Longtime friends of Mom and Dad currently live in Surprise, AZ, and Dad loves to join David and Sandy for a couple of weeks during winter to enjoy the milder temperatures and lack of snow. This year, they pulled their fifth-wheel RV down to the campground where we are staying for part of his Arizona…

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It is so nice to find ourselves so close to a national park with lots of hiking trails. We started with the west part of Saguaro National Park with its intense amount of saguaro cacti. Red Hills Visitor Center was our first stop to get another America the Beautiful Pass. Signal Hill was recommended by…

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This was a nice weather day for hiking and not having to drive anywhere. We took the Foothills Trail to the Ocotillo Trail to make one, nice long hike at Kartchner Caverns State Park. We also wandered through the visitors center with displays about the area and a video about two cavers who discovered the…

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Part of I-10 near the New Mexico/Arizona border looks like it has some crazy driving conditions at times. There are several sets of signs that tell you what to do in a dust storm, how to pull aside and stay alive. We questioned turning off lights, but they might confuse drivers behind you into thinking…

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Birthday Hike For his birthday hike, Tony chose a trail behind the science museum to walk among the murder plants that grow on the slopes of the Sacramento Mountains east of town. This is a trail that is clearly marked for the first half mile, then not so much after that. We had a map…

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Pecan Harvest/Cell Tower Tree We passed several pecan orchards on our way to Alamogordo, New Mexico. The harvesters have circulating brushes that sweep up the pecans on the ground and create small dust clouds that are visible from a distance. A quick Google search told us the NM is the number one state for growing…

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Harvest Hosts provided a wonderful spot for our first night in New Mexico. Enchantment Vineyards has several menu items to go with their wine and beer selections. We enjoyed a goat cheese with berries and honey glaze appetizer and a red pepper bisque in a bread bowl to go with our drinks. We would highly…

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We went on a couple of more hikes on our second day at Palo Duro State Park. The Big Cave is a featured spot on the trail map. It’s really a percolation cave where water has found a way through softer rock, so there is a hole in the cave roof. We accessed this from…

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With just one short hike under our belts for this trip, we decided to tackle a big one here in Palo Duro Canyon — the Lighthouse. This is a beloved rock formation that is featured on their maps and is used to symbolize the park. The hike is a moderate one until the end when…

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This morning we took a three-hour drive south of Liberal, Kansas. It was another windy day, but driving was great when heading due south with a tailwind. The roadside grasses were full of cotton pieces from the cotton harvest as we crossed the Oklahoma panhandle into Texas. The terrain in Texas changes into scrubby hills…

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