Cactus Country

We probably could have stayed in Big Bend National Park for a few more days and done a few more hikes, but the good weather we have had all the way up until mid-November was about to end for us. A wet rainy system moving over Arizona and New Mexico was going to collide with an intense arctic blast coming down from Canada to bring record low temperatures and even snow all the way down to Big Bend. We wanted to get west ahead of this, so the worst we would have to deal with was a little rain.

Heading west out of Big Bend, we soon left the Chihuahuan Desert environment and all of the rest of West Texas, was nothing but brush and tumbleweeds. You don't even see many cactuses out there. Following I-10 we went through El Paso and stopped for the night in Las Cruces, New Mexico. About the only thing notable about this area except for how barren the area was, were the occasional Pecan groves growing in very neat rows. Pecans must be a very hardy tree, since we have seen them being farmed everywhere in the South from Georgia all the way out to the dry desert environment of New Mexico. We stayed the night in Coachlight RV Park, tucked behind the Coachlight Inn. Not much more than a huge gravel lot enclosed behind a cinderblock wall, it did have easy pull through full hook-up sites. They had shower facilities at the hotel, but that required an access card which required a hefty deposit, so for one night it was too much of a hassle. Definitely a one night stop kind of place and not someplace I would want to stay a while.

We left early the next morning and promptly hit the rain that had been predicted. They were also predicting high winds of 20 to 25 mph, but for the most part they were blowing from the east. These actually gave us a little bit of a boost and we hit 14 mpg instead of our more typical 10mpg average. It wasn't until we were just south of Tucscon that we started seeing tall Saguaro cactuses and shorter fishhook barrel cactuses growing wild. Similar to areas near Big Bend, while still desert-like conditions, we started to see a wide variety of vegetation and a lot more green than we had seen for the past several hundred miles. We stopped in Tucson and decided to stay for about a week. We stayed at Whispering Palms RV Park inside the city, north of downtown. With our Passport America rate of about $15 a night it was one of the cheapest places we stayed on our trip. Online reviews had given the place a bad rap, but we found most of the complaints had been addressed. They had excellent wi-fi, newly remodeled bathrooms and decent laundry facilities. I have come to find that most RVers equate "bad neighborhoods" with areas that are look different from the suburbia in the northern US and have little to substantiate the neighborhood as being dangerous. For the first couple of days, it dumped rain and for an area unaccustomed to that much rain there was a lot of localized flooding with roadways blocked in some areas. However, once the rain cleared it returned to beautiful blue skies and warm in the 70s.

Tucson is in a valley between the Tucson Mountains to the west and the much taller Santa Catalina Mountains to the east. A short drive over the Tucson Mountains brings you to one of two parts of the Saguaro National Park. While the entire region is covered with Saguaro cactuses, you can get up close and hike through them here. Also like Big Bend, we found there is an exceptional amount of wildlife in the area, mostly we saw lots of birds and a few lizards, but there are rattlesnakes, deer, Gila Monsters, coyotes and a small pig-like animal called a javelina that can apparently be aggressive. Got to watch out for those piglets going for your jugular vein!

Saguaro cactus landscape in the National Park

 

A Saguaro family ... waving

Ancient Indian rock etching in Saguaro National Park

Heading east from Tucson, you quickly climb in elevation, passing out of the Saguaro cactus zone, through a scrubby brush zone, and then you enter Ponerosa Pine forest and the snow zone in the winter. It is amazing that with temperatures in the 70s you could be up in snow at the Palisades area in less than an hour. In fact, at the peak of Mt. Lemmon at 9157 feet there is a ski area.

Palisades area on Mt Lemmon

In general Tucscon seems like it could be a very livable place if you could deal with the heat in the summer. You wouldn't have much lawn to mow, but many of the stucco style homes had neatly planted cacutuses around creating a little desert oasis around each house. Also, Tucson seems to have resisted what I call "big box americana hell" that I observed of so many other cities on our trip around the country. So many cities these days lack any unique character since all the stores are the same and even the massive huge developments of houses built ten feet apart all look the same, the only thing that changes is the landscape around them. While Tucson has its share of big box stores, they were spread throughout the city and did not dominate any particular area of the city. The downtown area has a number of interesting restaurants including El Charro Cafe the oldest continuously running mexican restaurant in the country since 1922. While the food was good but not spectacular, the facility with an open air courtyard and a fountain in the middle had a lot of authentic charm. Also a thumbs up for Thunder Canyon Brewery downtown. They make several of their own beers, but also have dozens of unique beers on tap. You are sure to find something you will like. With freshly ground in-house and locally sourced beef, I can also recommend their burgers.

Courtyard inside El Charro Cafe

On previous trips and traveling for work, I have seen much of California and knew there was not much more I wanted to see in Southern California, so our next travel day was a huge one. We did 659 miles from Tucson to Tulare, CA in the middle of the San Joaquin Valley. With south winds and lots of semi trucks that we could keep pace with we saw the best mileage on our trip of 15mpg coming up the valley on highway 99. We stopped at the Sun and Fun RV Park in Tulare. Lots of long-termers here, friendly but strange is the nicest way to put it. A decent park with great bathroom facilities paved roads and well-maintained concrete pads at each site. A good place to stop for the night, but really not much else in the area that would encourage you to stop for a few days.

The next morning we were off on a much shorter trek to Calistoga, CA in the north end of the Napa Valley. Finding decent RV facilities in the wine country can be a challenge, most are quite expensive and that does not equate to nice facilities. The Calistoga RV Park at the Napa Valley Fairgrounds was a great find. You can stay up to four nights at the Passport America rate of $21 a night, which is a bargain in that area. It is pretty much a large paved/gravel yard with a few trees along the perimeter, but it is within walking distance to downtown and a short drive to most things in wine country. We stayed for a week.

A very modest Thanksgiving dinner in our cramped trailer

When I first visited the wine country in 2000, most of the wineries had free-tastings and maybe a reserve list that you might pay a tasting fee for. Today, that has all changed, nearly every winery charges between $10 and $25 just for tastings. For two people visiting three or four wineries you could easily spend $80 to $100 in a day on tasting alone. Now that we are on a fixed income we can't splurge like we might have in the past. I think many visitors to Napa today no longer go to the wineries with the intention to purchase wine, instead the tasting is the event and wineries are now charging high tasting fees to recoup a profit. I was amazed by the number of bicyclers going winery to winery and surely they are not able to carry purchased bottles of wine ... so I blame the bikers for ruining a fun time in wine country. :) However, we did uncover a couple of wineries that are bucking the trend and still had free tastings or maybe $5 tastings. Kenwood in the Sonoma Valley has free wine tastings still, but I can't say much about the wines we tasted. We saw a recommendation for a tiny and newer winery called Loxton and we were not disappointed, the Australian winemaker focuses on shiraz, but they had a good fruity zinfandel that we picked up a bottle of. We stopped by Roche and Hawkes, but both of those were just mediocre. Of course, we still think Cline cellars makes some of the best zinfandels anywhere and they have free tasting, lots of wines to try and a really nice facility.

The area along 101 north of San Francisco is a mecca for breweries with Lagunitas in Petaluma, Bear Republic in Healdsburg, Russian River in Santa Rosa, 3rd Street Aleworks in Santa Rosa, Moylan's in Novato and probably a couple others I forgot to mention. We didn't make it to all of them, but we did do the tour at Lagunitas, had a beer and some food at Russian River and 3rd Street Aleworks and got a pint or two at Bear Republic. Lagunitas and Bear Republic were really the standouts with some of the tastiest beers. I had high hopes for Russian River, but they have gone to the dark side and jumped on the sour beer bandwagon and that is just not for me.

On our trip we have been on the hunt for good bike trails that aren't just the shoulder of some highway. The last time we got the bikes out was back in North Carolina, but north of San Francisco near the Point Reyes National Seashore, we found the 5.3 mile paved Sir Francis Drake bikeway that goes along Lagunita Creek. This was a very scenic ride through redwood forests and one of the highlights of our stop in Calistoga.

From Calistoga, we headed north up highway 101 and stopped in Eureka for a few days. The whole Eureka/Arcata area has many of the aspects we appreciate about the Northwest and was definitely interesting enough to spend at least a couple of days. With Lost Coast, Six Rivers, Redwood Curtain, Eel River and Mad River breweries there is plenty of variety to check out. Most of Six Rivers beers were outstanding from their Chili Pepper Beer to their Sasquatch Double IPA, Lost Coast has their seasonal Winterbraun that we were pretty fond of and Mad River's barleywine is pretty solid in that category.

Eureka also is large enough to have a wide variety of decent restaurants. One of the most interesting was across the bridge to the little town of Samoa on the barrier island. Samoa is the remains of logging town back when the logging industry used to move in and literally build a whole town with nice houses, streets and stores. Today the Samoa cookhouse still serves three meels a day much as it was when it was an active logging area. There is no menu, you get whatever they are serving, but it is always lots of good home cooked foods served family style at the long banquet style tables. When we were there for $15 for dinner they were serving pot roast with gravy, fried chicken, a hearty soup, salad,  a couple of vegetable dishes and cake for desert. All the plates are "all you can eat" and they will keep bringing more. We did not walk away hungry. They have lots of memorabilia on the walls, like 15 foot saw blades and a small logging museum that is definitely worth a look. You get an idea what it must have been like to be one of the first settlers in the area amongst the giant Redwood trees that grow in this area.

Samoa Cookhouse

After leaving Eureka, we knew we wanted to stop someplace in the Oregon area so we could be closer to family over the holidays, but a nasty cold snap with below freezing temperatures was hitting the Portland area and our trailer's water system between the hook-up and the trailer is completely exposed and frozen waterlines is not much fun. We have heard rumors about Brookings, Oregon on the coast having unseasonably mild weather, but I will save that for the next post.