Arizona

We have been lucky for a while, no unusual incidents to report in our journey. We have been enjoying the solitude of the New Mexico desert. A day or two before we left Hidden Valley Ranch, we noticed a number of bees flying around our trailer. They were swarming around the door and over the top of the trailer. We wondered, ‘What is going on here?’, we saw no bees anywhere else on the Ranch. The day was warm and we had windows open and the draw-fans going to pull refreshing air through the trailer. We have three such fans, in the bedroom, the kitchen and the bathroom. I went to the bathroom and as I opened the door I heard loud “buzzing”. I looked up to the bathroom fan….. and you see something of what I saw in the first picture above. Dozens of bees. By the time I took the picture, I had persuaded many of them to leave by thumping on the screen.

Why they came in, we don’t know. The fan was spinning around, some bees had died as a result. Some were flying, some were crawling. What to do! Carolyn was making vegetable soup in the Crock Pot. Perhaps the bees liked the smell and wanted some soup. Who knows? I found some bug spray and let the little bees have it. After all, this is not a hive. We shut the outside fan hood, and waited for the bees to die. We removed the fan screen and blade, dumped the dead bees and cleaned up the mess. Job done. Or, so we thought.

We went about our business. Suddenly a bee was flying around the trailer. I grabbed a fly swatter. Swat! Then another showed. Swat! Then another, and another and more. ‘What is going on here?’ How are these bees getting in? Why are they coming in? Is it the soup? We checked all windows and could find no way the bees could enter. No holes in the screens. No openings. Yet, they still came. One after the other. Swat! Swat! I killed bees for hours. Finally, we had enough. We closed all the windows and turned on the air. Ok, another bee or two was still loose in the trailer. Before I got the last one, one little bee took revenge on me and popped me on the arm. That was 6 or 7 days ago. I still have the mark on my arm.

On Monday, October 29th, we left the bees behind and moved on to Arizona. We are in Benson, a little town of around 4,800 people. No special reason to pick Benson as a stop except it is “on the way west” and met our driving mileage criteria (you will remember that we don‘t want to drive more than 200 miles in any one day). It is also easy access from here to Tucson and Tombstone, two places we wanted to visit. Midway between Wilcox, AZ and Benson, AZ ( you can find those cities on your map, along I-10) one passes through Texas Canyon (no, it is not in Texas). Here the huge rocks are piled on one another and look like pebbles on steroids. You see a picture of the rocks above. It is here in this area that Cochise, the famed Apache Chief and warrior, formed a treaty with the Army in the late 1800’s. The Apache lived in the canyon. Beautiful sights.

On Wednesday we took a trip to Tucson, about 45 miles west of Benson. Tucson is the second largest city in Arizona, more than 500,000 population. Tucson lies in the high desert valley flanked by the Tucson Mountain to the west and Rincon Mountain to the east. The Sonoran Desert around Tucson is home to the giant saguaro (pronounced suh-WAH-ro) cacti. It is that giant cactus with its arms raised high, as though some cowboy said, “Stick-em-up!” and the cactus threw up its arms. If you see a 40-foot saguaro, you know that it has stood on that spot for 150 years. They are slow growers.

We drove around Tucson to take in the sights, stopped at Old Town Artisans, a 150 year old adobe building filled with native arts and crafts. We looked, didn’t buy. Just up the block was the El Charro, the oldest family-owned Mexican restaurant in the country, established in 1922. We decided to try it out. Frankly, it could not beat our most frequented family-owned Mexican restaurant back in Tennessee. In all our travels, so far, we have not found as good a Mexican meal.

On Thursday we drove to Tombstone, about 25 miles south of Benson. I’m sure all of you have heard of the legendary OK Corral where the famous gun-fight between Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday against the Clanton Gang occurred. We walked the board-walk through the city, past the OK Corral, The Bird Cage Theater (famous for its entertainment and bordello) and many other period buildings of the 1800’s. Most are used today for shops and restaurants. Of course there is always the reenactment of gun fights in the streets all during he day. Above is a picture of a typical street scene in “old” Tombstone today. If you look closely you can see the “OK Corral” sign in the middle of the picture.

Today, Friday, we drove some 35 miles south to Sierra Vista, a city of about 43,000 folks. Nothing special here to see, but it is the nearest place to Benson that has a Walgreens Drug Store where I can pick up some needed medication, and a Quest Laboratory to get my monthly blood screening to test the effectiveness of my blood thinning medication. That done, since we were there, we had lunch at a new restaurant called El Paso. Pricey, but good. Oh yes, speaking of pricey, we also purchased diesel fuel. It was the cheapest we had found in the area, $3.03 per gallon. We have seen it as high as $3.49. It appears that diesel fuel is about 50 cents per gallon higher than regular gas. Just our luck!

Tomorrow is moving day. We are headed to Gila Bend, AZ a town of less than half the population of Benson. It is a rural farming community in the low desert, about 736 feet elevation. I guess it is apply named since it lies in the bend of the Gila River. Check in on us again next week, we’ll be somewhere else. By the way, as of this writing I have “blogged” over 21,000 words (21,565). Boy, no wonder my fingers hurt!