The Adventures Continue

Monday 17Mar14 -- Greg drove from the Grand Canyon back to Phoenix and I flew from Jacksonville FL back to Phoenix.  We hooked up at the airport at 10pm.  Greg had gotten a camping site at Usery Mountain Regional Park just outside of Mesa which was about 30 minutes from the airport.  By the time he picked me up and we stopped at a drug store for Mucinex, it was 11:30pm.  I was recovering from a bad cold and Greg was suffering from sinus issues.  We both took Mucinex and passed out.  It had been a long day for both of us.

18Mar14 -- Tuesday-- Woke to beautiful skies and 56 degrees.  We are camping in an overflow area of the campground with no hookups, but nice large camping spots with covered picnic tables and big fire pits.  This overflow area is actually used for group camping.  There are 4 of us camping here but it is very quiet.  It is located just outside of Mesa which is part of Phoenix.  We can see the city lights but not heard any of the sounds.  It is wonderful.  We did absolutely nothing today... well, I lied, we went to the grocery store, but other than that, we both enjoyed a nice relaxing day of recovery.  It got into the 80's (LOVE it!).  For supper, we grilled caribou burger k-bobs with Anaheim peppers, red onion, grape tomatoes on skewers with side dish of prepackaged rice and veggies with a spinach salad.  The night sky was fantastic and we could hear some coyotes howling in the distance.

Usery Mountain Regional Park at sunset

19Mar14 -- Wednesday - This morning we rode our bikes about a mile up to the ranger station to pay for another night (it's 10.00 / night), then we rode another 1 1/2 miles to the trailhead of Wind Cave Trail.  It's a 1-1/2 mile hike up to a large overhang of the mountain where the indians and settlers would go to get out of the heat.  At the trailhead the elevation is just over 2000 feet, the hike takes you about 800 more feet up.  There were ton's of people here.  The hike wasn't real difficult just lots of rocks to step up on.  The trail was nice but single track in some places so we'd have to stop to let those coming down go by us.  Very pleasant once we got to the top.  We did see a couple of coyotes, lots of humming birds, and some chipmunks.  After lunch we decided to drive into Mesa in search of a new comforter (we have been using thin blankets since we got the RV and freezing our butts off....enough of that!).  As we drove out of the camp, Greg remembered he needed to do laundry so without the help of the internet we had to rely on the Garmin GPS to find us a laundromat.  That's a long story for another day.....but after an hour of searching we finally found one.  I brought from Anchorage 2 full quart-size baggies of quarters to do laundry with and of all the laundromats we found this one didn't take quarters, it has a debit-like card that you load money into.  It only took 1's, 5's, 10's, 20's, to load on the card......no quarters!  Oh well, we managed to scrounge up a couple of 5's to get the laundry done.  We then went to a Target and bought a down comforter.  Whew!!!!  We finally made it back to camp at 6pm.  We rode our bikes back to the main campground to take showers.  We grilled halibut and had quinoa, baked beans, and raw veggies for dinner.  Total exercise:  biking: 3miles; hiking: 3 miles.  Not a bad day.

At Wind Cave (2860 ft elevation)

View from Wind Cave