AZ to NM to TX

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Heading out from our 2 month stay in Tucson, we had 4 weeks with no reservations made as we head up to northern Indiana to have our solar system installed later in April. That’s not to say we didn’t have a general route scoped out and ideas of where our stopping points might be. We have relatives in the Dallas/Fort Worth area and plan to spend some time there before we head north. But Dallas is almost 1000 miles from Tucson so we will have a handful of stops along the way.

The first stop is just over 90 miles away. We are heading to my “home” Elks Lodge in Willcox Arizona. There are 28 campsites in the area just east of the lodge. Each site has electricity and water and there is a dump station on the grounds. We head in to register and pay and decide to have a beer or two while watching one of the NCAA basketball games. Willcox isn’t a big town and while there may be some things to see in town, we are really staying here to be able to visit Chiricahua National Monument about a 40 mile drive from the lodge. We have been to Chiricahua a couple of times already, but it is one of our favorite places to visit and would likely rank higher than several National Parks we have stopped at.

The next morning we head into the park. There was some sort of bicycle ride taking place on the roads to Chiricahua but fortunately the road has very little traffic so passing the riders isn’t too much of a problem. We have done several of the hikes with the park in past visits and were having a hard time deciding whether we should repeat one of our all time favorite hikes or try one we have not done before. We decide to go with a new hike for us - the Natural Bridge Trail. Listed as 4.7 miles out and back with over 1000 feet of elevation gain, it sounded like a good one to check out. Being a less popular trail, the roadside parking area is only large enough for a few cars but there was room for us.

Chiricahua National Monument

View Near Trailhead

It is a very pretty hike. It may not have as many special named rock formations as the Heart of Rocks Loop but it is still quite nice. The first mile of the hike is uphill. It’s not too extreme but we are back up in elevation peaking at just over 6000 feet so we feel it a bit.

Rocky Ridge

Then the trail starts to descend. At 1.5 miles out, I notice my Garmin has a point of interest called “Picket Park”. We kept a close eye out for a sign but didn’t spot anything that designated this feature. We assumed it had something to do with a rock formation but turns out to be an area with tall pine trees near Picket Creek.

We Assumed This to Be Picket Park

About a quarter mile from the end of the trail, I noticed motion several hundred feet off the trail. The brush was fairly thick so I only caught a glimpse of two animals with a long tails. It didn’t seem large enough to be a mountain lion and I wasn’t even sure if these lived in this area. A fox would have a much bushier tail so I was at a loss as to what I had seen. Of course, I wasn’t able to get a picture of them before they disappeared into the brush. Nor could I point it out to Chris fast enough for her to verify I wasn’t imagining it. We made it to the end of the trail and the natural bridge that the trail is named for.

Need to Look Closely to See Natural Bridge

Nice View at Lunch Stop

Unfortunately the bridge is about 500 feet across the valley and could easily be missed if we didn’t know to look for it. Even if the natural bridge itself was a bit disappointing, the views from here were quite nice. We sat down and enjoyed our lunch. There were 2 other groups doing the same thing soaking in the beauty. The hike back was uneventful and even though I was extra vigilant to look for the animal I had seen earlier, I never spotted it.

View on the Hike Back

We made it back to the car and decided to drive the rest of the way up the hill to Massai Point since we knew the views from there were excellent. We had only gone a mile or so when we saw something running along the side of the road up ahead of us. There was one car in front of us and they had slowed down to in order to watch. There were two animals with long tails that were running up the middle of the road following the double yellow line. They were maintaining a pretty good pace - 9 MPH according to my speedometer.

We followed for a bit and each time there was a car coming down the road towards them, they veered off the left side of the road into the brush only to re-emerge once the oncoming car had gone past and then immediately headed to the center of the road. At one point they both stopped and the one in the lead, turned and started to fight the other one. We could hear them although most of the action took place immediately in front of the car ahead of us. After brief encounter, they headed into the brush and we were able to continue up the road uninterrupted. Up at the point, I had enough cell coverage that I was able to look up what we had seen. Coatimundi are fairly common in the Chiricahua Mountains. We have likely seen some in a zoo at some point but never in the wild and never behaving so interestingly.

A Pair of Coatimundi Fighting

We did a short walk around Massai Point and talked with a bicyclist that arrived just as we were heading to the overlook. He was doing the ride solo but was aware of the race that had come through earlier in the day. I was suitably impressed since he was in his 70’s doing this serious of a bike ride. The views from the overlook and nature trail were quite remarkable. The really good hikes head down into the rock formations that we see from up here. We were tired from our earlier hike so we only did the short nature walk out of the parking lot before heading home. Chiricahua is definitely a special place.

Beautiful View at Massai Point

Stone Overlook Tower

We did one other thing out of our stop in Willcox. We had a geocache we needed to go find. The cache itself wasn’t necessarily all that special but it was where this cache was located. We have spent over 500 nights in Arizona and we had found at least one geocache in 14 of the 15 counties that make up the state and the remaining one was just a bit north of Willcox. So we drove up and did a short walk to find a cache in that last county. So far we have only completed all the counties in two states - Ohio and Arizona.

View at Cache in Graham County AZ

Our next stop would be another Elks Lodge in Las Cruces New Mexico. We haven’t stopped here before but they have recently upgraded their RV parking and now have 6 full hookup sites on hard pack gravel with a concrete patio slab next to each site. It is just under a 200 mile drive, so we won’t be getting in super early but we hope there will be spots available. It looks like it should be a relatively easy drive on Interstate 10. Much of this part of the country is fairly desolate and flat. It is know for some pretty bad dust storms but we had nearly perfect driving conditions. With a short stop for lunch and a few miles of construction to slow us down, we arrived at the lodge mid afternoon. As luck would have it, there was one spot still available. Instead of unhitching in the large empty parking lot, we angled the rig so nobody would be able to sneak into this spot. Our timing was pretty good because another rig pulled in shortly after we got setup.

We head into the bar to fill out the registration form and even needed to show our proof of insurance for the motorhome to park there. We had heard that this lodge has some really good burgers with hatch chilies to top them off, so we came back over for dinner and enjoyed the meal and the company of other members.

Our plan was to stay 2 nights before moving on and explore some of the area on our second day here. Unfortunately we had run into an issue with our black tank sensors. Even with an empty tank, our toilet thought it was full and required us to use the “emergency” flush mode. So instead of going for a hike, we dug into the basement storage areas to access the sensors that were messing us up. After a lengthy troubleshooting session, I came to the conclusion that the sensors had failed.

We could order replacements but they were not real cheap plus I would need to disassemble things again once we got the new ones. The other option was to remove the sensors from the side of the tank (they are external and held in place with double sided tape), and attach them in such a manner that they point to open space which makes them think the tank is empty. After six plus years of living in this, we have a really good sense of how quickly our various tanks take to fill so not having these sensors working properly was not a big risk for us. It was a rather simple solution but did consume most of our day. I guess we will need to come back to this wonderful lodge if we really want to explore the area around Las Cruces.

We still had about 700 miles to go before we got to the Dallas area. We likely would have broken this leg in Texas into 4 travel days but we received word that Chris’ father had passed away while we were in Las Cruces. He had lived in the Dallas area so our timing was amazingly coincidental since we don’t make it to this part of the country very frequently. So we decided to string three longer travel days in a row to make it there sooner. Our first stop was in Pecos Texas at an Escapees campground called TRA Park. It’s a rather large campground and there aren’t a lot of people camped here so we have no problem getting a spot after a 255 mile drive.

The following day is a 205 mile drive to Sweetwater Texas where we spend the night at the Bar J Hitching Post Campground. The third day would be a 235 mile drive to the Elks Lodge in Grapevine Texas. They have 5 RV spots with water and electric but no dump station. Our plan is to spend 9 nights here which will push the limits on our holding tanks but we arrived with empty black and grey tanks so if we don’t do laundry, we should be able to manage. There was only one other rig parked when we arrived. The spots are rather tight and the ground we are on looks like it could get muddy if the weather doesn’t cooperate. There was a new layer of old crushed asphalt which barely supported the weight of our rig. As long as we don’t get too much rain, we should be able to drive out of our spot!

Chris’ youngest brother, Matt and his family live in Southlake which is very near our lodge in Grapevine. For the next week or so, our days seem to blur together. We spend a portion of each day with family. Our two youngest nieces are into soccer and softball. Since our timing had us here over two weekends, we managed to get in quite a few games. When we were last here about 5 years ago, the girls were of the age where soccer resembled a blob of small children running around the field wherever the ball was with it occasionally popping out of the group only to be swallowed up again. They are now of the age where the games definitely look much more like soccer. It was fun to see them in action.

Matt has two huskies that really liked when we came over to visit. One day we headed out with the dogs to do a bit of a walk along Grapevine Lake. The water level seemed low but it was still a pretty hike and we really enjoyed getting the chance to walk with dogs again.

View Along Grapevine Lake

Sasha Acts as Foot Warmer

We had been having an issue with one of our roller shades for over a year now. I thought that the spring that helps to raise the shade had broken and needed to be replaced. I had ordered a spring for another shade years ago and it was a fairly simple fix. Turns out that MCD, the manufacturer of our shades, is based in McKinney Texas about 30 miles northeast of camp. So we removed our shade and headed up there one day to get the replacement spring. Well it turns out that our broken shade is a very special model and the fix wouldn’t be to replace the spring.

They held on to it and checked it out only to discover that it wasn’t something they could repair. We ended up needing to have them make a replacement shade with current parts. Our biggest concern was that we would be heading out in a few days and it was Easter week so the place would be closed on Good Friday. We gave them the go ahead to build a new shade as long as it would be ready by the end of day on Thursday. We headed back up and we’re pleased with the results and they were even able to fix a second shade we had another issue with. It was a bigger expense than we first thought, but now we have functioning shades again.

Our 9 nights seemed to fly by and before we knew it, we were packing up and heading out of Grapevine. Fortunately the weather had been decent during our stay, so there was no problem pulling out of the site. About a mile down the road was a campground we had stayed at last time and we were able to get in there to dump our holding tanks before we start our journey further east and north on our way to have our solar panels and lithium batteries installed in Nappanee Indiana.