Thursday 3 May 2001 - Saturday 5 May 2001

A leisurely drive west along the I40 to Holbrook / Petrified Forest KOA, Holbrook, Arizona, which is on the old Route 66. Holbrook boasts the only 90° turn in route 66; they must be desperate if this is all they can come up with as a claim to fame, but they do also have the wonderful Wigwam Motel ...

... left over from the days when a trip along Route 66 really was something and all tourists had to be trapped by any means possible. Our campsite was clean and pleasant enough, but a bit soulless being flat and covered in gravel.

Our first day's excursion was to the Painted Desert and Petrified Forest. The former was a bit of a disappointment, as we found the paintwork somewhat muted ...

... probably because of the distance from which we viewed it. The petrified forest is excellent, however, with huge stone logs of various sizes littering the landscape ...

It is believed to have been formed when a vast number of trees became caught in a logjam some 200+ million years ago. They were covered in sediment, and over the millennia became fossilised; eventually, seismic activity brought them near to the surface and erosion ultimately exposed them. About a hundred years ago the site was far more impressive than today, but years of depredations by tourists, souvenir hunters and entrepreneurs who removed the best specimens literally by the wagonload, sometimes dynamiting the bigger examples to make them more transportable (the semiprecious stone jasper is petrified wood with various brightly coloured impurities) have ruined large areas.

The next day we visited Canyon de Chelly, a National Park which is unusual in that it is also part of the Navajo reservation. Consequently, it is not permitted to explore it unaccompanied; you can either drive round the rim to various viewpoints from which you can walk down a little way, or else hire a Navajo guide who comes along with you to show you where you can and can't go (and take your money, of course). We did the former as we were a bit short of time, and in fact the more spectacular views are to be had from the top, such as Spider Woman Rock (this Spider Woman is an important figure in Navajo and Hopi mythology, not to be confused with a character in the Marvel comics) ...

An interesting feature of this canyon, apart from the spectacular views, is that there have been fields on the floor of the canyon for hundreds of years, and these are still cultivated today ...

On the way here we also visited the Hubbell Trading Post, opened in 1876 and still operating today although now owned by the National Parks Service.

The original John Lorenzo Hubbell gained a reputation with the Indians for dealing with them fairly, operating as an informal banker, moneylender and adviser as well as a trader, and eventually he and his two sons had over eighty trading posts all over the south west. He is one of only two white men to be buried on Indian land, which shows the respect in which he was held. He also provided the only accommodation for miles around, and the house was seldom without a number of more-or-less paying guests, one of whom was an excellent artist who paid in kind and whose works are now displayed all over the house.

Top tip #16: A propos of nothing in particular: we had always understood that America is the land where customer service is king, especially in restaurants. Don't you believe it. Although the waitress always greets you with a cheery smile and tells you her name so that you can establish an early rapport, things go downhill rapidly from there. What you order may or may not be what you're brought; plates are whisked away as soon as you put your knife and fork down even though your fellow diners are still eating; you're likely to be asked what you want for dessert while you're still in the middle of the main course; and worst of all the waitress will pop up several times during the meal with a cheery grin to ask if everything is ok, invariably just as you've taken a large mouthful of food.

Fast food outlets are even worse. The quality of staff isn't high in England, but out here many of them seem to be, forgive my harshness, part of some kind of care in the community project. Several times I've come away with a meal other than what I wanted simply because trying to communicate with the server was too difficult, either because their twelve words of English didn't cover it or because they were too stupid, indifferent or lazy to take in what I was saying. 

Sunday 6 May 2001 - Saturday 12 May 2001

To Woody Mountain Campground and RV Park, Flagstaff (also on good old Route 66). Flagstaff is at nearly 8,000' and so gets pretty cold in winter; it has about 25" of precipitation per year, but most of this is snow which evaporates off and so the region is semi-desert. The growing period is about eight weeks long so everything has to sprout, grow and seed pretty damn quickly.

On the way here, called into Meteor Crater, a vast impact crater almost three miles in circumference created by an iron meteorite ...

Early in the century, a wealthy engineer correctly calculated the probable size of the meteorite, filed a mining claim and spent half his life and most of his money trying to retrieve it. Unfortunately, he hadn't realised that instead of burying itself at the bottom of the crater it had exploded on impact, spreading the iron in small fragments over dozens of square miles of desert. When he died a disappointed man, the family tried to pass it on to the government to avoid taxes, but they weren't interested having just acquired the Grand Canyon which was far more impressive. So, the family developed it as a tourist attraction, and have done very well out of it since.

As an aside, while at the crater I noticed something tickling inside my shirt and absently brushed whatever it was away. By the evening I had huge red weals over a large area of my back, and Christine counted getting on for 100 puncture marks, although I still couldn't feel anything. The following morning, however, the whole of my left side - back and front - felt as though I'd been worked over with a baseball bat. I could add a picture here, but it's not very nice so I'll spare your sensibilities. We saw a collared lizard at the crater ...

... but I don't think it was that.

On Monday visited the Lowell Observatory where Pluto was discovered in 1930 with this telescope ...

... and a blink comparator. Note the high-tech boxing glove attachment to stop observers from braining themselves on the metal handle as they walked past. Coincidentally Pluto's moon, Charon, was also discovered in Arizona (in 1978) but at a NASA observatory. Isn't that fascinating?

Got rear brakes on the truck relined, and visited the library for internet access to book plane tickets home from Seattle and a week at a campsite in Yellowstone in August. The campsite has two antique payphones which have data ports but from which it's impossible to make local rate calls to MSN.

Wupatki National Monument and Sunset Crater Volcano on Wednesday. Wupatki is a desert area which was sparsely occupied until the volcano erupted in 1064 and covered the area with cinders. Over the subsequent years, however, many more people settled the area, possibly because the cinders helped to retain what little moisture was around, although by 1250 everyone was gone as happened in most of the settlements in the area. Amongst the ruins is a ballcourt ...

... which is most unusual in this part of the southwest although they're common in Mexico.

Thursday to Sedona, via a beautiful scenic road down the Red River Valley ...

Sedona has lovely scenery, but is a relentlessly touristy town consisting entirely of gift and craft shops. Some people from Florida we met said they were cancelling a visit to somewhere else just so they could go back to Sedona, which we found a bit strange as we exhausted its delights in about twenty minutes. Further on are Montezuma's Well - a natural spring and huge lake in the middle of the desert - and Montezuma's Castle - an imposing cliff dwelling ...

... neither of which have anything to do with Montezuma.

South rim of the Grand Canyon on Friday. This is absolutely stunning, being 25 miles wide and over a mile deep, with a tiny little Colorado River running through it at the bottom ...

Although the day was swelteringly hot we walked along the edge for a total of about three miles; you get a different vista every couple of hundred yards. The rest of the available road we did by the free shuttle bus, as you're not allowed to take any private vehicles along the rim road. It is possible to hike in the canyon itself, but you need several days and have to take all necessary food, water and shelter with you.

At our request the lady running the campsite had a look at my back which was still nasty and suggested that it looked like a spider bite. A browse through Encarta turned up the Brown Recluse spider which is the only North American spider dangerous to humans other than the Black Widow. Apparently it likes to hide in folds of cloth which makes it a likely candidate. If I ever see one I'll step on it.

Not long in Arizona for now, which is just as well if it's full of venomous wildlife. Tomorrow we go to Nevada, which probably only has rattlesnakes and scorpions. Back again in six months time ...

Friday 9 November 2001 - Sunday 11 November 2001

Stopped at historic Old Mesilla (still in Texas), once a major town in the region ...

... which nearly became abandoned but whose old buildings were fortunately preserved before they fell down. It was once a major transportation centre ...

... but, like so many similar places, was quickly overtaken by the railroads. Note the three year lifespan of the mail stage; even this is long-lived compared to the Pony Express which lasted for all of ten months.

Across the border into Arizona, through Benson - an uninspiring one-street town full of RV parks for some reason - and on to Tombstone Hills RV Park.

... which was in fact just a small back yard behind a building. Lots of controversy about what actually happened; Wyatt Earp, the most famous participant, was in fact just a deputy sworn in at the last minute by his brother Virgil who was the Marshall, and who subsequently made as much money as he could selling his story despite being known as a habitual liar. Doc Holliday was a complete head case who probably started it all.

Good meal at the Longhorn Saloon, including Death by Chocolate dessert which we took back to the trailer only to find that it was largely ice cream which had melted. Still nice though. Found a shop with some lovely souvenirs, including yodelling nuns and an angel with doughnuts ...

Other delights of old Tombstone included Big Nose Kate's, Madame Mustache (the mind boggles), and the Bird Cage Theater ...

... where young ladies were displayed in large gilded bird cages; you made your selection, paid your money and took her downstairs to the basement bordello for a quickie. How romantic it all seems.

On Sunday we went round the old Boot Hill cemetery ( every historic western town's cemetery is called Boot Hill), recently restored, and found the famous gravestone ...

Other than the amusing epitaphs, the main thing it brought home was that life on the frontier was pretty short and brutal (and more than a little racist). Most people died before the age of 40, usually of extreme violence or sometimes a vile disease. Dying of old age was rare.

In the afternoon we went to Bisbee, an ex-mining town which nearly died when the copper mine became exhausted ...

... but which was resurrected by artists and craftsmen in the 1960s and 1970s. Other than these worthy people, it is now largely inhabited by hippies locked into a 70s time warp; you can get beads in almost any shop, tofu and seaweed in every flavour imaginable, and ponytails (for men) and long flowing skirts (for women) can be seen everywhere. It does have plenty of character though; lots of interesting buildings built on a hillside brightly coloured by copper ore, as well as the people.

Returned to our campsite via Sierra Vista which people had recommended as a possible wintering place, but it's a flat characterless town of no interest at all so we gave up on that idea. We'd also looked at four of the five campsites in and around Bisbee, none of which held any appeal, but we didn't see the one which was most highly recommended by the helpful people in Bisbee information centre.

Monday 12 November 2001 - Tuesday 13 November 2001

Drove up to Apache Junction about 30 miles east of Phoenix. This was another place recommended to us for the winter, but it seemed pretty soulless to us, its only redeeming feature being the climate. The campground we were heading for no longer existed, so we settled for the Mesa Apache Junction KOA. This turned out to be the worst KOA we'd tried: expensive, on the corner of two main roads, and not even possessing a modem hookup.

Next day we went into Phoenix to see the Heard Collection, put together by rich industrialist and wife. Some Egyptian material, but mostly very good south-western US from earliest settlements to present day. We then drove around a bit. Phoenix is derided in both the Rough Guide and Lonely Planet as having very few redeeming features; we didn't find it too bad, but it didn't really appeal as a place to spend more than a couple of days.

Wednesday 14 November 2001 - Thursday 15 November 2001

Headed for Tucson, stopping off at Casa Grande Ruins National Monument. This was built some time between 300 AD and 1450 AD - records of this period are non-existent, as are oral histories. It's meant to be an early observatory, as it has holes incorporated in the walls for viewing solar and lunar events.

The large canopy was built around 1930 to protect it from the elements, and is somewhat more impressive than the thing it's meant to cover. However, there are large areas that the great unwashed are excluded from including hundreds more rooms and a ball court.

While driving along the Arizona Interstates we'd noticed a number of billboards advertising the Voyager RV Resort in Tucson. They were doing a special offer of one night free if you stayed for two or more nights, so we thought we'd give it a try. It turned out to be a remarkable place with over 3,000 sites (most of which are park models permanently occupied for between six months and the whole year), shop, restaurant, resident masseur and chiropractor, library, ballroom, craft rooms for woodwork, stained glass and lapidary work, three swimming pools, three hot tubs, golf course, pool room, tennis, volleyball, shuffleboard and bocce ball courts - the list goes on. On adjacent land the owners have built a suburb of houses, ownership of which gives use of all the facilities of the resort, and the whole complex is the size of a moderate town. Because most of the residents are here long term and retired, with a wide range of interests and expertise, there are plenty of willing volunteers to organise all the social and sporting events you could wish.

Next day we chatted to a few residents, all of whom were very positive about the place. Tried the restaurant - good.  We looked at a couple of other campgrounds in the area which weren't bad but didn't have anything like the facilities. Decided that Voyager is a great place, and decided this would be a good spot to spend a month after a few days in Bisbee. 

Friday 16 November 2001 - Sunday 18 November 2001

Down to Bisbee for a brief interlude of peace and love. We stayed at the Double Adobe Campground, which is truly in the middle of nowhere about ten miles out of town. It has to be the most friendly campground we've encountered; run by Kathleen and Mike McNeeley who are about our age and who make it feel like a large family rather than the usual impersonal stopping place. Although the facilities aren't the most luxurious or modern they have hot showers, cable TV, a good selection of books, free internet access, and cook a great breakfast every day (unfortunately a meal we don't eat). It's not quite as quiet as we expected, at least during the day, as they also run a trap (clay pigeon) shooting range which is in use most days, but you only hear a series of muffled pops in the middle distance.

On Saturday we toured the arty crafty shops of which there are many. We're not sure how they all stay in business; there are only so many hand-made rugs, pots and pieces of turquoise jewelry that most people need, but there must be a steady supply of tourists. We ate huge fajitas in the Bisbee Grille, and did the tour of the old Copper Queen Mine. They dress you up in nice yellow coats and hard hats and take you round a (very small) part of it on the old rail trucks ...

... the one I'm casually leaning against is a two-seater convenience, miners for the use of.

Much against our more sensible instincts we set the alarm for 2.30am to get us up to see the Leonid meteor shower. Very glad we did, as the sky was completely clear and we had a great display for about 40 minutes until the intense cold drove us back to bed. (The following night was supposed to be even better, but it turned out to be cloudy so we made a good decision).

Next day we went to watch the shooters competing for frozen turkeys, and had a couple of hot dogs. The novelty of this wore off after about ten minutes, so we drove to the Whitewater Wash Wildlife Area a few miles away. This is a remarkable place, with acres of lakes and ponds ...

... totally unexpected in the middle of a dry desert area, which not surprisingly attracts huge numbers of birds including a colony of sandhill cranes ...

... and animals including deer and javelinas.

In the evening I discovered that I no longer had my wallet. After a period of running round like headless chickens searching the truck and trailer, we narrowed down the possibilities to a small shop we'd stopped at on the way home. Got there five minutes before they closed, and to our immense relief they still had it. The disappearance of our cash, credit cards, cash cards, driving licenses and all the other stuff would have put a bit of a damper on the trip, so we were pathetically grateful to the nice people who were about to start making phone calls to England to try and locate us. Later, we booked our flights home on Travelocity; the only non-stop flights from Phoenix, via BA, also turned out to be the cheapest which cheered us up no end. They were also more than 50% cheaper than last time we flew home, due partly to the time of year and partly to September 11th.

We really liked it here, and determined to come back for Christmas and New Year after our life of luxury in Tucson.

Monday 19 November 2001 - Thursday 20 December 2001

Drove back to the Voyager Resort and booked ourselves in for a month of idleness. Despite a fair amount of sitting around reading and watching the box we still managed to see and do a few things. Here are some random thoughts in no particular order.

Talking Books    One of the things we miss from home is not having talking book cassettes to listen to in the car and lull us to sleep at night. Tucson, however, has a large talking book shop / library which does monthly memberships for the likes of us, so we were able to indulge ourselves at last. Bill Bryson, Fawlty Towers, Garrison Keillor - we managed an average of about one every two days. Bliss.

Thanksgiving Pot Luck    The 22nd November was Thanksgiving, and Voyager organised a huge pot luck dinner in the ballroom. They provided the turkey, and each guest produced a dish of their choice and brought it along. We did roast potatoes, as these are an exotic item over here (although more common in Canada); people have heard of them but don't seem to cook them. They all went quickly, so perhaps we've started a trend. Pot lucks are a big thing over here, and one of which we wholeheartedly approve.

Chiropractor    My neck and shoulder were still giving me gyp from since we were in Maine, so I tried the resort's chiropractor. Americans seem to use chiropractors a great deal more than England, where they still seem to be regarded as part of the fringe medicine scene. By another of those strange coincidences, it turned out he'd previously lived and worked in Berkshire, in conjunction with a British chiropractor whom Christine had visited. Anyway, over the course of the next few weeks he pulled and twisted me around periodically, with some improvement but not a complete cure. Hope I don't have this for the foreseeable future.

Entertainments    We both went along to the cribbage evenings, I joined a couple of bridge groups, and Christine went to quilting and sewing. We both felt guilty at the end of the month for not having participated more; if you're there all winter then it should be much easier to get involved. Oh, and we went carolling round the campsite one evening, the highlight of which was a tasteful Christmas ornament proudly shown off to us by the owner of one of the park models: a belly-dancing Santa who sings Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.

Saguaro National Park    To the east and west of Tucson are the two sections of Saguaro National Park. This part of Arizona has the most varied and interesting desert in the whole of the US (at least in our experience), including the wonderful saguaro cactus. This is the one that is used in cartoons whenever an image of a cactus is required; the basic version is the one with two upraised arms (top left) as used on the Arizona license plate, although they come in all shapes and sizes including with the arms drooping down (top right). About one in every 200,000 - don't know how they came up with this figure - has an abnormality which causes excessive growth at the top forming a large crest (bottom left), and some just go bananas (bottom right).

The east section of the park, which was nearest to us, is the more interesting and has plenty of well marked walking trails which we used a lot.

Interesting info #21: The holes in the saguaros (see above left) are made as nests by two members of the woodpecker family: gilded flickers and gila woodpeckers. The inside of the hollow forms a callus known as a 'saguaro boot'; after the cactus dies and the soft parts decompose, the boot remains and used to be collected by the Tohono O'Odham Indians as a useful container. The ribs were also collected and used to make tools, including devices to harvest the saguaro fruit in season. Owls sometimes colonise the boots after their creators have abandoned them, and locally there are numerous postcards with cute pictures of owls peering out of cacti.

Tucson Art Museum    Completed recently, this contains some very good exhibits of south-western cultures, plus assorted other works: Mexican Nativity scenes, welded cacti sculptures, Arts  and Crafts movement furniture, wild west paintings. It's in the form of a number of connecting houses built in different local styles. We took one of the docent-led tours which tell you a lot more than the printed descriptions. Good restaurant too.

Tohono Chul Park    

Tohono Chul Park was first conceived in 1966, when Richard and Jean Wilson began acquiring the land that forms the core of the park. The original intention was a short nature walk, but it soon grew and flourished into 37 acres of demonstration gardens, a geologic recreation of the Santa Catalina Mountains, a loop trail, and a recirculating stream. In 1985 the park was dedicated to the citizens of Tucson as a non-profit desert preserve by the Wilsons. In 1995 an additional 11 acres was added to the Tohono Chul Park through the generous gift of John and Mary Maher. There's plenty to see, and a good restaurant featuring delightfully purple prickly pear cactus lemonade; looking at the original you can see where the colour comes from ...

Colossal Cave    Those of you working in the computer industry in the 1960s and 1970s may remember the very first text-based computer adventure game called Colossal Cave (You are in a maze of small twisty passages all the same ...). Amazingly the people running the cave had not heard of the game, but I'm sure that it must have been based on this place. Anyone who has confirmation or otherwise please let me know. As caves go it's not very spectacular, being a dry cave (only 5% of known cave formations are dry). It was developed by the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), an organisation set up by Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933 to provide employment during the Depression, and which was disbanded in 1942 after America's slightly belated entry into the 2nd World War. The grounds contain a nice road sign ...

San Xavier del Bac Mission    Founded in the 17th century by Jesuit missionary Eusebio Kino, the Tohono O'Odham beliefs merged to some extent with Catholicism to form a hybrid religion. The architecture is some of the best of the Spanish Mission style ...

... with a beautiful interior and useful stainless steel holy water dispenser ...

Old Tucson Studios   

This is a film studio at which countless western movies and series have been shot, including High Chaparral ...

The mountain in the background is very distinctive, and once you know what to look for you can spot it easily in all sorts of programs. Unfortunately they had a major fire a few years ago in which they lost many of the buildings and the sound stage, which would cost millions to replace, so now it's really just a tourist attraction rather than a working studio. They still have what is claimed to be the most filmed train in the US ...

By coincidence it also happened to be the first night of their Christmas season. There was a bit of singing and dancing and a parade, but for us the highlight was the 'Christmas Tree'. This was covered by a small tarpaulin until the grand unveiling, at which point it was hoisted up and revealed as ...

... a huge structure in the form of a canvas beach umbrella with fairy lights draped round it and a star on top.

Desert Museum   Out in the wilds north-west of Tucson, this is not so much a museum, more a wildlife park / nature trail. Humming birds, ocelots, raccoons, mountain goats etc etc ...

For the first time we saw century agave flowers before they're dried out ...

... although they don't actually take a century to flower, more like twelve years. Oh, and we saw our first boojum, a bizarre plant native to Mexico, the only relative of the ocotillo, and which I'd seen described as an inverted parsnip with twigs growing out of it. This turned out to be a remarkably accurate definition ...

One thing which amused us was the proud statement by one of the park staff that the cactus wren, one of the main bird species in the park, is the largest wren in the world. As the main distinguishing feature of wrens is that they are tiny , this is akin to a claim to be the world's biggest dwarf: not very impressive.

This place is definitely worth the visit, and we had to be thrown out at closing time.

Pima Air and Space Museum    Because this area is so dry, it's ideal for storing things that tend to rust such as aeroplanes. In south Tucson is the Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, whose main function seems to be as a huge depot for all the superannuated US Air Force planes, which are parked in countless ranks next to the road waiting for some third world tin-pot dictator to stump up some cash for them. On the other side of the road is a huge aircraft junkyard; it's very strange to see jet engines which must have cost $millions not too long ago just lying piled up in heaps.

Anyway, next door to this is the Pima Air and Space Museum. The space part is a bit thin - if you want to see rockets go to the Kennedy Space Centre - but there are some great planes here including the SR-71 Blackbird reconnaissance plane, first built in 1958 and still the world's fastest aircraft ...

... some MiGs acquired from the Polish Air Force ...

... and a weird bulbous transport plane used for carrying rockets for the space program ...

That's about it for our stay at Voyager. As a minor irritation the truck needed some work to fix a water leak, oil leaks, broken door lock etc. which the garage took five days over, so we were here a couple of days longer than planned. Still, there's worse places to be. Down to Bisbee now for a real rest.

Interesting info #22: A few items on the TV which amused us:

Friday 21 December 2001 - Sunday 20 January 2002

Got a lift into Tucson to get the truck back from the garage (another $1,100 dollars worth), took talking books back, packed up, said goodbyes and headed down to Bisbee again to Double Adobe Campground ...

Set up, then went to supermarket on an errand for Kathleen to buy Texas toast and a piñata - something we'd not come across before. It turned out to be a wood and paper construction normally in the shape of an animal (ours was a purple dinosaur) which you fill with sweets and attach to a rope hanging from a tree. Blindfolded children then take swipes at it with a bat and try to break it open to release the sweets. Needless to say it's a single-use item. This was part of the entertainment for a local children's group which was doing carol singing round the campsite that night.

Our first night there was bitterly cold: about 10° below freezing. Although we disconnected the water pipe it froze up inside the trailer and didn't thaw until late in the morning; the remaining water in the pipe also froze. This turned out to be pretty standard for our month's stay here. Unfortunately, on our third day a huge motor home moved into the site next to us, putting us into shadow until mid-afternoon and delaying the time until we had running water by about three hours. Later in the day there was an excellent pot luck dinner for which we cooked our usual roast potatoes and sweet potatoes.

On Christmas Eve we went to a local production of A Christmas Carol, which was delightfully amateurish. Drinks and nibbles in the clubhouse in the evening, and of course a full-blown pot luck Christmas dinner the next day (yes, roast potatoes again). Just about used up a whole phone card calling all the relatives in England and New Zealand.

A couple of days before New Year, we met up with Christine's bookbinding friend Gabrielle and her husband Andy from Cincinnati. They were staying with her English uncle Alan who has lived in Tucson for twenty years, but they came over to Bisbee which they both enjoy for a couple of days. We wandered round, saw the sights, ate and drank including a large Sunday breakfast at our campground, and a good time was had by all. On New Year's Eve we were invited up to Tucson for dinner with and cooked by Alan (excellent lamb, which you can't get easily over here); at 5.00pm we toasted in the New Year which had just arrived in England. On the way home we called into Bisbee town centre at about 11.30pm to see the celebrations: fire eaters, jugglers, dancers, musicians, and assorted loonies in fancy dress. We felt depressingly normal. To give you an idea of Bisbee inhabitants, here is a typical Bisbeemobile:

Most of our time here was spent studiously doing very little, except for the occasional drive into town and walk in the desert. Christine painted a watercolour of the campground which she presented to Mike and Kathleen as a 25th wedding anniversary gift; she also learned how to make pine needle baskets from a resident expert. In the evenings we joined in the games of Mexican Train, played with 12 spot dominoes which we hadn't seen before (you can also get 9 and 15 spot versions). Caught up on emails and the web site, and generally relaxed. Wonderful.

Monday 21 January 2002 - Wednesday 23 January 2002

Back to the Voyager at Tucson for a couple of days of sorting ourselves out and packing, then the truck and trailer went into their huge storage area and we went to Phoenix on the Arizona Shuttle bus. As we left it was cold and raining, which was good for the locals as they needed the rain and good for us as it started to acclimatise us to the English winter ahead. Normal tedious BA flight to Gatwick (two thirds empty, so we had a row of seats each), two trains, one taxi and we're home. Back on 13th February.

Wednesday 13 February 2002 - Wednesday 27 February 2002

We'd hoped that giving ourselves three weeks for our stay rather than two would make things slightly less hectic, but of course it didn't work out that way. Getting the car going (it now has more problems than a 1974 Skoda), dealing with the huge heap of mail, a few days' spring cleaning for my Mum, seeing Christine's family (mostly achieved in one well-coordinated visit) ...

... and visits to lots of friends and colleagues absorbed the time effortlessly. We were shattered at the end of it all.

The flight got in fairly late in the evening, so we had a whole night's luxury in a motel and a good dinner in their tastefully tacky 50s themed restaurant. Next morning took the shuttle bus and a taxi back to the Voyager storage area, to find that the truck battery was so flat that it wouldn't start. Oh joy. However, after a bit of swearing followed by some thought, I plugged the trailer's electrical connector in to the truck, and the extra oomph from the trailer's battery was just enough to get it going. Pulled it to the campground, to find that we'd been allotted a different site from the one we'd so carefully selected before we went home; people staying three months or more take priority, so we'd been bounced. Fortunately the replacement wasn't too bad.

Over the next few days the truck was a pain, sometimes misfiring and even cutting out shortly after it started which it had never done before. I worked out that it was probably the (original) battery dying due to its age, but before I could get it replaced the electrics died completely and suddenly one night. However, a bit of wiggling of wires got it going again, and to cut a long story short it turned out to be the connection to the +ve terminal which was the culprit; some cleaning, greasing and tightening and everything was happy again at no cost.

The untold acres of planes stored at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base were significantly thinned out when we passed them. Our taxi driver told us that there had been a continuous stream of them heading towards Afghanistan over the past two weeks; Americans probably outnumber Afghans out there by now.

During the two weeks we took part in various campground activities, including cribbage and quilting (Christine went to an all-night quiltathon). I  began a dreadful cold, and Christine's frozen shoulder which started shortly before we came home wasn't getting any better, so we sat round and felt pitiful for a lot of the time. However, we managed to get out a few times:

Chili Cookout    On the Saturday we went to Colossal Cave Park for their 4th Annual Chili Cookout. Sixteen competitors cook up their own recipes for chili of various kinds and heats, and for a small fee the great unwashed get to sample them all and stand in judgment ...

We were expecting some real killers, but they varied from very mild to medium - nothing hotter than we would make for ourselves at home. It made for a good lunch though. There were various entertainments to follow, including live music and a rope-twirling demonstration ...

South West Indian Fair    Held in the grounds of the Arizona State Museum in Tucson. Had outstandingly good lamb sandwiches from a Navajo food stall, saw Hopi drummers and dancing ...

... and enough craft stalls to last a lifetime. We don't have the space, weight allowance or decor for it to be sensible to take any home, but the baskets ...

... and rugs ...

... were very impressive.

Kitts Peak Observatory    This is located in southern Arizona due to the elevation and lack of atmospheric and light pollution. They have a big four-meter optical telescope ...

... as well as some smaller ones and various radio and solar telescopes. We took the guided tour, but unfortunately the guide was one of the world's dullest speakers and our brains just tuned him out after a few minutes exposure.

Buenos Aires Wildlife Reserve    Located at Arivaca in the middle of nowhere on the way from Tucson to Kitts Peak. Unfortunately we were there at about the worst possible time of year; although there was still some ground water around, the vegetation was brown and we saw virtually no wildlife other than a few birds. We could have seen more sitting outside out trailer. Nice countryside though ...

... marching bands ...

... and floats ...

A very American spectacle.

This page probably takes about half an hour to download now, so it's time to move on to California. We greatly enjoyed Arizona, especially the Tucson area, and shall probably return some time in the future.