A jeep ride to the east....

 

 

Our Location: 

Road Runner BLM, Quartzsite, Arizona

 

This morning we had plans to head east toward the Saddle Mountain area looking for a better place to park without flies. The Little Black Limo motored along carrying the Deb's, Tom and Riley, while the Little Silver Streak carried Doug and Yuma. I won't bore you with the details but we found some interesting places with the draw back being no or spotty cell service. They are a little off the main path but still would be a nice place to park for a few days if you can do without cell service.  

 

I love the cloud play on the Harquahala Mountains.

 

A beautiful view to park here but little to no cell service.

The view is stunning.

Literally a forest of saguaros.

A few of the photos I took today are in tonight's post and I will be using the others as the days go on and I need some photos. The views were wonderful and the saguaros couldn't be photographed if I had a few years to do it. Lots of cholla and even some Ocotillos, some green but most not. A few cattle, a few rigs, lots of cloud shadows on the mountains. 

 

A very roller coaster like road....

Saguaros every where we looked.

Amazing how different they all are.

 

We stopped in Salome for lunch at Don's Cactus Cafe. A very nice little spot, the food was very good, the place was clean and I would go back again. From there we headed on home, stopping in Q for a few minutes and we arrived home just in time for happy hour. 

 

The clouds always make the mountains more interesting.

 

A call to my dad, cold weather and of course wind there too. He and brother Rick are off to Jesse's to pick a tractor that won't run or won't run well. It will give them something to do on those days that they can't be outside but don't wish to be stuck in the house. 

 

Chauffeur Tom drove us up to the top of this big hill, below us was the next photo.

We were parked on the top of that ridge way up there.

 

 

I hope you enjoyed the views! Thanks for stopping by. 

 

Until next time....

 

Take care, stay safe, 

 

Deb

  

Lots of pictures......

Our Location: BLM on Ogilby Road, Winterhaven, CA

 

A beautiful sunrise this morning splayed out in the eastern sky as I walked to Ogilby Road and back to the Igloo. So many wonderful shots but I have too many pictures to post today. So I'll cut them way down. 

 

The sun is starting to make it's presence known.

 

There was a lot of action between the first shot and this one.

 

We both decided that we needed to get out and do something and since Riley is feeling better she opted to once again walk to Ogilby Road and back to the Igloo. I on the other hand wanted to do something different. So I hopped in the Dogsled and took off for the Historic Townsite of Tumco just up Ogilby Road a couple of miles. 

It was not this dark but more of a pinky orange.

As you can see the Ocotillo is between me and the sun.

The road into the parking area is very rough and there was already one vehicle there when I arrived. At least 3 more would come after me. Numerous rigs were also scattered around the area as it is BLM land as well. I counted at least 8 people camping there, from tents and cars, to a cargo trailer, a van, and 3 fifth wheels. So it's a busy area for sure. 

This is the second 'sunrise' as those low lying clouds blocked it for a while.

 

This is all sand, very hard compacted sand.

 I started off at the first welcome sign for the townsite but truly didn't find much of interest there except the landscape. It was unlike anything I've seen before. I thought it was stone but it wasn't. It was very hard compacted sand. In some places it had been wind worn to a finish hard enough to step on and leave no imprint. You can see where water and wind have carved and curved along in this area to create a truly amazing type of landscape. 

It is sand.

Cut by wind and water and obviously humans. It's colour is a pinky, orange colour.

I did stop at a few of the townsite points but as I said I lost interest. The placards were hard to read and none of the sites had any labels of any kind so you didn't really know what you were looking at. Instead I wandered along on the roadways and found myself climbing of course into the hills. You knew that though, didn't you?

You can see how the water had cut it's way through here.

So many different colours here.

The views while not stunning were very scenic to see and I'm sure it would be a great deal of fun to walk farther than I did today. There are roads carved out of the hillsides and in places fill has been added to ensure the safety of the road but it's still a very nice way to spend a few hours and get some exercise. 

As you can see it's sand and the holes are obviously from insects, rain and nature.

The stuff in the foreground is very hard. They have used it to like cement in some places.

 I was back home about 3 1/2 hours after leaving. So not a bad way to spend some time today. We had lunch and just kind of rested for the rest of the day. I managed to get a couple of hours reading in on my newest book, End Game by David Baldacci. It's not his best but it's still pretty good. 

I followed the path in the very bottom of the picture but it swings left  and the whitish path you see branches off to the right and ended not far from the edge of the picture.

This is farther up the path in the last picture. The path you see at the bottom of the picture that goes left leads to a ventilation shaft.

This is the saddle part of the path where it goes from one side to the other side of the hill. That is looking toward Ogilby Road from where I am standing. So to the north west.

This is looking to the west. If you look off in the distance that line of light brown is the dunes we can see from the Igloo.

This is pretty deep and although you can see the paths along the edges I didn't walk those. I would like to but didn't.

A longer view and a slightly different angle.

A bit fuzzy but a nice view.

I would like to have followed this path farther but didn't have time.

 I hope you have enjoyed the pictures. If ever in the area and looking for some exercise it may be a nice leg stretch for you. Thanks for stopping by, I hope you enjoyed your visit.

You can see a few of the rigs and the sand dunes again.

Lots of room to park out there. Can you see the car? The little red dot in the top middle of the photo.

I went across the trail you see coming from the top right and ended up coming down the trail on the left.

Until next time... take care,  be safe, 

Not a bad view for a little effort.

Posted with permission. This little fellow was coming in while I was going out. He asked what that was in my hand and pointed to the camera. His father explained that it was a camera and it's how I take pictures. When he word the word picture he automatically smiled and said 'cheese'. I couldn't resist taking his picture. He is a cutie. 

 Deb

 Sorry for the crowded pictures but I'm tired of fighting with blogger tonight.

Touring New Brunswick......

Our Location: Walmart Front Parking Lot, Bathurst, New Brunswick


We left Edmunston after a rainy night. We shared the parking lot with numerous other RV’ers and something I noticed that was odd to me truckers had no issues blocking some of the exit/in roads to the parking lot in the middle of the area. Instead of parking across the lines they just blocked the driveway. I found that odd, and they looked at us odd as I didn’t park that way. Interesting. 

 

Riley noticed this fellow just hanging out while we were leaving Edmunston.

Cool, wet, damp and overcast was again the weather pattern for the day. Our goal was to reach Bathhurst on the north east shores of New Brunswick. One must be careful not to assume all roads on the map are actual roads, some are logging roads and with that in mind we continued on TransCanada 17 South until we veered off onto NB11 which took us north, then east, and finally south to our destination. 

 

Some of the long sweeping views as we left Edmunston on Provincial 17.

 

The sky doesn't look it but heavy rain is not far in the offing. Construction is minor.

 

We managed to fill up with the Big Dog’s drinking bowl for $1.24 per litre, best price we’ve seen the entire way. The previous fill up was $1.39 per litre. Huge difference. The green here is new, very much early spring colours and multiple just opening and soon to open blossoms such as crab apple, cherry, etc. Tulips and daffs are still the flower of the day. So we are again experiencing the cool temperatures of early spring. The wind is getting more noticeable which is to be expected nearer to the ocean which we managed to see on our journey today, snips and snaps of it at least. With the rain falling hard at times it was difficult to get any good pictures. However we did manage one or two. A quick stop in the small town of Saint Quentin for a break in their lovely little park  turned out to be the only place to stop during our drive. No other road side areas except one at a small town named Kegwick  which was literally 10 minutes down the road for S.Q. 

Lovely views, can't beat those green colours.

The over cast is getting more noticeable.

 

New Brunswick 11 was for the most part a good highway to drive, it had some extremely rough patches in places but over all it was good. Well signed, lots of moose warnings, although we haven’t seen any live moose, just a number of statues. NB11 reminded Riley and I of the foothills of the Great Smokey Mountains in some ways, although the hillsides here are much less populated and more dense with foliage. The views were stunning in many places. We passed places like Campbellton, Delhousie, Belldune, and on into Bathurst. Cousin Ruth lives in Belldune but was at work when we passed through the outskirts of her town. The drive was beautiful with the wonders of mountain driving along with the vast sweeping views that comes from reaching the high points in the road way. In many places it was forest and only forest with the small clearings here and there for roadways and houses/towns. In a few places there was the open fields of the farms starting to show their first green of spring plantings. Just like a light fuzz on the ground. The mountains here are nothing like the Southwest USA but they are mountains in their own right. The Appalachian Mountains to be exact.  We’ve all commented a number of times about the various shades of green in the distance, the views different at each high point as the growth mixture changes to more of one green than another. Few very short passing lanes on NB11 as well. Some beautiful views of the water as we rounded the corner at Campbellton and headed south. We would catch glimpses here and there of the waters off to our left.

The grades become steeper and steeper as we go along.

Similar views, but still very pretty.

Bathurst is showing the first signs of english since we left Ontario. Even on the edges of New Brunswick such as Edmunston we found we were still dealing with more french than english speaking people or heavily accented at least. Signs were a bit more multilingual near the provincial borders but here in the town of Bathurst are in english which is helpful if it’s language signs and not visual signs. We all noticed that Quebec had NO BILINGUAL signs which I thought was mandatory since both french and english are the official Canadian languages.

Some pretty views, see the slash in the trees,t hat's the road way.

A small pond by the road side.

 

So if it  seems like we aren’t actually sight seeing I’ll tell you why.We’ve discovered that we are too early due to the late spring to enjoy the gardens, etc. We’re too early for the summer events, which actually don’t really interest us anyway.  The rain is a definite factor and it’s rained pretty much each day of travel since North Bay, our second day’s location. Some times down pours, some times mist like air and all points in between. It’s very cool here with temps some times dipping very close to the single digit numbers even during the day, the wind in that case also plays a factor as it’s a chilly biting wind. The few sun shine spots have been rare and usually while we’re driving which limits our ability to take advantage of it. The other thing as mentioned above, due to the late spring everything is late. A number of the museums and such listed along the way haven’t interested us in the least but we figured that when we set out to see this side of the province. While we could have gotten off NB11 and gotten closer to the water we opted to wait until we are much lower down in the province due to the crisp winds. Which is one of the reasons we haven’t gotten ourselves into a campground either.  In a day or two we will be in Shediac which is lower in the province and hopefully more seasonal in temperature. We’ll be staying a couple of days in a park there and getting out with just the Dogsled which will be fun, much easier to get around and see things as well. I’ve been thinking about getting out my heavy coat to even just walk around the parking lot. Even Riley is in long pants. 

 

I'll take these views.

Yes that is the wiper blade you can see in the corner and rain drops on the bottom. All pictures have rain drops in them.

So there you have it, nothing exciting but some good views and we are having fun enjoying this outing. Always an experience when traveling!!! Thanks for stopping by, hope you enjoyed your visit. 

 

The town where we'll be spending the night.

Until next time …… take care, be safe,

 

The town of Sainte Quentin has a definite western flavour.

The town of Saint Quentin little road side park.

 

 

Deb