Author: Mary Ann

 

Time to catch up!!

We spent Christmas and New Years in Oregon with Kathy, Gabe & Greg.

The week before Christmas we visited Portland.  They had the animal sculptures dressed in ugly Christmas sweaters – very cute.

On Christmas Eve we viewed lights at the Grotto.  The Grotto is a religious shrine in Portland that puts on a great Christmas lights display.

The week after Christmas Greg and Kathy joined us for a couple of days for a visit to wine country in the Willamette Valley. Our Campground was in Dayton Oregon. Greg & Kathy stayed in a Vintage trailer from the 1950s.

 

Nearby was the Evergreen Aviation & Space Museum where Howard Hughes’s Spruce Goose is kept.

We had lunch at Golden Valley Brewery and Greg got a private tour of the operation.

On New Years day we drove down the Columbia River Gorge and stopped at Multnomah Falls.  Much of it was frozen this time.

 

Happy New Year to my great family!!!

We arrived in Portland Friday and are very happy to be spending time with Kathy & Gabe. Greg flies in later today.  I’m a happy mom!

We are staying in a nice little campground in Fairview, OR. Only a few miles from the Wilsons’ house.

 

 

We arrived in San Francisco on Tuesday and stayed in a campground in GreebBrae just north of the Golden Gate bridge. Wednesday morning we visited Muir Woods, a beautiful walk in a redwood forest.

 

 

I have recently become a big fan of John Muir because of all his work to preserve natural places.

 

Yesterday we visited Las Vegas.  We saw many of the sights and had lunch at Margaritaville. Lots of great people watching opportunities.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Arrived at Lake Mead National Recreation Area today. I am in awe. Will let the photos speak for themselves.

 

 

 

We’ve had a great time here. The pic below is the view from our campsite a few nights ago. That’s me on the beach. How could you not love this?!

Tomorrow we leave for Nevada to see Las Vegas, Hoover Dam, Lake Mead, etc. We have enjoyed this part of Arizona and will be returning to  a nearby campground, Sundance RV Park in Earp, CA for two months starting Jan 15.  The Sundance campground is also on the Colorado River about 20 miles from here, just downstream of the Parker Dam (the dam that holds in Lake Havasu). It is a new campground (still under construction when we visited) and we were able to get a site right on the river! Can’t wait.

Sunday we decided to take a drive on old route 66. Route 66 was one of the original highways in the US highway system and covered over 2000 miles between Chicago, Illinois to Southern California. Most of the road fell into decline during the 1950s and 1960s as modern interstate highways were built.  During the last few decades many sections have been revived and in some cases the old hotels, restaurants, billboards and neon signs have been restored. The section we drove on was only desert and hills.

After an hour or so we were feeling a little disappointed but then arrived in a gem of a town, Oatman, AZ.  Oatman was a mining camp during the gold rush in the early 1900s.  Today it is an old western town with burros roaming the streets and gunfights staged daily.   We roamed around the shops petted the burros and had lunch at the Oatman Hotel. The walls in the restaurant & bar at the Oatman Hotel are coved with dollar bills. Visitors autograph bills and staple them to the wall. The story is that this started in the gold mining days when a miner would put a dollar bill on the wall on payday and that would cover his tab until the next payday.

 

Traveled from Mesa, AZ to Lake Havasu City, AZ today.  Saw this on along the way. Don’t know what they are but they look like yellow crayons to me.

Arrived in Lake Havasu State Park. Lake Havasu is a part of the Colorado River. Best campground so far! Beautiful views, plenty of space. We’ll be here until Thursday.

 

 

 

Interesting landmark in town is London Bridge – one of the original bridges that spanned the Thames River in London England.  It was dismantled, shipped to Arizona, and re-constructed here in 1971. It is very close to our campground and we plan to see it tomorrow.

Cochise

On the route from Willcox to Phoenix we passed nearby Cochise Stronghold. Cochise was chief of the Chiricahua Apache and the leader of an uprising that began in 1861. Before that he was friendly with white settlers. The trouble started when his tribe was wrongly accused of kidnapping a boy from a ranch. Cochise and some of his relatives were captured and held hostage by US soldiers. Cochise escaped but the others were hanged. For the next ten years Cochise and his followers were located at what is now known as Cochise Stronghold.  They retaliated with a many raids on white settlements. We did not visit Cochise Stronghold so I have no photos but it caught my imagination and I wanted to write about it.

Mesa

So now we are in Mesa, Arizona, a suburb of Phoenix. Yesterday we visited the Mesa Natural History Museum.

Phoenix

Today we visited the Desert Botanical Gardens in Phoenix. WOW!!

 

We left Marathon on Friday headed towards Deming, NM. The area around the campgrounds in Deming looked unsafe so we continued on to Willcox, AZ.

Yesterday we visited Tombstone. The location of the original town has been kept to look like it did in the 1800s along with people in period clothing, horses, and all the trimmings.

We also saw a re-enactment of the Gunfight at the OK corral. The pics below are not the re-enactment. These figures were placed in the location where the event actually took place.