Hey, Dudes!

The magic of the Amazon Locker that finds us delivers John's new shorts, renews the chemicals that keep our black water tank from stinking, and supplies Debbie with a new chemical she found for cooking: Slap Ya Mamma is supposed to be a Creole blend.  For some reason the taste has been popular in Oklahoma, Texas and other parts well West of N'awleens.  John likes Creole cooking and it looks like Debbie's going to try to satisfy it.  Now we need to buy some large shrimp.  John promises to report.

Also, the B!tch has a new quirk.   As we near the Dead Horse Ranch State Park her ignorantly bright voice, absolutely unaware of the teeth grinding, stomach churning uncertainty she produces, advises of the “Turn right into the Dead {very slight pause} Horse Ranch State Park.”   Debbie doesn't hear it, but to John it sounds as if the navigator just wandered into distasteful territory.  The eww is unspoken but plainly evident to his ears in that pause.  He laughs every time and Debbie becomes annoyed.  Y'see, she is taken with cuteness over the story of the name's origin and assumes any set of parents has similar stories regarding family words and other coinages that have survived the years.  (Only three other people on this planet, f'rinstance, know what a kwa-kwa is when Mommy frequently refers to it.}

In this particular case, according to an Arizona State Parks & Trails publication, Dad Ireys, who was relocating his family from Minnesota in the 1940s, took them along on the inspection tour for the final choice of ranches.  One happened to have a dead horse on the road.  When Dad asked the kids which of the ranches they liked best, they said, “the one with the dead horse.”  And so it was.  And so it was named.  And so, while the ranch has withered into history over a few decades, its name remains to this very day  –mainly because the Ireys family made that a condition of the sale.  As Debbie says, cute.

After waking the next morning, Debbie's notes from No Rain yield fruit once more.  The woman had advised of the scenic beauty of the red rocks among the preponderance of mountains around Cottonwood, we hop in the car with water and lunch and head north toward Sedona, through the Village of Oak Creek.  Just before Sedona, but not as far as Flagstaff, we are taken by the majestic scenery and pull the car off Beaverhead Flats Road {John finds local place names engaging.) while Debbie wanders for picture taking.  Afterward, we discover we haven't even arrived in official tourist country, yet, as the town of Sedona lies just before the Coconino National Forest.   The strikingly brick red rocks carved from the landscape hundreds of millions years old are just so awesome.  By the time we arrive at Slide Rock State Park, which features a smooth rock face that enables younger, more athletic people to– uh, well... slide into the small river, we are ready for lunch and find a table under a shade tree.  The entrance gate guard wants ten bucks to let us in, but Debbie tells him we only want lunch, so the guy says, “I can't do that... But, sure. Okay!”  Lunch was nice –homemade deli turkey sandwiches– and there were more red rocks through Oak Creek Canyon before heading back to the RV.

p.s.: if we knew then what we know now, we would have gone into Flagstaff for lunch – more on that in our Grand Canyon post.

The next morning, we have to relocate the RV for the same reason as at Fool Hollow Lake, but this new site will keep us for four nights.  Actually, it's not much trouble to move this “house” as it's designed for that.  Just unplug and make sure things won't fall over or slip off shelves.   Also we're excited to get it done first thing, because we're taking a train ride early this afternoon.

The tracks had been laid in the early 1890s to facilitate a mining venture originally because the valuable copper ores were mostly in deep, steep-walled canyons miles from anywhere.  Now it's a tourist train, very much like the Coopersville-Marne Railroad at home –but this one has red rocks and deep, narrow canyons, and awesome

scenery.  The cars are Pullman cars, fitted out a bit more comfortably these days and each as its own bar, along with doors to the adjacent flatbed open-air car with bench seats and a sunroof.  They feed us a snack plate and a complimentary champagne just to whet the whistle for John's very tasty Blood Mary.  It was an enjoyable four hours.

The next day, we go up the road to the Blazin'M Ranch for an official Chuck Wagon Dinner and Wild West Show.  Neither of which happens until we first wander around to shoot a “Real Colt .45”, which strangely looked more like a Glock –with wax bullets.  We each put all our holes on the paper. And we
threw axes.  Not like Paul Bunyan's – more like tomahawks. Of six throws, Mommy's solidly thwacked

and stuck into the wood target twice.  She told me to text the kids that she still is The Mom: “Be very afraid!”  And we try our hands at roping a calf.  Well– a practice calf whose plastic head was stuck on a hay bale.

The food's okay –but in the cafeteria line with the realistically battered tin plates, they handed out the baked potato wrapped in foil; John thinks that is the epitome of Boy Scout Camp.  Oh, and the sour cream came in little tough plastic tubes that squirt everywhere all over your hands but not on the potato.  On the other hand, the baby back ribs were great!

The show is not the best theater, but they try: the four piece band includes a fiddle. A good try comes from the lady billed as actually having sung on the stage at the Grand Ole' Opry.  She sings Crazy and couple other Patsy Cline tunes, and the show ends on a high note with Ghost Riders in the Sky while strobe lights flicker to flash-illuminate a Casper cowboy flying past the chuck house windows in the dark.   Wonder what the horse thinks of all that?

This whole Cottonwood area is in Verde Valley surrounded by mountains. On one there is a large white letter J which stands for Jerome, a “ghost town” compared to its heyday before it was named an official National Historic District. (Jerome isn't an official ghost town because it has a lot of tourist activity.)  The home of one of the the rich guys who made money off the copper 

unearthed from the mountain is the tourist attraction's museum.  For the first couple decades of the last century, Jerome was the fourth largest city in Arizona sporting a population of 15,000.

On our fifth day we go back to Sedona for a Debbie hike and then see more great scenery before getting lunch in that town.  We're stalling in a circle around Las Vegas because we're trying to meet son John there on the 31^st  and it's only mid-May now. Debbie sees more red rocks before we relocate to Winslow, Arizona. Anyone from our generation can sing that Eagles song –unless you listen to Patsy Cline.  “The corner” in that town is the only reason to be there unless you were born in Winslow.  The Corner supports several businesses for us Baby Boomer youth seekers.

Actually, we hadn't thought about the song when we started in that direction.  Meteor Crater is relatively nearby.  In the other direction is the Petrified Forest National Park, so we booked into an RV park for two nights.  Meteor Crater is privately owned, as Wikipedia tells us, by the Barringer family... [whose] Barringer Crater Company proclaims it the "best-preserved meteorite crater on Earth".  We can't vouch for that; they want more than we're willing to pay to gaze at an old hole in the ground, so we went to the official US government Petrified Forest National Park for a day with our old Old Folks Free Pass.

The drive through is impressive –all this rock strewn, rough hewn territory is!– and Debbie hikes down the Blue Mesa Trail a piece to take more pictures.

Tomorrow is May 19^th and we'll be in boondock heaven by Debbie's definition; more than 6,000 feet elevation amid tall Ponderosa pines right next to the South Entrance of the Grand Canyon.