Another Arizona Winter

We’ve finished up the southern leg of our winter wanderings and are headed west for another Arizona winter. We are not looking forward to the drive across Texas and New Mexico. We always seem to run into some very cold and windy weather. And it’s also extremely boring. But the payoff is worth it – nice, warm, sunny days and plenty of outdoor activities.

Whitlow Ranch Road

After our long slog across Texas, we finally reached our first destination to start another winter in Arizona. Our first stop is Whitlow Ranch Road, located southeast of Florence in the Sonoran Desert. We’re meeting up with some old and new friends, all of whom have side-by-side OHVs. They’re nice people so they let us ride along. More importantly, this is our first off-grid stay so we’ll see how my newly upgraded solar system works out.

The weather this year is much sunnier and drier than last year. As a matter of fact, this area has had .03 inches of rain since July. That makes it a bit dusty when the wind picks up or you’re following too close to your friend’s OHV.

Having a OHV in the desert allows you to get to places you normally can’t get to if you’re just hiking or a 4WD vehicle, such as these coke ovens. The ‘roads’ getting here are quite rugged but easily handled by the OHVs. There are five wonderfully preserved ovens in this remote area close to what looks to be an old grove of mesquite trees. Each oven is about 25 feet in diameter and 30 feet high. The ovens reduced mesquite wood to coke, a hotter burning fuel, for use in smelting gold and silver ore taken from surrounding mines. Each one has a ground level entry and a few upper level vents. The mesquite wood burned slowly in the ovens for days, producing the coke.

We ran across a lot of other interesting sights in the desert on our trips. Here is an old railroad bridge and tunnel:

Here’s Cathy having way too much fun playing in the river:

And here are some interesting rock formations:

Speaking of rock formations, our ‘tour guide’ showed us a place where we picked up some rocks with turquoise in them:

And, of course there were amazing sunsets:

We even had Door Dash deliver some fresh steaks to our campsite:

The stars at night are big and bright hanging out around the campfire:

Oh, and, by the way, my upgraded solar panels exceeded expectations. I really over-engineered the entire system.

Catalina State Park

Our time is up at Whitlow Ranch Road and we’re moving on to Catalina State Park in Oro Valley near Tucson. We haven’t found an area in our travels that we would want to buy a permanent winter home but when we are ready, Oro Valley will be the short list of possible places. There are incredible mountain views, miles and miles of bike trails, plenty of outdoor activities, and, of course, warm, sunny weather. It’s also close to everything Tucson has to offer.

Catalina State Park is located on the western slopes of the Coronado National Forest’s Santa Catalina Mountains. The park is more than just camping and hiking. There are mountain bike and horseback trails. You can arrange for a horseback ride through the park concierge or bring your own steed. Sixteen pens are available at the equestrian staging and camping area on a first-come, first-served basis. Catalina has 3 camping loops. The A and B loops have electric and water hookups. The Ringtail Loop is rustic (no hookups) and more of a parking lot with numbered sites around the edges. That’s where we were. We didn’t come here to hang around the campsite so it worked out OK. We still had some great views.

Of course, there are miles and miles of hiking trails for every level of hiker. We did several with some spectacular vistas. If you go, take a trail map or use an app such as AllTrails or Gaia as some of the trails are not well marked. For example, this one:

Pretty straight forward, right? No need to check the app here! Except the trail we wanted went of to the right and I didn’t realize that until about 1/2 mile up this trail and things didn’t look quite right. I checked the AllTrails app religiously after that. Anyway, here is some of the scenery on our hikes:

I know that’s a lot of pictures but, really, which one would you delete? Anyway, we can only stay 2 weeks and our time is up so it’s off to our next destination.

Silverbell Road

From Catalina State Park, we headed west to Ironwood National Monument near Marana, AZ. We’ve been to this area in the past but this time we picked a different location within the monument. That turned out to be a great decision as there wasn’t anyone within 1000 yards of us and we had a very spacious, private site. There wasn’t much hiking here but there were plenty of roads to ride my bicycle on. This was a fantastic area to do nothing but just relax and enjoy the scenery.

There was no shortage of spectacular sunrises and sunsets here, either.

We really wanted to stay longer but we had reservations and commitments elsewhere. I better not catch anyone else in our spot when we come back!

Lost Dutchman State Park

Continuing our Arizona winter, we reluctantly left Silverbell Road and headed to Lost Dutchman State Park. We were here last year and enjoyed it so much, we thought we would make a return visit to do some things we didn’t get to do last year. While we didn’t get a site with the same unobstructed view of the mountain, we still had a very scenic spot.

Tortilla Flat

We made it up to Tortilla Flat on one of the days we weren’t hiking. We have been up here before some years ago and thought it was about time for a return trip. The place is always jumping but, today the town (if you can call it that) is really packed. It was an hour wait at the restaurant for lunch unless we wanted to sit on saddles at the bar. We were very hungry so…… After lunch, we wandered around a bit, checking out the stores, grabbing a gelato, and listening to the band playing out side.

But the highlight of any trip to Tortilla Flat is the drive up the winding Apache Trail and the overviews along the way.

On the way back, we stopped at a park beside Canyon Lake to lounge a bit. If we had planned this properly, we would’ve brought along some swimming attire.

Dolly Steamboat Tour

While we sitting on the shore, we saw a tour boat in the distance and thought that might be a fun thing to do. So we booked passage on the Dolly Steamboat Tour for the next day. They have a dinner cruise, big horn sheep cruise, astronomy cruise, and a sunset tours as well as the basic scenic lake cruise. We booked the basic scenic cruise as that was all that was available. Book early!

Arizona Winter Evenings

While we didn’t have many great sunsets here, the evenings did see the Superstition Mountains light up each night as the sun set.

Our Arizona winter is coming to a close. We have some family to visit and I have some golf to play but then we begin the long, SLOW slog back east. We have some more fun stops planned for the trip home so stay tuned for the next chapter of our winter travels.