The Wandering Camels: February 2022

January 1-31, 2022

We rang in the new year with our good friends Curt and Glenda, though we didn’t make it till midnight local time somewhere it was the new year.

The month of January was filled with hiking and friends. I was a bad blogger and didn’t get many photos with friends. but those whom I missed, most we’ll see again in February.

In all the years we’ve been out here we’ve never been to Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, neither had Curt and Glenda so we headed out in their new vehicle. We’re riding in luxury these days!!

On the 5th we moved to Lost Dutchman State Park where we spent two weeks on site 103, great views but not a lot of privacy when someone is on, site 100.

We enjoyed hiking many of the trails there, all but Flat Iron which with my vertigo I chose not to do.

While in the area we caught up with our friends Cindy and Paul who we first met in 2014 when they were workcamping at Gulf Waters in Port Aransas TX. Anytime we’re nearby we try and catch up with them. Thanks for a great dinner, we’ll get that picture when we see them next month.

One of my dear best friends from VT, Deb, her son lives in the area, we’ve known Jim since he was in 4th grade. They used to live 4 doors down from us in VT so our family has been intertwined for years.

A few days later his mom, Deb, arrived in the area. It had been 2 years since we had seen her, then it was less than 6 months since she had lost her husband. We spent lots of time talking and catching up, there may have been a few card games thrown in here and there.

All kinds of goodness homemade by Deb
Thanks so much, girlfriend

On the 19th we moved to Cave Creek Regional Park. We volunteered here many years ago and love this park. The sites here are water and electric only, you can stay as long as you like but you have to change sites after 14 days. We are staying in the park for two weeks, after 7 nights we’ll go to the dump station and then try a different site.

Our first site was pull-thru site 36, any of the pull-thru sites will work, we were just trying for some views we know of in the park. Our site choice was made based on knowledge from a few years back. Some of the back-in sites are not long enough for us or there’s no room for the truck, a few have some bad grades on them. All sites now have good cell reception so we added to the sites we like. Our second site was back in 26, with plenty of parking room.

Site 36 pull thru

Site 26 back in

Our friends Marv and Alice still volunteer at Cave Creek Regional Park, we first met them here. We had a great time with them back then and looked forward to catching up. We did manage to get out to dinner with them at our favorite Mexican place, El Encanto. Of course, I forgot to take a picture we were too busy talking. We’ve been trying to see them for the last couple of years but all sorts of things have prevented that, we are sorry our second get-together didn’t happen.

We love hiking at Cave Creek and their sister park Spur Cross Ranch Conservation Area so we hit the trails when we weren’t busy doing other stuff.

Overton Trail @ Cave Creek Regional Park

Quartz Trail @ Cave Creek

Michelin Man

Metate Trail @ Spur Cross

Metate-Hohokum mortar and pestle

Our friends Ingrid and Al, Steve and Mona Liza have all come off the road since we last saw them. They have settled in the Phoenix area, we made it to both of their new residents to see how they lived their lives these days. We are glad it is working out for them but once again we’re still nowhere near thinking of coming off the road. Once again we were too busy to take pictures but they will all be visiting us at our next stop.

We inherited our current summer volunteer position from friends, Pat and Frank, who have a house in Mesa. Our first planned get-together from Lost Dutchman didn’t happen but we did meet up with them while at Cave Creek. OSHO Brewery was a great place to meet up, another photo opportunity was missed but the plan is to see them again when we’re near Lake Havasu City. They will be in the area to see a firework show so we’ll catch up again then.

On 2/2 we move to Lake Pleasant Regional Park for 2 weeks where we have more hiking and visiting to do.

No matter where we move the hummers keep finding Dave.