Enjoying the Desert

 We had planned to leave our Gold Canyon winter home this weekend, traveling to Texas for about a month before heading to Colorado for the summer. We have spent lots of time in Texas as RVers, volunteering three times at various locations.  We wanted to revisit our favorite places.

Now, we aren't sure when, or even if, that part of our travels will happen.  John and I have lived almost our entire lives in Colorado and Arizona.  And we enjoy being outdoors as often as possible.  That is the cause the skin cancer we are developing in our late 70s.  For several years, John has been visiting the dermatologist twice a year.  I have gone once a year.  

At our checkup last month, the doctor found a basal cell carcinoma on the left side of my nose and sent me to see a skin cancer specialist.  He also burned a couple of places on my ear and hand.  Now, I too, will be returning twice a year.  John also had several spots frozen (burned).  The doctor also cut out a cancerous spot on his right arm.  And he, too, was referred to the specialist where some cancer was removed behind his right ear. 

I am healing nicely, if slowly, from my surgery.  I have been grateful I can hide behind a mask when I go out among people.  The only time I have been grateful for the Covid restrictions. When John returned to have the stitches removed from his arm, the doctor said the wound hadn't healed enough yet.  He had to wait.  John also had the doctor look at another spot on his leg and we now have to schedule another visit to the specialist.

All this explains why we aren't leaving this weekend for Texas and our plans are up in the air.  Our resort is really thinning out.  Most snowbirds have flown north.  However, the weather in recent days has been beautiful--meaning not too hot.  We can enjoy the desert.

Yesterday we walked through the desert toward Silly Mountain, a small hill near our resort.  The road we walked on is really an access road for the power company.  We walked next to some high voltage lines.

We noticed a bird's nest in a cactus along the route.

There are many saguaro cactus along the route.  Some are quite old.  They live about 100 years before they develop their first arm.

Birds make holes in the saguaro and build their nests there.  Look at how this cactus is coming apart because of all the bird houses.  I guess this plant was an avian apartment house.

In our resort, we are enjoying the many flowering desert plants--one of the benefits of remaining here this late in the spring.

This is one of the most prolific ocotillo plants we have seen.

This is argentine giant cactus.  We call it an Easter cactus.  Doesn't it remind you of an Easter lily?

This flowering palo verde is beautiful.  And also causes a lot of allergic reactions.

Saguaros usually flower on the tops of the arms They form a circle on the rounded top of the arms. This one developed a bloom on the side and I was able to get a photo of it.  

I'm not sure if these are wildflowers or flowering weeds, but they are pretty.

Showers Bring Flowers

The desert is incredibly beautiful since we received so much rain so far this year--almost 4 1/2 inches. That is unusual for Arizona for this time of year. Friday we went hiking with our friend Barbara and her friend Mickey. And it is also green, greener than we have seen before.

We found pots of gold everywhere.  Not the type you find at the end of the rainbow.  These were poppies and daisies in yellow, gold and some orange.

We also saw a lot more green than we usually find in the Arizona desert.

There was also a field of daisies along the road before we entered the park.

We are looking forward to seeing the cactus plants bloom soon.

Tucson

We are spending the week of Christmas in Tucson, at Justin's Diamond J RV park. It isn't a resort by any stretch, but the sites are large, the hookups full with 50 amp and there are trails right outside the gate through the beautiful Arizona desert.

There are cholla, saguaro and prickly pear cactus thick in this part of the Sonoran Desert.

The nearby trails were developed and are maintained by the campground staff.  They are labeled with neatly printed signs on the rocks.  At one time the signs must have been different.  In 2 places we saw this old tin baking sheets with long faded arrows marking the way.

The have a sense of humor, as well.   Here are two "graves" along the track.  The jug at the head of the right-hand grave reads "Platte River."  It comes from Missouri.

These folding chairs once provided a resting place along the trail.  There have long outlived their usefulness.

The day after Christmas we went hiking in the nearby national park.  Can you guess which one it is?  We are near Saguaro National Park West.

The Desert Blooms

It's spring and you really can't beat the Arizona desert in spring.  Desert plants are blooming all over our resort and even on the highway medians.  We love it!

This plant is in the median west of our resort near Basha's grocery store.

The bougainvillea bushes are absolutely stunning this year.

These pink flowers are so pretty.

Hiking and Eating

Spring has definitely arrived in our part of Arizona.  Friday we walked from our resort to the backside of Silly Mountain.  The poppies are blooming.

We have had above average rain and the desert is really green.  It's not often we see the ground this color here.  It is so nice.

After our walk we met our friend David and Alice and their daughter Teresa (I hope I spelled her name correctly) for lunch at Janie's Burrito Café in Gold Canyon.  We enjoyed the food and the time with friends.

A Great Outing

Our trailer remodel passed muster when we took it to Laughlin, NV, last weekend to attend a BBQ cookoff. We found the new recliners, storage and table meet our needs. We are really glad we had the work done.

There is lots to share about the trip but it has taken me a while to begin blogging. That is because not everything about the trip was great. We get our internet with a Verizon 4LTE Jetpack. We just upgraded the device and I hadn't taken the time to change the name and password on it. Not a good idea. Monday I checked how much data we had used in the first 4 days to the billing cycle. I was shocked to see 12G of data had been used! When I looked at how it was used, I saw it included streaming video and chatting. We don't do that. I called Verizon and all they could suggest is making sure I changed the security and the password. We have to eat the data!! You can bet I changed the jetpack settings. I also sprang for 10 extra gigs of data for the month.

The next day I wasn't able to sign in to that wifi signal on my computer. I could connect with John's iPad and our phones but not the laptop. A call to Geek Squad technicians didn't resolved it so I made an appointment to go into Best Buy on Tuesday. The fix was simple. Thank heavens I could go online later yesterday. So here I am, beginning to blog about our travel last Thursday and Friday.

Lesson of the day (or weekend), change the security on your wifi device as soon as you bring it home.

The scenery between Gold Canyon and Laughlin is beautiful and varied. First we had to deal with the traffic as we drove through Phoenix.

I didn't realize that Joshua Trees grew in Arizona. I thought they were only found in southeastern California. Wrong. There are a lot of them on the Joshua Tree Parkway between Congress, AZ, and Laughlin.

The desert and mountains along the way changed from one section to another but it was all beautiful.

(Barb, doesn't this look like a fist with a thumb up?)

There was a lot more that was interesting about this trip. But we knew right away we will be taking more short trips during our winter in Arizona. There is just so much to see.

First Hike of the Season

We love to hike and we love the desert. We hope to get out regularly this winter to hike in the Arizona desert. We didn't do that much last year. We have been here for just over a week and decided it was time to start.

Our destination was the Wind Cave trail in Usery Mountain Regional Park. The temperature was in the low 70s when we started out, thankfully low for this time of year.  John stopped by the great saguaro.

Usery is at the right elevation to support a beautiful desert landscape.

Last week we had a good rain and it brought out the leaves on this ocotilla.

Wind Cave is a steep but fairly short trail--3 miles round trip. We have hiked it almost every year we have come to Arizona for the winter but we didn't go there last year. It was good to do it again today.

The cholla was really pretty today.

This is the rock face of the mountain  where Wind Cave is located.  Lichen on rocks here in southern Arizona is always this fluorescent lime green--so striking.

Scenery like we saw today is why we enjoy Arizona--when the weather cools down. It's so much better than snow back in Colorado!

John took a picture of me in the cave--which really isn't a cave but an overhang of rock above the trail.