We arrived in the RV park near Parker, Arizona, on a rainy morning. We had driven in wind, dust and rain from Phoenix till we got near here. By the time we arrived, the rain had stopped.
However, in the RV park, it had started raining around three AM and before it stopped in late morning, they had gotten over an inch of rain. The park’s streets were full of water.
Our friends, Jack and Bev Scovel winter here. We told them that we knew the park was on the Colorado River, but we didn’t expect to get a space with a waterfront view.
It took all of the three days we were there for most of the water to go away.
We were glad to spend some time with Jack and Bev and some of the other people we have met there. Jack has been quite ill since Christmas and was finally diagnosed with a bad case of Valley Fever. We are happy to report, though he is not well, he is feeling much better.
One day we decided to drive up to Havasu City to see the historic London Bridge.
For centuries, the London Bridge of nursery-rhyme fame was the sole thread across the Thames River in England.
It had been built between 1176 and 1209, replacing an earlier timber bridge. By the end of the 18th century it was apparent that the bridge needed to be replaced. In 1831 a new bridge with five stone arches was built.
Due to the extremely heavy traffic on the bridge, one end began sinking an inch every eight years.
By 1924 the east side of the bridge was some three or four inches lower than the west side and it became apparent that the bridge would have to be removed and replaced with a new one and so they placed the old bridge on the market.
American entrepreneur, Robert P. McCulloch, bought the bridge for $2,460,000. The bridge was taken apart, each piece numbered to aid re-assembly and reconstructed in Lake Havasu City, Arizona.
It was dedicated on October 10, 1971 and has become Arizona’s second largest tourist attraction after the Grand Canyon. The total cost (transportation and reconstruction included) was $5.1 million.
Driving back to the park, we took the Parker Dam Road.
The scenery along this route is impressive.
It follows the Colorado River most of the way.
This is the Parker Dam on the Colorado River. You can drive a car across it, but not trucks or motorhomes.
The scenery from the dam to the RV park continues to be beautiful and it turned out to be an interesting trip.
On this trip we have taken this year, we have seen road signs cautioning about Panthers and Crocodiles.
Here you have to watch out for wild burros on the road.
These guys walk along the side of the road, or right in the road, hoping for handouts of carrots or apples from passers by.
When we saw them by the road, we stopped to take pictures as did others.
The burros are either a light gray-brown or black. This little black fellow saw us stop and started coming over to the car.
I had the window rolled down and was taking pictures from in the car. This guy got a bit too “up close and personal” and I began rolling the window up as he proceeded to stick his nose in the window.
As I quickly rolled the window up, he wiped his snotty little nose clear across the glass, and then looked offended when I didn’t give him any goodies. What a little freeloader!
Now we are off to spend a few days on the desert in Quartzsite while we wait for the snow to melt at home before we head in that direction.
Yes, it’s true. We like ghost towns. We have visited several on this trip and there may be a couple more before we get all the way home.
Goldfield is a State Park near Apache Junction, Arizona, not far from Phoenix and…
…nestled up against the Superstition Mountains.
Goldfield is billed as an authentic ghost town, and it is, more or less.
Authentic, if you don’t count the ice cream parlors and souvenir shops, that is. However it is authentic in that it has many old original buildings still standing and some are in use…primarily for the aforementioned ice cream parlors and souvenir shops.
These little ghost towns often have a church…(got to have someplace to hold the funeral after the shoot-out…)
Invariably, they are at the end of the main street and up a hill as well.
They are still having services in this church so it has been maintained and has some updates, like electricity.
One building housed a small museum about mining, Goldfield and the Superstition Mountains. There was quite a bit of information concerning people who hunted for the famous Lost Dutchman Mine that is supposed to be (lost) somewhere in these mountains.
Don and his long-time buddy, Steve Campbell, when they were 20 or 21, used to talk about coming here and finding the mine. Of course all they ever did was talk and dream about it, never actually tried to find it. Ah, the dreams of young men!
This wall of photographs and short stories catalogued numerous pictures and histories of prominent, “Lost Dutchman Hunters.”
Don regretted that he and Steve’s pictures were not there. Of course all these guys pictured are now dead…many died searching in the mountains, many others had been murdered…
I found it interesting that there was one guy pictured on the wall from Florence, Kansas, who in 1950 hunted for the Lost Dutchman. After not finding it, he retired to Florence, Arizona, just a few miles from Goldfield.
Besides the fact that the guy was apparently stuck on towns named, Florence, in 1950, I lived in a little town just a few miles from Florence, Kansas. I didn't know him, but it was an interesting coincidence.
The man in the museum told us that people are still searching for their fortune in those mountains. Four men have died up there in the last year looking for the mine. Three of the bodies were just recently recovered and the fourth one is yet to be found.
He also said the land is now owned by the government, so if the mine was found, you couldn't keep the gold anyway. Don was quite disappointed when he heard that. Another dream down the drain...
From Goldfield, the Superstition Mountains are very, very close, only a mile or so away. The lure of gold and the looming mountains must have been impossible for many with gold-fever to resist.
As we left Apache Junction, I noticed a building next to the highway that said, "Barleen's Arizona Opry." It was a dinner theater.
I was amazed as I recognized the name as that of a family that I had known when in high school in a small town in Kansas. Jan Barleen was in my class. I had heard that the family in recent years had been performing in Branson, Missouri, so this made sense.
We stopped at a restaurant for lunch a little further on and I found a flyer about them and the dinner theater. There were pictures and schedules, all the usual stuff. Twin girls looked just like my friend, Jan, when we were all younger, confirming that it was the family that I thought.
On the back of the flyer was an old lady in typical hillbilly garb with the quote, "Granny says, 'We're easy to find!'" I looked at that somewhat familiar face again and again, and suddenly realized that "Granny" was JAN!! How could she look that old?? We still look like we're 17, don't we? OK, maybe not...but they made her look so much older than either of us are, I'm sure...or at least, I hope so!!
On our way back to the RV, we came across the Tom Mix Memorial.
For anyone reading this who doesn’t know who Tom Mix was, well, not to worry. That means you are waaaay younger than we are. Tom Mix was an old radio/early TV/cowboy movies/Wild West star. In other words, we grew up listening to Tom Mix catch the bad guys on old-time radio.
We wondered why there was a memorial (complete with picnic table and fireplace) to him out in the middle of the desert, and the words on the memorial really didn’t clarify anything. Thankfully, Google filled in the blanks.
It seems that on October 12, 1940, Tom Mix was speeding along this desert highway in his convertible and didn’t stop fast enough for the “Bridge Out” sign and crashed into a shallow wash.
Tom's suitcase that was on the back luggage rack of his car, smacked him in the back of the head. He stepped out of the car and dropped over from a broken neck.
The little ditch nearby where the accident took place is designated as, “Tom Mix Wash.”
So now you know. They just don’t make cowboys like they used to.
Our number one plan for sight-seeing in Benson is a trip to Kartchner Caverns, but that is our second day here, so we decided to checkout an old ghost town, Fairbank, not far away on our first day.
When we arrived at Fairbank, an old mining settlement, the schoolhouse/museum wasn’t open (weekends only) so there wasn’t much opportunity for background or history. There were only a couple old buildings still standing, including a “two-holer” outhouse.
The two-holer. This was set on a concrete base, so it may not have been all that long ago when last in use. Makes one appreciate the bathrooms currently in our homes.
We saw a small sign pointing to an old cemetery about 1/2 mile down a path, so we headed in that direction, watching out for rattlesnakes as we went.
We passed some old abandoned mining equipment along the way.
Then we found the cemetery on top of a small hill.
From the cemetery hill, there was a view of the desert and mountains in the background.
Then there were the graves…
There were a few with old wooden, and still barely-standing, crosses.
There were only a couple that had any kind of name markers, such as this one.
This one has some names, but were hard to read. The date was around the turn of the century.
This one also had names, but were completely unreadable.
There were about 50 or so graves on top of that hill. Most were just indicated by piles of stones.
A couple were, or had been, fenced.
We saw another one of those non-moving, "flying saucers/blimps," like we saw in New Mexico down near the Mexican border. We determined, correctly or not, that it is probably surveillance of the border.
The next day was our tour reservation at the Kartchner Caverns. There are two tours through the Caverns. We took one last year and were so impressed we wanted to see this one also.
The visitor center is right off Highway 90 near Benson.
One would never guess that these amazing caverns are hidden under the surface of these hills behind the visitor center.
In 1974 Gary Tenen and Randy Tufts were exploring in the area looking, “for a cave no one had ever found,” and they found it.
The two kept the cave a secret until 1978 when they told the property owners, James and Lois Kartchner, about their awesome discovery. Since unprotected caves can be, and have been, seriously damaged by vandals, they knew the cave had to be protected.
The two spent several years keeping the cave a secret while exploring ways to protect and develop it.
There were numerous highly clandestine efforts to this end, including taking a blindfolded Arizona State Parks officer to the cave late at night. This officer turned out to be too large to get all the way into the main part of the cave, and ended up having to see a slide presentation of what was inside.
To make a long story short, through an arduous 10+ year process to keep it a secret and still find a way to get it designated and funded as a state park and then developed, the Upper Caverns opened to the public in 1999 and the lower Caverns opened in 2003.
This cave is probably the most highly regulated and cared for to insure it’s protection, of any cavern in the world. This is an amazingly huge cave and has areas that still have not been explored.
For more on Kartchner Cavern's history, go to www.pr.state.az.us/parks/KACA/history.html
The beauty of this cave is almost overwhelming and of course, they do not allow photographs anywhere inside the cave. I found some pictures on the web to give you an idea of what it is like, but trust me, there is no way to even begin to show the beauty of this cavern without seeing it yourself.
Unlike many caves that are very cold, this one goes straight in from the side of the hill, not down deep. It is 88 degrees and 98% humidity inside. It's a little sticky, but not really uncomfortable for a tour. The part of the tour that is inside the cave lasts approximately 1-1/2 hours.
“Soda Straws” stalactites hang from the ceiling.
Those taking the tour stay on the concrete walkway designated by
the handrails in the picture.
“Bacon” draperies display amazing colors.
One of the things not obvious in the pictures, is that the ceiling is 40 to 60 feet or so above your head. You are not squeezing through tight spaces like the original explorers had to do to get into the cave. They don't call these "caverns" for nothing. They are truly cavernous!
Pictures are totally inadequate to show the majesty of this place. If you are coming to the Tucson/Benson area, you will be very happy you made this stop and then, like me, you will struggle trying to find words adequate to to tell your friends about it and talk them into going as well.
