Dreams, Moments, Travels
Getting the car washed so I begin the 42nd year with a fresh and clean perspective. Plus, after driving to and from California and then yesterday’s drive into the mountains, it became a necessity if I were to continue seeing through the windshield and having functional headlights.
I pulled off Highway I-17 just north of Phoenix, where it enters the mountains, for a brief visit to Black Canyon City.
The phone is off the hook and unavailable so am I today on my 42nd Birthday. I took a long and meandering drive, making Black Canyon City my first stop. Wandering around, I visited a deserted facility that turned out to be the Black Canyon, Greyhound Park. Dusty and weathered the facility ages, just like me.
The views are great, with Towers Mountain and Crown King to the northwest. Mines dot the surrounding hills, both operative and defunct. Most of these lands are private property and well-marked as such. Mine owners are a riley bunch on the whole, so as you go around these parts, it is best to honor the “no trespassing” warnings.
Without much to investigate, I make my way back to the 17, traveling north. Camp Verde is the next exit I take to look for Fort Verde. Fort Verde was the primary base for General George Crook’s scouts and soldiers.
Lately, Caroline has been reading the book Once They Moved Like the Wind in the car while we are out driving, and I have been going out to check out the sites referenced in the book or with historical context regarding the Indian Wars.
The preserved and well-maintained buildings of Fort Verde are on the National Register of Historic Places and feature interpretive exhibits, helping the visitor draw a more vivid picture of how the Fort looked and how its residents lived while the State of Arizona was being established.
Nearby Camp Verde are worthwhile destinations, including Montezuma’s Castle and Montezuma’s Well, while only 20 miles northwest is the Verde Canyon Railroad.
Driving east out of Camp Verde on State Road 260, the Mogollon Rim lies before you. The Rim extends from here to the Mogollon Mountains in southwest New Mexico, defining the southwestern edge of the Colorado Plateau.
A resident of Phoenix and parts south makes regular visits to Rim Country. The area is popular for its cool temperatures, many lakes, campgrounds, and small towns that allow an escape from the bustle of America’s sixth-largest city.
In the mountains of the Mogollon Rim, the elevation rises as high as 7,000 feet, which makes for occasional snowy winters. As winter snows melt, temporary meadow lakes are created across the plateau, as seen here on the left.
The Ponderosa Pine found extensively across the Rim lends an alpine atmosphere to the region, broadening its appeal.
Within the forest, hikers and surprised drivers will often spot elk, deer, javelina, and, on rare occasions, a bear.
Walking along the above lake on my way back to the car, I spotted this relatively fresh bear track amongst some cow hoof impressions and quickly scanned the area to find out if I might be looking like a juicy berry to a bear in hiding. Fortunately, or maybe not, there was no bear to be seen.
Leaving the lake on State Road 87 I am driving south through an old favorite place of mine called Strawberry. Soon after, I pass the little village of Pine, an attractive place where weekend visitors can stop to buy local honey and maybe a bite to eat.
My intended destination today, though, is the Tonto Natural Bridge State Park. The turnoff from State Road 87 to the park is a steep road leading into a tiny valley with a fee station, charging a $3 per person entry fee.
A well-marked trail guides you to the bottom of the bridge for a great view of the surroundings. Allow at least ninety minutes to hike down, explore, and hike back up.
The bridge itself stands 183 feet high. The tunnel below is 400 feet long and measures 150 feet at its widest point.
Rocks at the base of the bridge near the end of the tunnel are covered in moss accumulated due to a fine misting from a small waterfall trickling down from the top of the bridge like a silver curtain.
On hot days, you will find youngsters of all ages playing in the stream and standing under the cool mist descending through the mountain air. Today, at the beginning of spring, only a few other visitors have taken to the trail.
This photograph tries but does not quite succeed in demonstrating that the tunnel you are looking through is 400 feet deep and 150 feet wide. Only a visit to Tonto Natural Bridge will relate to just how large the entire bridge structure truly is.
Before I turn to leave, I stand at the end of the catwalk, hoping the wind will direct those cool, misty waters my way so my return trip up the canyon might be just a bit more comfortable.
No luck with the uncooperative wind, though. This small waterfall is only to be appreciated by viewing today. The hike back out is fairly painless, even for an overweight guy like myself.
The rest of the trip home is about 90 miles south, but first, I will pass through Payson and a gorgeous valley with green mountains on my right and the four peaks to the left. Thus, my Birthday drive comes to a close.
Following breakfast and a long goodbye, we are once again on the road. Tata gave us a kite this visit and as we passed the beach near downtown Santa Barbara, I pulled over for a picture, and Caroline suggested we try out our new toy. It takes her about 5 minutes to assemble it while I walk along the water’s edge, wishing we were so fortunate to live here in this incredible coastal community.
Tata and Woody gave Caroline and me a large dragon kite this weekend. From a prior visit, they knew we were looking for a nice kite but came up empty. Tata, on one of her many shopping trips, found this one and was certain it would be one we liked; she was right. On our way home, we stopped near Stearn’s Wharf, walked out to the beach, and Caroline assembled the dragon and put it aloft.
With Caroline at the helm, her smile is as big as the kite’s high. It’s not a stunt kite, but Caroline is having fun all the same as she lets the string out allowing the kite to tug at her grip: A perfect day next to the Pacific Ocean in Santa Barbara. Eventually, she reigns the kite in, and we continue our journey.
Of course, driving home through California is never all that straightforward, and it’s not long before we stop at another beach near Sea Cliff. This time, we cannot pass up the telltale sign of low tide – exposed rocks and grasses next to the surf. We walk along for a half-hour, spotting anemones, starfish, coastal birds, and the occasional crab. Finally, Caroline puts her shoes back on, and this time, we definitely must push on to home if we are to get there at a reasonable time.
We make good on the commitment and, after a couple of hours, are about to reenter the desert near Palm Springs. This snow-capped peak is a great reminder of how fortunate we are: Other places around the country are just leaving winter, while we get to walk barefoot along the ocean after visiting the Botanic Garden and watching butterflies flutter about.
Daylight gives way to a stunning sunset of blues, purple, orange, and red, while another great brief weekend away from Phoenix comes to a close. For everyone who wonders how we can handle so much driving, we ask them back, how can you handle watching so much TV?
This weekend, our trek is 507 miles long each way, which is how far my Aunt and Uncle in Santa Barbara live away from us. California had an exceptionally wet winter. One particular time we had considered visiting but decided against it because all roads in and out of Santa Barbara had been closed due to them being washed out or covered in mud due to landslides. After too much delay due to wet weather, we arrive on a beautiful weekend.
Visiting Santa Barbara, California, to visit Uncle Woody and Tata; some dishes are getting cleaned before we go for lunch. This was our first visit since Christmas and was long overdue. Just after the weekend, we learned that Tata’s brother Mike isn’t doing well. Caroline and I visited with Uncle Mike in Buffalo, New York, back in 2000, and later, as Mike and Penny made their last trip to California.
Following the rains, the mountains, gardens, and yards are vibrantly green and lush, which leads us to the decision that we have to go to the Santa Barbara Botanic Gardens. Nestled into Mission Canyon and only a mile and a half from the historic Santa Barbara Mission, the Garden, a state historic site, has been welcoming visitors for more than 75 years.
This weekend and for the coming two years, Toad Hall, pictured to the right, will be on display. Created by artist Patrick Dougherty, this environmental sculpture is a two-story willow tower with a maze of pathways and chambers. The inspiration for Mr. Dougherty’s work was taken from the book The Wind in the Willows. If you would like to see how Toad Hall was built, visit these pages on the Garden’s website.
Coming from Phoenix, Arizona, where we have what appears to be a mere handful of native species, mostly consisting of cactus and more cactus, the seemingly infinite number of plant species here in Santa Barbara strikes a stark contrast. It was this diversity that first drew us to the Garden on a previous visit. Short of walking Santa Barbara’s hilly streets and stopping to gaze at individual private gardens, a visit to the Botanic Garden really is the best way to acquaint yourself with the plants of California.
Continuing into the Garden, deeper in the canyon, a path leads you through a small grove of coastal redwoods and clusters of fern. Conveniently located throughout the park are comfortable benches for taking a moment or two to relax, listen, and feel your surroundings. On any given day outside of California’s notorious torrential downpours, you can expect a wonderfully pleasant day here at the Garden.
A small creek running through the Garden is momentarily stopped at the Mission Dam. Water spilling over the enclosure adds to the ambiance of sound and vision as we meander under the heavy canopy of trees towering overhead. Further down the canyon, visitors have the opportunity to cross the creek, hopping from stone to stone – if they so wish.
With so much moisture and heavy tree cover, a redwood’s favorite lays a carpet of clover over the ground, offering a magic blend of shadowy greens and giving rise to thoughts of emerald islands and elfin mysteries. Not only is the Garden busy with plant life, but there is also an abundance of wildlife to be enjoyed here too. The Santa Barbara Botanic Garden is visited by 123 species of birds, some year-round.
Other animal life includes turtles, who occasionally perch themselves on nearby rocks to catch some of those famous California rays. On a previous visit, we watched a harmless garter snake slither over the trail. Butterflies and honeybees also make the Garden their home. I’m sure that if Caroline and I had more time here at the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden we would continue to discover new inhabitants here in this little slice of paradise.
We enjoy these walks through the trees, stopping to smell the flowers, look at the birds, and listen to the water bubbling by, but our visit to Santa Barbara is also about visiting family, and so after what seems to be the shortest of visits we depart and almost immediately talk of plans to come back as soon as possible. After dinner later in the day, we stay up late talking with Uncle Woody and Tata (Aunt Anne) before heading to sleep so we catch 40 winks and are well rested for our long drive home on Sunday.
In the car, leaving Phoenix, Arizona.
A road crew out repaving the 10 freeway about 65 miles west of Phoenix, Arizona, causes us a 45-minute delay on our way to Santa Barbara, California to visit Uncle Woody and Aunt Ann.
North of Interstate 10, about 50 miles east of California, is the Harquahala Mountains, one of about eight ranges we drive by on leaving Phoenix, Arizona. Caroline and I have passed these mountains at all times of the year and at all times of the day. No less than 60 times west and 60 times east have we crept down this interstate to begin and finish a weekend. After ten years of following the more than 350 miles of road between Phoenix and Los Angeles, we still love the views this stretch of desert offers.
We seem to stop at Mix Bowl in Pomona a lot; that’s because they are great!
Drive south on 51st Avenue out of Phoenix, Arizona, for a mighty good way, and you will drive into Laveen and the Gila River Indian Reservation. South of Laveen is the St. John’s Indian School. Of the original boarding school, all that’s left are a few ruins and signs of foundations. Fortunately for me today, Deacon Cline Anselmo was coming to work at the still functioning and quite beautiful little church. The Deacon pointed out where the dormitories, bakery, food storage, and old church used to be.
Update: it’s 2023 in late June as I turn my attention to extending this post that originally was nothing more than the first photo of Deacon Anselmo. Once I’m done with this post, I’m going to try giving up on additions and corrections in order to turn my attention to other things. Plus, I feel like I’m running out of steam to tackle more.
Today, in 2023, as I am working on this old post, it is now considered “Woke” to create awareness about the forced assimilation, denial of using indigenous language, and the cutting of hair in the 408 Indian Schools across the United States that once existed. The abuse should just be swept under the Indian blanket since that stuff “happened so long ago.” It’s wrong to hold people of today responsible for atrocities they had nothing to do with, such as slavery. By the way, the last Indian School closed in 1996.
According to a study in 2019, only 2 of 113 cities with populations over 200,000 are considered truly integrated. Take Detroit, for example; it is 70% black, while the neighboring suburb of Grosse Pointe is 90% white. Why be aware of this in our age when it’s a non-issue because the forces of lock-step conformity desire the image of one big happy American family undivided by class or race to stand unchallenged?
Certainly, not all the boarding schools that attracted or pulled in Native Americans were bad, just as not all Catholic priests molest children. This is not a zero-sum argument that drags an entire system into the mud, but we have to recognize that these things were done in our fathers’, grandfathers’, and other distant relatives’ names and that this long history of abuse has likely left us with biases that are still structurally inherent in how things work in modern America.
Now consider that in Tule Lake, California, from 1942 to 1946, there was a Japanese Internment Camp, the largest in America, with 18,000 prisoners. We are not talking just adults; nearly half the population were children, some just a few days old. They lived there for four years, and some of the survivors would be in their 80s today; so much for ancient history, huh? Just as we’ve erased our other embarrassments, we’ve moved to take away the evidence of wrongdoings so plausible deniability can present itself as fashionable modernism. We can live in the moment without a nagging past in which people in the United States were intentionally disadvantaged. It is only the “Woke” who want to keep these things alive instead of people picking themselves up by the bootstraps like real Americans always have. People who want justice only want a handout, welfare, or to shame white people out of revenge.
Learn what we want you to, replace your individuality and culture so you better integrate, and we’ll ensure that when you return to your people, your community will come undone into absolute dysfunction rife with malaise as the glue of belonging to something unique is destroyed. This is how we’ll break you and then blame you that even with the best of our guidance, you still have chosen the bleak path of laziness, regardless of how much your community is economically disadvantaged.
I was never taken away from my parents and placed in a boarding school where Catholic disciplinarians shook fingers (and instruments of corporal punishment) at my wayward ways and foretold of my future of hellish existence if I didn’t conform to the principles of the white man and his god. I don’t know what it was like to cry myself to sleep without a family member to turn to for emotional support, feeling like my mother had abandoned me to the wolves. Or might you think this was like summer camp just without lakes, canoes, the forest, or the chance your family would pick you up in two weeks?
This is not about being “Woke” it’s about recognizing that communities that have been repressed and isolated for centuries do not recover in 20 or 30 years. Traditions led by dominant forces are able to persist for centuries, and change only happens when average people no longer want to bear witness to the crimes, such as when Martin Luther translated the bible in an act of defiance. Those who are woke today are attempting to act in defiance, and those who benefit from the status quo are fully aware of what’s at risk if things change because change often sweeps away bad actors. Good thing the bad actors of our age have PR companies that are able to control narratives using the arms of media to subdue contrary opinions, such as the truth.
I get it; the dominant culture and ruling class love the perceived stability they’ve created for themselves, and as long as everyone else stays in their lane, life will be perfect. It will be perfect because that’s what we are selling you if only you would position yourself in the winner’s seat and do as we tell you. Do you want to win the game with us? Or do you want to sit there and whine in your poverty, isolation, and total disenfranchisement that actually and, in all honesty, absolutely blocks you, but that’s beside the point and isn’t part of the narrative anyway? That kind of knowledge is toxic, so we’ll call it “Woke” and be done with it. I know full well I’m on the winning side and that the life Caroline and I have is one of great fortune, and I don’t entertain the idea that everyone can be pulled from the flood waters of poverty and discrimination, but sometimes I feel that we’re not even trying anymore to throw the disadvantaged a lifesaver. If you are a minority in America, there’s a likely chance you’ve been fouled, and the referee is nowhere to be found.
You might even think your world is on fire, smoldering as the flames move closer and closer to destroying the fragile threads barely kept together in your impoverished and/or marginalized existence.
Fortunately for me, I’ve run out of photos from St. John’s that I wanted to share and can move on to the slow decay of the declining town known as Gila Bend, Arizona.
Trust me when I tell you that I love decay, not of the mind, but when it comes to small towns, there’s a kind of charm and intrigue that arrives with the collapsing economy. Big cities on the other hand, when economic malaise takes over, become the breeding ground of a blight ripe for criminal activity to fill the void. That’s a different kind of scary compared to the type that arrives with poking one’s head into a dilapidated old building, wondering if a hobo has taken up residence.
In this case, there is no building to poke a nose into – while the steps into the storefront remain, there is nothing to walk into.
Why do bits and pieces remain behind, such as part of the entry, the sign, a filled-in swimming pool, and an empty jacuzzi that’s just baking in the sun? Somebody came in here and made an effort to haul the majority of stuff away while leaving these things. I’m perplexed.
While I’m compelled to look into refrigerators of abandoned properties, I’m reluctant to gaze into the receptacle of human waste, but that doesn’t mean I don’t take a gander as though what I might find could convey something of interest.
I think I heard someone in the bathroom…just kidding.
Was there a time when a TV in your room cost extra? What did they mean by “Free 19-inch Color TV?”
In a country where land is so plentiful, we just abandon one location, leave everything there as it’s too expensive to carry away, and build new just down the street. But when it comes to housing for the poor, the land is too expensive, and everyone screams, “Not In My Back Yard.”
Three deserted gas stations in town? There may have been more, but these were the only ones I photographed.
How many more years will all of this remain in place?
Looking at the map of this trip, I can only wonder why I took such a peculiar circuitous route, ending up in Sacaton, where I visited the Gila River Arts & Crafts Center. This part of the day was absolutely neglected in the original post. I visited Google to learn more about the museum and gift shop but information about this place is next to non-existent. It turns out that the building was razed not too long after my visit and while the plot of land was scheduled to have something new built there, that is yet to materialize.
The Gila River Japanese Internment Camp has been off-limits to visitors for a long time, and even had it been open, there’s very little left aside from some foundations, but the exhibit here at the center was well presented. There’s the Huhugam Heritage Center in nearby Chandler, run by the Gila River Indian community. Maybe the exhibit ended up there, but their brief opening hours (six hours over the course of three weekdays) make it nearly impossible to visit with Caroline. Add to this, there are no photos allowed in the museum.
Sadly, I’ve rarely been able to bring myself to buy anything at these places as one never knows what is made for mass consumption in other countries and what’s stylized in such a way to make a purchase more palatable to the tourists, and so I simply don’t want any Native American artifacts that we’re not purchasing as art. Caroline does recall that I brought home several types of tepary beans, though.
And that was my day of wandering around things that all go away.