New Bohemians | The Life Adventures and Creative Works of Bob and Claire Rogers

A Visit to Monument Valley, Arizona in our Motorhome

Bob and Claire's motorhome Turtle's campsite at Monument Valley, AZ

Three photo panorama from our campsite.

May 18. Monument Valley is a tribal park, and more reasonable with a $5 per person entry and $5 to dry camp in a spectacular spot. Late today we hiked the one trail open to unguided hikes, 3.5 miles around

one of the Mitten buttes and arrived back at Turtle just before sunset. Took much of a 512 card of photos, and will probably do it again tomorrow when we bike the 18 mile loop tomorrow. With this park, it at least is fully within the control of the Dine; at least we are allowed to bike the same loop the guided tourists take.

We got a fantastic place to park Turtle (check the photo) though I had to make him/her act like a 4 wheel drive to get there and out, the sunset view was worth it. Had one of us been prone to sleepwalking, it would have been about a dozen steps to the edge.

May 19 Bicycling Monument Valley. We had a great mountain bike ride on a good dirt road today through some wonderful scenery. We left at sunrise and managed to do the loop at an easy pace, with lots of photo stops, and finish just as the loads of tourists began the loop, so we had no dust and we could hear the birds and smell the vegetation.

Los Burros Campground and Mountain Bike Ride

Our first night out of Tucson we parked in a dirt lot next to the Apache Gold Casino and had a quiet, if somewhat warm night with a good NPR signal. We cooked a pork roast in our combo microwave/convection oven, along with a big, yam and a glass of Chilean red. Life on the road is tough.

Our second night we drove about eight miles back in the woods from McNary to the Los Burros campground on the Coconino National Forest. We read about it in Matt Nelson’s column in the Desert Leaf. We wanted to try some of the great mountain biking he described.

Around dark we heard the loudest commotion not far back in the ponderosas; it morphed into a chorus of howls the likes I have never heard. I would swear they were wolves, but I’m not sure the relocated Mexican Wolves are this far west. Maybe they are migrating this way because of all the New Mexicans shooting them. A few minutes later we heard the usual yips and yaps and sing song of a pack of coyotes. Nice go-to-bed sounds.

We love looking at the stars through our 16 x 24 inch (approximate) skylight above our little nest/bed. I was wondering at some very unusual low lying black as ink clouds, silhouetted against the starfield, when a huge shooting start burned out from behind the biggest cloud, fading out the stars for a couple of seconds. It was then I finally realized the black clouds were not clouds, but big ponderosa pines leaning in over our Turtle. We are so unused to tall trees in the desert that I had been fooled. I love it!

The trails were indeed wonderful, snaking through aspens and ponderosa in the cool 8,000ft. sunny mountain air. We hadn’t ridden trails for yonks and the first few miles were challenging until we got our looseness back, and then it was a hoot. However, the blue sky turned black, thunder rumbled and lightning flashed, and we had to turn tail back to Turtle before we were ready to be done. Still a fine day, particularly the cool air after experiencing 100 degrees or more several days before leaving Tucson. We now know why so many Tucsonans come here for the summer; it’s an easy day drive and 30 degrees cooler.

We are sitting in the parking lot at the Hon Dah Casino, getting wi–fi from the casio RV park. This works!

Of Life and Risk and Fun Too

May 11. We rode seventy-one miles and around 7,000 feet of climbing today on our single bikes. We were doing a Greater Arizona Bicycling Association annual event. We are finally getting some fitness, not bad considering how little we rode this winter. Claire decided to adopt a young guy who was attempting his first ascent of the mountain, and she paced him all the way up. (she equals me in climbing this year)

I sometimes rode ahead of them, but it was the not-getting-dropped-by-a-(43 year old) woman, that kept him going. He was full of appreciation for her for getting him to do something he thought he couldn’t do. Jack has a six year old, and a two and a half year old, and a job, and his wife works too, so the fact that he gets any riding in at all is amazing to us. Go Jack! You were great! If we do the ride next year, he’ll drop both of us easily.

Descending Mount Lemmon was fun as usual. I intended to take it easy today. A week ago I maintained 48 miles an hour for a mile or so through several curves, leaned way the heck over, using most of my lane. After the thrill wore off I realized just how much it would hurt to crash at that speed. Talk die. The fastest crash I ever had was probably 20 miles an hour, and I hurt for a very long time, and that was 20 years ago. The boy is still inside me, egging me on. I tell Claire (she hates it when I ride no hands for miles down the mountain) she shouldn’t complain about my testosterone levels remaining high; testosterone has some positive uses too!
However, today Claire was feeling frisky and I just had to pass her on the fastest part of curvy downhill. She was going 42, (go Claire!), and I, using the magic of superior gravity (I outweigh her by 40 pounds) passed her in the middle of a curve doing 47. Since I only had half a lane I had to put a lot of pressure on the front wheel to keep it from drifting over the center-line. I later noticed that I had a wobbling front wheel; I had broken a spoke with the pressure. It would take two or three spokes to cause a wheel to totally collapse, but the thought certainly gave me pause.

I’ll moderate my speed. Next time. Honest. Really. I will. I promise.

That brings up a curiosity I have increasing puzzled about as I go through life. Why are young people (sometimes) fearless, when they have so many years to lose if they die doing something risky, and older people (usually) so timid, when they have relatively few years left? I am not sure it applies to me fully, but I do think about consequences more than I did when I was climbing outrageous ice climbs in the Alps 30 years ago. I do take risks most people considerably younger are unwilling to attempt, but I am somewhat more cautious now. Perhaps it is because I have someone else to think about, Claire (no timid one she), and I appreciate each day more as I grow older. The dilemma is this: if I become more cautious, I take less from life, that most limited of resources, but if I continue to take risks, I might suffer consequences that would limit my ability to enjoy what is left of life.
Such is life, from first consciousness to final thought; choice. Perhaps it is choice that most fully defines our humanity.

The choices never end. Until we do.
Take a risk today, even if it is just a brave thought. You’ll feel more alive for it.

(The photo is one I took for a Sweat article of Claire’s. The young woman is Sam. She was so cute! And a good climber. The highway below is part of the Mount Lemmon highway we rode Friday; the view is from near Windy Point on the road.)

All the best,
Bob

A Norman Rockwell Kind of Place

May 9. A friend had just finished reading my last blog about Greenburg and our soda jerk Dick Huckriede, when she saw him being interviewed on television. She said he looked fine and promised to open the soda fountain again. What a relief. Looks like we’ll have to find our way back to Greenburg in a couple of years: I think I’ll have a plain chocolate soda with vanilla ice cream, and take another picture of Dick. I’ll be sure and print up the pictures of the old place for him.

I’m not one of those people who would want to rebuild in Greenburg or New Orleans. The world is full of places I could be happy. The idea you can recreate a way of life seems overly optimistic to me. Perhaps people want to rebuild because the idea of starting anew, among strangers, is even more daunting.

I’m not sure I understand their pride in the big hole in the ground they call their tourist attraction. We leaned Zippy against the big well, looked past the protective mesh, saw a glint of light from the sky, and … that was it, a big round hole in the ground.

Now Dick’s soda fountain was a worthy attraction, a Norman Rockwell tableau where kids stopped in after school to order a suicide, dangle their legs off the stool, maybe stick their worn out chewing gum under the bar.