#7 Coveys Great Adventure - Arizona Part 1

Arizona part 1: January 1 -17, 2015

On New Years Day, we hooked up the wagons and headed east, looking, among other things, for warmer weather. Our departure was delayed a few hours by…ice. Yup, it sleeted and snowed overnight (it’s SoCal! WTH??) and we were stuck until it all melted. One of the first hard lessons we learned about living with an RV was that frozen awnings and slide covers must be fully thawed out before you try to roll them in. Really bad damage will occur if you try to rush things, so we waited until the sun rose over the hills surrounding Meadowbrook and eventually melted all the ice.

After being in one place for a month, the first few miles on the road can be a little exciting. Despite checking and double checking drawers, doors, latches and switches, Kayeanne seemed to be popping up every 5 minutes for the first hour to deal with the latest crash, bang, boom or thud. Someone once described RVs as earthquakes in motion, and I believe that’s pretty accurate. We’ve had drawers come right off the slides and end up in the middle of the floor, shower wands hit the floor with a frightening crash, pantry racks shoot out of cabinets on right turns and many other interesting events. One of these days we have got to write up a pre-departure checklist!

Saddle Mountain RV Park

Late that afternoon we pulled into Saddle Mountain RV Park in Tonopah, Arizona, about 50 miles west of Phoenix. Why it’s called Saddle Mountain I never figured out since the park is located in the middle of a very large, flat desert, over 25 miles (no exaggeratio

n) from the nearest supermarket. Tonopah consists of a freeway interchange, two gas stations, a nice RV park, a popular local’s bar and grill, and a huge poultry operation that you could smell 10 miles away when the wind was right. Luckily it was about that far from the park, because the stench driving by it was almost intolerable.

Sunset from the coach at SMRVP

Surrounded by desert and by surprisingly huge farms, SMRVP turned out to be a happening place, especially if you were into off-roading with Jeeps or quads. Everyone seemed to have at least one or the other or both. We found a large, end row space in the short timers section with a great view of the desert. Most of the park spaces are rented for several months or year round by snowbirds from all over the US and Canada. A full roster of activities filled the park calendar every week. Kayeanne went to two beading get-togethers. The dogs and I spent many hours hiking the trails and dirt roads in the desert near the park.

After a week we had exhausted Tonapah's many attractions and were ready to move on to North Ranch, an Escapees Rainbow Park near Wickenburg, AZ. Despite the sparse amenities (no pool or spa) and really poor WIFI, North Ranch turned out to be one of our favorite parks, so far. The Escapees is an organization formed in 1978 specifically to support full time RV'ing. Run exclusively by volunteers, the park has a couple of hundred privately owned sites of various sizes and several dozen transient sites that rent by the day or week. We spent 10 days in site 29, backed up to the field that contains the dog park and with a great view out the windshield over the park and desert to the distant mountains.

North Ranch Park Model

North Ranch is a very interesting mix of people at various stages of life. All are retired. Many of the sites are occupied by folks who, for one reason or another are no longer traveling full time. Some still have RVs and go on the road for part of the year, but others have sold their rigs and settled permanently at NR.

A number of the NR sites contain “park model” RVs, a hybrid between a large travel trailer and a mobile home. Park models are roughly 3-600 sq.’, depending on whether they have been added onto or not. Although they are towed onto the site like a trailer or a 5^th wheel and are built and titled like an RV, they are really never intended to move again. After delivery, the wheels and axles are removed and semi-permanent supports are added, similar to a mobile home. Park models are very popular throughout RV parks in the Sunbelt because of their relatively low cost and quick delivery.

One of the larger NR home sites

NR also has many larger lots, up to a quarter acre, allowing people to build more elaborate homes that often incorporate a large garage specifically to house their RV.

NR is a happening place. There's a comprehensive activity schedule (pickle ball, beading, off-roading, Chi Gong classes, dance classes, happy hours, breakfasts, lunches, etc, etc, (phew!).  The proximity to Wickenburg and the surrounding area proved to be a real bonus for us. Wickenburg is clearly a small town in the best sense of the term, but it is large enough to offer two good markets, a couple of sizable hardware stores and a few good restaurants. With Amazon deliveries by UPS, FedEx and USPS right to our site, all of our basic needs were met. One market even carried a few decent wines at reasonable prices!

Suspending the travelogue for a minute: weight is a big deal on RVs. Tires, wheels and axles are rated for maximum loads and really bad stuff happens if you ignore those ratings.

Steer tire failure can be really serious
(from Michelin website)

We had the coach weighed in Paso Robles on a truck scale that scared me silly because it showed that we were right on the max weight limits on the steer (front) and drive (dual) axles. We had less than 1,000 lbs. available out of a 47,000 gross vehicle weight limit. Yikes! I suspected that we were heavy, but not that heavy.

Truck scales just give an axle weight, so you can’t tell whether one side (wheel) is carrying a disproportional share of the load and might be over its limits. I lost a lot of sleep over this because tire pressures have to be adjusted to match the load. Too little pressure leads to catastrophic tire failures. That is bad in a car; it can be extremely serious on a coach like ours. Without good weight data you are only guessing at the right pressures.

Finding a place to weigh individual wheels is not easy. North Ranch is one of three Escapees sites that offer the SmartWeigh service, a process where each wheel is weighed independently. Weighing the wheels individually gives vital information about what share of the load each one is carrying. It turns out that we are right on the limits but not over on any given wheel, and I had guessed pretty close on the pressures. We can’t buy any pottery, iron or glass souvenirs, and we need to drink up the wine cellar but I now sleep better. 

Wickenburg has a legitimate western heritage dating back to the mid-1800s. It is a for-real cowboy, cattle herding, ranching town that is only beginning to be yuppified (real word) and is quietly resisting that insidious fate. Many of the ranches are still operating, although some are being turned into golf courses surrounded by faux-adobe ranchettes. 

The Desert Caballeros Western Museum is a must see. Many local museums are not, but this one is worth the time. It has accumulated a really nice collection of Remington bronzes and paintings, but the highlights for me were the photographs from 1900 to the 1980's of the people who worked the ranches over several generations, especially the women. When we go back to NR I’ll spend more time at the museum. Walking around the small downtown area is a relaxing way to spend an afternoon, too, with a couple of ice cream shops and several eateries to pass the time and sustain life. The library has strong free WIFI; drop a couple of bucks in the jar on the way out, please.

Until we spent a couple of hours in Jerome last year I didn’t realize how big mining was and is in Arizona. NR is roughly 60 miles from Bagdad, AZ, a town I'd never heard of. Bagdad is the location of one of the largest open pit copper mines in North America, and it is also one of the few remaining “company” towns in the country. Freeport-McMoRan (FCX) owns every building and employs every person in town, even if they don’t work in the mine itself. When people retire they have to leave town. Many have lived there all of their working lives and retirement can be especially traumatic for them.

Getting to Bagdad takes a little effort. Its located about 40 miles up US93 from Wickenburg, then about 20 miles across the desert on 2-lane swoopy, curvy roads (fun!) that climb into the mountains. Bagdad is a clean but rather colorless town. It had one gas station, one market, one fire station, one .... etc, etc. It also had one 9-hole golf course that was free to whoever showed up to play. Carts were $5 per round, but you could walk the course and pay nothing. We had to play, but the less said about that the better. We stunk.

The pit is several miles across

As interesting as Bagdad town wasn’t, the reason we were there was the mine. Once a day FCX escorts visitors to an overlook where the active mine can be seen. The pictures can’t begin to show the scale of this place. Underground mining began in the 1920s, and open pit mining started in 1945. The current pit is over 2,000 feet deep and miles across. As they dig away one mountain they create another with the scrap rock and dirt that has to be cleared from the ore-bearing rock. It is called overburden. It turns out that the key to open pit mining economics is how much overburden there is and what you have to do to get rid of it. 

That little truck climbing the hill is three stories tall

The scale of operations and the apparent capital investment is just staggering. From our vantage point, dump trucks seemed to be dogging it up a small grade. Then a pickup truck came along to give some scale to things. The mine dump trucks are simply enormous. They are so big they have to be assembled on site. The reason they crawl up the hills is because they are carrying a few hundred tons of overburden or ore. They are roughly ten times the size of conventional dump trucks! Bagdad operates 12-hour shifts around the clock, 365 days a year. The mine never stops working.  It’s a fascinating place, we learned a lot and really enjoyed the day.

Wow, I can run on! We left North Ranch on January 17, bound for Dead Horse Ranch State Park to explore Sedonah, Jerome and Cottonwood, and then on to Quartzsite with Christine and Ed Woznicki. More soon, stay tuned.