You gotta know when to hold 'em...know when to fold 'em...

Know when to walk away, and know when to run!  That's our RV in the photo, parked right by the covered hot tub we just enjoyed.  The latest information on our Colossal job [from an employee of the park]:  The maintenance manager is supposedly an alcoholic, along with his wife and brother, who are also on the payroll.  There is not a penny for improvement, due to mismanagement, it would seem, but we were told the manager has been tucking money into his own pocket.  Were any of these allegations true?  [Stay tuned.]  Martie kept saying there was no money, but we'd seen all kinds of people taking the cave tour and buying things in the park.  We believe Martie.  She is a kind, gracious, noble person...completely dedicated to the park.  So why is there no money for maintenance?

We needed to get away.  A week had gone by and our host site was still not accessible, so we needed to go somewhere to empty our tanks and fill up with water.   We decided to explore Benson, Arizona.  We checked out our competition, Kartchner Caverns State Park.  Then we checked out RV parks, thinking we might need to live in one if we didn't have a hosting job.  These pictures are of Chochise Terrace RV Resort from our site, #256.  We parked next to the camp host.  They usually make the best neighbors.  Below is our host, and his dutiful dog.

Business had seriously dropped off.  Competition is huge among the parks,  We paid $33.41 for the night...but there were less expensive places down the road.  But this is the only park far enough away from the railroad tracks to sleep undisturbed.

We thoroughly checked out a co-op with very individualized lots, like the one above (which is for sale).  We heard hosts complaining in this park--that either the management liked you or not.  If not, it was a tough haul. 

The co-op is considered boondocking because it's only $5 to dry camp on the above section.  It's like a Walmart parking lot...except you can join in on the planned activities.  Check this place out at SKP Saguaro.  You do have to join Escapees to get this price, though... we discovered after parking and starting to enjoy the park.   Ah, well.  We found out some fellow RVers settled in at Benson on 5 fenced acres with a like-new 2,000+ sf home with a wrap-around porch and a garage complete with workshop....for...get ready.... $111,000. 

No S&Bs, please.... I just want to be FREE....to run like a wild horse.     Thank you.

Our Job at Colossal Cave Mountain Park

We are still excited about our new job, even though they aren't ready for us...after a month??  So we were left waiting...and adrift.   Justin and Li (the doctor friends) fed us a delightful dinner, including the most flavorful and varied salad I'd ever had.  Since I think of a vegetable salad as dessert...it was the best treat possible for me.  They had about 5 acres that came with their gorgeous mountaintop home, and they invited us to park there overnight.

Their home is next to a preserve, and protective zoning has changed, so they will remain the only home at the top.  There were javelina and deer tracks among the cacti, so I hoped for visitors.

This is the sunrise the next morning.  Do Arizona skies behave like this often?

The Schmidt's home is steel frame with hay bale insulation--brilliant considering the climate... with no heating or air conditioning required.  The side of the home facing Tucson has a glass-walled family room with a grand piano and large, peaceful spaces that invite meditation.  The "official" family portrait is shown below...a fascinating holographic image.  It's the actual family that anyone would find ultimately fascinating...and gracious.  Tucson is so fortunate to have them!

Justin and Li told us the story of how they met in China and eventually married (in Tucson).  It was clear they should write a book.  We were so spellbound we missed church!

Can you tell we love Li and Justin?  We could stay forever, but on Monday we had an appointment with Martie and the park maintenance manager to figure out just what our duties would be.  This pic of the host site can be enlarged to see the nature of the road.  This is the only good section.  We learned in our meeting there were 3 maintenance people, but no work had been done.  The person who was to bring a grader in was "busy" and he'd need Martie to buy him a new blade, anyway  ???  Why would you have to buy a blade before renting equipment??

We had to wait some more, so I decided to unwrap this great gift of nature.  The canyon we were parked in led up to a wild campground called La Selvilla.  The road to it had been washed out, but instead of fixing it, they had posted signs directing you to drive up the dry river bed.  I picked up trash as I walked and threw bigger rocks out of the "road" just to feel useful.  I discovered the Arizona Trail crossing the campground and followed it for a while, delighting in the rock formations and plants it led me to. 

The next day we found La Posta Quemade Ranch, which is run separately, but Martie gets a percentage.  We saw two full wagons departing the ranch in the rain with the happiest passengers you'd could imagine.  They were all older, but as giddy as little kids getting a pony for a birthday.

I think I'm giddy, too, having always been horse crazy.  Living in a park with a real, working ranch was going to be great!  But what about getting busy with camp hosting?  There's signs posted (BIG ones) saying you can only camp one night.  Martie was not aware of that.  The bathrooms needed cleaning, but one of the maintenance people, Skip, said the boss told him there wasn't any money for cleaner.  ??

What me worry?  No, we just went on a tour of this dry maze cave they call Colossal.  I had already read so much about the cave that I'm sure I could have given the tour myself.  In fact I was so enamored by the Indian and robber history of the area as well as the flora and fauna that I was consuming information wholesale.

Meanwhile...no likelihood of the roads being fixed...and Bill, an arachnid researcher working in the cave, informed us of many things that were less than satisfactory in the operation of the cave...including a maintenance team "that did nothing".  I said I'd start working on the road if I could get a shovel and a wheel barrow, as I'd found a pile of road base...but that just brought chuckles.  We may be dry camping for quite a while, just dreaming of FHUs on those cold Arizona desert nights. 

P.S.  Dr. Bill Savary is not only the wild cave tour guide, but a good friend of Justin Schmidt (Bob's friend).  As a herpetologist, he has been allowed to go into the park's pristine caves and has discovered new species of critters.  These caves are so delicate they are even closed to researchers now.  You may contact Bill through tucsonherpsociety.org or if you'd like to know more about reptiles, email him at:  bsavary@mindspring.com

Tucson Mountain Park lures you in...YES!

The trails of the Sonoran Desert lure you in, hold you captive, and make you grateful that you came.  Nothing is more tempting to me than a clear view of a trail.  Where does it go?  What will I experience?  But I was distracted by the litter at the beginning of this trail.  True to my Mom's training, I have my own grabber (blue) to aid my compulsion to pick up garbage, especially cigarette butts and anything plastic.  Bob takes this as odd behavior, and he took the following pictures...to prove I'm wacky.  Does anyone else do this?

Ewwww... more butts.  Notice that by now the trail is forgotten...and I deposit the trash in our RV's basura.

Every mountain has Saguaro growing to its top!  The fuzzy cacti are Buckhorn Cholla, and I already had spine wounds and fine needles still paining my hands from a fall 2 days ago.  I didn't know these tricks for removal (click here) and threw away the needle-infested gloves I'd been wearing when I fell, and I wished I could throw away the pierced flesh of my hands as well.  But it's incredibly beautiful in the park.  We were excited now to find Gilbert Ray Campground.  Click here to see an excellent description (with photos) of this premium camp.  Volunteer jobs are for 3 month stints, but there were no openings...in case you were looking. 

The campground has one trail, so I happily followed it to Rattlesnake Trail, which I decided to cross because I saw Old Tucson Studios in the distance.  I knew John Wayne movies had been filmed here, so I let myself get curious.  The bright paint and kiddie rides betrayed my expectations, but it's still a fun, fun place.

On the way back to camp I got to celebrate the beauty of the area by raising my own arms with so many others in praising God's creation.  What an evocative area for the imagination and the spirit!  It certainly resonated with my eternal nature.

I found an ad posted in the bathroom of the educational group site for a walk on the Brown Mountain Trail.  I watched a film on YouTube of a crazed biker riding down this mountain trail, with hairpin turns and huge sharp shards or rock flipping up as the bike bounced over them.  But the crazy part to me would be the risk of falling into that cacti and being injected with the tiny, fine spines called glochidia. The glochidia are the most difficult cactus needles to see and remove, and will cause dermatitis if left in the skin.  (I should know.)  I took a chance the 9 o'clock walk was on and rode my bike to the trailhead in the chill of the desert morning.

Parks and Recreation Volunteer Naturalists Ed Bartlett and John Scheuring were prepared and ready to take a mob into the desert for a fabulous learning experience.  We waited together as exactly not one other person showed up.  I was not surprised, and let my new friends know they could cancel the walk...but I had a few questions about the crazy cacti I'd met on my own walk.  Ed graciously said he'd take me on the walk.  Later he said I had so many questions that the walk had taken twice as long as it usually did....but, boy, did I learn a lot!  Again my theory was verified...you learn so much more and retain it much better if you experience your learning.  Nevertheless, I was presented a gorgeous book at the conclusion of the walk to help me retain the excellent instruction I had just received.  Ed deserves the Volunteer of the Year Award!

Buckhorn Cholla standing in a Row with Rhyolite Peaks in the background.

Every Saguaro has its Story

Why grow arms at all?  So many seem tortured by the elements.  More arms equals more surface area for photosynthesis plus more places to grow flowers.  Each fruit may have 2,000 seeds!  If the Saguaro cannot reproduce itself (at least once) in its lifetime, it has failed...and that may be after putting out 40 million seeds!  Saguaro babies can grow to be as tall as I am in 35 years...if conditions are ideal.  Usually it takes 47 to 67 years to reach my height.  Adult weights are in the tons. 

 

Read more: How to Remove Cactus Prickles | eHow.com

The SECRETS of Colossal Cave's JOB Offer

Got a whale of a tale to tell you lads....  This one HURT.  With wandering awe we finished our trip from Orlando to Vale, Arizona, and met Colossal Cave Mountain Park.  The spirit of this cactus-covered land was pure peace and inspiration.  The pictures are of our temporary parking spot at the first camp site.   Even though we'd been offered the camp host position a month ago, the existing 5th wheel on the site had not been moved and the road had not been graded (anywhere in the campground) so we couldn't drive up to the host site anyway.

Then we met our boss...the wonderful Martie Maierhauser, who had been overseeing the park for 50 years.  She lost her husband, Joe, in 2008... but he still had a strong presence and even a desk in the main office.  Martie explained the rare beauty and biological diversity of the park, and its fascinating history.  But we soon found we had a problem:  There was no vehicle to help us do our job.  The sizable distances between the 3 camping areas, the ranch, and the cave (high up on the side of a cliff) made it out of the question to manage the area on foot.  And the RV could not travel the washed out, rocky roads.  We decided to visit Tucson while Martie saw what she could do about preparing the host site.  We started with the Pima Air and Space Museum.  They were having a marvelous educational event centered on a paper airplane competition.

All of the kids had a cool shirt that said, "I folded, I flew, I made history".  But I was looking for my favorite:  the SR-71. 

So...I couldn't get even half of this stealth machine in the picture frame...so I tried making a movie.

I found out all of Arizona is in the middle of a SciTech Festival.  I just adore the "doing" of science.  There's even an Lockheed SR-71 “Blackbird” Symposium next month at this museum.

We walked through the 5 giant hangers with our mouths open.  The interactive displays were phenomenal with excellent histories, photos of the planes in action and actual period artifacts.

This NASA Aero Spacelines 377-SG Super Guppy was my favorite.   It was built big to move segments of rockets, including much of the Saturn rocket that powered the Apollo Program.

We walked our legs off and then went back in the main hangar to check out how the paper airplane races were going.

We had walked ourselves numb, so Bob took a nap out in the RV.  He suddenly woke up and said, "Let's go see my childhood friend, Justin Schmidt."  I had no idea who that might be, but we headed across Tucson to find him.

 

It turned out he's Dr. Justin O. Schmidt, a research entomologist at the Carl Hayden Bee Research Center in Tucson.  He studies apiculture- the science of beekeeping- with an emphasis on bee nutrition, chemical communication, physiology, ecology and behavior of bees.  And his wife, Li, is a very talented doctor, a Family Practice Physician with 14 years business, and about to open her own practice.  They are both fascinating to listen to.   Justin has ongoing experiments right in his backyard.  They are both celebrities in their fields and in our eyes, certainly.  They are generous, very kind people. Their two sons are extremely bright and original...and well loved.  Click here to read an article by Scientific American Frontiers about Justin. 

Caverns of Sonora Job Offer

We were on our way to our new job at Colossal Cave Mountain Park when we got a call from the Caverns of Sonora.  It was Bill Sawyer on the phone, a life-long aficionado of caves.  I had sent out a flurry of applications just before our trip to Mexico.  I'd worked hard on them, and Bill said they were ready to hire us.  We couldn't believe we were almost to the cave when the offer came in.  We said we'd be right there.  In the above photo is a sample site in their hookup section of the cave campground.  We'd stayed here before, loved it, and did not want to leave...unless it was to get family to come see this special spot.
This was a paid position...besides being camp hosts, we'd get to give cave tours!  We soaked up information in their well-endowed "visitor's center", which had a massive collection of minerals, fossils, historical memorabilia and antiques.  Bill's photo albums of stunning cave speleothems at this site were unbelievable.  Nothing that fanciful could be real.  But we were soon in the warm and humid and living cave.  We found a meeting room.  You could be married or meet with the spirits or have a family reunion here....or maybe take a nap??








We found detectives were needed.  There's a $20,000 reward for the return of the signature feature of the cave...a gorgeous, but very fragile, "butterfly" (a bladed helictite).  Read this compelling article about the theft.  Bill told us they now know who did it and they intend to sue him for millions, but he has not been located.  He must be on the run, like the many wild-west robbers who used caves as their hideouts from the law.

We were distracted from our robber story by the deepening beauty as we descended with 4 other guests, who were true cave lovers.  Since the group was small, Bill said he'd take us to a wondrous part of the cave...that was even more delicate and beautiful, with a natural tunnel that hummed to a certain pitch and glorious white celestial rooms.  I was in helictite heaven, as I had done college papers on these gravity defying structures.  

Nothing prepared me for the Celestial Room...all decorated in White.

There was no end to the beauty!

I took my own movie and also bought one at the gift shop...but nothing captured the exquisite delicateness and perfection of God's own creativity with ordinary calcium carbonate.  This you have to experience yourself...on the small-group tour.

We were wishing we'd never heard of Colossal Cave, but we had made a commitment to be there and we had been told work had gone into preparing us a site with full hookups.  But we knew we'd found something so much better!!

 

We met with Gerry Ingham, a co-owner, and her daughter, along with Bill and learned even more of their passion for preserving and enhancing this invaluable geologic gem.  We wanted to be a part of this.  They'd even pay us more than the usual minimum wage, which was remarkable in this market with floods of hosting applicants.  The staff were all wonderful, and we knew we'd love working with them.  During our meeting an exasperated worker came in and said the plumbing was backed up in the restrooms.  We went out to the RV to talk this out.  We'd be working with wonderful people in a top-notch attraction...something you could dedicate yourself to.  There'd be a lot of interaction with eager-to-learn school children.  The job would be demanding...probably more than full time in a month or so.  But the big factor had to be we already had said "Yes" to what we thought must be a super job at a cave resort.

We decided to say Bye-Bye to the BEST job offer we've had so far...and farewell to the "singing cave".  (Play the above film clip to hear the cave humming...a natural feature that we'd never imagined even existed.)  Please visit this cave and see its wonders for yourself.  Anything on the internet does not let you experience what comes very near to being divine.