2008 Looking back at the highs and lows.

2008 WAS A YEAR THAT STARTED IN TEXAS AND FINISHED IN ARIZONA VIA MEXICO AND ALASKA.

These are in no particular order just as we thought of them. The highs come first.

Getting up close and personal with two California grey whales, mother and baby, off the coast of the Baja Mexico.

From John and Carols Blog

We were able to touch both mother and baby who seemed happy to be with us. A very special moment.


MukTuk kennels near Whitehorse in British Columbia is the home of a famous sled dog racer and his 140+ sled dogs. We were able to go for a walk with some and Carol really enjoyed meeting the puppies.

From John and Carols Blog

Manuela, a carpenter from Germany, who is now a musher at heart, showed us round and we are following her progress as she works with her sled dogs and aims to complete a qualification race this year with her sights set on the Yukon Quest in 2010.


In southern Utah we drove through the most spectacular canyon scenery.

From John and Carols Blog

Called Canyonlands the red rock is interspersed with bands of yellow and grey and sculpted by wind and water into the most amazing shapes.




In North Yellowstone we hoped to see a wolf or wolves in the wild but knew how we would need to get lucky to get more than fleeting glimpses at great distance in high mountain meadows.

From John and Carols Blog

However we did get extremely lucky. We were treated to a view of the Slough Creek pack on a kill no more than 150 yards away from the front of the RV. They had killed a pronghorn antelope the day before in a riverside and meadow. We saw them coming, bouncing down the trail from the high meadows, chasing a coyote off the kill then breakfasting at leisure with time off for a snooze and a bit of play with a pack mate.




A visit to Joshua Tree National Park enabled us to drive through and appreciate the three desert types on show. The subtle changes in attitude, altitude and rainfall creating growing conditions suiting particular vegetation. The most spectacular being the expanse of Cholla cactus wa walked around very carefully.








These plants spread by dropping parts of themselves which then get picked up by animals brushing past and when they drop off some will root and grow another cactus, a clone of the parent.



As a contrast we were in the snow in Sequoia & Kings Canyon National Park when we walked through the groves of the largest living things on earth. The General Sherman tree is 275 feet high and is thought to be between 2300 and 2700 years old.

From John and Carols Blog

It was a very sobering experience to touch something that had seen that many cycles.






Outside El Paso at a small state park we met Shadow.

From John and Carols Blog

As a wolf hybrid his possession is forbidden in many US states but we saw only a big friendly animal.







At a facility in Oregon where rescued animals were rehabilitated we saw these two female wolves. Carol was able to get down in a corner where the electric fence was low and the wolves came to speak to her and allowed Carol to touch them.







Lake Powell is a giant and very controversial man made lake in Southern Utah / Northern Arizona.

From John and Carols Blog

We rented a speedboat from Waweep marina and headed up the lake past giant red walls of sandstone to a hidden gem called the Rainbow Arch. To get there we had to thread our way through some twisting slot canyons, park at a little marina and then hike to this natural wonder. It is sacred to the first nation people and we were only allowed to get so close but not to walk under the arch.




Driving up to Alaska on the 1,522 miles of the Alcan Highway.

From John and Carols Blog

We saw bears walk across the road, swam in a natural hot spring in surroundings

From John and Carols Blog

straight out of a Indiana Jones movie and at Hyder we saw a big old grizzlie catch and eat a salmon.

From John and Carols Blog

THE LOWS

John is finding that he can not cope with the conditions of many of the animals kept for exibit to the public and will try to avoid captive animals in the future.

Carol is against any animal being caged or trapped in unnatural conditions. If they have to be in captivity they shouldn't be too aware of it. It was a honour to be able to get close to the two white wolves who managed to find a gap next to the electric fence to come forward and make contact. they wagged their tails and licked carol's hand. The feeling that came across was " I don't want to be here but I bare no malice, I am resigned"
Carol feels ashamed for the members of the human race that put these animals where they are, and helpless for having to leave them there, and others like them.


The worst of all lows was losing Charro. He never complained even when he was sometimes in pain,
he was always willing to go and smell new places, or just lie in the sun with company.

His trolley was a godsend, and he accepted it so easily, knowing that this was a lifeline , and that he could maintain his freedom still, and accepted the situation with dignity. He saw more places in his lifetime than most dogs, and had lots of memories. Now he is one of our most precious memories.

PUEBLO GRANDE, DISCOUNT ROULETTE AND GOING TO JAIL

The scarcity of recent posts relates to the poor quality TENGONET wifi connection we have here at Superstition Sunrise.

We visited the homesite of the Hohokam first nation people today. They lived in the Phoenix valley from AD 1 up to about AD 1450 building 100s of miles of irrigation canals to make the desert bloom. They also had an intricate society including some accurate astrology.

We wondered about the game court, what sort of football was played here and how did you score a goal?





We looked in at the Scottsdale Fashion Mall.
This is a vary upmarket mall with Guchi stuff and valet parking.

We liked this approach to giving a discount at one shop.

First shop and let them swipe your card then spin the wheel to find how much discount you get,

ONLY IN AMERICA.





Finally we got the call. Friday at 2.00pm we go to jail.

Parks and Museums in Phoenix.

We found the historical museum in Papago park gave us a real insight into the growth of Phoenix and how important water is to a town in the desert that gets only 7 inches of water a year. Irrigation has been practiced since about AD700 firstly by relatives of the pueblo people up to the present situation where thousands of miles of canals make the desert land fruitful.
This is somewhat ironic as we have had two days of heavy rain which flooded the RV parks baseball field and it is raining again tonight.








We also learned another disquieting fact about bad treatment toward the first nation people. In Arizona they only received the right to vote in the 1940s.

The Botanical Garden was amazing,
firstly a great display of Sonoran desert vegetation and some wildlife including lots of desert hummers like this one which I tentatively identified as an Anna’s Hummingbird. But we also were blown away by an amazing display of blown glass from the Chihuly workshops.
I had seen similar work at the Belagio but this was where it belongs out in the sunshine and a natural backdrop.

The park highlighted the way the Sonoran desert vegetation could be used to support life with lots of hands on exibits. Carol had a go at making brushes.

There was a light show in the gardens that night which was a sellout so we went to the famous Phoenix Zoo show which was excellent.




The legend of the Lost Dutchman Mine still draws prospectors and treasure hunters to the area and we went to see if we could stumble across it.
Instead we found a junkyard which had been renamed as a Goldmine recreation.








The museum included something I had never heard of before, Parlour Pistols. These were designed for indoor target practice.

We are having a break from RV life over Christmas and are off to stay at a hotel. Someone else has to washup after dinner!

MERRY CHRISTMAS

Merry Christmas from Phoenix in Arizona.

Getting in the Christmas spirit

We dug out the motorcycling snowman, reassembled him and much to
our surprise he still works. Carol has built a new centerpiece decoration and it is on the dashboard. Overall the whole park is looking more colourful unfortunately this years in decoration is a motion sensitive device which sings you a christmas carol everytime you walk past. One would be OK but they are everywhere! Bah humbug I say!

Superstition Sunrise RV park

After a cloudy Thursday the sun returned today and after getting some odd jobs done including washing the Trek we decamped to the pool for an afternoon swim in the heated outdoor pool. Carol’s problem with her light weight feet was again evident. When she tries to stand up from the prone position her feet stay up and her head goes down, which is not good. A friendly fellow swimmer lent us her giant foam noodle and normal service was resumed with head up and feet down when stopping.

We had had advance warning of a block party for
our neighbour’s 65th birthday party. So we were not surprised when we returned from our evening walk to find a golf cart jam in front of our plot.







The park is fairly quiet at night but there is an active coyote population in and around the park and sometimes they have a real good howl. There is also a three legged coyote which we are told lives in the park denning under a park model home, AKA garden shed.

Mesa Arizona and the hunt for a RV Park

We have been down in Mesa, which is part of the urban sprawl called Phoenix, for a few days now. The drive down was a wet one with a surprise regarding the road. Our Rand Macnally atlas showed a tarmac road leading to our planned stop at
the Lost Dutchmen State Park but when with 25 miles to go the road turned to dirt. We chickened out as it was going to be slippery and there is always the chance of a flooded wash like this one blocking our way. The rain was the first significant amount in six months.

When we finally got there we discovered that finding a park that met our parameters was hard. We have had to make some compromises and have finished up at Superstition Sunrise RV Park which has fairly good WiFi [sometimes!] and lots of things to do but we are surrounded by hundreds and hundreds of garden sheds which they call a park model home down here and little greenery other than a token orange tree. The park has more than a thousand sites and about as many golf carts. However the skies are blue, the temperature is in the 70s and the swimming pools are a toasty 82.

We were tempted by a sign boasting of the best cod and chips in the valley. Carol added onion rings and mushrooms to her order and we were both appalled by the amount of batter we were paying for. Carol decided to peel hers and this is the result, I being the gannet that I am ate mine, batter and all. Yummee!

I got a days flying in with the local club. This magnificent tarmac runway with the Superstition mountain range providing the backdrop, is provided by the local parks authority and is home to one of the more active clubs
I have come across. They even go pylon racing. However they won’t let me fly my delta, too fast!






In the back in the park we are getting the odd jobs,
that have built up attended to and decorating the Trek and our plot for Christmas.

Sedona down to Payson via some state parks.

We left Sedona after a last visit
to the art galleries which are full of interesting and quirky pieces.








Montezuma Castle

I got a mornings flying in with the Central Arizona Flyers before we moved on to Montezuma Castle. This is a pueblo people’s building, another built in the shelter of an overhanging cliff. When the early white explorers saw it they assumed that it was too well built to be a product of the local Indians and thought it had to of Aztec origin and this is the reason for the name.
We could only look at this 5 story 20 room dwelling built high on a vertical cliff and marvel at the agility and the endurance of the builders in the 12th century. The stream below was a reliable source of water and the flood plain provided fertile soil for the squash, beans and corn that was their staple food. Yet this dwelling with its attached lower village of 45 more rooms at the base of the cliff was abandoned by the early 1400s.

Fort Verde

The Fort is the best preserved example left in the southern states. Unlike the movie forts the southern forts had no stockade but relied on good lookouts. Anyway the local tribes avoided big set piece battles preferring to make hit and run raids on supply trains and small settlements or patrols. The soldiers sent to garrison this fort had no idea of how to track the raiders but they employed scouts from local tribes who could. We learned how the tribes were not united but in fact existed in a state perpetual intertribal slave taking and raiding for horses so it was not difficult for the scouts to feel OK about working with the army
. In fact as most of the tribes were crammed into one tiny reservation, this was a way for a young man to acquire wealth and status. In 22 years 11 scouts won the USA’s top award for valour. As this was only 120 years ago the oral memories of the scouts live on in the minds of their descendents and someone had tracked them down, recorded them and edited the stories into a some short films. It was quite eerie listening to a first nation slant on the Indian wars.

When the forts were abandoned at the end of the Indian wars those parts made of wood were dismantled and the timbers reused elsewhere, those made of adobe could not and were just left.
The four we looked at were adobe and were refurbished as living quarters. The commanding officer’s quarters were well furnished and quite genteel in contrast to the bachelor’s quarters which had guns stripped for cleaning on the dining room table and a poker game in the back room.







Tonto Natural Bridge

This was a find. We only stopped here because it was on our route to Phoenix. We had seen other natural arches including the rainbow arch at lake Powell, supposedly the best in the USA and expected this one to be less impressive. We were wrong.. This arch is different.
A different set of geological circumstances resulted in a massive arch of travertine over a river.


The trail down to the bottom of the canyon and back, taxed Carol’s strength to the limit as she is recovering from a severe bout of shingles. We walked over the top of the bridge and dropped down into the canyon.
Apparently the water flowing from the top of the bridge is still rich



in the mineral travertine and the bridge is still being built one drop at a time. Although there are no signs of first nation dwellings it is hard to believe that this site with it’s reliable water supply and convenient caves was never inhabited.

We are sitting in the rain in Payson at 5000 feet glad that the forecast snow level has been moved upwards to 7000 feet. It has been a long time since we have had some serious rain but we might get 2 inches today. This will produce "gulley washers" as the soil does not absorb the rain very well and it floods off into theses temporary rivers.

Williams to Sedona

Horrible Zoo

We visited a deer farm / petting zoo near Williams on Route 66. The pigmy goats were seriously cute and seemed to take turns in the bath tub in the middle of their small compound. The deer expected to be fed by the visitors as you were prompted to buy a cup of deer feed on the way in as you bought your ticket. Some deer were full up and content to lie in the dust in the shade in the middle of their compound others looking like they were eating for two would follow you around waiting to be fed.
I was concerned by the lack of stimulation for many of the animals who did not have visitors in their compounds. All they had was a small area of red dirt and a little shade.
Some of the animals, like the caribou are used to cold climates and must really suffer in the heat of the Arizona summer when daily temperatures approach 90f.


The whole place had not one blade of grass, just rocks and red dirt. Tiny fenced compounds with no enrichment, at best a shed offering some relief from the Arizona sun.

All in all I did not like this place and believe it needs looking at by someone with the animals welfare at heart.

Oak Creek Canyon

This leads down from Flagstaff to Sedona and is a mini grand canyon. The road was impressive and I wish the information given by the visitors centre had been the same. We were expecting to stay in one campground which was closed even though the web site said otherwise, the one we were directed to was open but took tents only although the web site said short RVs were acceptable, our final site we were directed to was miles away and there were several others closer that we were not told about. We finished up in Cottonwood at The Dead Horse Ranch State park. It was OK just further than we needed to go.

SEDONA

Next day we back tracked to Sedona which was a find. The weather is great. We are back in shorts. The shops are interesting. Carol is happy and goes shopping. There is a good flying field nearby. John is happy and goes flying. There is a really nice RV park inside Sedona within walking distance of the free bus service which runs around the interesting bits. So the Trek is happy and gets a rest.


We spent a day using the free shuttle bus and exploring the shops, art galleries and quirky little courtyards on offer.

Sedona is a four seasons playground for everyone. It has history and archaeology; arts and culture; power shopping; outdoor sports. It also has much to offer in the spiritual and metaphysical fields plus internationally known Vortex meditation sites which are locations having energy flows in those deeper dimension that the Soul can soar on.



All of this with a backdrop of some of the most spectacular scenery in the world including SNOOPY.



Finally flying after many frustrations

I got a good days flying in with the Central Arizona Modellers,
after fiddling with the tank on my big Yak and replacing the throttle servo on the little delta which then performed nicely now I have increased the size of the fin to avoid the involuntary inverted spin.

Sacagawea

As we explored the North East USA we kept coming across references to the heroic exploits of Lewis and Clark whose journey across ¾ s of the northern USA had been the second non native expedition to the Pacific. However we found out in Sedona that one reason for their success was their Indian companion, Sacagawea, and her infant son. This Shoshone woman, married to the French trader Toussaint Charbonneau, accompanied Lewis and Clark from the Mandan villages to the Pacific Ocean and then came back with them.
Indians who might have suspected the explorers were on a warlike mission would have been reassured by seeing Sacagawea and her child with the soldiers. According to William Clark, "The Wife of Shabano our interpreter We find reconsiles all the Indians, as to our friendly intentions. A woman with a party of men is a token of peace."
She did all this carrying her child on her back in a papoose carrier.

SQUIRREL

We are staying in Flagstaff in a Ponderosa pine forest. It is a commercial campground but unlike many
it has a healthy wildlife population including this cute little fellow. It is an Abert's squirrel or tassel-eared squirrel. With it’s long tufts or tassels of fur on its ears red stripe on it’s back and bushy white edged black tail with white fur on the underside it is also pretty striking..

It turns out that Abert's squirrel is a favorite game of hunters and its flesh is often eaten. The fur is not particularly valuable yet has been used for pelts.

Carol got this video clip from through the Trek door. BROADBAND NEEDED

Lake Havasu Cars Boats and Planes

CARS

One of the big car dealerships in Lake Havasu cleared its sales lot for a classic car and hot rod show and it was quite a show.





Here are two hot rods that we really liked. Both were very well crafted and the chops were subtle with a really good finish.

I loved Carol's reaction to this little additional feature on display.






However not all the cars were immaculate chassis up restorations. Some people just polished the old pickup, turned up and parked.




Others were a little more creative.








BOATS

Ok this one is a bit of a stretch but I liked it for the title. At first you will not see anything out of the order until I tell you that the model seaplane fly-in took place just to the right and the circuit and landing approach was directly over the passing boats, one of which was the local ferry.

PLANES


The local flying club, the Desert Hawks, put on this 3 day fly in every year. The weather was unkind for days 1 and 3 but day 2 was perfect. Lots of 1/4 scale Cubs and little electric foamie Northstars flying really well. I did not see the WW1 job fly but it looked very scale.

MY PLANES


Over the last 10 months I have been putting together a fast little home brew delta to handle the windier days. I had built something like this many years ago and although I did not have any plans or measurements I thought it looked about right although I was not sure about the CG and the size of the fin. The CG seemed to be a long way forward. I did a calculation which showed it to be about right.

After a final aileron and range check I fired up the ancient MDS 38 and tossed it into the air. I was pretty sure it would fly as the thrust to weight ratio was clearly better than one to one but boy was I surprised. I was instantly into a huge loop as I had dialed too much reflex into the ailerons. As it screamed of the top of the big vertical split S it accelerated to warp factor 13. It was a busy 30 seconds as I went for low rates and trimmed in some down. Even on low rates it was still twitchy but boy it is quick and tracks really well on low passes. I was glad I had painted the underside half black as I tried for some twinkle rolls on high rates. But all good things come to an end and as I pulled a tight turn it went into an inverted spin and I could not recover it. Shutting the engine down just before it hit I watched it hit the desert just off the runway. Not too much damage and I will soon have it back in the air with a bigger fin.















I got some nice flights in with the YAK after this but after 10 months of absolute engine reliability I have been having engine problems and it is it still deadsticking. RATS!











Many thanks to the Desert Hawks for letting me fly at their great site.