A Day Trip to Payson and the Mogollon Rim

I know. Two blog posts in one day after two months without one. Hmmmm.

Today we took a day off from Mom care and took a 200 mile ride on the scooter. We left Mesa at about 10am when the temperature was just about 90, and headed up Arizona 87. Payson is at about 5,000 feet and only 70 miles away. We pulled into town about 11:15. The temperature was only 78. Dianna actually had to put the liner in her riding jacket to keep warm.

After getting gas (which was illogically 25 cents a gallon cheaper than in the Phoenix area) we went to the Rim Country Museum. We paid our $4 each senior admission fee and expected to wander the museum, but instead a docent was assigned to us to give us a guided tour. It was great. We had one docent for the first floor, a different one for the second floor, and a third for the Zane Grey cabin tour. All of them were very knowledgeable and great guides. We were there for a little over 2 hours, and we were the only people on our tour. There were some other tours going on with other docents, but it appeared everyone had their own personal guide.

Of course, Zane Grey wrote many of his stories about the Mogollon Rim country, and he had a cabin there for a while. The actual cabin was about 20 miles east of Payson, but they built an exact replica of it next to the museum when the original burned in a huge forest fire in 1990. It was an interesting and educational visit. We were both very pleased that we stopped. I think it is worth a trip from Phoenix just to experience the museum and cabin.

After lunch we decided it was still to hot to head back to the low country, so we drove east on 260 17 miles, then north on a side road 4 miles to the area where Zane Grey's cabin was located. There was nothing to see, but it gave us a sense of where he wrote many of the books about the area.

We then continued east on 260 and climbed to the top of the rim. It was 75 degrees and the elevation was 7,500 feet. I almost put in my jacket liner! We rode down the rim road a ways to a vista point. It sure was beautiful up in the pines, even though the smoke from a forest fire southwest of Payson obscured some of the view.

We then headed back toward town, stopping in Payson for a hot fudge sunday at McDonalds, and removing the jacket liner. By the time we got home it was nearly 7pm, but it was still 94 degrees. We had a good time, learned something, and spent a mostly cool day in the mountains of Arizona.

Not Exactly What We Planned

It's a good thing our plans are always cast in Jello. Things have not gone as expected this spring.

After spending our two weeks along the Salt River in Mesa, on March 27th we moved to an RV park just north of Wickenburg, AZ for an opportunity to explore an area of the state we had not spent much time in before. We visited Prescott and toured the museums in Wickenburg before Deidra returned to Texas on March 31st. We stayed at the campground for another couple weeks, making an occasional trip back into Mesa or Tempe to visit Mom and pick up mail or packages that had been sent to Daryl's. We were on schedule to leave for Southern California when plans were changed.

On Saturday morning, the 14th of April, we got a call from Mom. She said she couldn't move her right hand. We contacted Donna who went over to get her and take her to the hospital. Although it was initially misdiagnosed as a palsy and she was sent home, Daryl stayed with her on Sunday and took her to see her own Dr. on Monday. He sent her for an MRI and it was confirmed that she had had a stroke. She was admitted to the stroke ward at Banner Baywood hospital that day.

Dianna drove down to be with her that Monday, and I packed up the trailer and moved our home back to Mesa on Tuesday. Since then our lives have been pretty much taken up with caring for Mom. She was in the stroke ward for about a week, and then was moved to rehab for over two weeks. We were there at least once and usually twice a day. Between caring for her and helping with logistics and other things, we have had little time to ourselves.

Mom was released from rehab on May 8 and moved back to her apartment. For the first few days we never left her alone. Dianna spent the first two nights, then Daryl spent Thursday night, and I spent Friday night. She had almost nonstop visits from a home care nurse, a physical therapist and an occupational therapist, as well as visits from friends and family. By Saturday she was doing quite well and we left her alone for the first time that night. We have continued to spend time with her every day as she continues her recovery, and we are leaving her alone more and more.

Her strength on the right side has improved. She is probably at 70-80 percent of where she was. The fine motor skills are also much improved, but still have a ways to go. She does not have the strength in her legs that she used to have so mobility is something of an issue, but she is getting better. There are still questions about how much help she is going to need in the future, and where that help will come from.

A major complication with her recovery occurred from an unexpected place. She began experiencing severe back and shoulder pain while doing the therapy. At first it was thought it was just muscles that hadn't been used in a long time, but the pain kept getting worse instead of better. X-rays showed nothing but finally an MRI revealed that she has numerous tendon tears in her rotator cuff and other tendons. No wonder it was so painful. It still is. The pain is severe enough that much of the strengthening exercises and other therapies have been scaled back or put on hold. We are trying to get a handle on the pain, other than taking huge amounts of Vicoden every day, but have been frustrated by the availability of doctors who accept her insurance. It is still an ongoing issue, but the pain is getting somewhat less and she is not taking as many pain pills as she was.

As I mentioned, until today (which will be the subject of my next blog post) we have been with Mom every day since the stroke. Of course, Daryl and Donna have also been very involved, but we are staying only three miles from her apartment and we don't work, so it is much easier for us to deal with most of the day to day stuff. Heaven knows that Daryl and Donna have done far more than their share over the years. We are glad our lifestyle lets us support Mom in this way when she needed it, and lets us take some of the burden from Daryl and Donna for a while.

We currently plan to stay here in Mesa until the end of the month. At that time we expect to resume our plans for visiting Southern and Central California, then on to Oregon and the Pacific Northwest for the summer. Of course, anything can happen at any time to change those plans.

Winter Update

Yes, we have been remiss in not keeping our blog up to date. While most everyone who reads this already knows what we have been doing, I will document it anyway to serve as a history.

We arrived in Mesa on Jan 9 for a two week stay at our boondocking spot along the Lower Salt River. It was nice to see family again.

We had to move after our 14 day limit was up so we went to Quartzsite for the Big Tent event and to once again experience the uniqueness of the place. We were only there a week when we got the call that Dianna's Uncle Linc was near death. She drove the car to Denair ahead of me, and I followed the next day with the truck and trailer. He passed away before I arrived.

We stayed in Denair, camped in Mike and Randi's yard for a little over a week, then headed back to the desert. This time we went to the Imperial Dam area north of Yuma where we stayed for two weeks. While there we took care of our annual dentist visits in Algadones, MX.

On Feb 26th we left the truck and trailer in storage at an RV park in Quartzsite, and left for Dallas in the car so I could have my annual checkup with my back surgeon. We took three days to make the 1200 mile drive and get there the day before my appointment. All is well with my back. The day after my appointment we headed back to Arizona, this time taking the northern route instead of the southern route. Deidra decided to join us for a month, much as she used to do when she was younger. We stopped for the night after 600 miles of driving, in Edgewood where we spent the night with good friends.

The following day we drove the second 600 miles to Quartzsite where our trailer was stored. We moved it out to the desert and spent the next day recovering from our trip. The following day we moved back to Mesa where we plan to stay for the limit of 14 days again. We didn't tell anyone that Deidra was with us, so it was fun surprising Mom, Daryl and Donna when we met up with them.

We are currently just doing our normal relaxing routine that consists of hiking, shopping, geo-caching and relaxing. It's already starting to get a bit warm here, so our days are numbered. We'll probably head for cooler places soon.

That's about it. Certainly nothing exciting. Just life as usual for a couple retired full time RV'ers.

Family Visits

Understanding it has been a while since we posted, the blog police have finally prodded me into writing something. I doubt it will be exciting or news to most readers.

After our tour of the Nachez Trace, we traveled to the Chattanooga area to visit Darin and his family. We camped about 15 miles from their house in Cleveland in a rural RV park at the junction of the Ocoee and Hiwassee Rivers. It was a a pretty place to spend a month. Unfortunately, the weather was cold and rainy most of the time, so we only got in a couple motorcycle rides. Mostly we just tried to stay dry and warm.

One day Darin accompanied us to Oak Ridge where we toured the museum. Oak Ridge was a secret city built during WW II by the Manhattan Project. The enriched uranium used in the first atomic bombs, the ones in New Mexico and Hiroshima, was refined there. It was interesting how a secret city of 50,000 people could spring from nothing but farmland. The plutonium used in the third bomb, the one used on Nagasaki, was processed in a similar secret city built in Hanford, Washington.

Other than that it was a rather uneventful visit. We did celebrate Thanksgiving and Christmas with his family, and it was great fun playing with our great-grandson Skylar. He is very bright, and quite a handful. It had been a long time since we had been able to spend any time with Darin and his family, so the month long visit was very nice. We hope to do it again soon, but either in spring or fall when the weather is nicer.

We then traveled back to Denton in early December to spend Christmas with Dayna's family. We also both arranged for our annual doctor visits and checkups. This year Dayna wanted to do something special for Christmas, so we all went on a horse drawn carriage ride to look at Christmas Lights in Highland Park, a ritzy area just north of downtown Dallas. The nicest decorations were probably on Jerry Jones house. He owns the Cowboys, in case someone isn't familiar with who he is.

On the night of the 23rd of December, an apartment complex in Denton burned, leaving several families homeless just before Christmas. Dayna felt compelled to do something about it so went down there to see if she could help. She found that one of her co-workers lost their apartment, and also met with a family that had eight children. They lost everything. Dayna talked to the mother and got a list of what each of the children wanted for Christmas, and then she went shopping. She bought each of the kids a major gift. Dom was with her when they took the presents to the kids, and was deeply touched.

We both got more than we needed. I got some new tools, a spotting scope and a new weather station. Dianna got a new GPS and a Kindle. She also received a new phone a few weeks early. We now both have Droid Bionics.

We stayed in Denton through New Years, celebrating Dom's 15th birthday on December 31st. We left Denton yesterday on our annual migration to Arizona. We're moving slowly, about 200 miles or so a day, and staying at the free city campgrounds in the little towns here in West Texas. Tomorrow we should be in Carlsbad, NM and plan to visit Mike and Linda Morrow, friends from Edgewood, who now live in Artesia.

I hope this satisfies the blog police for the time being. When I have something more interesting to write about, I will.

The Natchez Trace

The Natchez Trace (a word that means trail or road in French) was originally a network of Native American trails. By the late 1700's when the United States was just beginning to expand into the area along the southern Mississippi, what became the Natchez Trace developed in prominence. It was designated as our first National Highway by Thomas Jefferson.

You can read the story about the Trace on Wikipedia or you can read my condensed version here.

The Trace ran from Natchez, MS to Nashville, TN, thus joining the lower Mississippi with Daniel Boone's Wilderness Road that ended in Nashville. Its original use was by boatmen and entrepreneurs who built flat bottom boats on the Ohio River, loaded them with goods, and floated them down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers to Natchez where they sold the goods and the lumber from the boats. At the time, Natchez was the most important city on the Mississippi. They then had no choice but to walk back north. Steamboats had not yet been invented, so there was no way to go up river by boat.

The trip from Natchez to Nashville was about 450 miles through wilderness and Indian Country. Eventually some very hardy individuals built and operated "stands" about a day's walk apart. So every 15 miles or so there would be a small cabin where the travelers could stop for the night and get a meal. The trip took about a month to complete.

The Trace was in use for only about 30 to 40 years. During that time it was very important, both as a route for commerce, and in later years as a postal route when the US was attempting to lay the claim to the lands in what was then the west. When the steamboat was developed, it eliminated the need for the Trace. It fell into disrepair and might have disappeared from history if not for the Mississippi chapter of the DAR which took on the project of restoring the Trace in about 1930. They sold their idea to the government and in 1938 the Natchez Trace became a unit of the National Park Service. The road was finally completed in 2005.

The Natchez Trace is essentially a 444 mile long National Park. They have done as much as possible to follow the route of the original trace, and to give the feel of the wilderness. If you have ever driven on roads in National Parks, you know what this looks like. There are no billboards, power lines, fences or other signs of civilization; at least to the the greatest extent possible. There are no stop signs from beginning to end, and the road crosses over or under all major highways. Many small roads do intersect with the Trace, but the Trace always has the right of way, and all access to the Trace is through ramps that camouflage the other road as much as possible.

The road itself is in excellent condition. The speed limit is 50 MPH, and we saw only very few people driving over 55. There are a lot of motorcycles on the Trace, so we were right at home. We started from Tupelo since it is approximately in the middle of the Trace. We used the trunk on the back of our scooter as our "suitcase" and filled the underseat storage with cold weather and rain gear. Unfortunately, our delay in getting the trailer painted meant that the weather was not nearly as nice as we had hoped for. We encountered no rain, but it sure was cold. With snowmobile suits and our heaviest insulated gear, we managed, and left on our adventure on Wednesday.

We first went south towards Natchez. It was only in the upper 40's as we left, and the sun came out for only brief periods throughout the day. There are exhibits, nature trails, signs and things to see every few miles, and we stopped at just about every one of them. We saw cypress swamps, hardwood forests, remnants of the old Trace, Indian burial mounds, sites of treaties, Indian villages, boundaries, geological formations, sites of old stands, and ferries. Below is a photo I took in one of the cypress swamps near Jackson, and a picture of Dianna standing in the old trace with her cold weather gear on.

It was getting late, and we were getting saddle sore by the time we reached Jackson, MS, so we stopped for the night. The next morning we continued on south toward Natchez, about 80 miles away. The entire trip from Tupelo was mostly over flat land. The elevation did not change more than 200 feet from beginning to end. About 15 miles north of Natchez we stopped at the only restored stand on the Trace. It was also one of the most luxurious due to its proximity to Natchez. It also served as a working plantation, and it was owned by the original family until the 1940's when it was taken over by the National Park Service. It has been restored to its 1810 appearance, and approximately 25 percent of it is original.

We then continued into Natchez where we visited the "Under Hill" area. It is where the steamboats tied up. Natchez itself is located on the highest bluffs anywhere along the lower Mississippi, which was the reason it was settled in the first place. We then toured the Natchez Visitor Center, and finally we toured Melrose, a plantation that was built in 1841.

By now it was late in the day, so we spent the night at a Day's Inn. It was somewhat unusual in that not only was breakfast included, but also dinner. They served red beans and sausage over rice, with cornbread. I thought it was pretty good. Dianna does not like sausage so she was not as impressed as I was.

The next day, Friday, we rode all the way back to our trailer in Tupelo. Since we didn't have to stop many places, it took a lot less time getting home. Saturday we rested, did laundry, and prepared for the trip toward the northern end of the Trace.

It wasn't quite as cold on Sunday, but we were still bundled up. As we rode north the terrain began to change, and there were fewer leaves on the trees, although beautiful fall colors were on display everywhere. Again we stopped at all the exhibits, overlooks and falls, tobacco farms, ferries, fords, Indian mounds and other sites to see. As we neared Nashville we got into much more mountainous country, but the Trace followed mostly along the ridge tops, which provided great views.

Near the northern end of the trace, yet still well into the wilderness, is the burial place of Meriwether Lewis of Lewis and Clark fame. He died there under "mysterious circumstances" at one of the stands while traveling the Trace in 1809, three years after returning from the famous expedition. By then Jefferson had appointed him as the Governor of Northern Louisiana. He was only 35 years old.

We continued on to the end of the Trace and found ourselves in a major city, Nashville, with Interstate highways and lots of traffic. I had used Travelocity's "secret hotel" feature to find a place to stay. It was described as a 4 star hotel for only $59. It turned out to be the Sheraton Music City, and it indeed was a very nice place. We paid less than half the normal rate. We had a nice dinner at the hotel after soaking our aching bones in their hot tub. By the way, our dinner cost a lot more than the hotel room.

Monday we headed back. We retraced our route across Nashville to the start of the Trace, then south for about 40 miles until we turned off toward Columbia, TN. It was the home of President James Knox Polk, also a relative of Dianna's. We toured the house his parents built, which is now a museum that contains most of the artifacts of his presidency. He did live in the home for a short time, but it was his parents home. It is the only house he lived in that is still in existence, except for the White House.

The video and tour lasted quite a while, so it was getting late by the time we had something to eat and left Columbia. We rode south to Lawrenceburg, where Davy Crockett lived from 1817 to 1821. He served as a state representative while living there, but had moved further west when elected to congress. Of course, he died at the Alamo in 1836.

From there we continued west to the Trace again, and then south to Tupelo, arriving about 6:30 last night. It was well past dark by then since DST is no longer in effect, and we are near the eastern edge of the central time zone. We were happy to be home, but we have great memories of our adventure. We rode just about 1,000 miles in total, saw some great scenery, and learned a lot of history. Next year, maybe the Blue Ridge Parkway.

Arkadelphia, Tupelo, and a Droid

We hung around Denton for a few days so we could celebrate Deidra's 19th birthday and take care of some last minute business, and left there on Tuesday the 25th of October. We drove to Arkadelphia, AR where we stopped at a very nice Corps of Engineers park. We stayed two nights since rain was forecast. That's when we found the leak in the freshly painted trailer. They had not sealed the roof properly where they added the new wall/roof radius.

While in Arkadelphia, Dianna did some genealogy research. One of her ancestors was a Confederate governor of the state, and he was from there. There is a lot of history about him in the town, including his original law office which has been preserved.

We then drove to Tupelo, MS where we planned to ride the scooter on the Natchez Trace. Unfortunately, I came down with a bad cold and did nothing for 2 days. The 3rd day I finally got dressed and we visited the Natchez Trace Visitor Center, just north of Tupelo, and we made the obligatory visit to Elvis's birthplace.

There is not a lot to see unless you want to pay to go in the house and visit the museum. We've never been huge fans, so decided to pass. We came, we saw.

While in Arkadelphia my Motorola RAZR died. I have had it for many years so it served its purpose. I purchased a Droid Bionic smart phone to replace it. It's a nice phone that does a lot, but I'm not sure I really get the love that some people seem to exhibit. This has one of the largest screens available, but it is still very small print, even when enlarged. I'm sure I will find I use it more as time goes on, but it is not going to replace my laptop.

The biggest reason I went with this particular phone is that it is 4G, and because Verizon is currently running a little known promotion. For $30 per month they will enable the hot spot feature, and include unlimited data for life! I've been thinking about purchasing a cellular connection to compliment or eventually replace my satellite internet. This deal made it a no brainer.

I have now had an opportunity to use the hotspot in a 4G area. I can tell you that it screams. Even in a good 3G area it is much faster than satellite for small amount of data, mostly because of less latency. For large files the satellite is still better due to some recent improvements from HughesNet.

That's it for this part. The next post will cover our adventures on the Natchez Trace.

The Finished Product

Although it has been completed for a couple weeks, I finally had an opportunity to take a decent photo of our freshly painted trailer. We are reasonably pleased with the result. There are a few flaws, and a mistake on their part resulted in a very bad leak the first time it rained, but overall it looks very nice.

They had originally estimated that the job would take 3 weeks. It ended up taking almost 7. It was a huge job and I think they underestimated just how big a job it was going to be. Then they had employee problems, paint problems, supplier problems. By the time it was finished we were both glad it was over.

The new fiberglass radius where the wall meets the roof is a huge improvement. We decided not to have any brand name painted on it. Since Teton is no longer in business, there doesn't seem to be any reason to advertise for them. Now if we can just keep it looking good .....