Last Month in Arizona

We're in Nevada now and for the next two months, but last month we toured the Western deserts of
Arizona. Arizona, the land where rocks float, giant trees sink and the winter desert blooms with RVs.

We started our tour way back at the end of November at Lee's Ferry, and I already blogged about

Colorado River @ Lee's Ferry

that. Not sure however that the post included the fact that there, as in many places in the southwest and especially Arizona, the ground is covered with pumice, porous volcanic rocks that weigh very little and actually float. Scattering a handful out onto the Colorado was like sending a hundred seeds downstream. These light weight rocks are everywhere and I still get a small thrill from easily picking up a big one.

From Lee's Ferry we headed south to Flagstaff. We spent a week or so exploring along RT 40, and where it still remained, RT 66. First we headed west to Williams, with a days detour to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, and then east to Homolovi State Park, and the Petrified Forest National Forest.

Looks like a log, sinks like a stone

The Petrified Forest is one of those places like the Grand Canyon, that is more than photos or written description can do justice. I'm certainly not going to try but I will say that hiking the Blue Mesa trail through the 'forest' of log rock chips and finding giant petrified trees eroding out of bluish purple sand dunes was amazing. Also amazing was picking up a piece of one of those magnificently colored 'tree' pieces and feeling how really heavy it was. Really, really heavy. Certainly heavier than the floating pumice stone, maybe even heavier than granite. If that rock/piece of wood ever came close to water it wouldn't float for a second.

Blue Mesas

From there we headed further south and a bit west to Dead Horse State Park in Cottonwood, just west of Sedona. Sedona generally gets all the attention but the Verde Valley, in which Cottonwood sits, and through which the Verde River runs is stunning, in a the way only a river-running-through-the-desert can be.

One of the many magnificent
finds at the Quartzite swap meet

Heading further South, and almost to Mexico, we drove to Quartzite and spent a few days satisfying our curiosity about this legendary RV mecca. We wanted to know why every year, from January to March, millions of RVer's descended upon this barren desert outpost. Was it because of the thousand acres of free BLM camping? Was it just of the climate and companionship of other RVers? Was it the lure of the hundred acre swap meet, rock and RV show? Even though it wasn't peak RV season, still the desert sprouted RVs of every kind for miles along the road, and it was easy to imagine the place with wall to wall campers.

We were glad we had visited Quartzite off season. It was interesting, but just not our thing.  We then headed North, back to the Colorado River. Camping at Buckskin Mountain State Park along the shore of that awesome river. This time a ways downstream of the Grand Canyon and a few dams. From there we continued North, stopping at Lake Havasu to see the London Bridge, which we drove over while arguing about where it was. Then a night in Bullhead City visiting family. The next morning we drove on to Nevada and the Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge. We'll be in Nevada for a few months but are looking forward to going exploring more of Arizona this spring.