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Some friends of ours that we first met in early 2017 camping next to us in a casino parking lot here in Tucson and had most recently got together with about a month ago in Quartzsite, were camping just a few miles from our campground. We made plans to get together again and head out for dinner. They are snowbirds from Washington state and usually spend their winters in the desert southwest, so when we are doing the same, we usually try to get together. We drove by their boondocking spot to pick them up and headed to Taco Giro. We enjoyed the meal and their company and took the time to get caught up.
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| Dinner With Friends |
For quite some time, we have been debating whether we would upgrade our internet capabilities. We have had our phones and one tablet on Verizon plans and the second tablet on a T-Mobile plan for quite some time. This had been working fairly well for us. Any of the devices on Verizon could be used as a hotspot for our laptops and the T-Mobile plan had a feature that allowed us to stream video from multiple services without going against the data limit. For heavy internet usage, we would typically head to the local library. There, we could download tv shows or movies onto our devices that could be shown on our tv without the fear of buffering or going thru our data limits.
We were seriously considering taking the step up to Starlink and were talking with fellow RVers we came upon who were already using it to see how it had been working for them. There had even been one presentation at the rally we had in Quartzsite last month that was reselling a package from Starlink that sounded really good. After a little research, we decided what he was doing might be just a little “too good to be true” and stayed away from buying thru him. Our biggest fear with going the Starlink path was just how frequently the plans were changing and how the cost just kept going up.
During our search for better internet options, we stumbled upon the Calyx Institute. Founded back in 2010, the mission of this organization is to educate the public about data privacy in the digital world. One side benefit of this organization is they had a deal worked out with Sprint to be able to provide members a hotspot that has no data caps or speed throttling imposed on its use. When T-Mobile and Sprint merged recently, the plan has continued on the new combined network. We watched all sorts of reviews of the hardware and plan and decided it sounded like it could work for us. The unusual aspect of Calyx is that we aren’t really buying a T-Mobile plan with them but instead making a donation to become a member and one of the perks of joining is a baseball cap and a 5G hotspot. The initial fee is $750 for the year and includes the physical hotspot device and SIM. This works out to be under $63 per month for what is supposed to be unlimited high speed data. Subsequent years will only be $500 (under $42 per month).
By going this route, we don’t really have a plan with the Calyx Institute. So if they were to close down, we would be left without anything to show for it except the hotspot. But since they have been around for over a dozen years, we feel it is a low risk and will give it a try. The hotspot came a few days after we joined and I got it setup and working. We had pretty good T-Mobile coverage at our campsite in Tucson and were getting speed in the 10 to 20 Mbps range - not blazing fast but plenty good enough for what we typically do. I connected all of our devices (smart tv, Fire Sticks, phones, tablets) and found things worked nicely.
A benefit of being 2 months behind on writing this blog post, I can actually give a progress report on how it has been working. So far we are quite pleased. It has worked at each of the 18 or so camping spots in the past couple months. We used 164 GB of data that first month and about the same amount during our second month. Most of the time our speeds are well over 10 Mbps and have even achieved over 600 in Hot Springs Arkansas! We have been able to cancel the plan on one of our tablets and will likely be able to go with a cheaper plan for our other devices on Verizon. So far so good.
We headed out for a hike before a cold front was supposed to move thru the area. We had a beautiful day although the winds were starting to pick up already. Enchanted Hills Park is just a couple miles from Cat Mountain but not part of Tucson Mountain Park. The trail we picked was the El Grupo and Tecolate Loop. It’s just over 4 miles long and has only 500 feet of elevation gain. The parking area wasn’t too crowded but at least part of this trail is designated for mountain biking as well, so we need to be on the lookout for riders.
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| Enchanted Hills Trailhead |
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| Lots of Saguaros |
We took the loop in the clockwise direction and had some rather rocky sections. Just as I was coming to the conclusion that this trail would not be fun (or possible) for us to mountain bike, two riders and their dog came up on us from behind and passed us making it look easy. As we worked our way around the loop, we had some very nice distance views too.
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| Following Rocky Trail |
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| Distant Mountains |
This park has an abundance of saguaro cacti but we noticed one particular saguaro that had 10 small arms all starting at nearly the same point. It would be interesting to see what happens over the next couple of decades. Will one arm win out or will they all keep growing? At the 1.2 mile point is the left hand turn for the trail to the top of Enchanted Peak. This part of the hike is about 1.5 of the total miles but includes the majority of the climbing. We did have one geocache to find just before heading up so we had that added incentive to do the peak.
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| Arm Explosion |
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| Approaching Enchanted Peak |
It wasn’t too bad of a climb and the views were worth it. Of course the winds were even worse up at the top and baseball caps needed to be tightened up to avoid losing them. A sign at the top shows a picture of the views and includes all the named peaks so it helps to get our bearings straight to some of the other hills and mountains we have visited over the years. The hike back down and back around the rest of the loop to the car was nice and we discovered that we likely could mountain bike 75% or more of the trail as long as we skipped the rough section.
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| View of Nearby Neighborhood |
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| Sign Atop Enchanted Peak |
The cold front did move thru overnight and we awoke to 2 inches of snow. Knowing that it was going to warm up rather quickly, we put on our boots and headed out into the desert trails just behind the campground. Getting a snowfall in Tucson isn’t unheard of but it is a rather uncommon event so we wanted to see some of the desert plants covered with snow.
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| Snowfall in Tucson |
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| Bird Perched on Saguaro |
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| Snowy Jumping Cholla |
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| Frosted Prickly Pear Cactus |
It was a very short lived winter wonderland. Much of the snow was already starting to melt and once the sun came out from behind the clouds, it would be gone. The nearby mountains were dusted with snow but some of the higher peaks to the west appeared to have much more significant amount of snow. Having left western New York many years ago, we have been successful at avoiding too much snow and this little blast of winter was fine by us since it showed off all the various cacti with just a frosting of snow.
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| Closeup of Cholla |
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| Nearby Peak Lightly Covered |
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| Snow Covered Saguaro |
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| Snow Covered Barrel Cactus |
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| Ice Drop on Saguaro Needle |
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| Barrel Cactus with Fruit |
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| Distance Mountains to West |
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| Nearby Mountains |
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| Spineless Prickly Pear |
A couple of days later we were back to having beautiful weather and headed to the northern portion of Saguaro National Park. There are numerous trails that start in the Picture Rocks portion of the park. We plan to combine part of Picture Rocks Wash and the Ironwood Forest Trails. If our plan works out, we should end up with a 4 mile loop. The bulk of the hike will be within the national park but about 2/3 mile will be just outside the park boundary.
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| Starting Out on Wash |
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| Unusual Saguaro Pattern |
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| Bright Poppy |
We do need to cross a road a couple of times but we manage to safely get across. There was a geocache to find as well as some petroglyphs in the rock wall next to wash. Just across from the petroglyphs was a developed walkway labeled the Way of the Cross. It seems to be a loop with the Stations of the Cross spaced along the walkway. We took a quick look but knew we had some hiking to do and didn’t want to get too sidetracked.
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| Rock Outcropping Along the Wash |
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| Petroglyphs |
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| Artwork at Way of the Cross |
The bulk of this hike is in a wash. The sand wasn’t too difficult to walk in but it isn’t our favorite type of trail. When we hit the intersection with the Ironwood Forest Trail, we hang a right and start the climb up from the wash. It wasn’t particularly steep and was nice to be walking on firmer ground. This part of the hike was the prettiest section. We had some distance views of snow capped mountains and some of poppies were blooming adding bright color to the landscape.
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| Following the Wash |
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| Distant Mountains |
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| Bright Poppies Along Trail |
We had joined a group called RVillage when we started camping. I like to think of it as Facebook for RVers. While it is intended to be a social network for us to meet other members during our travels, we tended to not use it for that purpose. Instead, our main use of it was to get (and provide) information about Elks Lodges. One member (Donna) had taken it upon herself to create listings within RVillage for all Elks Lodges that provide some sort of camping facilities. There were several thousand members in that subgroup and we would all provide info and photos from lodges we stayed at. For those lodges that didn’t have any information about what services if any they provide, Donna would see that a member checked into a lodge in the database and she would contact them for detailed information about the lodge so she could include it in the services provided section. We had come to rely on the RVillage Elks Lodge database to get a sense of what to expect at a lodge before we arrive.
Well, at the end of February, we received a notice that RVillage would be shutting down at the end of March. Lots of the more frequent Elks members within RVillage started to contact one another to see what this would mean and how we could either continue something similar or at least grab the data from the website prior to it going away. I even got Donna’s number and spoke to her a couple of times to see what strategies we could take. It was clear there wasn’t some existing website or system that could import the Elks Lodge database and continue in a similar manner as before. Chris and I took the approach that we should scrape as much of the data from RVillage as possible so that we at least had a static point in time regarding each of the nearly 800 lodges in the database.
For more than 3 weeks, we worked on extracting the data in a form that we could use and managed to complete the task prior to RVilage’s demise. We worked on how to create a map of the lodges and have all the info in a Google Map as well as in a format we can use in our geocaching app. We even went as far as to color code the lodges to identify those that only have dry camping, or electric or sewer facilities. It also includes all the other lodges that don’t have RV camping listed. It was quite the undertaking and consumed much of March in the process.
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| Google Map Showing Elks Lodges |
We met up with our friends nearby again before they started their long journey back to the Pacific Northwest. Barrio Brewing worked out well. They had lots of good beer choices and decent food as well. Until we meet again.
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| Outside Barrio Brewing Company |
In the middle of March, the campground had a concert for the residents. Our camping spot was situated such that we didn’t really need to take a chair down to the stage to hear the band. I didn’t catch the name of the group but they played plenty of songs we knew and could sing along with from our rig.
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| Band Plays at Campground |
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| The Crowd Enjoys the Music |
With all the work we were doing on the Elks database, we really only got in one more decent hike before heading out. The Painted Hills Loop is in a park to the northeast of camp. It is just under a 4 mile loop with only 350 feet of elevation gain. It was another pretty desert hike. There are lots of cactus and other pointy plants. We only had one cache to find along this trail but it was still a nice one.
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| Painted Hills Trailhead |
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| Desert Trail |
There are some good distance views along the way and we had the place nearly to ourselves. We did spot our first snake in quite some time and it didn’t bother to get out of the way very quickly so I managed to get a picture. It didn’t look like a rattlesnake and as we stepped closer, it slithered away. We have done many hikes in southern Arizona and have seen our fair share of different cacti, but we stumbled upon a first for us. A rather large saguaro cactus with a couple of arms, actually had a prickly pear cactus growing out of the joint between the saguaro’s main trunk and one arm. I can only assume a bird pooped out a seed from a prickly pear and it somehow took root. It must be getting some water from the larger cactus to have survived long enough to grow to its current size.
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| Trail Goes Up the Hill |
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| Snake Poses on Trail |
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| Prickly Pear Grows on Saguaro |
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| Military Helicopter Flies By |
Our two months in Tucson seemed to go by in a flash. We now have over a 3000 mile drive to complete over the next 6 weeks. We have a few designated stops but we will be winging most of it.
