Letter 2 Arizona

Monday, March 26 we headed back into Springerville and found Oaks RV repair who promised us a new potty. After researching which brand and whether plastic or porcelain we chose the porcelain. The owner and repair man couldn’t work on it until about 4:00 pm so we did our washing. Another person washing looked like Sean Connery. So much so, Olivia asked if it was he. He denied it. He was also traveling around except he was on a recumbent bike! He planned to go to Alaska leaving soon.

We still had time to kill so we drove out to the town of Greer sightseeing. Back in town we decided to see the advertised “Western Drug & General Store.” Much to our surprise we found a full supply

gun shop in the back corner. They also offer snacks, candy, ice, beverages, ammo, tackle, bait crafts, fabric, souvenirs and gifts. Olivia even found her discontinued mascara.

Oaks RV Repair finished our job and allowed us to spend the night on their property.

Tuesday, March 27 we departed the repair shop and headed south. We knew the highway 191 wouldn’t have gas for a long time and we had gassed up. This part of 191 is a US scenic highway and we were looking forward to a nice drive. About 30 miles south we went down a

6 mile hill and commented it sure would eat the gas if we were going uphill. At the bottom we discovered an RV turnaround as there were short hairpin turns to come. Drats! It wasn’t as if we could just detour a few miles. We had to go back to Alpine and go into New Mexico and parallel 191 then back west.

We gassed up in Alpine again as the detour didn’t have many stations. We turned east on 78 and started back to our route. As we crossed back into Arizona here was another big sign about the next 20 miles had hairpin turns. We had already decided to spend the night along this road so we stopped in a large pull-out along a dry creek. There was very little traffic and we are so glad we had the experience of camping along the road going to Alaska, as this is exactly what we were doing here. By 6 pm, there was no traffic.

Wednesday, March 28 we were early risers and were on the road before the traffic started. It wasn't long until we made several

large switchbacks with wide shoulders.

As we passed through a little community we were feeling pretty good about the road, when it narrowed a little and made several sharper curves. Fred was able to stay in our lane because he was traveling slow. By the time we reached the valley floor we had only met one car and the stretch of road limited to under 40’ was behind us.

By mid afternoon we were in Tucson and landed in the Cactus RV park just north of their fairgrounds. The carnival group had already taken over the campground in the fairground.

Daniel and Resa came out to the camp and we served them supper. It was very good to see both of them as it had been a year since seeing them.

Thursday, March 29 was a day off for Daniel so we picked him up and prowled the town. We started on

4th street where we strolled around window shopping as well as visiting the goodwill store, a co-op and several vintage clothing stores. When Resa arrived after work we went to eat Mexican food.

Friday, March 30 we talked to Anna Kay and she had put beautiful flowers on Fred’s mothers grave as it had been a year since Lillian had passed. Teenya also sent a video of her in some of Granny’s jewelry. It was very touching.

Both Daniel & Resa were working so we were on our own. Olivia attended aerobics and class jewelry classes at the campground. She made Resa a pair of

curled earrings.

Resa’s sister and brother-in-law invited us to a BBQ supper of fancy hamburgers & hotdogs. It was really a party as there were others there also.

Saturday, March 31 we picked up Daniel & Resa early and drove to the Sabina Canyon. We just thought we were early as the parking lot was FULL. Fred continued to circle and finally found a spot. It is a very popular spot.

We purchased tickets to take the

tram up the canyon. The CCC group build the road and narrow bridges, so only foot and tram traffic was allowed. Usually the creek is dry, but because there had been resent snow the

creek was flowing.

The driver pointed out the scenery along the way.

As the road rose up the mountains we could look down and see a

waterfall.

The driver pointed out the many formations up the

canyon. Many of the riders jumped off at the end of the road to climb or hike around the rest of the canyon. We decided to ride back to one of the other stops so we could walk down hill on the nicely paved road.
It wasn’t long until we

waded and played in the creek.

At the bottom of the road we enjoyed seeing one of

the

Saguaro cacti up close..

On the way back to the trailer, we detoured to see the Saguaro National park and took the eight mile loop up, down, and roundabout seeing LOTS of different forms of cacti. Of course the Saguaro was the star. We had learned this morning that for the Saguaro cacti to grow an arm, it had to be at least 75 years old. Just how oldwere these?

The ocotillo was in bloom and it was fun to see through their long stems to see people climbing on the rocks in the background. Yellow flowers were also blooming. We could just imaging what it looked like when all the cacti was blooming.

We were invited to

Resa’s parent’s home for “Ugly Steaks” and twice baked potatoes. Southern hospitality isn’t just in the old south it continues out west also. Olivia was introduced to a new wine also. It was New Age and is a bubbly white served over blackberries with a twist of lime. Fellowship was on the

back patio before and after the meal.

We told Daniel goodbye, as we were leaving the next morning. We had a very good visit with Daniel and Resa and hope to see them in Texas sometime.

Sunday, April 1 we attended church in the campground community building and heard a fantastic sermon by a young preacher waiting for a home. We are sure he will be called to any church that hears him preach.

We departed Tucson and headed to Mesa. This is where last year we visited with Olivia’s cousin Betty and Nelson Brinkerhoff. Again we wanted to see them and she had aided in gathering her siblings and their families to see us. They are all heirs to Lon Burton and one has inherited their share of Oklahoma rights.

We found our friend Renee’s campground where we stayed last year, Val Vista.

Monday, April 2 we called Teenya and told her Happy Birthday.

As our fruit and vegetable supply was nil, we went to the Superstition Ranch farmer’s market. We had visited there last year. Our stomach was larger than our refrigerator when we left. We came away with 5 extra large sacks. Now we need to cook instead of eating out.
However, the B’s wanted to eat at

Organ Stop Pizza for “Pizza and Pipes” so we treated them to awesome pizza and a very entertaining organ recital. This is a two story pizza place, with pipes surrounding the place. The

organ came from an old theater and reminded us of the Majestic Theater in Dallas. This mighty Wurlitzer has 6,000 pipes, numerous percussions and countless traps. To see more go to www.organstoppizza.com
And the pizza put Shakey’s to shame!

Tuesday, April 3, Olivia went to Betty’s to borrow her sewing machine and when she arrived found tornados had hit Lancaster and Dallas, just 25 miles north of Waxahachie. She was glad to see the pictures on CNN to discover if Waxahachie was ok.

Wednesday April 4 we arrived at Betty’s at noon and all went to pick up Betty’s sister Margaret then all drove to see their sister

Ruth Burton Kalisz and her daughter Janet. After a nice visit we went back to Betty’s where

Robbie, Ava, Sienna and Cynthie Burton arrived to have supper and talk Oklahoma oil. We arrived back home in time to see the palm tree lights at the entrance to the park.

Thursday, April 5 we again thought of Fred’s mother as this had been her birthday. We recouped from the busy day before and only left the trailer for cappucino and a couple of groceries. Later in the day we took advantage of Val Vista’s lovely air conditioned laundromat which came equipped with a treadmill, scales, an ironing board and two irons. We only used the scales.

Friday, April 6 we had heard about a huge flea market, so Olivia drug Fred to the Mesa Flea Market on the east end of town. The sign said this was the greatest “recreational” shopping place.
We found four rows of covered paved shopping with space between for vendors parking. There was a little breeze blowing through the vendors shops. Olivia made two of the rows, but that was plenty for her to find five pair of sandals, a brightly patched zippered hoodie and a rolling tweezers. She tried on many shirts like she finds on Harry Hines, in fact the same brand. The selection was a lot better, but none worked for her. Fred ventured in long enough to find a new reptile billfold.

That was enough excitement for one day. Later our daughters kept the phone exploding with texts and videos of their newly mowed yards so we joined in the fun by videoing the pea gravel around our trailer.

Saturday, April 7 was moving day, after we revisited

Superstition Ranch market for to go supplies. We hit the freeway around Phoenix then northwest to Wickenburg where we found another cousin and her family.

Charlene Burton

is the widow of Robert Burton, the brother to Betty, Margaret, and Ruth. She is also the father of Rob and Rosalyn. Both of them and their families were there for Easter Sunday. We were so busy with all the Easter activities Olivia forgot to take pictures so she took one of the Smith’s family picture. We enjoyed thelittle girls again from Rob’s family and enjoyed chatting with

Steve, Roselyn and Steven. Steven is now ten and very interested in history and is taking an advance class in that subject. It was very enlightening to talk to him about Gettysburg and other historical subjects.

After Rob & Rosalyn’s families left and the house quieted down, Charlene opened her safe and brought out her

turquoise and other Indian jewelry. WOW! Over the years she and Robert had accumulated quite a collection of museum quality jewelry.
Olivia learned to keep silver in tissue paper to prevent tarnishing.

The necklace second to left is actually Sara Coventry, much to Olivia’s surprise, it was a good replica of Indian. All the rest was authinic Native American Indian.
Charlene and Olivia really hit it off as they found they were the same age and had lots of similar loves. In the second picture, as Charlene was putting the jewelry away she gave Olivia the

pendant on the bottom right between the belt buckles. What a generous gesture to a cousin. Olivia will treasure wearing it.
In the third picture Charlene told of the thunderbird necklace being made during WWII of old records or old tires. It was actually very light weight. This was from one of her grandmothers.

This was all drool city! Thank you Charlene for sharing. This was a real treat. By the way she has vintage items on etsy.com

Monday, April 9, on to Nevada. We drove all the way to Las Vegas and found the Western RV park near downtown Vegas and within walking distance for Fred to play Texas Hold’em.

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Letter 1 Waurika, Texas, New Mexico

Thursday, March 15, yes this was mid-March as promised to everyone. It is always a surprise to others and to us that our departure creeps up on everyone. This year it certainly crept up on us as we had so many appointments and obligations to meet. Finally on Wednesday we had the whole day. Work, work, work, then the some on Thursday as we made sure all the electrical plugs were pulled, except the refrigerator and two night lights. We also turned the water off at the street and the gas in the house.

About 12:30 we rolled out to stop at Discount Tire for an air pressure check on all eight tires. Finally at 1 pm we were on the road.
175 miles later we found our Corps of Engineers park on Waurika Lake, near Waurika, OK and enjoyed the pot roast Olivia made that morning. Exhausted, you bet.

Friday, March 16, we went to the Jefferson Co courthouse to search for records of the section of land in which we have mineral rights. After spending several hours with the delightful clerks and two gentlemen land men, that were so helpful with all the heavy books, we came away with copies of the indexes of land documents. We headed over to section 32 to get an up close view of what was happening.

Saturday, March 17 we vegg’d until about 2 then drove into town for cappucino where the cashier told us of a good steak house and another fish house. We drove to the first which was closed, then on to the fish house, where we pigged out on fried food. Back to the trailer we continued to rest.
We viewed a

beautiful sunset from the trailer.

Sunday, March 18 we followed many United Methodist Church signs into Waurika to find they served
Breakfast at 9:00, Sunday School at 9:30 and church at 10:30, too bad we slept too late for breakfast.
Following church we drove back to the mineral rights and did get a look at
some of the wells on section 29. Look past the cows to the far hill. The wells might encroach on our rights, so we hope they will pool this area.

Monday, March 19 back to the courthouse to make more copies of sections 29, 30, and 31. Olivia asked around and found Ty Phillips. He was a real gentleman, he took off his hat before shaking Olivia’s hand, when we met and said goodbye. He is the county commissioner for the Ringling area who just happens to own part of Section 32. He lives south of that section. He told us one of his grandparents or uncles was Don Burton. Was he kin?
Olivia looked up Uncle Lon’s will to find a big thick folder. In it was mentioned some people we don’t know.
All of the index copies to deeds had to be cut and pasted to get a whole sheet together, so the afternoon was cut and paste, then highlighting the pertinent information. This was a good project for the rainy afternoon.

Tuesday, March 20 it was raining when we woke up, but by the time we were ready to roll, the sky was clearing. We drove west in Oklahoma to cross the Red river just before Vernon, TX then 120 miles west on highway 70. We had not driven this road before and it was so nice. We saw the towns of Thalia, Crowell, Paducah, and Madador. The first 30 miles we met 30 cars. There were less after that. We had the road to ourselves and it was good paving. What a delight. Our destination was Floydada and a free city campground.

We found this campground on Olivia’s new app “Camp Where.” It cost $4.99 but paid for itself this night. It lists city, county, state, and national campgrounds. Of course not all are free, but there are a bunch of free sites in west Texas. We visited one in Littlefield. The map version has all the campground icons, then gives lots of information about each one.

Wednesday, March 21 we drove on to Levelland, TX and another free city campground. These are wonderful sites to visit the towns. This time we visited

Olivia’s cousin who shares interest in the Oklahoma mineral rights. We met them many years ago at a reunion in Lubbock.Jim & Robbin took us to eat at a great Mexican food restaurant. We hosted them for dessert and looked over the papers we had from Oklahoma. They are retiring in December and plan to hit the road like we do. They will make great traveling buds. Hope they join us when they start traveling.

Thursday, March 22, we woke up to totally clear skies, just a little wind, but by the time we were on the road, we had a crosswind. Heading west, then south to Tatum, we passed the iron worker, that started all the metal cowboys we see everywhere.
On further we reached Roswell, home of little green men. Everywhere we looked we met up with them.
Fred says, “Send this to Bobby”, our son-in-love who is positive the green men came to Roswell. Even Walmart had painted windows welcoming the green men.

In fact, we ended up staying on the Wal-Mart parking lot, where we met a young family from Washington state. He is a photographer. They have three small children. They spend several months of the winter traveling while the children are young and he can photograph on the road. If we get to their town we will look them up.

We visited several shops then ate at the Capitol Café, where Olivia had blue corn tortillas with green sauce. It was hard for her to stop half way through to save some for left overs. New Mexico green sauce is to die for.

Friday, March 23, we struck out through Billy the Kid and Smokey the Bear country, across the desert north of White Sands Missile Range and Trinity site (1st Atomic Bomb test) to Socorro. After gassing up we drove west to the almost ghost town of Magdalena. We parked in a pitiful Passport America RV park, but it had full hookups. No service on this road, not even cell service. While taking our walk we were welcomed by a

metal cowboy and were invited to a party at the only store we saw open. It was a print shop that specialized in the old way of printing. One couple from Oregon were there to help demonstrate the
old press.

Magdalena is an interesting town. During its mining and railhead heydays it had a population of over three thousand. Today there are many deserted buildings. From first blush, you might call it a ghost town. But, upon closer examination, you realize there are several hundred full time residents. Some are tucked away in renovated old buildings. Many of them retired. The pace of life is slow here. Fred met and visited with a gentleman who retired here. Has was educated as a geologist, but his last career was as a mapping programmer for Microsoft in Seattle. Shortly after moving here he suffered a closed head injury while biking in the mountains and then spent a year in hospitals and recovery in rehab. He has virtually no memory before 2002, but seems to be coping well.

Saturday, March 24, it wasn’t far until we were sidetracked to see the VLA—Very Large Array. We both knew our country was progressive in looking into outer space, but we didn’t know about this observatory. These disc’s were huge and rotated 90 degrees while we were visiting the information center. We took pictures of some of their displays for those of you interested in reading more about this project. We know of several of you who will enjoy reading about VLA. It really boggled our minds.



Just a little further down the road was Pietown, or PIE-o-neer” town. One of the first residents couldn’t make a living mining, so started making pies and they are still making them and we sampled a slice of Almond Joy pie.
From the time we left Waurika we had been driving almost due west and we had the road to ourselves. These little US highways have been well maintained with a good shoulder and many roadside parks. We stopped in one that had several picnic tables off the road and thought about spending the night. We wanted to go a little further so continued on.

Just inside Arizona we turned south at Springerville. North of Alpine we found the nicest forest camp, until we drove in and found the turnaround was full of snow. Poor Fred had to back around a 90 degree turn, then up hill to turn around and get out. There were several spots we found would hold us if we had been headed the opposite direction. So on down the road.

In Alpine we found there was another forest camp east of town. It was getting late for us—5 pm. As we approached the sign said, “Open.” We wound around to the back of Luna Lake and found the gate closed. There was a turn around and we considered staying in it, but Fred wasn’t happy with it, so we went back to a forest service picnic site we had passed near the highway. There were no signs telling us we couldn’t stay so we set up camp.

Sunday, March 25, we awoke to find our "potty pedal" was broken. It wouldn’t flush! Thank you God for placing us in this camp spot as we were only a short walk to a very nice, clean pit toilet. It didn’t take us long to start making calls. Even though Good Sam’s emergency service is for enabling us to get to a repair shop, and we could drive, the lady was so nice to research repair places near us and on our route. The first one was in Springerville and after making several calls we chose the closest. He could fix (probably replace as ours is old repairing is iffy) our potty later the next day. We had planned a day of rest so we took advantage of the time. The weather calls for winds in the 50 mph range starting Wednesday. This was Sunday, so we hope to complete the repair and be gone from the area by then.

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