Lisa
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Death Valley National Park — Day 2
Sadly, there are high wind warnings starting later today, so we must bid goodbye to Death Valley sooner than we would like. We’ll definitely have to come back since we haven’t checked out the west side of the park yet, plus there are more hikes we want to tackle. On our way out, we made…
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Death Valley National Park — Day 1
Zabriskie Point Our first stop in the park was Zabriskie Point. This is a popular tourist stop and has a big wow factor. It was a good introduction to what the park had in store for us. Texas Springs Campground The next order of business was to find a place to camp for the night…
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Palm Springs
Our home base for the next two nights is a KOA outside of Palm Springs. It was very windy as we emerged from the mountains toward the city. Their is large area dense with wind turbines (one can pay to tour the wind turbines) so we assumed that winds are pretty common in the area.…
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Joshua Tree National Park – Mojave Desert
On day three in Joshua Tree National Park, we headed over to the northwest side of the park. Now we’re officially in the Mojave Desert, which is this cool spot that bridges the Sonoran and the Great Basin. And guess what? The unique plants here definitely include the Joshua Tree! There are tons more of…
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Phoenix Outings
During our stay at Lake Pleasant we made a few trips into the Phoenix metro area. Traffic was what you would expect for an area with over 5 million people, but the major roads we traveled had 6 lanes in each direction and we tried to avoid rush hours so didn’t have much trouble getting…
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Cottonwood and Tuzigoot
Visiting Cottonwood’s Historic Old Town Dead Horse Ranch State Park is just outside the town of Cottonwood, Arizona. The Old Town section is lined with shops and restaurants and the Iron Horse Inn. We ate a delicious meal at Crema Craft Kitchen and did some shopping. There are several places for public parking, and the…
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Iconic Sedona: Bell Rock, Courthouse Butte, and Bun Rock
Finally on Monday, I felt good enough for a hike in red rock country, which is less than half an hour from Dead Horse Ranch State Park. Sedona is a very busy town, so we suspected that the popular hiking trails parking lots would fill up fast. There is a shuttle system, but it only…
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Dead Horse Ranch State Park
After doing laundry at the clean and convenient laundromat at Rancho Sedona RV park, we traveled on to the Dead Horse Ranch State Park where we have a three-day reservation, all at the same site this time. Park’s name story The story of the name of this park is that a family was touring different…
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Sedona – red rock beauty
Trekking north on I-17 to Sedona from the Sunbeat Winery led us to some new Arizona landscapes. We saw our first “Burro Crossing” signs and encountered a grassland at the Sunset Point Rest Area. Other sights included hillside mining, pretty overpasses, and our first encounter with Flex Lanes outside of a city. And then there…
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Sunbeat Cellars
Time for another Harvest Host stay; this evening we will be in San Tan Valley, Arizona, on the outskirts of Phoenix. We traveled north on Indian Highway 15 which is marked with arrowhead-shaped signs. We noticed many signs were tagged with graffiti, signs in a native language, roadside memorials that included brick and mortar structures,…