Saturday March 29

Woke up to a sunny day. First night in a real bed for
a couple months (ok, one hotel night, also). Made
coffee without cold fingers and rinsed the pot with
warm water for the second cup.

Went for a bike ride in the capitol of beautiful bike
riders. I smoked one old guy on a mountain bike but
otherwise I watched a lot of well shaped butts go
flying by. There were groups of 5, 10, 40 bikers,
most very intense. About half responded to a wave.
Although the altitude is only about 5000 ft I was
felling it on the hills.

Went food shopping with Steven in the afternoon and
while he and Mandy were out for dinner with friends I
pigged out on English soccer on the telly.

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Friday March 28

It wasn't too cold this morning but it was raining
and foggy. Went for coffee at George's Restaurant and
Drive-in in Walsenburg and watched two Colorado State
Policemen give a sobriety test to a pick-up driver.

Found I-25 and headed north. Just south of Colorado
Springs it started getting icy but the rotten
conditions were short lived. It stayed foggy enough
that I never saw the front range until I got to
Boulder.

Arrived at my brother's about noon.

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Thursday March 27

Woke up to frost, a warming sunrise and canada geese,
robins and redwing blackbirds. It sounded like
Vermont. Nothing was frozen so I had coffee and
watched the shadows on the mountains disappear.

The road out of Navajo State Park was thick with
Magpies, enormous birds with long black tails that
make a blue jay kind of unattractive squack. Drove to
Sand Dunes National Park outside Alamosa, CO. The
highest sand dunes in the US, mountains of sand
carried off the Rockies by rivers and blown back into
dunes by the prevailing SW winds. I climbed part way
to the top but the footing is nasty. Some hardy souls
did go all the way to the top. It was so high you
could only tell they were people because they were
moving. The wind was fierce.

Went over two passes. One, Wolf Creek, has a ski area
on top and piles of snow 10 feet deep along the road.
The Suby managed nicely in third low gear at 40 mph.

On the way into Alamosa there was a cut field of
something, with about 30 sandhill cranes, stopping on
their way north to bulk up.

An ad in an RV mag I picked up about a fancy RV park
system, "These places don't just let any coach in
through the gates. There are standards and they're
high."

Tonight I'm at Lathrop State Park in Wahsenburg, CO.
It's situated between a busy highway and a golf
course; one of the less attractive camps I've stayed
in. There's one other site occupied. The little
reservoir was full of coots, canada geese and a pair
of mergansers whose bright coloring could only mean
one thing.

It's very cold. I'm under the covers and it's only
7:00. I've packed up everything so I can just jump in
the car and find a warm diner in the morning.

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Wednesday March 26

Couldn't decide, when I packed up this morning which
way I was going to go. At the last second I decided
to turn north into Monument Valley, home of El Capitan
of "Close Encounters" fame. Very cool buttes and
mesas that stretched for miles. Now and then an
"Indian Trading Post" selling "Real Navajo Jewelry" at
"Wholesale Prices". And many little homemade roadside
stands with hand painted signs advertising the same
stuff. Passed three of four housing developments on
the reservation which must have been relocation
villages. The whole res culture is so mysterious to
me. And I have real hesitation and discomfort about
asking questions (which I have never had in
Newfoundland, for example). I feel like I used to in
the Middlebury Natural Foods Coop, imagining the
salespeople saying to themselves "what's he doing
here?" My own mischugass ("craziness" for you goyim
((gentiles)) ), of course.

Went through Mexican Hat and Bluff, CO, two little
towns on the San Juan River that are starting and
stopping places for rafting trips. There's a lot of
water in the San Juan because of the amount of snow in
the mountains and there were lots of rafts getting in
and out. I toyed with floating some of it but the
shuttle back to the starting point was a problem. I
liked the funkiness of the two towns. One had a
restaurant with a sign that said "Home of the Swinging
Steak" and no explanation or picture.

Drove through Cortez and Durango. Elevaton stayed
pretty steady at around 7000 ft. Lots of snow. The
only campground open was a state park near Ignacio,
which is also the home of an old college buddy, Hope
Vail. Hope tried to teach me to smoke and drink
scotch. Needless to say…. She and her partner lived
in Asheville, NC . after graduate school and enticed
me and Phoebe to move there. Anyway, I left a message
but haven't heard anything. Hope works for the
schools and this is spring break.

I'm camping on Navajo Lake, right on the water, no one
else in the campground. A beautiful view of the
snowcovered mountains. Had a campfire. I'm a little
worried about the temp tonight. It was 19 above in
Durango last night. It's a little lower in elevation
here.

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Monday March 24

It was very windy and cold this morning. Had my
coffee and packed up and drove into Springdale, just
outside the park. Found a laundramat and by the time
my undies were clean and dry the sun had come out and
it was another beautiful day. So I went back to the
campsite (which I'd paid for anyway) and set back up.

Took the shuttle bus to a trailhead which also
happened to be under one of the most popular rock
climbing routes. There were four teams of climbers
headed up a sheer face of rock that takes two days to
climb. There was a climber hurt and I watched a
rescue team set up ropes to get him off the cliff.
Never did get to do a hike myself. The rescue guys
said they do about 65 rescues a year and almost none
are rock climbers. Usually, a hiker who slips and
breaks a leg.

Back at the campground I chatted with a young woman
who graduated from Bowdoin two years ago and now
teaches art and outdoor skills at a private school in
Prescott, AZ and her parents; the mom is a social
worker in Waterbury, CT who works in maternity with
high risk moms. Dad teaches art at a posh CT prep
school and makes wooden kayaks. And a man with
Aspergers who has a fiberglass teardrop trailer.

I've been looking at the map and the weather and I
think I'm not going to go any further north right now.
It's very cold in Bryce and in the mountains of
Colorado. Going to head east into the Navajo-Hopi
reservation and into Southern Colorado before I turn
north toward Boulder.

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Sunday March 23

Drove from Page to Zion National Park by way of Grand
Staircase-Escalante National Monument. GSENM is
mostly accessible by 4-wheel vehicle. It gets it's
name from the 4 distinct geological layers in the form
of a, that's right, grand staircase, each tread being
about 25 miles wide.. Big time dinosaur remains and
lots of universities sending teams to dig. In the
more remote areas they helicopter in and out.

I'm starting to OD on beauty. Zion is another
spectacular place. Two immense canyons. You drive
down into the first, go through a tunnel into the
second. The tunnel was another CCC project, built for
the cars of the time. Some rigs are too big to go
through, and some, pay a special fee to they can go
through as a single lane while the traffic from the
other direction is stopped. The Virgin River Canyon,
where I am camped, is a very busy place. So much so
that you can't drive to the end of the canyon but have
to take a shuttle bus, and so much business that
there's a bus every 15 minutes for the 8 mile route.
The canyon is very narrow and the walls go up 500-800
feet on both sides. I biked to the end today and the
views were dangerous. In case anyone was wondering
what happened to the tops of the Appalachians, they
are outside my trailer. The eastern mountains eroded
and the dirt ended up in Canada. Then big sandstorms
blew the dirt down here (though, when this happened,
land masses were in some different places), turned
into sandstone and got eroded away again.

The campground is very much like ones I remember from
growing up. Lots of families with kids running
around, lots of tents. There's a woman with rather
large parts a couple sites down who keeps yelling
"Matthew". I don't know if Matt is a kid, a dog or a
spouse, but whoever, he keeps pissing her off.

Finished "The Worst Hard Time" about families that
lived through the Dust Bowl. I'd always thought that
the dust bowl was simply caused by drought. But it
was drought, after all the grassland had been plowed
under to grow wheat, which was encouraged by the
government. A great read. Just started "Special
Topics in Calamity Physics", by Marisha Pessl.
Fiction, stream of conciousness, made up literary
allusions, about a young woman with an eccentric
father. Very good so far.

This is my first night on daylight savings time. I'm
ready to go to sleep at my usual time of 9:30 or so
but when I wake up at 6:30 AM, this morning just in
time to see the sunrise, it will still be dark and
cold, even more so because it will take a couple hours
for the sun to peek over the canyon walls.

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Saturday March 22

Woke up to a gorgeous sunrise. I set out my coffee
making equipment last night so I wouldn't even have to
get out of the sleeping bag to make the morning cup. I
sat sipping, and watching the sun slowly light up
Gunsight Mesa. I had planned to kayak into a couple
other canyons today but in the middle of the night the
first of the easter weekend
fishers/partyers/religionists showed up. To be
followed in the morning by the invasion of the bass
boats and parade of the floating apartment buildings.
Under this onslaught, not even my well protected
illusion could survive. I turned around and headed
back to the boat ramp at Antelope Point. The placid
lake now was like the ocean in Newfoundland, the many
wakes combining to make a confused surface and one
behemoth almost swamped me.

Got back to my starting point and as I was loading up
the car, a couple from Brunswick, Maine came over to
chat. She works at LL Bean. He's a woodworker who
has moved his shop to Kaneb, Utah and they are trying
to figure out how to live together again. She's on a
6 month leave and trying to make the leap.

Treated myself to a Whopper and fries and came back to
the campground of a few days ago. There are two
Arabic speaking RV's, one German, one Korean and one I
can't make out what language they're speaking, some
slavic tongue perhaps. The young couple next door are
on spring break from Santa Clara College. He's quite
full of himself, she seems in awe but I have hopes
this week together will cure her. They've just come
from Zion and Bryce so I got some good info.

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Friday March 21

One of the things I like about kayaking is the
illusion that I'm paddling where no one has gone
before. Even in the face of jets overhead, floating
signs labeling waterfilled canyons, the occasional
speed boat and the odd floating beer can I can still
imagine that I'm the first person seeing all this
wonder. Labarynth Canyon is filled with water for
about 2 miles and makes lots of sharp turns. Most of
it isn't wide enough to turn the kayak around in and
the walls are hundreds of feet high. No one hd ever
seen this before. I got out at the end and started
walking up the dry bed. Until I heard the sound of a
motor boat. I rushed back and a film crew was getting
out to do some video taping for a web site. On the
way out I had to back up beneath and overhang to let a
party boat, skippered by a Woody Harrelson look alike
go by.

There's a hundred foot high white ring around Lake
Powell, the discoloration on the canyons' walls caused
by the water when the lake was full. The maps, all of
which were made a few years ago during high water
levels show channels which now don't exist. At the
places I camped, there are clam shells all over the
ground.

In the afternoon I paddled over to Gunsight Canyon,
much wider than Labyrinth and chose a much more
convenient site: a level area on a sandy beach,
protected from the west wind and wide open to the
morning sun from the east. The moon is just rising
and it is full, throwing sharp-edged shadows and mood
lighting the mesa on the other side of the canyon.

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Thursday March 20

Loaded up the kayak and headed out onto Lake Powell.
Just east of the boat ramp is a huge marina, full of
private houseboats and one's to rent. It's hard from
a picture to get an idea of how large some of these
macmansionboats are. Some are three stories tall.
Many have 4 matching jetboats hanging off the back and
all have a second story water slide. You can rent a
pedestrian one story houseboat for $800 to $1200 per
day. The few floating estates I saw all travelled
with an accompanying water skiing boat.

I was fortunate that there were very few people out on
the lake. The surface was very still and after a few
hours I found a sandy beach to camp on. I passed one
other kayaker, on a situpon covered in mounds of black
plastic bags, poormans' waterproof sacks.

And now for the important info. The poop bag will go
down in history as an invention rivalling poprocks,
air conditioning and power car windows. Comes
complete with TP and a hand cleaner. You squat over
it, do your thing and it all closes up slicker than a
selfsealing envelope. Inside is a special gel which
breaks down the things that need breaking down so you
can just throw it into a garbage can when you get
back.

The moon is a day from being full. I found enough wood
to have a small fire. And little dried tumbleweed
bushes almost explode when they hit the heat, cheap
fireworks. I am sleeping out under the stars, the
water lapping at the shore, the moon rising. It's all
just about perfect. I'll have to remember tomorrow to
not set my sleeping bag out on the side of a hill.

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Wednesday March 19

Woke up to a beautiful sunrise. No clouds. Just a
little cool. Drove to the Lake Powell visitor center
to get info about kayaking. There are many narrow
canyons to explore, lots of good camping spots to
paddle to but no bathrooms. You can pee anywhere but
pooping must be done in an approved container. The
high tech bags are $4 each or 5 for $15. I went with
the big buy. Apparently, the people downstream have
not been excited when the lake level rose and water
quality decreased. I'll keep you all posted on how
portaholes work. There are eight floating
bathroom/dump stations on Lake Powell but they are not
open yet.

Biked into Page. There was nothing here except Indian
land before 1954 when the government started building
the dam. The Bureau of Land Reclamation traded the
Navajos some land in Utah for the area that is now
Page. There were 8000 people here until the dam was
finished in 1963 and then the population dropped to
almost nil. Now the village is mostly tourist
industry and the only good sized town on the north end
of the Navajo reservation.

In the afternoon I took a tour of the Glen Canyon dam,
Pretty cool. Enormous beyond words. The lake is
down over 100 below maximum level, supposed to rise up
to 40 feet in the spring with the great snow cover in
the Rockies. But there were displays at the visitor
center about how much lower the lake would need to
fall before they could no longer generate electricity.
It's not real far.

Just outside Page on the Navajo reservation is a huge
coal fired electric plant, very high tech supposedly,
fueled by coal from the reservation, that provides
lots of jobs and noncasino income for the tribe. It
looks so out of place. Four extremely tall
smokestacks and the thing plunked down on a gorgeous
mesa. A whole set of interesting tradeoffs and values
foreign to my middle class progressive,
environmentally and scenically aware upbringing.

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Tuesday March 18

It was pretty cold again when I woke up. Had a quick
cup of coffee, packed up and zipped over to Starbucks
in Camp Verde for more coffee, internet access and
warmth.

I had lunch in Pine, AZ with two of the people who run
the Workamper News web site. They happened to be in
the area and I have had some emailing with Jaime who
moderates the forums. Good conversation and lots of
pics with everyone and the Toaster.

Pine was settled in the 1870's by Mormons, who are
known for keeping excellent records and genealogies.
There are scrapbooks and histories of all the founding
families. The story is that they were sent there by
the elders in Salt Lake City to spread the word to new
areas. But I think they chose a pretty out of the
way place to practice polygamy without getting
hassled. The histories in the little museum (which is
quite good) are quite explicit about the many wives of
the first male settlers. The woman at the museum
entrance desk is a Catholic from Cleveland who said
that the Mormons still run the town. I bet there are
some great stories there.

Decided to bypass the Grand Canyon as overnight temps
continue to be in the teens. Drove north out of
Flagstaff through the Navaho reservation. Beautiful
red cliffs ran along the road for 50 miles. And
little clusters of very small houses and shanties,
nice pickup trucks among junked vehicles, lots of
corrals for horses and lots of horse trailers.

The approach to Page, AZ and Lake Powell is through a
pass in the red cliffs. The first glimpse looks like
someone flooded the moon. Eerie topography and no
vegetation. I'm in a National Recreation Area
campground on the Utah side of Glen Canyon Dam. There
is a marina here filled with 2 story houseboats.
Fortunately, there is very little activity this early
in the year on the lake and I'm hoping to take a few
day kayak expedition to see some out of the way
canyons.

Stopped in Walmart to use the bathroom and most of the
shoppers were Native Americans.

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Monday March 17

It was very cold when I woke up this morning. None of
the snow had melted overnight. I turned the heater
back on before I got out of the trailer and enjoyed a
half hour of warmth. While making my coffee I saw 5
pairs of great blue herons nesting in a huge tree
above the park. I don't know how they managed with
all the snow but they seemed quite active. I couldn't
tell if there were babies.

I packed up and headed down the mountain. The five
miles between Sedona and Oak Creek on Rt 179 has,
perhaps, one of the 5 best pieces of scenery in the
US. The red rock peaks are beyond description. Then
I got into Oak Creek, a Sedona wannabe and the beauty
of the last 10 minutes was shattered like a thrown
wine glass.

On to Montezuma National Monument which has nothing
whatsoever to do with Montezuma. It's a 4 story
apartment complex built into a cave in the side of a
cliff by the Sinagua in about the year 1000 and is
amazingly well preserved. The area was abandoned in
about 1400 and no one knows why or where the Sinagua
went. The Hopis have some oral history of absorbing
them into the tribe but there is no other evidence.

I drove through Camp Verde and into Coconino National
Forest and the Clear Creek Campground. This whole
area is part of the Yavupi-Apache Reservation and
there is a casino in Camp Verde. I took a quick walk
through it. Mostly slot machines. The new technology
allows one to play the slots without using cash. You
get a kind of casino credit card that you wear on an
elastic leash around your neck and insert into the
machine. Some people have two or three cards and seem
to be connected to the slots like patients in an
intensive care ward.

It's a cool clear night. The moon is about half full.
There's an enormous sycamore tree that's been cut
down and the largest parts of the trunk are lying next
to my camp site. I peeled some punky layers of wood
off them and had my first campfire in a couple weeks.

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Sunday March 16

Tourist: I'd like to see some of the sights of Sedona.
Information Person: Where are you from?
Tourist: Philadelphia.
Information Person: Well, we don't have any cream
cheese factories here.
(Conversation I overheard at info booth)

Ah, Sedona. Gatlinburg for college graduates. Santa
Fe without Mexicans. I imagine that sometime, long
ago, the first gringos came to Sedona because it was
so beautiful, to paint, explore, whatever. But it has
turned into an obscenity. Psychic readings, crystals,
jeep tours and expensive schlock stores. Towering red
rock cliffs and mesas to which a guide will take you
to your own personal vortex, in the vernacular, that's
a particularly healthy spot on the earth's surface.
Getting down and personal with the environment while
driving an Escalade and wearing $600 crocodile skin
cowboy boots. Thankyou. I'm done now.

No. Wait. I'm not. The big controversy in Sedona is
between resident/owners of million dollar homes and
people who illegally rent their million dollar homes
to whichever riff-raff can pay the toll. The average
house price in Sedona is $600,000. Now I'm done.

I got into Sedona, elev. 5000 ft, in a driving
snowstorm. Started to drive higher up the mountain to
a national forest campground and had to turn around
because of the weather. Plunked myself down in a
little RV park in Sedona for $31 a night. Went for a
walk in town and got back to the Toaster very cold.
Drove 17 miles to a Walmart to find a heater. No go.
They've got their spring inventory on the shelves.
When I got back to the park, I discovered the trailer
across the way was from VT. Turns out the woman, Sue
Ellen and her husband live half the year in Weston and
half here. She does "body work" in both places.
Barbara Miles in Bristol was one of her bridesmaids.
(I was going to move into Barbara's apt. had I stayed
in VT.) And even better, Sue Ellen had a little
ceramic heater which she has loaned me for the night
and I am warm as can be now.

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Saturday March 15

It was a little chillier than I've gotten used to this
morning. Put on hat and gloves for the first time in
a couple weeks. But by 9:00 it was nice and warm.
Sat through an hour long sales pitch by a very
pleasant guy. Nothing I'm interested in but not a bad
price to pay for two nights stay.

Drove to Jerome, AZ, an old copper mining town that
flourished at the turn of the 19th-20th century, died
in the 1950's and was brought back to life by
hippie-entrepreneurs to the point that you can't find
parking on a Saturday afternoon. Art galleries, cafes
and shlock shops. The town reminded me of mountain
villages in Tuscany with narrow streets built up the
side of cliffs. You can see for 50 miles from
anyplace in town and there is a great little museum
that devotes a significant amount of space to
prostitution during the mining heyday. One of the
perks of working for the mining company was a weekly
visit to a brothel.

Spent the evening with the couple camping next door.
He rolled up yesterday with a chromed out Yamaha
cruiser pulling a little trailer and she came later on
with a car. His trailer opened into a tent bigger
than the toaster, complete with double bed, table and
lamp and all off the ground supported by a spider web
of aluminum tubes. They were married for a few years
in the late 60's, got divorced and went separate ways
for 24 years having 3 children apiece, got divorced
and found each other again in 1995. Have been together
again ever since.

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Friday March 14

Packed up this morning and started north. A very
strong wind from the west. Went through Phoenix, very
smoggy, huge traffic. Just north of Phoenix the road
starts to climb and the rise goes on for 25 miles.
From low desert to Saguaro cacti to scrub Pines. The
car really labored for the first time and the wind was
whipping the kayak back and forth.

I'm now near Cottonwood, AZ in a big time RV park with
a social director and heated pool. They have a stay
two nights for free deal trying to sell a membership,
like a time-share come-on. The mountains have the
same coloration as the Grand Canyon and there's a fast
flowing river just below my campsite. Saw a gila
woodpecker on my walk down to the water. Walking into
the "family center" felt like going into Porter
Nursing Home, except not as many wheelchairs, though a
number of little electric scooters like George rode on
Seinfeld. And the campground is very quiet. Tomorrow
morning I have to attend a sales presentation

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Thursday March 13

Tucson has a public park just for model airplane
flyers. I rode out there this morning to watch an
international vintage model competition. All men in
their later years, a physician who comes from Brasil
every year, a team from Japan. Every plane flies the
same pattern for 8 minutes while judges score. The
fliers stands in the middle of a paved circle and
controls the plane with two wires. The plane goes
around and around and around. Fun to watch for about
20 minutes.

Came home did some food shopping and cooking. Made
some great guacamole. Was going to go to the U to
hear the last jazz concert but ended up staying here,
doing laundry and getting ready to leave tomorrow.

Talked with my next door neighbor, a very nice guy,
older, with a pig tail who works at a call center that
subcontracts for Verizon. They are supposed to
average 400 seconds per call and the whole thing is
computer monitored so each worker can see each day how
they are doing. Chatty customer service people don't
last long. He's done this work for 20 years.

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Wednesday March 12

Took a bike ride this morning into Sabino Canyon which
is a beautiful recreation area and full of very
expensive homes. They are all very attractive. No
McMansions. There are pretty strict zoning laws and
all houses have to be only one story. Lots of flat
rooves and adobe style right angles. There are no
lawns but many very well kept cactus gardens. Big
article in the paper this morning about how the
average house price in Tucson has just fallen below
$200,000 for the first time in years. Huge numbers of
for sale signs and apartment complexes advertising $99
total move in cost or first two months rent free. One
bedroom apts are about $450/month, way less than
Addison Co.

Spent the afternoon reading "The Worst Hard Time"
about the dust bowl years. Really well written. Then
the adolescent boy I've seen wandering around stopped
by with a story that he's 15, just got out of 11/2
years of jail because of mistaken identity but isn't
going to sue for false arrest because he doesn't need
the money. He came over just before I left for the
jazz concert to see if I wanted to take him miniature
golfing.

Another great show tonight. The UofA A jazz ensemble.
Amazing.

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Tuesday March 11

I hate dentists. I've always hated dentists and, I
imagine, I'll hate dentists in the future. Last night
I bit into a tortilla and split my upper denture in
half. Now, when this happened in Newfoundland about 4
years ago, I thought, no way I'll get it repaired
here. And then I discovered a small dental lab about
3 hours away. He fixed it, said he wouldn't charge me
because he was sure it wouldn't last. And it is still
good. And many of you know my guy in Addison, the
Picasso of false teeth, who charges little and
entertains with stories of his navy days.

So, here I am in Tucson, with two little pink pieces
of plastic and a toothless smile. I called a couple
dental labs and they said I had to have a referral
from a dentist. One dentist said they don't repair
splits. I went to an office in a ritzy part of town.
The dentist said I'd need a new denture. I told him
it had been repaired before. He threw down a folder,
told me to go back there and stormed out of the room.
His nurse came in and said they'd make me a new
denture but the process would take two weeks. I left.
Rode around for a while and saw a practice in a not
so ritzy part of town. Walked in to three
conversations in Spanish going on at the same time.
The dentist came out, looked at the broken pieces and
said he'd have it back for me at 4:30. So, at 4:30 I
returned. The denture fit perfectly. They invited me
back if there is any problem. OK, I don't hate all
dentists. I had a great bike ride, put in lots of
miles chasing dentists and had some killer chicken
tacos for lunch.

Saw a sign at the UofA for the Oy Vey Café.

This evening went to another jazz concert. The B jazz
ensemble. They were great and had a wonderful guest
sax soloist.

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Monday March 10

Gave my legs the day off today. Did laundry then
spent the morning trying to find new rubber latches
for the hatch on the tear. The old ones are about to
come apart. No luck.

In the afternoon I drove to the top of the Catalina
Mountains (above where I first camped) to a little
village called Summerhaven that burned almost
completely in a forest fire in 2003. Tucson is at
4000ft and Summerhaven at 8000. Passed many large
patches if snow. Lots of bike riders in both
directions. I think my next biking goal is to ride
that route. Starting to think about spending next
winter here. Saw yellow-eyed juncos.

One of the campgrounds in the Catalina Mountains, part
of Coronado National Forest, is named after Gordon
Hirabayashi, a Japanese-American who fought internment
during WWII. The camp was originally an "honor
prison", no walls or fences, and Hirabayashi did hard
labor there building the road up the mountain. He was
exonerated by the supreme court in 1987, the
prosecution having kept from the courts information
which showed that the Japanese in the US were not a
threat.

This evening I heard a great jazz concert at the UofA.
Members of the jazz faculty and famous bass player
Rufus Reid who blew the lid off the hall.

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Sunday March 9

Rode back to the soccer tournament. The first
entertainment was a dance group from Mexico. Great
performers. Watched a couple games, listened to a
Mariachi band, gazed at the mountains. Reminded me of
watching soccer games at Mt. Abe on a colorful fall
day with the Green Mountains in the background.

In the afternoon did some reading and tidying up.
Remembering that I have electricity in the trailer
park, I went out and bought a clip on light. I've
been using the Coleman lantern but need to keep the
door open so I don't die from the fumes. I'll see if
the lamp puts out enough heat to actually warm up the
trailer in addition to providing cheap light.

While I was on the phone with my brother this
afternoon, a very odd looking woman came up to me in
the park and started telling me she was my neighbor
and did I want to buy two Sean Connery DVD's for five
dollars.

This evening I went to the UofA for the first night of
their jazz fest. A great dixieland band. The best
musician was the banjo player, used to be with the New
Christy Minstrels. Good trumpet player, former studio
musician now getting his doctorate at UA.

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Saturday March 8

Rode to Oro Valley to a farmers' market. The big
score was a giant bag of roasted poblano peppers for
$5 which I brought back with some difficulty on the
bicycle and cooked up a pot of the weekly stew. I've
been adding chorizo to the chicken and the goulash is
developing a nice kick.

I did some reading in the afternoon and after dinner
drove to south Tucson to a men's soccer tournament.
Teams from Phoenix, Tucson and Mexico and live music.
Mostly Hispanic players and very good soccer.

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Friday March 7

Rode to the UofA art museum to see an exhibit of Goya
etchings that were all like today's political
cartoons, complete with an ultraliberal (and not only
for that time) bent. I sat in the middle of one of
the two galleries to read the catalogue and classical
guitar music started to play. I thought, what a nice
idea, to have recorded spanish classical guitar
playing in a Goya exhibit. Except, it was a live
guitar player. So I sat, with eyes closed, listening
to the extraordinary music, when a second guitar
started to play, a different piece of music. Then a
third. Turns out they were warming up for a recital
of the guitar section of the music school. I stayed
and listened to 8 spectacular guitarists, all college
seniors.

Did a little food shopping, came back to the trailer
and spent the afternoon sitting in the sun and reading
"The Worst Hard Time", nonfiction about the dust bowl
of the 30's.

This evening I went back to the bookstore to hear an
author, Nadia Shivack, talk about her book, Inside
Out: Porait of an Eating Disorder. It's cartoons she
has drawn over the 30 years of her struggle, and very
well done. She is about to be 50, just started the
first job she's ever had, is anorexically thin, and is
so eloquent about the process of her recovery.

I've decided to stay in Tucson for a few more days as
the low temps in the places I want to see next are in
the teens and 20's. So I paid for a week, 7 days for
the price of 5, and looking forward to biking, reading
and getting to know Tucson better. Starting Sunday
evening is the annual weeklong UofA JazzFest.

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Thursday March 6

Drove to the AZ Sonora Desert Museum, about 15 miles
away on the west side of Tuscon, combination zoo,
botanical garden and nature center. At the front gate
was a volunteer holding a kestrel. Two Harris' hawks,
put on a show of hunting and low flying directed by
their trainers. There were a number of people with
binos and walkie-talkies out on the fringes of the
demonstration area watching for owls and eagles that
might attack the tame hawks while they were putting on
their show. I walked through one aviary full of
hummingbirds and another of desert birds. Many of the
hummys were sitting on eggs or feeding young. The
nests were about the size of an espresso cup. There
were hundreds of species of desert plants, a small zoo
of desert cats and an art museum full of a recent
competition of paintings of flowers; the first prize
was $25,000.

This evening I had dinner with Margaret O'Neil-Frater
and her friend Ally at a great Peruvian restaurant.
Margaret and I competed about who liked Tucson more.
She is helping with some animal research on a farm
that milks 3500 cows.

I just remembered a country and western song that I
heard between innings at one of the ball parks. A
male singer sang to his girlfriend about their taking
a walk in the mountains, seeing the sunset, etc. And
the verse ended, "Then I'd like to take you home and
check you for ticks." I am not making this up.

I was planning on packing up tomorrow and heading
north. Then I looked at temps in Flagstaff, the Grand
Canyon and Bryce: in the low 20's at night and 40's
during the day. I'm rethinking my plans.

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Wednesday March 5

Rode down to the Colorado Rockies spring training camp
and watched the morning workouts. The major leaguers
had a game so they took batting practice in the
stadium. I was watching the hopefuls. And they
looked so young. It was fun seeing what goes on after
hearing about all these years. Watching batting
practice with the big team before the game was a
revelation after seeing the wannabees. The hitting
power was amazing and the throwing accuracy was
unerring.

The Rockies' spring training stadium is the oldest in
the leagues. They are threatening to move to Phoenix
if Tucson doesn't build them a new palace. If the
Rockies leave, then the White Sox and Diamondbacks can
opt out of their contract in the new stadium built for
them 2 years ago because there won't be 3 teams in the
area. The major leaguers, apparently, hate being in
Tucson because there's no night life and the golf
courses are better in Phoenix. The Tucson city
council is debating whether to create a special taxing
district to pay for a new stadium.

I didn't stay for the game, climbed on the bike and
rode to S. Tucson to visit the Tucson Rodeo Parade
Museum. Frank Mazza wrote me that he and Deb saw the
parade a few years ago and there are no motorized
floats or vehicles. The museum has hundreds of old
horse drawn wagons, stage coaches, surreys with and
without fringe on top that are in the parade every
year. The parade is financed partially by the fees
companies pay to hang their shingles on the museums
wagons. There are ore wagons, hearses, milk carts,
calliopes and the winning wagon from this year, a
prairie schooner decorated to look like a Rose Bowl
float. The parade's been going on for 80 years or so
but the pictures of the recent ones look so much like
ones from the 50's.

Had dinner at the Taqueria Pico de Gallo. Dan, the
trailer park owner, said it was his favorite place.
There's a small walk-up counter to order from and a
series of 5 or six little dining rooms. Dan said the
restaurant was originally a wagon but it has done so
well over the years they've added on a new eating area
every so often. I had chicken tacos to die for.
Stopped at the tortilla factory next door and bought
flour tortillas that were still warm to bring back
for breakfasts.

This evening I drove into downtown to hear an author,
Amy Irvine, talk about her new book which is about her
Mormon upbringing, militant enviromentalism in the
southwest, a father who committed suicide and a
questionable love affair. Sounds a bit weird but I
liked the excerpts she read.

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Tuesday March 4

Biked out to Saguaro National Park and rode through
the cacti. Some of the cholla and barrel cactuses
are beginning to have buds and the octillos that
always look like thiey're dead are starting to turn
green. Saw curve billed thrasher and phainopepla
(looks like an all black cardinal). Came back to the
campground and collapsed. Some ice water and I was
revived. Added some grocery finds to the goulash and
sat in the sun to read.

I've started "The Iambics of Newfoundland", a book of
essays by an American, Robert Finch, who splits his
time between Cape Cod and St. Johns, and he coedited
The Norton Book of Nature Writing with John Elder.
Very nice writing and lots of details about
Newfoundland I didn't know. The essays are mostly
from the late 80's when NL was still pretty primitive.

I finished Travels with Charlie. I think I read
Grapes of Wrath in high school so I don't know much
Steinbeck. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature. His
writing is effortless and a pleasure to read. But you
shouldn't try to give it a lot of thought. He tries
to rediscover America, comes up with all kinds of
generalizations, says it's impossible to come up with
generalizations and says even if he does they're only
his generalizations and an Englishman might see
something completely different. Duh. He's also a bit
of a curmudgeon, constantly catching himself
glorifying the good old days. The best part of the
book was his going to New Orleans to watch the crazy
crackers curse at the first black and white children
going to the same school.

At a natural foods store I saw a healthy living type
magazine with an ad that read:

My body, my fish oil.
On my path, I strive to achieve balance.
Fish oil makes me strong, enhances my well-being.

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Monday March 3

Had the complimentary breakfast at the Ramada and went
to find a new camping spot so I drove back up the
mountain and retrieved the Toaster. It was very windy
and very cold. I'm now on site 13 in the Pima-Swan
Trailer Park right in the middle of Tucson. There are
about 24 sites and most of the RV's look like they've
been here for years. The one next to me has a tacked
together unpainted plywood door and is for sale for
$2000. The woman living in it told me most of her
life story within a ½ hour of my pulling in. But it's
quiet, cheap, has a nice bathroom and shower and the
owner is eccentric and entertaining. I even get a
wifi signal now and then.

Biked to the ballgame, about 8 miles. As I was taking
off my bike shoes at the ballpark a guy gave me a
ticket, first row right on first base, among a bunch
of season ticket holders who all knew each other, the
players and the umpires. I recognized the names of
many of the players and realized I was looking at and
(from this close range) listening to men making
millions of dollars a year.

Got back to the trailer park, had my afternoon coffee
and went in search of a Walmart which, I heard, was
having a sale on little heaters. Found the Walmart,
no heaters.

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Sunday March 2

Had coffee this morning with the rock climbers. Turns
out they are in their mid 40's. She has a 23 year old
son. They have two of the best bods I've seen in a
long time. Spandex looks good on some people. He
works for Phelps-Dodge, the big mining company, she
teaches special ed.

Drove down off the mountain. Passed at least 100 road
bikers coming up and another 100 on the flats. Just
about every street in Tucson has a bike lane. Even
saw some bike teams training.

Went to Tucson Electric Park to watch the Diamondbacks
and White Sox. Nice new stadium, pretty antiseptic.
I had second row seats along the left field line right
near where the players come out of the locker room.
They were all great about signing autographs. The
game looked a lot like some A league games played in
Burlington. Lots of errors, lots of subs. But it was
warm and the two kids in the seats right behind me
loved looking through my binoculars.

Got back to the campground about 4:00 and repacked the
car. Unloaded everything, and made up a box of stuff
I don't need, extra pants, towels, curtains, shirts,
bike parts. Will send them on to mom's tomorrow.
It's easier to get to stuff now.

Then the wind started blowing. And it got cold. And
I haven't had a shower in too many days and there is
no running water in the campground. Climbed into the
Toaster and started feeling sorry for myself. So I
told the camphost to watch the trailer overnight,
drove into Tucson and got a room at the Ramada. Had a
shower, went out to dinner and I'm feeling much
better. Tomorrow I'll try to find a place down here
in Tucson and spend a few days baseballing and biking.

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Saturday March 1

Drove to Willcox, AZ this morning. Had coffee at a
run-down antique store that had espresso, 30 coffee
flavorings and at least as many liquers. The barrista
told me that the ranchers and cowboys have develped a
liking for lattes but refuse to use the name as it
might make them appear less masculine.

Did my laundry and the owner/laundress said she'd been
travelling for a number of years after she retired.
On her way back to her home in California she stopped
in Willcox, saw the for sale sign on the laundromat,
made an offer and now she's been here about a year.
But she's getting the itch to be on the road again. I
could probably now be the new owner.

Washed the car and trailer, did a little food shopping
and went to the local museum which was dedicated to
Cochise and Geronimo. Very well done for a little
town. There was also a large travelling (southern
AZ) exhibit about the history of baseball in the area.
This is another place where baseball was a primary
source of entertainment. There were pictures of ball
teams from the 1890's. and a huge, life size photo of
Pete Rose as a very young man though there was no
caption and the museum woman didn't know why it was
there. Four members of the 1919 Black Sox played in
an outlaw league around Willcox in the 1920's after
they'd been banned from baseball.

Saw acorn woodpecker, mexican jay, spotted towhee,
gabel's quail.

Drove up the Skyline Parkway outside Tucson up into
the Coronado National Forest. Great forests of
Saguaro cacti. I'm in a pretty primitive campground.
No water, pit toilets. The camp host gets electicity
from solar arrays. And for the first time, no RV's.
Real live people. You can hear their conversations
and watch them do the camping thing. At first I was
annoyed that they were so obtrusive and then had to
remind myself that I'd gotten spoiled by all the 5:30
PM fogey disappearance rituals. A young rock
climbing couple across the way next to a single mom
with two young boys. On one side of me are 4 college
age kids and on the other 3 older hispanic folk. The
campground is all gravel, not brought in, but the
natural desert surface, surrounded by mounds larger
than hills but not quite mountains.

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Friday February 29

Had my morning coffee in complete silence. Not even
the birds were awake yet. Made my way slowly down the
last 15 miles of bad dirt road. The forest at the
camp looks like the fir forests high on Vermont
mountains. Then a couple miles along yuccas start to
appear. The big pines give way to junipers and
further down sotol cactus, until at the bottom you're
back to desert.

Chiricauhua National Monument is a geologic wonder,
something to do with tilted uplifts, splits and
fissures and big time erosion until what is left is
chimneys of all shapes and one size, very big. I
thought I'd bike up the canyon to the trailheads but
after 3 miles I felt about to die. So I turned
around, flashed down the road back to the campground
and got the car. Took a nice hike through the rock
formations. About half way back to the car I heard
some clomping behind me. A tour group riding mules
passed by carrying bodies that made even the sweaty
animals look good.

Did some housecleaning this afternoon. The car and
trailer look like they've been mud wrestling after the
30 miles of dry dirt roads. And dust got into
everything. Emptied the cooler and washed it, shook
out all the bedding and wiped down everything in the
galley. I still need to find a car wash.

Bought a book at the visitor's center, about the
cavalry out of Fort Bowie, near here, and their
pursuit of the Apaches led by Cochise and then
Geronimo in the 1880's. Most of the story is
predictable: white settlers, mail routes all moving
into Indian territory. Indians both fighting back and
stealing horses and livestock as they'd done
intertribally for ever. The army finally winning and
sending the Indians to the reservation. But Geronimo
had so angered the government that his tribe was first
sent to an arid desert prison then moved by train to
Florida, to a reservation in Tennessee and finally,
after Indian rights organizations (and some
progressive cavalry commanders who understood the
natives plight) got involved, allowed to return to an
Apache reservation in Arizona in the late 1890's.

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Thursday February 28

Woke up to a beautiful sunrise and a campsite
surrounded by 10 different kinds of cactus. Chatted
with a Dutch transplant to Montana who gave me some
good leads on places to paddle. He was at the park
and would be leaving when his dental work in Palomas,
right across the border, was done.

Columbus is famous because Pancho Villa, a
hero/villain in the Mexican Revolution came over the
border in 1916 and killed a number of people and
soldiers here because he was pissed that Woodrow
Wilson was supporting a dictator as head of Mexico.
Gen. Pershing followed him back into Mexico but never
caught up with Villa. Pershing was the first to use
airplanes in a combat operation in searching for
Pancho.

Pancho Villa State Park is 3 miles from the Mexican
border so I drove to customs, parked and walked across
to Palomas. The first shop is a very fancy optician
and there were many others, also dentists, pharmacies
and medical clinics all catering, of course, to
gringos. I walked to the end of the town, about ½
mile and NEWSFLASH: We have another candidate for the
best burrito contest. A little hole in the wall. The
woman spoke no English though I did find out through
an exchange of animal noises that the meat in the
burrito was beef. And, by the way, Mexican chickens
go "phew, phew". The filling was simple, great spices
and came with bowls of green salsa and a parsley/onion
mixture. All for 12 pesos ($1.20).

I decided to go to Chiricawa National Monument that
I'd been to a few years ago and loved. But instead of
going the longer well paved route, I rejected the
advice of a mail delivery person and a state trooper
and took the back roads. Straight up a mountain on a
rutted gravel road, crossing streams and around
hairpin turns. Halfway along as I was losing courage
there was a small group of 4 or 5 houses, the remnants
of the once thriving Paradise, AZ. A sign in front of
one said visitors welcome. A stained glass artist
lives there with her husband who works 3 hours away
and only gets home every few weeks. His great
grandfather built the house in the glory days of
Paradise. She also runs a small guest house, mostly
for birders and folk who come to the Southwest
Research Station of the Museum of Natural History in
NYC; it's an out of the way PhD mill. She looked at
the Toaster and said I shouldn't have any problem the
rest of the way. We chatted for a while and I left
and the road got worse.

I am now in a pine covered National Forest campground,
3 sites, no water or toilet. I'm the only one here
and the nearest people are probably 15 miles away.
It's very quiet, the stars are as bright as they were
at the observatory and I had my first campfire in
weeks.

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Wednesday February 27

When I tried to make my morning coffee, the two halves
of the pot were frozen together. The handle on the
water pump was frozen. The sponges in the sink were
frozen. The stove wouldn't light because it was too
cold for the fuel to vaporize. And, to add insult to
injury, raccoons got the animal proof latch on the
cooler open and ate 3 apples and a half pound of
sliced turkey. The ranger said the low was 19
degrees. I slept well though,

Went to the lodge at the campground and had coffee,
into Fort Davis to get an oil change and then to
Lupita's lunch wagon for a Tournado Burrito: sliced
pork, lettuce, tomato, onion and then smothered in
guacamole.

Saw a large handpainted sign outside Van Horn, TX that
said "Van Gogh Gallery" so I got off the interstate
and almost rolled past the town. The gallery is a
combination bookstore, curio shop and Van Goghish
paintings museum all seemingly shaken sometime in the
past by an earthquake and then resettled by feral cats
with urinary tract problems. There was an old and not
so sober man tending shop but he was not the
owner/painter. He was holding down the fort for "the
boss" who he couldn't seem to tell me much about.

Drove towards El Paso. Got off I-10 and onto Rt 20
the old two lane road highway. It runs for about 60
miles right along the Mexican border. Miles and Miles
of cotton fields and pecan orchards. And all
Hispanic. Stopped in a bakery and the woman behind
the counter spoke no English. The quick stop cashier
said that just about all the cotton workers cross over
from Mexico every day. And, I passed 2 very large
high schools right at the end of the day when all the
kids were leaving. Made me remember the Lower East
Side Tenement Museum Kate and I visited in New York
City in January. Few of those immigrants spoke
English and now, 2, 3, or 4 generations later, even by
people's last names, you can't tell where their
families came from.

Planned to stay tonight at Franklin Mountains State
Park in El Paso. I called in the afternoon to make
sure they had room; they did. And then I couldn't
find it. No one I asked knew anything about it. The
two gates I found that I thought led to the park said
"park closed", and no one answered the phone because
it was after 5:00. I got totally lost trying to get
out of the city, found myself very low on gas on a
road with the next town 52 miles away. But the drive
was beautiful. I raced the sunset west and the pink
and orange sky made the mountains look like paper
cutouts. I made it to Columbus, NM and Pancho Villa
State Park in the dark.

I've passed at least 10 Border Patrol regional
offices. They are all brand new and each has a number
of buildings and acres of vehicles.

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