Arizona Bound

Taking Highway 10 from Indio to Benson, Arizona today. Just hitting the state line at 11:45 a,m. The desert has been cultivated here into orange groves, and they are cutting alfalfa hay at the end of November.

Benson, Arizona

We high-tailed it out of Gallup, delaying our trip south an extra day due to 6 inches of snow in Flagstaff.  We travelled down on Wednesday, taking about 7 hours to comoplete the journey.  The weather was sunny and got warm once we got into lower altitudes (Gallup is around 6,400 feet, and Flagstaff is higher yet).

We are happy to be back here in Benson, where the weather is nice and sunny and warm, and the pool and spa are great.  Who knows, maybe we'll even see the Dark Rider again!

Dark Rider

 Above:  A view of the wash looking south

On our last morning in Benson we took the two big dogs for their usual run up through the wash in the desert to the north of where we were staying.  This is an area that is dry right now but becomes a raging river during flash floods.  It twists and turns and has banks anywhere from 6 to 15 or so feet high, and varies from about 40 to 75 feet or so in width.  It is full of stunted trees and underbrush.

 Above:  A view of the wash looking north

On our way back down we were approaching a corner.  Our 165-pound Ovcharka dog was leading the way when a shadow appeared on the ground just ahead of him, indicating someone was coming around the bend.  He stopped in his tracks and was intently watching to see what was coming.  We yelled to the dog to stay so we could leash him, and grabbed the German Shepherd and put on her leash. 

When I looked up, there was a tall handsome man on a tall Mammoth Jack mule (these things are almost as big as a draft horse).  The man was wearing a blood-red shirt, a black cowboy hat, black jeans, black boots, and black gloves.  He was holding a large black pit bull on a chain, who was barking and jumping around beside him.  The mule was dancing around, the dogs were all barking, and the rider was trying to keep his dog untangled from the mule.

As he maneuvered past us in the wash, he commented with a laugh, "I think everyone here is new to this."

When he got about 20 feet past us, he turned back and yelled something that I couldn't hear because my faithful companion began barking at him again.  He then repeated it, saying, "Y'all didn't see a black knife up this way, did you?"  To which I replied, "No, sir, we didn't see any knives."

Then I remembered the iPhone in my hand and yelled, "Can I take a picture of you?"

He laughed and said sure, and turned his mule to the side and I snapped the photo.  When I looked at it later, it gave me a start because his face was all distorted, like some kind of a horrible mask.  Yet I was talking to him before I snapped the photo, and he had put nothing on his face.  Then the words from the song Red Right Hand came into my mind and I was totally freaked out.  Take a look at the photos below, but before you do, click on the play button on the video below to hear Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds performing Red Right Hand while viewing photos to get the full effect:

Click above play button to start the video and listen to the song while checking out photos below:

Above:  "On a gathering storm comes
a tall handsome man
In a dusty black coat with

a red right hand ..."

Above:  Enlarged to see face
That's either a gun or a knife on his belt (Arizona has open-carry firearms laws)

Holy Javelina!

Javelina, pronounced "havalina"

Exercising the dogs up in the wash across from the RV park today.  The wash is a dried up large creek bed that becomes a raging river when the rains hit.  The banks are over 6 feet high in some places and are pretty much straight up.  That's where a small pig suddenly ran across the wash in front of us and clambered expertly up the bank and into the brush. As we passed by the spot, we could see it standing in the brush looking at us rather surprisedly.  It had huge bristles all over it, especially on the top of its head.  It was a little smaller than my potbelly pigs were.  They are remotely related to the domestic pig of today, and have migrated from South America through Mexico and are now living wild in Arizona.

 Above:  in the wash

So now the dogs have three things they like to watch out for when we go out for walks:  desert cottontail rabbits, Gamble's quail, and now the javelinas! 

 We're probably going to head out Wednesday morning, over to Las Cruces, New Mexico, then up to Roswell.  Some people from Albuquerque parked their bus beside us last night, very friendly folk, who gave us lots of info on stuff around their state that would be nice to see, places to probably stay away from right now due to extreme weather conditions, and the name of a casino that has the best buffet in the state.

Benson, Arizona

 Hey, weird, it looks just like the photos of Arizona ...

Three and a half hours of travel on Highway 10 today got us into Benson, Arizona.  We're staying here for a week while we explore the area.  There's a lot of old mining towns and caverns to see, not to mention the one and only Tombstone, Arizona, which is about half an hour away.

There are a lot of cotton fields in the Buckeye area, which surprised me because I thought that crop was grown in the Deep South.  The cotton fields continued almost all the way to Benson today, which leads me to believe it might be the number one crop in southern Arizona.  It looks like most of the crop is harvested, but there are a few places where the machines are still plucking the cotton balls off the dried-up bushes, and there are huge bales of cotton lining the dirt farm roads.