Petrified Forest Gift Shop and Museum Petrified Forest Road Holbrook, AZ Site 10; $10.85/day - 2 days May 2 - 3, 2017  

  There are two entrances to Petrified Forest, one off I-40 and a second off SR 350. The main road of the park goes from one entrance to the other. The Petrified Forest Gift Shop and Crystal Forest Gift shop are the only places to camp, and they are at the second entrance to the park. Petrified Forest Gift Shop has 10 sites with tables, a concrete pad, electricity (no sewer, no water) for $10.85 per night. The Crystal Forest Gift Shop across the street has no utilities, but lets you camp for free. They have quite a few sites set up there. There are even some "teepees" in that campground that I guess you could camp in, too, but I don't think I would, as there is no light in them and there could easily be creepy-crawlies of any kind in there!  So if you come into the park from I-40 as we did, you'll have to drive all the way through the park (28 miles) to get to the other entrance and park your camper. It was not a problem to pull the trailer through the park, as there were no steep inclines. The road was not potholed, but still rough like riding in a small boat in very choppy water! It took about 45 minutes to an hour to drive all the way through. We stopped at a few pull-offs for pictures, but saved the main "looking" for the next day's visit. I was very tired from driving all day and was disappointed to find that we had so much farther to drive before getting to our campground. Should have had Bob do some of the driving!

Painted Desert

When you come upon the Park from the East, you'll have been traveling over very flat and empty land for many miles. Then suddenly in the park, the land drops off and you see stunning views of the Painted Desert below stretching for miles. Stunning colors! Then the land gradually becomes flat again and then into the hills and valleys of the Petrified Forest. Of course, there are no trees, but you see scattered pieces of petrified tree trunks everywhere. And there is much more land of ravines, cliffs, and gullys than I expected. And some very colorful rock formations reminiscent of Death Valley.   On day two, we took most of the side roads to the features there. Bob liked the "Newspaper Rock" petroglyph site the best. You could not get close to really examine the petroglyphs because they were at the bottom of a ravine, but the park had several telescopes set up so that you could look down there and see them. I got some photos of them with my 300 mm lens on the Canon 20d. We didn't go all the way back to the first entrance where the best views of the Painted Desert are. I was just too tired to want to go back that far - Newspaper Rock was about half way back and that was as far back as we went. We were also getting low on diesel. From the park we drove into Holbrook, AZ which is a 16 mile trip. It's a small town, and has a number of old buildings in its "old town" section that date back to Historic Route 66, and there are the ususal motels and fast food places just off I-40. An article on the internet notes that the town of Holbrook was singled out for its assistance in the credits of the movie "Cars." The Visitors Center and Museum at the second entrance has an interesting display of dinosaur skeletons and a diorama of what the area would have looked like when the forests were there. Behind the building is a short trail leading out among many petrified stones - a great place for photo ops without having to hike miles.     

Tombstone RV Park

Champion Park Wickenburg, AZ Parked in parking lot for one night, April 23, 2017   Headed out today to begin our Spring trip. We're a bit late in the season and it's HOT here in Wickenburg, AZ. We're at a small city run campground across the street from their rodeo grounds called Champion Park. 

Boondocking at Sand Mine Road, near Overton, Nevada. April 13 - 16

Sand Mine Road and Poverty Flats are two BLM dispersed camping areas a few miles south of the town of Overton, Nevada.. They are east of Valley of Fire State Park and sit on opposite sides of a very deep ravine. The ravine has rough dirt roads in it that are popular for OHVs and four wheel drive vehicles. The Sand Mine Road area seems to be less used, at least on this Easter weekend. I can see three other campers within about a mile's radius from us on the Sand Mine Road side. However, over on Poverty Flats, I'd say there are 15 or 20 RVs within our view, and we saw maybe ten more RVs camped on the west side of the main road when we came by.

There is a small, easy to miss, brown sign at the side of Hwy 169 that identifies Sand Mine road and recommends 4-wheel drive vehicles. It is an unpaved road, not heavily used or washboarded, and we had no trouble bringing our travel trailer over it. Viewing this area on Google Maps, I could see that the road goes a long way inland and up into the mountains, and that there are many wheel tracks from previous visitors making camping spots that go a very long way along the road, so I was not too concerned about driving far enough off the highway to get away from road noise. And indeed we came upon a very nice spot with a stone fire ring that is right at the edge of the bluff of the ravine, and just past the power lines that cross the area. It is flat and has a great view down into the ravine. We were the only ones here when we arrived about 1 pm on Thursday. Later that day, three other RVs arrived: one passed us and went about a mile farther down the road, a fifth-wheel took a turn-off and went up to the top of a rise before you get to the power lines, and a motor home came a shorter way into the area and is not visible to us past the rise.

The weather forecast called for high winds on Thursday afternoon, and the winds were picking up even as we left home. By evening the trailer was rocking and the wind whistling around the windows, but by morning there was just a slight, pleasant breeze. Temps in the mid-eighties during the day and comfortable sleeping weather overnight. Forecast calls for the winds to return on Sunday. A bit cooler and more breezy on Saturday morning.

Art left behind by previous tenant

La Posa, Wednesday   Woke up this morning to the sound of . . . nothing. No sounds! It was quiet! QUIET! No wind! The wind had finally stopped! Wow, what a welcome change! Pleasant, slightly cool temperature. I turned the solar panel toward the morning sun and took the dogs for a walk. Took a few pictures along the way. Such a nice day. Wish they were all like this!

It's 1:30 pm now and the wind is beginning to pick up a bit. We're planning on heading out for home tomorrow. Don't know if we'll do it in one day, or take it easy and stop at Cal-Nev-Ari along the way. Kind of sad to be ending this trip, but we're in need of restocking about everything and in bad need of doing laundry. Ah, the realities of life. I washed out all my socks in a bucket yesterday and hung them out to dry. They came out surprisingly clean but stiff as a board. LOL!  

La Posa North LTVA US - 95, Quartzsite, AZ Monday, March 27   We were really loving Imperial Dam - so quiet, such beautiful views. But the wind! It hardly ever stopped. There were a few maybe 6 hour long periods where there was just a breeze, but mostly the wind just howled. Official weather page said winds 14-25 but it sure seemed and sounded like more! Sometimes it was really dusty, sometimes not. I don't know how that happens, but eventually everything inside gets a fine coat of dust on it. By our fourth day we needed water and it seemed that the solar panels were not recharging the batteries (they started at 12.5 and were down to 12.2), so we decided to drive up to the LTVA at Quartzsite. We're covered there by the same pass from Imperial Dam, so there will be no extra charges there. And we'll be much closer to shopping. We're running low on food and dog food.   Not much of a drive back to Quartzsite - less than two hours. Didn't put much of a recharge on our batteries. 12.4 when we got there.   

You pass through the Yuma Proving Grounds going into or out of IDLTVA. You can recognize the road to turn into to go to LTVA by the big guns flanking each side of the entrance. The helicopter and missiles are on display along the road there too.

At the Imperial Dam Long Term Visitor Area (IDLTVA)

So Hubs and I got up the morning after the first night at Salton Sea. He's the one that really wanted to go there again, as he was wanting to do volunteer work. But after siting outside for just a few minutes we both looked at each other. "These flies!," I said. "Would you consider going somewhere else where there's less flies?" He surprised me with his quick "Yes!" He had a relieved look on his face! So even though we hadn't even had breakfast, we packed up in record time and headed south.

Salton Sea State Recreation Area, California