Our Most Spectacular Dispersed Campsites!!!

We have now camped in over 130 dispersed sites.  By "dispersed" we mean that they are not in campgrounds.  Instead, they are on public lands, usually as far away from "civilization" as our rigs will take us.

As we mentioned in a previous blog post, we have camped in the rigs/tents shown in these photos over three years total, in less than nine years. 

We thought it would be fun to put together a slide show of some of our more spectacular dispersed sites.  In some of the photos we are hard to see, but we are there.  

From all of these sites we have taken hikes, usually in every direction.  We stayed a week to two weeks in some of these places--they became our home.

And this is the most hard-to-believe fact:  On none of these hikes from these sites have we ever seen another hiker.   Recently we saw a cyclist.  That's it.  

It's like we own all of these lands, which in a sense we do.  All citizens collectively own them. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This one requires an explanation.  We were literally a few steps from the Grand Canyon, on the north side.  Nobody close to us for days!

Find Elmo....

Can you find Elmo?  He is Dan and my new pet!

Actually I was cutting our prodigious Tecoma Sparky bush and I thought he was a leaf....until my fingers touched him.  (Note to myself: even when an Arizona plant doesn’t have thorns or spikes, ALWAYS wear gloves.)

We have never seen any thing like this.

Look at Elmo holding onto the branch with his little “feet.”

Elmo got quite upset with me when I tried to measure how tall he was.  I was watching out for his spiked tail, and then he faced off with me and looked like he wanted to bite me.  I remembered the old western rule, “Don’t bring a knife to a gun fight.”  With Elmo the new Graybill rule is, “Don’t bring a camera to a tooth fight.” 

Elmo won. I backed off.

When stretching out as he crawls, Elmo is five inches long.  A monster insect with eyes that reflect red in the light!

Upon extensive research, I found that Elmo is quite harmless to humans, but he does love to eat up all the leaves on my flowering shrubs.

He is a Manduca Sextra (L.), commonly known as a Tobacco Hornworm, named after the spiky horn on the end of his body.  Elmo is a caterpillar.

And someday he will transform into this....

A beautiful Carolina Sphinx Moth with a five inch wing span!

It was noted in an article I read that children like to keep the hornworm for a pet.  We have several grandchildren that are are vying to have Elmo, but the Post Office refused to ship him on the grounds that he is perishable.

“You guys are studs!”

This is what a young couple exclaimed as we were driving up a steep solid rock road.  We were headed deep into the Superstition Mountains north of Superior.  Dan was driving our Rat (Toyota 4Runner TRD) and we were pulling our little Quail (TC teardrop trailer) behind us.

After hours of studying my numerous forest service maps, my hunter app, and satellite images on Google maps, I had identified a possible sweet spot to camp.  The campsite was near the Arizona Trail and countless old 4wheel drive dirt/rock/sandy roads.  So there would be many days of hiking possible from this area.  And even better, the spot was several miles into the mountains of the Tonto National Forest, so we could be assured to have the quiet and isolation that we seek.

Just a few moments before the young couple declared that we were “studs,” I had noted to Dan that, “we may have gotten ourselves in over our head this time.”  The road was VERY rugged and getting worse around each narrow steep corner.  Dan replied, “There’s no way to go but forward.  We can’t turn around."

It was all worth it when the couple in their twenties stopped to let us know that they thought we were “studs!”  After seventy plus years, we are finally studs!

The couple added that they were impressed to find us on this road in our rig.   They were slowly maneuvering the technical 4-wheel drive road with their rig, which happened to be a real Studmobile.  It was a top of the line, fully decked out OHV Polaris just like this one:

Here we are climbing the hill to our campsite.

 

Our campsite was definitely worth all the effort (and nervous excitement) of driving there!

The hiking was spectacular in every direction from our campsite.

This geological rock formation is called “The Crack.”  It is 20-30’ deep and strangely beautiful.

This stately old saguaro was at least forty feet tall.  An adult saguaro cactus is around 125 years old and can weigh 6 tons or more and grow 50 feet tall.  

We hiked along part of the road that we had traversed with our Rat and Quail on our drive into the mountains.  It was much steeper and more treacherous than the pictures show.

On all our hikes we could see our Rat and Quail nestled high up in the hills.  Can you see it in the center of this picture?

As usual, in the afternoons we enjoyed sitting in the shade of our Quail.  

Dan started building and painting a 1914 Mercedes Racer model car.

I knitted a winter hat for Aryana to match the purple sweater that I knitted for her last summer.  The sweater fits her now.  This hat will keep her sweet ears and head warm during the cold snowy winter.

(December 1st Aryana is all bundled up for a ride in the car.  There’s snow on the ground where she lives and Aryana is snuggly warm in the sweater and hat that I knitted for her.  We love getting pictures of our grandchildren!)

I started knitting my first pair of mittens on this camping trip.  On Dan and my early morning hikes my hands get awfully cold!

My first knit project was a tortoise sweater that I made the summer that I turned 13 years old.  I wore it the first day of school in the eighth grade.  I was so proud of it.  

But in all of my fifty-seven years of knitting, I have never made a pair of mittens. Here I am on our front patio proudly showing Dan the VERY first pair of  mittens that I ever knitted!  It looks like I’m a criminal surrendering to the police....

Every afternoon we were camping, we enjoyed the view of our lovely desert and the majestic Superstition Mountains in the distance.

We love the solitude and isolation we find out in the desert.  The millions of stars in the night sky were  extra bright on this trip as we were camping during the new moon cycle.  Often there is a breeze that rocks our rig gently throughout the night and we sleep like babies.

But sometimes the wind rages across the desert and slams into our rig.  And then our little Quail rocks and rolls and sleep is near impossible.  That is what happened on this trip onto the desert.  After our second sleepless night and with more wind predicted, we decided to return home to Nuestra Casa a day early.

It was a good decision, but, as stated by another stud,  “WE'LL BE BAAAACK."  This area is only 42 miles from home.  It is spectacularly beautiful and the hiking opportunities seem endless.  Best of all, we can find solitude and peace here. 

And only a couple of “studs” would travel up into these rugged mountains with a rig like ours!  

We’re pretty proud of being called studs.  (I am now calling Dan my Stud Muffin....he still calls me his treasure).