Beach Day

Things are very relaxed around here on Saturday. We just enjoyed the wave action, the pretty blue skies and water.

Over the hills and through the woods

Yesterday, we drove.

Across the desert from El Centro (elevation -35), up the hills to Jacumba (elevation 4,000), across the hills to the coast, and up the coast to Laguna Beach. In between, we stopped in Oceanside to pick up a rental car, dropped off the RV at our nephew's place 20 miles inland, transferred the food and clothing from the RV to the rental car, went to visit my sister, then drove up the coast to Laguna, stopped at the grocery store for a few dinners for this week, and plopped down on the sofa in the condo.

Then one of those serendipitous things happened. I had posted a Facebook picture of the wind in the palm tree out in front of our porch, which was seen by a friend from years back who was explaining to her husband how Facebook works. They, for the first time in many months, perhaps a year, were also in Laguna Beach, taking a stroll on the sand. So they called, and long-story-short, they came over and we had a late steak dinner.

So here are our friends Tim and Jean

After catching up on our various ailments, the status of all the kids and grandkids, and where we've all traveled, it was pretty late. But they did tell us that their daughter, the pastry chef Heather, was working on a project and had 'suggested' they get out of the house (AKA her way) and that was how they ended up just down the road from us. Amd here is a photo of the creation Heather was working on.

A little warmer - near El Centro, CA

After yesterday's rather lengthy post, I am going to revert to a rather short one for today. We left early this morning from Kartchner Caverns state park. The wind had shifted a bit overnight and it was much less smoky, but the fire was still threatening, so we headed west.

There is not much to say about our six hour, uneventful drive. There is not much to say about our six hour, uneventful drive. We saw lots of blooming Ocotillo and Saguaro cactus. Not too many other vehicles. Tom decided to try hyper-miling in an RV, and he was a little bit successful--he managed to keep the miles per gallon up above 17 for the whole trip.

You may have also noticed the temperature at the bottom of the instrument gauge. Yes it hit 90, and right now it's 95. Part of that, I am told, is due to the fact that we have lost a lot of elevation and in fact we are currently below sea level. Minus 32 feet:

That is about all there is to say. We have a nice lakefront spot, a tee time in the morning for nine holes of golf and an appointment with the broom, mop and washing machine in the afternoon. Oh, and grilled salmon for dinner.

Keeping us on our toes

OK, the caverns were beautiful, and there is a lot more on that below. But we've had a couple of interesting hours since our cavern visit.

First, the wind blew all night long, necessitating that Tom crawl up on the roof of the RV this morning and untangle the antenna from the antenna wires. Second it was a gorgeous morning, although windy, when we entered the caverns for our tour. When we came out of the caverns, however, we smelled a distinct odor that we've encountered a couple of times before on our RV trips. No, not skunk, THAT we get in Corrales all the time. This was forest fire smoke, again! We must be a jinx or something, because this is now the third forest fire that has impacted our RV travels.

It has become a pretty serious fire, around 20,000 acres, and only about 7% contained. It is burning about 20 miles west of us, so we are not in any immediate danger, but it's those pesky embers in the wind that could wreak havoc. The camp hosts came around to notify us that we are on an evacuation warning. They asked for our cell numbers in case they have to call us to tell us to evacuate the campground overnight. Tom asked what the host's gut instinct was, and she replied, "well, I already see bits of ash coming down". We are prepared to leave with five minutes notice, but hope to make it through the night in place, even though it does smell quite smoky. The winds are still blowing quite strong, which is bad for fighting the fire, but it does keep the smoke from settling on us full time--the smoke tends to blow in and blow out again. If the winds change direction or settle down we could clear the air. But yes, I think everything is going to smell like smoke for a couple of days.

We were scheduled to be here another day and a half, but we will leave in the morning unless they call us earlier. This will put us on the road on the least windy day this week. That is a really good thing for driving, especially as the stretch of I-10 between Lordsburg, NM and Willcox, AZ is completely closed in both directions. It's been closed for five hours and counting today, with no expectation of when it will be safe to re-open. This is the same stretch that Tom's brother Jim was stuck on early last month, also due to strong winds creating so much blowing dust the visibility was reduced to 0 feet. So....tomorrow we head to the hot part of the desert a day early, but it should be less windy, with no fires, and we will have a pool to keep cool in.

And, now for the promised Cavern review.

It really was a wonderful tour, and is something we both highly recommend if you find yourself down in this neck of the woods. First, a little history.

Randy Tufts was a geology major at the University of Arizona. He introduced his roommate, Gary Tenen, to amateur spelunking, or cave exploration. Randy had been shown a sinkhole when he was a teenaager in the mountains near Whetstone, Arizona. The sinkhole is about 12 feet deep and 8 feet across, but had long been written off as nothing more than a sinkhole full of rocks and debris. Since the age of 18, Randy been hoping to discover a new cave, and had practiced squirming through tight spaces in order to go spelunking. A common practice tool is a wire coat hangar, which a caver can somehow manage to squeeze through with enough practice. That is a 10" diameter circle, which I am not even going to think about trying. There are practice holes of slightly larger sizes in the Visitor Center if you are so inclined, but neither of us wanted to make fools of ourselves in front of the school kids sliding through with ease.

Randy and Gary often explored the Whetstone Mountains because some small caves were in the area, and the geologic conditions seemed ripe. In November 1974, having struck out at yet another promising lead, Randy decided to show Gary the sinkhole Randy had seen as a teenager. When they got there, they discovered a blowhole; warm, moist, batshit-smelling air coming out of a 10" crack. They knew they had found a cave, and one big enough to support bats living in it.

After wriggling through the crack, which required removing shirts to minimize size, as well as exhaling, they found tunnels filled with amazing, ancient cave formations. Deep mud pits without tracks told them they were the first to enter the cave. Glistening walls told them this was a rare living cave, with formations still growing. Over the next few years they mapped miles of cave and found more elaborate rooms. Remarkably, they kept the discovery a secret to keep the cave pristine and undamaged.

Four years later, they let the property owners in on the secret. The Kartchner family patriarch, on being told of the discovery, said that he often thought that area had sounded hollow when he rode horses over the top. After 14 years, realizing the cave could not stay secret for much longer, a secret negotiation with the state of Arizona was reached to purchase the property and develop it in a manner that would protect it from vandals while still maintaining the living cave. The negotiation was so secret that the state did not even know the location of the property; the state was shown the cave by bringing the head negotiator for the state to a town 25 miles away, blindfolding him, driving him to the location and then leading him up the mountain and into the (now only slightly enlarged) entry before removing the blindfold. But that was enough to seal the deal. And in 1998 the first part of the cave opened to public viewing.

The state park now takes great pains to minimize human impact. Only 15-20 people enter at a time. No more than 500 people are permitted per day. There are two air locks to maintain cavern humidity. To enter you walk through a mist tunnel that helps to minimize shedding of hair and skin, and you are not allowed to bring in cameras, phones, purses or bags of any kind, no food or water. It almost goes without saying that there is no touching of anything, and if someone accidentally bumps into a rock wall or steps over the boundary, the area is flagged for the cleaning crew to decontaminate that night to remove oils or bacteria. Now, if you caught the part about no cameras, then you will know I did not take the pictures below, but they are pretty much exactly what we saw.

Here is map showing the main rooms of the cavern along with the new, modern paved trail entry as well as the original sinkhole entry.

The picture below is of some of the many soda straw formations. This sort of formation tends to only grow to 5 feet or so before breaking off, but there is one in this cavern over 21 feet long. It is very fragile, even moving when people walk by, so that part of the cave is not part of the tour. In this cave the soda straws grow at a rate of a little less than 1 mm per year, meaning the largest one in the cave is over 8000 years old.

This photo is from the Throne room, and that large formation was dubbed Kubla Kahn, from the poem Xanadu. Xanadu was the code name given to the cave by Gary and Randy. Take note of the human at the base; this formation is over 70 feet tall.

The formation below was probably my favorite one on the tour. It shows many different types, but I thought together it all looked like a very large pipe organ.

Lastly, here is a picture of the very pretty flowstone and drapery formations

Well, that was much too long of a report, so I'm off to cook dinner (pork noodle stir fry) right after this posts.

Kartchner Caverns State Park

We awoke bright and early, actually dark and early, to be ready to depart at sunrise when the park gate at City of Rocks opened and we could head out while the winds were still not quite a breeze. The forecast was for 30 mph winds by 10 am and we wanted to have an enjoyable drive rather than arm wrestle the steering wheel when a gust comes along just as we are passing a wide-load semi on the interstate. After an easy drive, a stop at the travel center and the grocery, we arrived here about 10:00.

We had heard of this park by word of mouth and decided to include it on this itinerary since we missed it on our last trip out this way. What a gem of a place this is. I had a short chat with one of the four camp hosts who told us that the park is completely full from December to April, but we've caught them during low season and the campground is maybe a quarter full tonight. The only possible thing lacking is sewer hookups at each site, but there is a well-designed dump station at the park, so we are all set. Plus, the shower house/bathrooms are quite modern and clean and are conveniently located behind a stand of trees about 30 yards behind us.

We had reservations, so we proceeded to our carefully selected site, only to discover it was smack dab up against four cabins that have recently been added to the park for car campers. So we headed back to the check-in desk to see if it was possible to move. It was, but unfortunately we had not carefully looked at the nearby sites....all of them were highly sloped. After getting a new assignment further away from the cabins we then discovered that it would be a bit of a challenge to get level at the new site. We tried out the angles on a couple more sites, drove around the entire park looking at suitable and level sites, and then returned for the third time to the check-in desk, very sheepish, explaining that we usually were not that difficult, but we wanted to change sites, again. Fortunately our first (new) choice was available and our actual final site is just long enough for us, is perfectly level, near to the shower house and even has trees which provide a bit of shade.

Now here comes the serendipitous part-- I was taking a photo out the window to show the site:

See the nice trees, shady location for the picnic table? I had just snapped the picture when someone entered the frame. Now look closely at the roadway on the left, see the woman just starting out walking at the left of the picture? With her face covered by the tree branches? She was eyeballing our rig, and just as Tom came walking back she runs up and exclaims "Mr. Graham, I thought that was you!" Turns out it was Caroline Baldwin Scroggins, a now-retired teacher who had worked for Tom at Griegos Elementary. She and her husband just happened to select the site across from us for the night. We have not seen her since Tom's retirement in 2012, so it was fun to catch up with each other. They have headed out to see the caverns and will be on the road in the morning, so I may not get an actual photo of Caroline and Rick, but I will add it later if I do get one.

We're hanging around here a couple of days, our cavern tour is Tuesday morning, and there is a very nice museum with many interesting things to tell you about tomorrow night.

Among the Rocks

Last night we went to the star party held here in the park. They said it started at 7:30, so by 7:15 we were settled in our chairs. And then we waited, and waited and then the sun set and we waited some more. We knew sunset wasn't until later, but thought perhaps there was going to be a presentation or talk before. Nope. Along around 8:30 one of the guys decided it was twilightish enough to see Jupiter, so set up his scope for that. Then the troop of girl scouts showed up as did a brisk wind. I looked at Tom and said "I've seen Jupiter and this wind is making me cold, do you want me to bring you a jacket?" And that was pretty much the end of my star party, although Tom did return to the Beach House about 15 minutes after I did for that jacket after all. And around 9:30 or so we sat at the picnic table outside in the dark and just looked at the millions of stars sparkling overhead. It reminded me of camping out in the backyard when I was kid and Dad would tell us all the constellations.

This morning I watched the sunrise through the window from the warmth of my cozy bed. Too chilly for me (47 degrees) to crawl out of bed, but it was fun to watch the light come up and listen to the birds chirp as they, too, woke up. After that it was a very lazy day...and I do mean lazy...as we leisurely had coffee, read the email, downloaded the Sunday paper and ate breakfast. The wind was pretty blustery all morning, so we did not venture much outside. But by 10 or so, it had warmed up enough that we decided it was safe to trek out among the rocks on a loop circuit. This park has many lovely campsites tucked up and into the large boulders and rocks. Every where you turn is an interesting view or perspective. I had my phone with me, but it was in the pocket of my jacket, which I took off about a third of the way through the hike...so I have only one picture from early in our walk.

This area was inhabited by the early Indians and there are artifacts from that up in the rocks. Easiest to find are the matate depressions where they ground their grain on the rock.

This afternoon the wind was reduced to just a cooling breeze, so I spent the time reading, blogging, and writing a couple of emails while Tom spent most of it editing his raw footage GO Pro movies. He's trying to cut down several hours of raw footage to a few minutes of interesting video.

We'll be heading out early in the morning to avoid the predicted 30 mph winds in the late morning and afternoon. Not sure what our wifi coverage will be, but imhope to post at least once from our next destination: Kartchner Caverns State Park in Arizona.

City of Rocks

It's day 1 of our spring Beach House on the Move travelogue. I will keep this short, as I am typing this on the phone and hoping there is enough oomph in the cell service to post with a picture...or two. But, do get ready for more of our adventures.