LIVING IN THE BED OF A PICKUP : 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.