​We left Mojave National Preserve and headed for the north entrance of Joshua Tree National Park.  We drove through a dry lake where they collect and process chloride, and pulled into the town of Twentynine Palms.  We decided to get fuel before heading into the park, so used Gas Buddy to find where it was the least expensive, and started following the directions.  We were a little surprised when we pulled up to a military checkpoint and were told we weren’t allowed to enter the base, but they had plenty of room for our rig to turn around and head out.  We headed for another road to get to the gas station, only to again find ourselves at a military checkpoint.  We turned around again and asked where civilians could get fuel, and were directed back into town where we found a gas station with more expensive fuel, but by that point we were happy to get whatever we could.

We then headed into the park to see the points of interest and see if we could find a campsite in one of the park’s first-come-first-served campgrounds.  Because we didn’t arrive until the afternoon, we thought we might want to spend a couple of days there.  However, we quickly realized that the entire park was crawling with people, and not only could we not find a campsite in the park, it was difficult to see the recommended sites because so many people were in so many cars that even if we could find a parking spot within walking distance of a site, when we got to the site it was difficult to even get a photo without random people posing for selfies or family portraits.  We abandoned the plan to spend significant time in the park and found a pull off near a random trailhead that wasn’t near a point of interest, and took an off the map hike through the desert and the Joshua Tree forest. ​

We got back in the truck and headed for BLM land just north of the park and the town of Joshua Tree.  Apple Maps took us in on a very bumpy OHV road, but we found the very large and very open BLM land at the end of the road - and also at the edge of the town with paved streets, which we used to exit in the morning.  We parked fairly close to the town rather than driving further out the bumpy road, and spent the night listening to baa-ing goats or sheep, which was far preferable to lots of cars and lots of people talking. ​

​In the morning, we used All Trails to find a hike in the Mission Creek Preserve, which was on the way to Huntington Beach.  The Preserve is about 2 miles up a very washed out gravel road, so we decided to park near the highway and walk to the Preserve rather than driving up there and walking in the park.  The gravel road wound up a wash through the desert, and at the top we found a beautiful picnic ground that looked like it used to be a fancy campground.  Shells of stone buildings were along the trail, and a small dry swimming pool was behind them, with a beautiful fireplace.  We poked around, and then headed back down the road to the camper to drive towards Huntington Beach.

​We arrived in Mojave before the wind and rain started, and barely got in a short hike on the Rings Loop Trail before the rain started.  It started raining just as we got to the climbing part of the trail, so the rocks weren’t too wet, and the rings made the steep climbs relatively easy.  The rock formations were beautiful, and we got an up close look at the namesakes of the Hole In The Wall Campground, although the rain started in earnest just as we got to the top so we were soaked by the time we returned to the camper.  We changed into dry clothes, had dinner, and by the time we went to bed the camper was rocking from the winds.

​The next day was still breezy but clear, so we did the six plus mile hike around the mountain behind the campground.  A ranger had warned us that the trail could be hard to follow because it wasn’t really a trail, just a series of washes, but in the open desert going around a mountain we didn’t have too many turning options and found the route fairly easy, whether or not we were on the actual trail.  We were amazed at how the landscape and rock formations changed as we did the loop, and my biggest challenge was watching where I put my feet since I was more interested in ogling the scenery.  We saw only one other couple hiking until we were within the last mile back to the Visitor Center, and heard nothing but the wind and occasional raven call.

​We got up and on the road early the next morning, heading for Joshua Tree National Park.

We took US60 west from Tonto National Forest into Phoenix.  When we had planned to meet Michele and Gino for dinner, we looked into urban camping options in Phoenix and found that one of the Gila River Casinos was probably our best bet.  We didn’t have much on the agenda for Phoenix other than visiting the Capitol, so we stopped at the Casino on our way into town to make sure it was okay.  We hadn’t realized that there are three Gila River Casinos, and we first went to the wrong one which has a hotel and doesn’t allow overnight RV parking, but the very friendly and helpful security guards we spoke with directed us to the right one, which was only about 5 minutes away.  We checked with security at that one to make sure it was okay, checked out the place where we were told to park, and then headed for the Capitol.

The Phoenix Capitol is a small but elegant building surrounded by a memorial park, with memorials to just about anything you could think of, including veterans, civic servants like firemen, and even K9 police dogs.  Our favorite feature of the entire complex is that all of the ground is covered with grass, which made our dogs really happy after over a month in the desert.  Kismet made a gigantic pain of herself because we couldn’t walk more than four or five steps without having her throw herself on her back in the grass for a good roll and rub.  But, we couldn’t really blame her since she loves to roll in the grass and she hasn’t had much opportunity lately.  We didn’t see too many people around, but the capitol complex gets points for an easily accessible free parking lot that had room for our camper, and an obvious effort to keep it clean and appealing.  We saw a few obviously homeless people but only a few, which surprised us until we drove out of the area and found a sprawling homeless encampment between the Capitol and downtown.  We wandered around and read many of the memorial plaques, and then headed back to the casino.

We found that a few more campers had pulled into the casino while we were gone, but we had no trouble tucking in next to a large class A.  The casino supposedly has a 24 hour parking limit, but it was pretty obvious that a number of the campers there were parked for the long haul.  But, it was a safe place to leave the dogs (& cat) while we went out to dinner, so I texted Michele and they came and picked us up and took us to one of their favorite Italian restaurants.  We had a delicious dinner, but mostly had fun catching up on all of our Rochester connections as we compared who keeps up with whom.  Between us, we *think* we now know what everybody who matters is doing.  We had an interesting discussion on our definitions of “home,” since Michele and Gino still call Rochester home, while Tom and I think about it every time we say the word.  Right now, we don’t really have a home, but Belize has been home for over 16 years, and Rochester will always be home since that’s where we spent most of our adult lives, and even New Jersey will always be home since that’s where we grew up.  

Michele and Gino delivered us back to the camper after dinner, and we decided during the night that we are going to try to avoid casino parking lots as camping places.  It was probably better than paying $100 to stay at a city “RV resort,” but between semis pulling in and out all night, and the Class A neighbor who thought it was a good idea to turn his generator on at 4:30AM, we didn’t have the best night’s sleep.  We packed up fairly early and headed west, with a planned stop at Quartzsite.

The planned stop at Quartzsite turned into a fairly rapid drive by.  Since Quartzsite is known as a mecca for the RV lifestyle, we wanted to see what it was about, and we weren’t impressed.  I know I’m going to sound snobby, but our view of the RV lifestyle is traveling in comfort to see a lot of different things.  Apparently others define the RV lifestyle as living as cheaply as possible and parking in one spot while your vehicle collapses around you, as the garbage piles build up around you.  I understand that many people aren’t fortunate enough to be able to do what we’re doing, but somehow I don’t think that a lack of funds justifies living in filth. It’s not that hard to find a dumpster for your bag of garbage, but apparently it’s not worth the effort for a lot of people and they just chuck it under their campers.  After this drive by, when we reached the Ehrlenberg BLM land where we decided to park for the night, we decided to watch the movie Nomadland, which is about this issue of people losing everything and living in their vehicle because it’s all they can afford.  The movie was great, and considered a lot of these issues, but still didn’t address how many people seem to have just given up caring about anything.

Ehrlenberg BLM land is wide open and starkly beautiful.  Tom didn’t really see the beauty and described it as a wasteland, and the thought did cross my mind that it was basically a gigantic gravel parking lot, but it’s surrounded by mountains, and anyone can park just about anywhere, so you needn’t be bothered by other people.  Some campers had parked in groups, which seems to be some people’s preference, but we had no trouble finding our very own gravel field with a remarkably level spot for the night.  I don’t know that I’d want to vacation there for a week, but for a quiet night’s sleep, it sure beat the casino.

In the morning, we packed up and headed west towards California, which was only about 2 miles away across the Colorado River.  We crossed into California and followed the river north towards the Mojave Desert Preserve.  We’d read the warnings that you should gas up before heading into the desert, and we were very lucky we decided to check gas prices in Needles, which turned out to be right on the Arizona/California border.  We headed back into Arizona to get diesel for $4.31/gallon, where if we had waited had had to buy it in California, it would have cost over $7/gallon.  We are now well into California in the middle of the Mojave Desert, so we’re probably going to have to suck it up and pay California prices from here on out.  In the meantime, we’re enjoying the beautiful desert and planning to get out for a hike if the wind ever stops rocking the camper.

From Casa Grande, we headed northeast towards the Tonto National Forest and Tonto National Monument.  The Tonto National Forest is huge, and seems to cover most of the public lands from just east of Pheonix to about 40 miles out, and a good 40 miles south to north.  That area isn’t all National Forest and contains a few towns and private ranches, but you can’t drive too far in any direction without seeing the “Entering Tonto National Forest” signs.  We had looked on iOverlander for a good place to camp, and found a disbursed camping area just west of the town of Superior.  We didn’t really know what to expect, but found an area near the Picket Post Trailhead with very clear camping spots, some in groups, and some individual sites by the side of the road.  Since cows were wandering the area freely, and lots of people were camping with horses and dogs in the other areas, we picked an individual site on the side of the road so our dogs wouldn’t make everyone crazy barking at everything passing the camper.  We found that the area has a lot of trails through the desert, but it also has nice dirt roads without too much traffic, so we were able to get the dogs out for a good long walk and scope out other sites in case we came back.

We pulled out the next morning and headed for the Tonto National Monument, which was about 50 miles away through a few towns and over a few mountain passes.  It was beautiful drive, and we easily found the park.  Tonto National Monument is another National Park site featuring cave dwellings.  We were very lucky because the site contains two cave dwelling areas, with one up a paved trail very easily accessible from the Visitor Center, and another larger dwelling up a mile-plus dirt path which is usually only accessible with a park ranger as a guide, but on that Sunday the were allowing people to walk to the larger dwelling on their own.  We visited both dwellings, and enjoyed talking to the rangers and archeologists on site.  We also enjoyed seeing the local flora and fauna, and spotted a few lifer birds as well as some very fat squirrels.

Our plan had been to leave the Tonto National Monument and head to a campground closer to Phoenix near Tortilla Flats.  However, in talking to one of the rangers, we discovered that although that campground is only about 25 miles from the National Monument, a landslide had closed Rt. 88 and the detour around the landslide meant it would be more like 90 miles whether we went north or south around the landslide.  In looking at the map, we realized that the southern detour took us back through Superior and the area where we had camped the previous night.  But, we needed water and wanted to get some laundry done, so we called a campground in Superior to see if we could get in that night.  They didn’t have any full hookup sites open, but they said they could give us access to water and they didn’t care if we dumped our gray water in their gravel parking lot, so we went to the Box 8 Ranch RV Resort and parked in their parking lot and both got our laundry done and filled with water.

The next morning we went less than 5 miles back down the road to the Picket Post disbursed camping area.  We went to one of the spots further off the road that we had scoped out on one of our walks the first night we stayed there.  The second spot was quieter with fewer people around, but was still in a spot where we could easily access both hiking trails and the back roads for dog walks.  We stayed there two more nights while Tom did some maintenance on the camper, we took the dogs on a couple of long walks, and we took a couple of hikes by ourselves through the desert.  

We left the Tonto National Forest after a walk with the dogs on Wednesday morning because we had made arrangements to meet friends Michele and Gino in Phoenix for dinner that night.The Tonto National Forest is less than an hour outside of Phoenix, but it seemed like worlds away as we drove back into civilization.

We left Tucson and headed north towards Phoenix with a planned stop at the Casa Grande Ruins National Monument.  This is a small site south of Phoenix where extensive ruins of an Ancestral Sonoran Desert People’s settlement was discovered, complete with a very large structure dubbed Casa Grande, or Big House, because of its size.  The site had long been abandoned even when it was found by Spanish Missionaries in 1694, but research over the years has uncovered some of its background.  Archeologists believe the area was settled around 300AD, with the Casa Grande completed around 1350.  Nobody is sure when the area was abandoned, but archeologists now believe that the Ancestral People may have been too good at creating irrigation from the nearby Gila River, and may have caused the river to run dry, meaning they had to move to where the could find water.  Modern day ancestors of the Ancestral People don’t believe they went far - since these modern day people are still in the area - but the population centers were abandoned for more disbursed living.  This site was the first national archeological reserve, and became protected under the National Park system in 1892.  It takes only an hour or so to wander around the site and see the ruins as they have been preserved since  1892, but this is a significant site nonetheless because of it’s historical value both as an archeological site for the Ancestral Sonoran Desert People, and as a testament to how the National Park system can protect these ancestral relics.

We left the site by mid afternoon, heading for the Tonto National Forest east of Phoenix.