Cottonwood campsite photos

A few weeks ago I went to the Prescott Valley area for a couple of days and spotted a bunch of these critters - crickets? - on a wall.  Isn't he beautiful?

Here are some photos from my favorite campsite in Cottonwood. 

First my favorite - a Roadrunner.  It's funny - there don't seem to be many in any particular area, they don't hang out in flocks from what I've seen.  Sometimes I'm lucky and park right in their daily path from "here" to "there" and can see them right out my window, and other times I'm facing the wrong way to see them out the window, or I'm just not in the right place.  But whenever I'm in this site, I always see a roadrunner and here he is:

Hey, Barbara - you're back!

Look at how well he's camouflaged in these bushes:

Here's a view of The Palms with cloudy skies overhead.  This area has good hard ground and I wasn't worried about getting stuck here if we had a few days of rain. 

It was super hot this day, and the cattle that were grazing in our area were trying to find any shade they could get.  There are no large trees here, but they managed.

This one was pretty smart - it had quite a bit of shade earlier on, but is starting to lose it in this photo.  Then it was time to mosey on...

I love that in the desert things are so sharp, thorny, prickly, sticky, etc., but then when they bloom, the flowers are soft and beautiful.  These white flowers have always been a favorite of mine.  Absolutely pure white petals:

 This next plant had really pretty flowers, too.

There's so much to see if I take the time to walk around and notice.  And TAKE THE CAMERA!  Sometimes I forget, but when I miss something blog worthy, I make sure to bring it the next time.  LOL

From me and Katie, have a great Thursday, everyone!  💟💟

A1 Mountain Road - driven out by the dust!

I wanted to check out the dispersed camping at A1 Mountain Road, and when we left Willard Springs, we headed there.  It's in the Coconino National Forest - 6.6 miles west of Flagstaff, off I40.   This is the road we came in on, and just pulled off to the left and stopped.  Easy, peasy.  Good road, and tons of flowers. 

It's nice that it's so close to Flagstaff.  I found a level, solar friendly site right along the main forest road, and I set up camp.  The weather was perfect and we settled in.  Then a huge lumber truck went past us on the road, in a cloud of dust - you can see in the photo above how close we were to the road. A while later he drove past us the other way, loaded with huge tree trunks.  This went on all day, for two days.  It wasn't terrible, but on Friday I was thinking, it'll be a calm, quiet weekend, then I'll see if I want to head on to other places.

(There are other roads running off this main road that I could have moved to, but honestly, I had just experienced two "oops" moments when I drove too close to a large round rock and damaged the step on The Palms, then a little later, brushed the corner of the roof past some small, leafy branches and got a little dent from a sharp branch that I didn't realize was so unmoving (it looked like some easy, leafy branches to swish past, which I've done many times), and I needed to stay on easy roads at this point.  Sometimes boondocking can be rough for a solo driver, constantly jumping in and out of the rig to check clearances, but both these times I didn't think I'd have a problem clearing the rock and the branch.  These things happen, and no permanent damage was done.)

We were parked in the middle of a field of flowers, and I picked some to put in The Palms.  I love having fresh flowers.  I hung them on the knob of my beautiful pantry door.  I'm collecting photos to blow up and hang on the walls of my future Park Model - this one might make the cut.  I love the way it looks:

Saturday morning started at 3:00 am, with traffic on the road.  It sounded like another big truck, but it sure was early.  I went back to sleep, and when I woke up in the morning and looked out the window, there was a line of pick-up trucks, some towing flatbed trailers, as far as I could see in either direction.  They were crawling along, no problem dust-wise, but when the traffic started moving, it became really dusty, of course.  I wondered what was going on!

After a while, trucks started coming back past us in the other direction loaded down with truck beds and trailers full of cut firewood.  Must have been the smaller pieces from the harvested tree trunks the logging trucks carried.  This went on most of the day.  I really liked our site and didn't want to move, and thought, tomorrow's Sunday.  It'll be quiet.  I kept The Palms completely buttoned up all day and night to keep the dust out.  The Palms is pretty tight, and I don't usually get dust inside unless I leave something open.  But it was a really nice day, and I wanted the door and windows open!

Sunday morning, I woke up and another pick-up truck drove by with a bed full of firewood.  Within 15 minutes we were on the road.   It's a good area to boondock, I think we were just there at the wrong time, and next time, I'll check out some of the side roads, which I know have lots of room for campers.

While we were there we had a Harvest Moon, and we had a perfect view right across the street from The Palms:

Onward and southward - we are now in the Sedona/Cottonwood/Camp Verde area, where we have two forests between the three locations.  That makes it nice - 14 days are allowed in one forest, then I can shop, dump the tanks, get water and propane and drive to the other forest for another 14 days.  That's the plan until - probably - November, when we'll head down to the Quartzsite area.  It should be perfect weather then and I'm looking forward to being in Quartzsite again.

Don't forget the VP debate tonight - I'm looking forward to it.

From me and Katie, have a great Tuesday, everyone!  💗💗

Final photos from Willard Springs

I have a lot of photos left to post from Willard Springs, but I've moved on, so I'm going to try to post just ONE photo in each file category.  It's going to be hard, but for the sake of your gigabytes, I'll try.  🤔 Otherwise, we'll have a hundred photos here.  They are such pretty critters, it's hard to pick a favorite.

I saw two different kinds of squirrels, a regular grey squirrel and one with a brown back and white tail:

Lots of birds - here are two kids of hummingbirds:

Female - I think this is a Broad-tailed

Male Broad-tailed

Male Black-chinned - notice the purple band on his neck?

Acorn Woodpecker:

Black-eyed Junco:
 

Hawk:
 

Painted Redstart:
 

Western Bluebird:
 

White-breasted Nuthatch:
 

Yellow-rumped Warbler:

And finally, instead of a sunset photo, I'll end with a foggy photo.  We had some rain while I was there, always welcomed, but I'm also always afraid I'll get stuck in the mud in places like Willard Springs.  Thankfully that didn't happen, and one morning I looked out the window and saw fog.  I didn't see it coming in or coming down, I just suddenly noticed it, and it was FOGGY.  Really pretty:

We enjoyed our stay at Willard Springs, AZ.  It's south of Flagstaff and north of Munds Park, and at an elevation that's perfect for summer.  Right now, though, it's quickly cooling and it was time to head south to warmer temps.

From me and Katie, have a wonderful Sunday, everyone!  💕💕

Bull Fight at Willard Springs

There were two bulls fighting (practice fighting, I think) at Willard Springs - head to head.  It went on for a long time.  The bull on the left always won, he was either heavier or stronger, or just knew what he was doing.  The bull on the right, after being pushed back, would kick up a bunch of dirt with his front and rear hooves, then come back and start all over again.

You can see how dusty they are, obviously I didn't notice them at the beginning of this exercise.  Sometimes we were outside watching them, or watching through the window of The Palms, or walking nearby.  It was very entertaining, and as I said, it went on for a loooong time.

Facing off:

Kicking up some dirt:

After quite a few loses, the loser walks away...

The white faced bull (my favorite) watches him go:

Can't you just see him thinking, "Hummm, he's a poor loser...."

"Very poor fighting manners.  Too bad, he has such potential."

The loser lets out a LOUD MOOOOOOOO as he stomps away!

As the white faced bull watches, our winner takes off after the loser....

and it starts again.

I really thought they were playing but this exchange got a little rough:

One bull trying to push the other down:

Notice the smaller bull on the left watching?  A lot of the cattle were watching on and off during all the head pushing.

Then they stopped and the loser walked around to the corner of the fenced in area and the winner followed him and it started again - I thought he was going to force the other bull into the barbed wire, but he got away from the corner.

Then look what happens -  some of the other bulls started doing the same thing.  The white faced bull was pretty gentle with the smaller guy, though.

Finally it was getting late, and they all turned in one direction and headed off to wherever they went at night.

But guess who didn't go with them?  Right...  these two were still going at it.

Katie and I were walking along the fence line near the road and were watching.  When they saw us, they stopped head pushing and started walking toward us.  That's not a huge fence separating us, and I started getting a little worried and we turned around and quickly walked back to The Palms.  I could see out the window they went at it again.

All I know is:  they weren't still there the next morning.  What an endurance test!  It was sure fun to watch them.

From me and Katie, have a great Sunday, everyone!  ❤❤