Our winter home of Desert Gardens, Florence, AZ

Monday, September 11, 2017

Today we will arrive in our winter home in Florence, AZ. 

 We have parked our smaller RV on one of our rental lots. Once we get the jack fixed, it will go on the market. It has been great for our trip!

We got out main "home" out of storage and back to Desert Gardens. Now to determine how the coach fared in the heat of AZ while it was in storage.

WOW, we are having some beautiful sunsets here in AZ. We will be staying here until about mid-Oct when we will hit the road again headed back to Texas via New Mexico.

Kanab, UT to Bontito Nat'l Forest Svc Campgroung

Sunday, September 10, 2017

Today we head to Bonito Nat'l Forest Svc Campground 14 miles north of Flagstaff, AZ via Marble Canyon in northern AZ.

As I mentioned in the previous post, Kanab, UT is only 3 miles from the AZ border.  We drove the 89A route for the views. Marble Canyon and its bridges were stunning.

We are at Marble Canyon. The Colorado River cut this beautiful canyon which is north of the Grand Canyon not far from where highways 89A and 89 intersect.

 Look at the reflections in this canyon. It makes it look like the Colorado River is still. No it is deep.  If you looked straight down from the bridge we were standing on, you could see the water was flowing quickly.

The Vermilion Cliffs National Monument.  This picture doesn't show the color in the cliffs very well because of the distance. So stunning. This picture was taken from the bridge at Marble Canyon Visitors Center.

There are actually 2 bridges crossing the mighty Colorado River here. Above is the bridge for cars, trucks etc.  Below is the pedestrian bridge. They look very similiar. Tic took most of the pictures from the pedestrian bridge.  

This is the Visitors Center. See our trusty little RV. It made it all the way to Alaska and back without any problems!

Bonito NFS Campground about 14 miles north of Flagstaff, AZ. We got one of the prime spots because of the shade. Today is it supposed to be 87 so we are glad for the shade! After all this park is at approximately 6600 ft elevation.

I spoke too quickly earlier.  As we lowered the jacks to level at our site here, the left rear hydraulic jack started leaking hydraulic fluid. Guess the seal gave out. We brought the slide in and raised the jacks and spent the day like that. Thank the Lord it happened on our last night out. AND that our site was fairly level.

 Above and below are views from our yard! We spent the late afternoon and evening sitting outside in the shade.

Tic had fun "shooting" the squirrels and birds we could see. I've picked my favorite pictures of the different animals.

It was pleasant sitting outside in the shade.

Tomorrow we head to our winter home of Desert Gardens, in Florence, AZ.

Vermillion Cliffs National Monument - Condor Viewing area

Saturday, Sept 9, 2017  - Part 2

When we visited the Visitors Center we saw a map that showed a condor viewing area not too too far away. Since the day's weather had improved, we decided to drive there. We are only 3 miles from the Arizona border so the Vermillion Cliffs National Monument is actually in Arizona just north of the north side of the Grand Canyon.

 This shows the size of the California Condor compared to other large birds most of us are familiar with. Condors can fly up to 150-200 miles per day looking for food. Condors do not kill their food. They only scavenge for already dead animals.

This is the viewing area. We are sitting under a covered table looking towards that mountain. A nature tour guide showed up with 2 vans of people hoping to view a condor. Glad they showed up because he found some condors.

The pictures below zoom in one step at a time.  

Above is the section of the rock we were directed to look. Below starts to show some white areas on the rocks, which is actually bird droppings.

 In the picture above you can barely see 2 black dots at one of the white spots.

Now they are little more evident.

Now you can see one of the condors flying in. It eventually lands there with the other 2. The tour guide said the 2 condors already there are young ones.

 The white spots on the condors are number tags. All condors are tagged since they are endangered. California condors were introduced to this area about 20 years ago. In the last 10 years they have started to multiply here. We were blessed and highly favored to be able to see condors today. Thank you Lord!

Above and below are the mountains along the 3 mile drive from Highway 89A to the condor viewing area.

On our way back to Kanab, coming down from 8000', we got a different view. Tic took this picture, but it is not able to show the magnitude of our view. 

We had a beautiful sunset this evening also. We've had another God blessed day! 

Coral Pink Sand Dunes State Park near Kanab, UT

Saturday, Sept 9, 2017  -  Part 1

It rained most of the night last night and most of the morning this morning.  Once it quite raining we decided to drive to Coral Pink Sand Dunes State Park just a short distance from our RV Park in Kanab.

These pictures don't show the coral pink color as much as the actual color was. It was amazing to see so much coral colored sand. 

The cloudy sky started to show some blue making our drive back to our home-site more beautiful. There were some very fascinating rock formations and interesting sites that caught our attention.

Guess that is enough of rock formations. We are intrigued by what we consider unusual formations. 

 We even saw a rock carved totem pole. It was behind a fence that had a sign on it that said due to vandalism you must get written permission from the owner to enter this property. Property was being monitored by cameras.

Just to the west side of the totem pole was this little pond. The pond water is so still you are seeing a reflection of the rock wall in the water. This picture doesn't do it justice.

Then to the east of the totem pole was this "house" built into a cave?  We could not get any closer so don't know the story. It did not look like any one lived in it at this time.

The day had brightened up so we decided to go on another excursion.  See the next blog post.

Drive to Kanab, UT and Paria Mtn

Friday, Sept 8, 2017

This morning we move from Salina, UT to Kanab, UT. The Salina area is beautiful and the Kanab area is supposed to be just as beautiful so we are looking forward to our new home.

As we headed south, the mountains had various colors. These looked white with green trees.

Then to the west was this colorful mountain range just beyond the valley.

 More of the same range as above. I couldn't decide which picture I liked better so you get both.

 This is Candy Mountain in a canyon we drove through. The road was following along side the Sevier River. The whole drive to Kanab was gorgeous!

This is our site at the Kanab RV Corral. It is a wide site but the space next to us is actually another site. Hopefully no one will be put there today or tomorrow.

After getting settled and having lunch, we headed to the Visitors Center here in Kanab.

The Visitors Center was closed for lunch. It was 12:50pm. We hoped (because it did not say) that the center would open at 1pm.  We decided to hang around. Above was a red mountain behind the Visitors Center. Below is a fountain behind the parking lot and another red mountain.

We wanted to find the directions to the Paria (Pahreah) Mountains. We had seen pictures and wanted to find it.  We found the directions, so took off to find them.

As we headed down FS road 585 the mountains started getting more colorful!

 WOW look at the colors!  We found the Paria Mountains. See above and the next several below.

The colorful mountains are almost as colorful as my top.

WOW it was absolutely stunning.  There used to be a movie set here, but it was washed out by the Paria River which flooded the movie set.

In Kanab, we saw Mater! How cute!