Yesterday we drove to Tempe to visit our niece Stacey and her husband Eddie (and also had a chance to briefly see their daughter Elise). We chatted for a few hours in the new outdoor patio eating area of Monti's which they are part owners of.

We thoroughly enjoyed the conversation and the continuous flow of appetizers like hard-boiled eggs stuffed with chorizo, bacon-wrapped dates in a wonderful sauce, and ground beef sliders with bacon, jalapeno and strawberry jelly (not to mention the guacamole and chips, etc). The food and conversation was so wonderful that we forgot to stop and take pictures of the beautiful food presentations (which included edible orchids)  for the blog.

In addition to Monti's, Eddie has taken on new responsibilities at a restaurant franchise, the national headquarters of the Tilted Kilt, and has been extremely busy. We had not heard of these restaurants before but apparently they are Hooter's-like sports bars with great food. We really enjoyed our few hours with them, and Stacey will probably journey up here to Cottonwood sometime during the next two weeks for another visit..

Today (Easter) we went out for an special meal. We did a Google search for local restaurants with Easter Brunches and came up with a restaurant about 10 minutes away in Cornville.

It's called the Manzanita and we had a wonderful meal beginning with Easter Egg Coolers.

For this day-long occasion they narrowed their menu to four entrees. Sharon started with carrot with ginger soup (foreground) and Rick had a chilled strawberry soup.

For the main course Sharon had the salmon filet topped with crab, spinach and artichokes (served with lemon wine)

and Rick had the lamb shank brazed in burgundy demi glace.

We finished it all with a slice of carrot cake and a lemon berry mascarpone cake.

The trouble with a big meal in the middle of the day is that we haven't felt like doing anything the rest of the afternoon - which is good because we can now catch up on this blog.

The weather here has been beautiful -crystal clear skies and warm days with temperatures in the upper 70s. Today it hit 80 and it is supposed to get even warmer over the next week. This signals to us that it is time to start migrating back to cooler country. Highs in the low 80s are OK but when it starts inching up onto the higher 80s we plan to be out of here. So we have a general plan to leave here on April 15 and spend a few days in Flagstaff (at an elevation of 7000' and about 10 degrees cooler than here). Then we will head to the high mesas of NW New Mexico and visit the ancient Anasazi ruins at Chaco Canyon and Aztec Ruins. After a few days there we will move to SW Colorado (probably to Cortez) and tour Mesa Verde, Hovenweep, and Canyon of the Ancients. From there we will head to Moab and visit Arches NP and Canyonlands. By then it will be time to head back north for a couple of days visit with Shirley S. then back to Pocatello/Island Park for a few routine doctor's appointments. After dropping off the trailer and catching up on obligations we will head to the Seattle area to visit Chris, Kristen, Keira, and Kailyn probably over Memorial Day. Then back to IP for an enjoyable summer. Just thinking about it makes us exhausted. We'll keep you posted.

We have a lot of catching up to do on this blog. This entry is organized like the rest of the blog beginning with what we have done today and then digressing through our activities over the last couple of days.

Today may well be the high point of our trip so far for Sharon. As we have mentioned, she has a javalina "fetish" and has been anxious to see live ones in the wild. This morning we walked down to the RV park office and a mother and two baby javalinas came up from the river, crossed the road right in front of us and headed up the hill. Neither of us had a camera so we didn't document the sighting - too bad. Other than that excitement, we did other things like laundry and a short hike up the hill behind us conducting further exploration of the Senagua Pueblo (seen discussion below for additional info).

Yesterday we left Abby in the trailer and drove up Mingus Mountain to Jerome (about a 20 minute drive). We walked around for a while then had lunch at the Haunted Hamburger Grill.

We split a Philly cheese steak sandwich (with grilled onions, green pepper, mushrooms and green chilies)  seated on their deck with a great view of the Verde Valley and the snow-capped San Francisco Mountains in the background.

With our stomachs full we walked to the Caduceous Cellars Tasting Room - you may remember that this winery was the reason we visited the Verde Valley last winter. Chris was the original instigator - the owner and winemaker is Maynard Keenan the founder and lead of the rock band Tool (and a couple of other bands). Chris insisted that it would be worth our effort to visit (and buy him some wine). We did and here we are back for a second year in a row.

So we entered the tasting room and begin a tasting. Since last year they have created a second label (not so expensive) named Merkin (after one of their vineyards) and have entered the white wine market. We began our tasting with the whites and progressed to the spectacular reds. As we were sipping and enjoying the atmosphere we noticed a bottle of wine placed in a place of honor. The bottle is a 2008 Nagual de Judith - undoubtedly Maynard's most famous product and most desirable, but it has not been available since 2010. The bottle is signed by Maynard (dated 2013) and was recently removed from Maynard's personal archive cellar. While sipping our currently available wines Sharon sent a text to Chris telling him about the signed bottle. He had to have it so we exited the cellars with it carefully packaged in a box. The back and forth text messages go something like this:

• S: A signed Judith for $_00, interested?
• S: A 2008 from his personal cellar.
• C: Yes!
• C: Yes please!
• S: R U sure?
• C: Yes!
• S: $_00?
• C: Yes :)
• S: The deed is done.
• C: Thank you very much...........don't break it ;)
• S: I made them box it special ;)
• C: Awesome! 

So Chris has purchased a very expensive bottle of wine - we wonder what it's future will be. We will hand deliver it when we drive to Washington in late May.

The previous morning - Sunday - was cool and beautiful so it seemed like a great time for a hike. We walked up the hill adjacent to our trailer to further explore the collapsed Sinagua Pueblo that covers the hilltop and much of the upper slopes.

It was built and occupied around 1125-1400 A.D. and is littered with collapsed walls and 10s of thousands of pot sherds.

Abby gets thirsty too!

Last year we identified four types of pottery that occur around here - three types that were made locally and a fourth type that was a beautifully decorated Jedito Black-on-Yellow trade ware from the Hopi Mesa (which dates to the later end of the site's occupation). On our Sunday stroll eagle-eye Sharon found three more decorated sherds that are three additional types (probably also all trade wares). We haven't done the research yet but we will be able to find out when and where they were made - we'll report on that when we get around to it. Interestingly, the three new decorated types were found in the same area as the Jedito sherd found last year (the midden area below a 10-15 room annex located on the ridge directly above our trailer).

The room block is in the center of the photo and our trailer is

the small white one at the bottom of the draw with the

white Yukon parked diagonally beside it,

It is difficult to estimate how many rooms were in the pueblo but simply walking the area of collapsed wall rubble suggests that 60-90 may be a reasonable guess. Some more research on our part will probably give us a better estimation.

Looking down from the site at our trailer confirms that we are the smallest one here.

We love it and if it weren't for Abby we would have all the space we need. Fortunately we spend so much time outside the tight indoor space isn't really an issue. And Abby has really learned how and where to move to stay out of our way. But probably when we get older and more decrepit then a larger trailer might be in order (as mentioned in a previous blog).

After the three of us descended the hill we visited the Mexican food vendor parked adjacent to the RV park.

We purchased enchiladas de pollo (chicken) and quesadilla de assada (beef) to-go. We walked back to the trailer and with a couple of cold beers we enjoyed a wonderful and very authentic meal.

There was a lot of food (and we ate it all)  so we weren't hungry for dinner and didn't have any. We will go back and try their tacos or other things. The menu lists tacos with beef tongue or brains - Yum! An interesting note: the Mexican food was delicious and resulted in no stomach problems for either of us (which can be a problem because we have eliminated so many bad things from our diet) - the Philly cheese steak sandwich we had in Jerome was also delicious but it tore our stomachs apart (both of us) probably because of all the grease used in frying the contents. Live and learn.

We haven't posted anything for the last several days because we have either been too busy or too lazy (but mostly lazy). We have been discussing our future winter trips to Arizona and have pretty much decided that trying to purchase something here isn't worth the money and effort (since we would probably never spend more than four months here). We had another idea, however: we could buy a used trailer with more space than our ultra-lite and leave it stored here. Then when we come down (without our ultra-lite) we could take the larger and heavier RV out of storage and park it in an RV park. With this in mind we spent Friday afternoon touring a large gated RV resort a few miles east of Cottonwood. It has a swimming pool, tennis courts, shuffle board, putt-putt golf, a club house (with a little cafe) and several rental cabins. Plus a large secure storage yard for RVs when not in use (apparently our idea is a fairly common practice). Sounds ideal, right? After walking around for a couple of hours, and discovering that they have very limited phone and wifi service, we came to the conclusion that we simply didn't like it and we significantly prefer the place we are staying - the Rio Verde RV Park. This place is not gated and has no amenities, but we like it for reasons we don't completely understand. Quirky is the best descriptor. Over the last few days on our walks around the park we took some photos to capture some of the quirkiness. Here are a few:

RV park entry.

Park office (the owner is Taiwanese and teaches Tao in her studio next door).

The "totem poles" are an interesting combination of Asian and Arctic traditions.

Next to the park entrance is a Mexican eatery truck. We'll talk about our visit and purchases there later.

RVs in the park range from this old Air Stream with flat tires and a makeshift roof

(occupied by a full timer with a giant bushy beard) to mega motor homes with several slide outs.

RV parking spots vary from riverside to hillside. The hillside ones are very secluded and appear to all be occupied by full timers. They have very nice views across the valley. 

We selected a spot overlooking the river (although we can barely see it because of the dense vegetation).

You can't really see it in the photos but the leaves are budding on many of the trees so it will be very green here soon.

Directly opposite of our view of the river is a view of  the hilltop with a large prehistoric pueblo on top.

Our spot is in a long line of diagonal spots overlooking the river.

The parking looks dense but one of the attributes we really like about this RV park (as compared to the large gated park described above) is that we have a nice "private" space where we can lounge and enjoy. Notice the cinder block stairs. The sites are not very level so we have blocks under the wheels to level the trailer; and we needed to create a stable stair to get us up another 8 or 9 inches. So at a visit to Home Depot we came up with the idea of cinder blocks and at about one dollar each (X 4) we got exactly what we needed.

Following the river bank below us is a nice trail that we walk frequently.

Our trailer from the trail below.

Along the trail are "inspirational" signs that are probably consistent with Taoist teachings.

So we really like it here - quirky as it is - and we will probably continue to come here for the foreseeable winters. After we get tired of dragging our trailer back and forth we may decide to purchase a larger one and simply leave it stored here. Who knows?

Yesterday (Tuesday) we were too pooped from our previous days to do much of anything so we did some laundry and just enjoyed relaxing and reading. Today the weatherman said is was going to be cloudy and windy so we decided to avoid the wilderness and go shopping. The closest town with the outlets that we wanted (Petco and Costco) is Prescott located about 40 miles away over Mingus Mountain.According to Wikipedia the name Mingus comes from either a couple of brothers who established a saw mill at the base of the mountain in the 1880s or a pioneer prospector who mined in the mountains in the 1870s.

There are a couple of routes to get to Prescott but we have never driven over the top of the mountain so we took that route. It is an extremely narrow and curvy road that climbs from Cottonwood (at about 3000' elevation) up through the small mining town of Jerome (now an artist and winery colony) to a pass that is over 7000' in elevation.

Then down the other side to Prescott at about 5000' elevation. We didn't stop to take photos because it was so cloudy and hazy - probably some other day. Using our GPS (thank you Atkinsons) we found Petco and Costco (plus stopped and had our Yukon's oil changed) and spent some money on food for Abby and food for us. We stocked up on meats (rack of lamb, baby-back ribs, salmon, and New York steaks) and picked up a few snacks and clothing items (plus a couple of jugs of the Kirkland Cabernet) - YUM!

We had never toured around Prescott before but we know it has  large population of retired folks. It didn't take us long before we both commented about our negative reaction to the place (quite contrary to their promotional materials on the internet). We have never seen anything quite like it - an endless hodgepodge of doublewides and small, cheap prefab homes. Plus odd things like a wedding chapel wedged between a large Texaco station and a Dollar Store - strange. We saw a quasi-mini-mall wrapped around a gravel pit (not just a temporary one but one with years of use). We were soon ready to leave but instead of driving over Mingus Mountain we drove around it (which is a longer route but takes about half the time). 

We have no idea what we will do tomorrow - probably depends on the weather. It is supposed to be nice so we'll see.

Today we drove about a half hour to the V-V (aka V bar V) Petroglyph site. It's an old ranch that contained a large petroglyph panel that the Forest Service traded some land for to preserve it as a heritage site. The image below is the outside of the fireplace of the old ranch house.

There are some interesting interpretations of the glyphs: one of the more interesting and probable is a solar calendar for a few of the glyphs. The panel faces west and has a couple of large stones dislodged high above that cast a shadow when the sun rises over the cliff top (around mid-day).

The shadows swing left and right (north and south) as the seasons change - and there are several glyphs that the shadows (and the shaft of light in between the two shadows) intersect at very important times in the agricultural cycle. If we were there this Wednesday or Thursday (the spring equinox) around noon we would see the shaft of light intersect the center of some concentric circles.

There is a "step ladder" glyph (top in the image above) that marks other important times like the beginning of monsoon season (in late July and August) - super important for dry land farming of corn, beans and squash.

The interpreter at V-V said that the glyphs were probably a product of the occupants of a couple of pueblos a half mile to the east. We had heard about "Sacred Mountain" on a small mesa top just down the road - so we went there and hiked up.

It was only a 0.6 mile trail up there (and a 225' climb) and we really enjoyed the exercise (although a few sections of the trail were steep).

The mesa top is covered with ruins - it looked to us like three room blocks of 20+ rooms each. Plus it looks like there was a wall all around the mesa top enclosing the room blocks and a central plaza.

An amazing aspect is that we find water in the strangest places - we guess this is a Spring phenomenon.

Apparently there is a "ball court" somewhere around the bottom of the butte (but we completely forgot to look for it when we were on top). One of the white dots in the left center of the image below is our Yukon (you may have to click on the image to enlarging it enough to see the white dot).

Tomorrow we will probably head over the mountain (through Jerome) to Prescott and check it out. Apparently it has a very large retirement community - we'll see.

Happy St. Patrick's Day! We celebrated the day by staying close to the trailer and puttering. This morning we bought corned beef (because we knew it would be on sale). It was low fat and low sodium so we thought we would give it a try.

This morning we also purchased de-flappers for our awning because occasionally we get a good breeze like we did last night. They seem to work great! We no longer worry about a strong breeze destroying our awning.

Sharon slaved all afternoon cooking the corned beef in our "outdoor kitchen". The built in cook top is the black object to Sharon's upper left. The stuff on the table is Rick's tool bag supporting today's puttering. In addition to cooking corned beef Sharon multitasked reading a book on her Kindle and tanning her feet (plus relaxing).

Another spectacular dinner. After simmering the corned beef for 3+ hours we crisped the fatty side on the BBQ - it was delicious! (But we could tell that it was low sodium and low fat.)

When it is hot (today's high was 79) Abby likes to relax under the trailer in the shade. The only problem with that is there are millions of tiny "soft" burrs that she collects whenever she lays down outside.

At least twice a day she is de-burred and really loves it. All the combing also makes her the most gorgeous dog in the campground.

Abby just heard a vehicle pull in next door. They have a 1.5 year old golden retriever named Jacob that she is hoping to greet. They are an older couple (as old as we are) and we saw them yesterday beside the highway selling pinion nuts, buffalo/elk/beef jerky, and chocolate. We don't know if they need the money or are just looking for something to do. We think we will check out the elk jerky.

Last night we heard coyotes. Much much closed than we have ever heard at the cabin. Today we enjoyed watching bright red cardinals, kayaks and rafts in the river just below us, and buzzards circling high in the sky. Abby preferred to watch the little lizards skittering about.

Life is good!