this line, see what it is, and maybe hike on it.    

We hiked off-trail to get up to it.

And found that indeed it was an old railroad.  The right-of-way is no longer used for a railroad but it must have been a convenient place to lay water pipes.  What all of this was at one time will have to wait until we can get home and do some research. 

You can tell that the rust on the rails and the deterioration of the ties means that it was an old line and no longer used:

There was a very old spur that had an unknown purpose, lost to time.  

Vicky tried to make the train exit onto the spur, but it had rusted shut many years ago:

Spur from the other side.  Very old:

It ended at someone’s private property (looked like a horse farm), just before a bridge.   I wonder if this means that this farm owns a train trestle made of wood.  Wouldn’t that be neat?  I wonder if it’s for sale.  Always wanted one.  Leisure World probably won’t allow it, though.

Photos of our other hikes.   

 

 

 

In the afternoons we would just chill out and look at the desert.

A great way to turn 72.

Our hikes:

Addendum:

The rail line appears to be the Magma-Superior short-line railway.  It was active between the years of 1920-1943.