Thursday, June 9th, our first full day in Camp Verde and the Verde River valley of Central Arizona. We woke up to clear skies and a little breeze. We had decided that this was going to be a “stay in” day and I wanted to get Jackie’s computer finished with all the software reloaded. It was just as well we stayed home as Jackie still was not feeling well, I think allergies, and spent the whole day on the coach watching TV and napping. I finally finished the computer about 5:00 p.m. and it now back to the same state it was before the disk crashed. Friday Jackie was still feeling poorly, so we had another stay at home day. I did some computer stuff and spent about an hour at the hot tub, but beyond that it was pretty quiet.
Saturday, June 11th my brother Dennis came over about 10:30 a.m. and he and I began the process of changing out the TV in the front of the coach. Regular readers of our story may recall that back in August of last year we were at the Monaco International rally in Salem, Oregon and Jackie won a drawing for a new 26 inch LCD HD television. I put the TV down in the cargo bay to use when we are outdoors, but frankly we don’t spend a lot of time sitting outside watching television. We have been considering replacing our front TV for a while, and wanted to put in a 32 inch TV, but we had to find a very specific model for it to fit without major reconstruction of the cabinets. We have yet to find a 32 inch that meets all our criteria.
The last few weeks I got to thinking, why are we wasting a nice LCD TV outside which we rarely use? I decided that it would be a good interim replacement for our old, heavy tube TV that is in the front. I decided to wait until we got to Cottonwood because Dennis is a great tinkerer and improvisor and I knew that between the two of us we could figure out how to make it work. We pulled the old TV, which has to weigh close to a hundred pounds, and studied the inside of the cabinet and the framing that supported the old TV. We finally determined what we had to do to mount a bracket for the flat screen and made a trip to Home Depot for supplies. By 4:00 p.m. we had the new TV in and, to be honest, the installation looks like we had a professional do it. We didn’t have to modify any of the cabinets or framing and the TV fits perfectly, and works well too. Later we can use the same mounting for a 32 inch, once we find one that will work, and the 26 inch can go back to outside use. All in all, very happy with the work we did today.
After we got everything cleaned up and had a congratulatory beer, we fixed a quick dinner and all three of us left the coach about 6:20 and drove a few miles to the Cliff Castle Casino over in Camp Verde. We were here to see comedian Bill Engvall at the casino’s outdoor entertainment venue. The show
started at 8:00, but we wanted to be there early because the show was open seating and we thought that it would be pretty full. Bill Engvall is pretty well known from his participation in the Blue Collar Comedy tours with Jeff Foxworthy, Larry the Cable Guy and Ron White. We got pretty good seats in the bleachers, just behind the more expensive floor seating, and frankly I think our view was better. Only problem was the bleachers were hard and there were no backs. As it turns out we could have come a little later as the show was clearly not sold out, but the arena was about two thirds full. Bill finally came out at 8:00 and put on a great 90 minute show that
was hysterical. Only a few of the stories he told were familiar to me from hearing him on TV and the radio, most of the material was new and very funny. He is a story comic, not a joke comic, which are the kind I really prefer. He also uses no profanity, which is refreshing. I’m not a prude, I listen to raw comedy and enjoy it, but it is nice sometimes to see someone be very funny without dropping the “F” bomb every third word. After the show we drove back to the coach, talked for a little bit, and then Dennis left for home and we headed to bed. A good day!Sunday, June 12th we left the coach just after lunch and went over to my brother’s house in Cottonwood to pick him up for an afternoon of geocaching. By way of background, it was Dennis who had originally told us about geocaching about three and a half years ago. It was only conversational, we didn’t actually go out and do it, but he told us what the hobby was all about. It took us about six months of talking to other people, reading about the hobby, and considering it, before we finally bought our first GPS, subscribed to the website and started caching. We started in March of 2008 and since then have introduced the sport to at least five other couples, three of whom are now avid cachers. Ironically, Dennis has really never gotten deep into the sport. He caches occasionally, but doesn’t even bother to log his finds on the website. He’ll cache if one of the brothers, Ken, Russ or I, that cache come to visit, but beyond that he doesn’t have a strong connection.
We got Dennis in the car and headed out to do some caching in and around Cottonwood. Finally about 4:00 we quit with a total of ten finds with two new DNFs. Happily, one of our finds was a cache that we had DNFed back in 2009 when we were caching with Dennis. Dennis had gone back again later and still couldn’t find it. Today it just sort of jumped out at us when we looked. Yea, we like fixing DNFs. We took Dennis home, but didn’t stay, Jackie’s allergies were really acting up and she wanted to get home. We did stop briefly at Walmart for some quick shopping, then headed home for dinner and an evening of relaxation.
Monday, June 13th was a stay at home day. I spent the day alternating between the computer and completing some minor chores. I did the final finish work on the new television installation, putting a cloth screen over the small opening left between the top of the TV and the frame. I also tried to fix Jackie’s hammock and did a couple of other little things. In the afternoon we did our laundry at the RV park’s laundry. One advantage to the park being nearly empty is we don’t have to fight for washers. Jackie spent most of the day on her computer, still fighting her allergies.
Tuesday we left after lunch to do some caching, this time in Prescott, Arizona. Prescott is a medium sized town in the central mountains of Arizona, about 40 miles West of Camp Verde. During my forty years in Arizona, Prescott has always been one of my favorite places to visit, especially in the summer. The town is at about 5,000 feet elevation, so it is always about 15 degrees cooler than Phoenix. The history of the area is closely linked to the history of Arizona itself. What would be Arizona became a part of the U.S. in 1848 as a result of
the Mexican-American War. At that time the entire area was the New Mexico Territory. In 1853 President Lincoln split the territory into two parts, the Western most becoming the Arizona Territory. At that time the territorial capital was designated to be near a mining area near Fort Whipple, one of the few areas of Arizona at the time with any appreciable number of people. A year later Prescott was established and declared the territorial capital. In 1867 the capital was moved to Tucson, but ten years later moved back to Prescott, where it remained until 1889 when it was permanently moved to Phoenix. Phoenix remained the territorial capital until statehood in 1912 and is the state capital today. Prescott is surrounded by pine forested mountains and is very picturesque. The downtown area consists of the Yavapai County courthouse in the center of the main square, surrounded by shopping and bars. The Montezuma Street side of the square is known as Whiskey Row because it was originally the street on which all the bars, gambling halls and brothels were located. Even today Whiskey Row looks pretty much the same as it did in 1905 when the area was rebuilt after a major fire. Also near the main square is the original Elks Lodge Building, a very large five story stone building that even today has a bronze Elk on the roof. Although now known as the Elk Theater, when it was the Elks Lodge it was the
center of social activity in the town. The lodge was charted in 1896, and as the first Elks Lodge in Arizona is known as the “Arizona Mother Lodge.” The Elks moved their lodge to nearby Prescott Valley in the 70's and the building is now owned by the City of Prescott and still operates as an opera house and theater. We did most of caching right in Prescott, urban caching, and managed to find a total of 12 finds for the afternoon, along with two DNFs. We also managed to trade two travel coins. Later, when Jackie was logging the coins she found that we had one of them in our possession previously, back in 2009. With all the thousands of coins and travel bugs wandering around it is amazing that we
would end up with one twice. One of the caches we did took us to a small Prescott City park which was really just a vacant lot with some picnic tables scattered around. However, it seems someone decided that the park needed just a bit more comfort, as in a living room couch and chair. Very weird what we see caching sometimes. After caching we made a stop at the Prescott Elks Lodge. We have never been to this lodge before. They have a very nice facility about 10 miles South of Prescott in the town of Prescott Valley. We had a couple of drinks and chatted with the bartender and a couple of patrons, including one very interesting character named Red. Red was one of those guys who just couldn’t stop talking about all the things he did in his life. He was a NASCAR official, the operator of the Ontario Motor Speedway, and had a lot of interesting stories to tell. No telling how factual they were, but it was fun listening. We also got a lodge pin for our collection. We also found that the lodge has 14 full hookup RV sites behind the building, and they take reservations, which is rare for Elks RV parks. This would be a nice place to stay for a week or so. After cocktails we headed back to Camp Verde for dinner and the rest of the evening at home.
Wednesday, June 15th we stayed in for the day. It was quite warm today, close to 100 degrees, which is still cooler than the 107 down in Phoenix. We spent the day taking care of chores and playing on the computers. About 6:30 my brother Dennis came over for dinner. Jackie made chili rellno casserole and the fixings and it was good. After dinner Dennis and I went into the back of the coach for a couple of hours of karaoke. Dennis is even more into karaoke than I am. He actually makes money at it as a sideline job, playing various venues around the Verde Valley, usually two or three times a month. We had a great time singing and sharing until he had to leave around 10:00 or so. He is one of those unfortunates who still has to get up in the morning to work. Oh, the horror!
Thursday, June 16th, my oldest daughter Tye’s birthday. Happy Birthday Tye! Today we are expecting our good friends Barry and Colleen Cohen to come into the RV park for a long weekend. Regular readers will remember that the Cohen’s are full time RVers and have lived in a motor home since 2003, but Barry still owned and worked at his transmission shop in Cathedral City, near Indio, so they didn’t travel much. They have a very nice lot at the Motorcoach Country Club in Indio. A few months ago Barry finally sold his business and, although he told the new owner he would stay on for a year, he now only works three days a week. Since they are also Western Horizon members, they decided to come up to be with us for the long weekend. The trip was well over 300 miles, but Barry loves to drive and they usually leave early in the morning.
We weren’t sure exactly when they would arrive, so after lunch we went out to do some quick caching in the area around the park. We found four caches, along with two new DNFs, in an hour or so before we got a call from the Cohen’s that they had arrived. We went back and greeted them and welcomed them to Camp Verde. We spent the afternoon talking and catching up. About 5:00 we went out for dinner at a local Mexican restaurant that is located just a mile or so from the RV park. We have always noticed that there were a lot of cars at the restaurant every time we drove by, and it is on the road to the park so we pass it a lot. However, someone had told us the food wasn’t so great, so we never went. Today I suggested we just give it a try, so the four of us went in for dinner. The restaurant is called La Fonda, and is located just off Highway 260 on Horseshoe Bend Road, about two miles North of the I-17. You can see it from the highway. The place was very busy, but the service was good. The menu was quite large, although pretty typical Mexican. Once the food got to us, quite quickly by the way, we found it was very tasty. It was well spiced, not bland “gringo” food like you get in some places. The prices were also reasonable. We later learned that it was a family run operation and the
family had several other restaurants in Cottonwood, Flagstaff and Kingman, Arizona. The place gets a thumbs up from us and we will eat there again. After dinner we went back to the coach where the girls played cards and Barry and I sang karaoke until about 10:00 p.m. when they left to go home. We are going to have a good time over the weekend and are glad to have our good friends come visit.Friday, June 17th we loaded Barry and Colleen into our Jeep and the four of us headed out about 11:30 towards Sedona, Arizona, about 20 miles Northeast of Cottonwood. Sedona is a very nice, and affluent, tourist-oriented town in the red rock country of central Arizona. We stopped first at a place called Tlaquepaque, a fairly large complex of high end shops and art galleries.
It is built on the bank of Oak Creek, which runs through Sedona, and looks like a huge Spanish mission type structure. We ate lunch at the Oak Creek Brewery and Grill and had an excellent lunch. It is a fairly typical micro brewery restaurant and the food was very good. After lunch we spent about two hours walking around the complex. Actually, Barry and I sat on benches, talked and people watched while Jackie and Colleen looked in the shops. We then went to Uptown Sedona, the original part of Sedona for some more shopping. Barry and I had a beer in the bar while the girls shopped. About 4:30 we went to the Sedona Elks Lodge for a cocktail. We have been to the Sedona Lodge before, but Barry and Colleen have not. It is a very nice, modern looking lodge with pretty friendly people. After one drink we got back on the road and started back towards home. We stopped at the Walmart in Cottonwood for some supplies and then went back to the RV park. We were too full from our big lunch for dinner, so we went to the Cohen’s coach where the girls played cards and Barry and I just sat outside and talked. About 9:00 we called it a night because Jackie’s allergies were still acting up and she was tired.
Saturday, June 18th we again left about 11:30 with Barry and Colleen and drove into Old Town Cottonwood for lunch. We stopped at an interesting looking local café called the Red Rooster Café. It turned out to be a bit of a yuppie type place, but we stayed anyway and found the food to be quite good. I had a tuna salad sandwich that was excellent. After lunch we walked around old town for a little while, looking in shops and antique stores. We then got into the car and did a driving tour of nearby Clarkdale and Jerome. Barry and Colleen had never been to either town and found them interesting. Being a weekend, we weren’t able to find a convenient parking place in Jerome, so we didn’t stop anywhere.
Jerome was established on the side of Cleopatra Hill in 1883. It was named for Eugene Murray Jerome, a New York investor who owned the mineral rights and financed mining there, however, he never visited his namesake town. Jerome was incorporated as a town in 1889. The town housed the workers in the nearby United Verde Mine, which was to produce over 1 billion dollars in copper,
gold and silver over the next 70 years. Jerome became a notorious "wild west" town, a hotbed of prostitution, gambling, and vice. On 5 February 1903, the New York Sun proclaimed Jerome to be "the wickedest town in the West". The last of the mines and smelters were closed in 1950 and Jerome was on the road to becoming a ghost town. In the late 60's and the 70's the town became popular with counter culture types (hippies) and later artists and artisans. This fueled a rebirth of the town into a quirky artists community that is thriving on tourism today. It still has many of the buildings from the turn of the century and is an interesting place to visit. The town quite literally hangs on the side of the mountain above the Verde River Valley.After our touring we stopped at Walmart and then headed back to our coach. The girls played cards while Barry and I talked. A little later in the afternoon my brother Dennis came over also and joined the festivities.
We had a very nice dinner, with the girls cooking lamb and the three guys having some of Barry’s famous pasta and meat sauce. Then the three of us went in the back of the coach and sang karaoke until about 10:30 at night when we finally quit and everyone left. All in all, a great evening with friends and family.Sunday, June 19th, the Cohen’s came over about 9:00 and said goodbye before they left on their way back to Indio. It was a great weekend with them. We went out after lunch to take another drive to Prescott. When we were there last Tuesday we had stopped at the Best Buy in the shopping center to get a new remote control for our Direct TV receiver. We had two remote controls, one for each of us so either can control the TV volume and change channels on the satellite box. However, one of the remotes was an older model that came with our original box in 2005 and it didn’t have the codes in it for the new LCD TV we installed. Since we liked having two remotes, and a new one was only $20, we wanted to buy one. The store didn’t have one in stock so they ordered for us and we had gotten an email that it was in. After we picked up the remote we went to the Prescott Valley mall and spent a couple hours walking around and shopping. Didn’t buy much, I got one new tee shirt, but we had fun. We made a couple of other stops and then headed home for the rest of the night. Programmed the new remote and it works perfect with the new TV. Yea, two remotes again.
Monday, June 20th was a really crappy day. It had a head start on Sunday when I realized that I had a crown coming loose in my mouth. This crown has been a problem since I had it put in back in the early 2000's in that it is not the type of crown that fits over the top of a tooth stub. The tooth for this one is ground down flat nearly at the gum line and the crown is held in by a post and then cement on the mating surfaces. This means it is not particularly strong and has come loose a number of times in the past. Early on it would come loose about every year and a half or so and I would have to find a dentist to glue it back in. However, the last time I had it fixed was in Michigan back in June of 2008. The dentist used some really good cement that time. Nonetheless, I felt that it was loose now and needed to get it fixed. I looked on the internet for dentists in Cottonwood and found a list of five. I called one and they were able to give an appointment for 1:30 to have the crown reset. So far I’m pretty happy that they were able to get me in.
Not too long after that phone call Jackie woke up and was feeling pretty bad with her allergies. She decided she wanted a couch day, which was OK with me, I just had to run to the dentist. At that point I went to get my secondary wallet to look at which credit card I had in it, and I couldn’t find it. By way of explanation, I carry a badge wallet in my back pocket that has my drivers license, various membership cards, like Elk and Moose, my Sheriff’s ID and badge (always handy for traffic stops), concealed weapons permit and other stuff I don’t need often. I carry my cash, ATM and credit card, and Costco and Sam’s Club cards in a small money clip that I keep in my front pocket for easy access. I have been doing this for years and have never had a problem. When I went to get my money clip from the tray where I keep all the stuff in my pockets, it wasn’t there. My regular wallet was, the keys, all the other stuff, just no money clip. At first I thought it might have just fallen on the floor, but I tore up the bedroom looking and no money clip. Looked in the car, looked on the ground outside, nothing. We reconstructed our day yesterday and the last thing we did was stop for fuel at Sam’s Club in Prescott. I had my clip then because I needed both the ATM card and the Sam’s card to get fuel. Called Sam’s club to see if maybe it fell out of my pocket there, or I left it on top of the pump, although I found that highly unlikely just based on my habits. They didn’t have it. I spent over two hours searching and searching again and finally decided I needed to cancel the credit card and the ATM card. According to the online account access there had been no activity on either card.
I hated to do it because of the inconvenience, but I just couldn’t think of where the clip could be. I called and cancelled both cards and got new cards on order. With that done, I went back to normal daily activities. Then I went into the bedroom and was doing something that made me move some stuff around on top of the freezer, which is what I use as sort of a dresser. That is where Jackie’s jewelry box is and the tray that I put all my pocket stuff in. There is also a small mesh box that we use for batteries. With our caching we use a lot of AA batteries, so we keep a bunch of them in this little box that Jackie made from plastic mesh. Low and behold, I found my money clip UNDER the mesh box. The reason I never saw it when I was moving stuff around was that the money clip has a pretty strong magnet and it had locked onto the steel batteries through the bottom of the tray. When I picked the tray up and moved it, the clip went with it, hidden under the bottom. Well poop. Too late to uncancel the cards, but at least I knew I hadn’t lost the damn thing, and I still had the cash that was in the clip.
Now, at 1:30 I show up at the dentist and am sitting in the waiting room. No one says anything to me, despite the fact that the gal told me on the phone when I made the appointment that I would have to fill out some paperwork. I was just about to go to the desk and try to find someone who could tell me what was going on when my phone rang. It was the dentist wondering where I was. I wrote the wrong address down from the internet list! Oops. Not bad customer service, just the wrong office. Fortunately, the right one was less than a mile down the road. I finally got to the right dentist, filled out the paperwork and got into the chair. After poking around for a while and taking an xray, the dentist finally told me that the crown could not be put back in because the tooth had started to crack. He said if he put it back in the post would cause the tooth to crack completely in half and then I would have real problems. He suggested a couple of fixes, the most likely one just having the tooth pulled and modifying my upper partial plate. I guess that is what I will do the next time we are close to Algodones, sometime this fall. He put a plastic “cover” of sorts over the stub of the tooth to keep anything from getting inside and sent me on my way. It will be inconvenient for the summer because I will have some issues eating, but I can get by. Just more bad news. After the dentist I went back to the coach and just stayed in, feeling sorry for myself the rest of the day. Jackie did the same.
Tuesday, June 21st, the first full day of Summer, happy summer everyone! We went out after lunch to capture a couple of geocaches that had alluded us earlier in the week. The owner of the caches had emailed a clue to us for two that we had DNFed. We were able to find one of the two, but the other one continued to evade our find. We did, however, go down the road and get a second cache, one we had not tried before. Since it was 101 degrees outside according to the thermometer in the car, we decided that two was enough. We went back to the coach and I spent an hour or so putting stuff away in preparation for our departure tomorrow.
About 6:00 we left again and headed into Cottonwood to meet my brother Dennis for dinner at the Sizzler. We had a very nice dinner with just the three of us. Afterwards we stopped by his house and picked up the last of my parent’s photo albums. Over the last year and a half I have been scanning and digitizing all of their old albums. After I get them in the computer I burn CDs and send them to my four brothers so we all have access to the photos. Dennis is the keeper of the actual pictures, but I will have the whole collection on my hard drive. We said goodbye to Dennis and went back to the coach for the night.
Wednesday, June 22nd, we departed Camp Verde just before 10:00 a.m. and headed North on I-17 for the 60 mile trip to Flagstaff, our next stop on our summer journey. The freeway climbs roughly 4,000 feet between Camp Verde and Flagstaff, all in the course of about 40 miles. About two thirds of the way up the hill I had to pull over to the shoulder and let the coach cool down. My engine temp never got into the red, but it got close and once it settled at about 124 degrees, with the manifold temperature over 150 degrees I decided it was time to let it rest. We stopped on the shoulder and let it idle for about five minutes to get it back down into a
normal range below 200. We then continued the climb and got into Flagstaff with no further delays. We settled into Black Bart’s RV park, which is located on the East end of town. We have stayed here before. It is certainly nothing fancy, lots of dirt and not very level, but it is inexpensive and close to town. We will be here four days before continue East on our travels.With our arrival in Flagstaff I will close this episode of our travel diary. I will publish in another week or so when we get to Albuquerque. Until we meet again, remember, don't worry about the world coming to an end today. It's already tomorrow in Australia.
