August, 2011 - We crossed the Sea of Cortez from just north of Bahía Concepción on the Baja side of Mexico to San Carlos
on the mainland side in late June, a 75 mile jaunt. It was the very best sailing day in our entire seven months spent cruising
the Mexican coast: bright sunny skies, flat seas, and a sprightly wind drawing us along on a close reach. Our arrival in San
Carlos was the first step of our re-entry into civilization and the US, and each stage of re-entry was a shock.
Perhaps the most jarring
moment in this process was
our first trip to a Super Frys
supermarket in Phoenix.
What a staggering abundance
of gorgeous produce, so
beautifully presented and in
such perfect condition! Mark
and I stood and stared in
amazement, mouths open in
awe. "Where's my camera?" I
cried. Our friends thought we
were nuts.
Getting to Phoenix from San Carlos required an 11 hour bus ride, and we then
returned to San Carlos by truck (a mere eight hour drive) to deliver some things to the
boat and relieve the boat of other things we didn't need any more (winter clothing!).
Then over the next six weeks we skidded from being merely bone
tired to being utterly exhausted as we ticked off the endless items
on our "to do" list of chores. We lived as perennial house guests,
bouncing between generous friends' homes.
The madness culminated with finding new tenants for our
townhouse. Sleeping on an air mattress in our empty
townhouse during a frantic week of repainting the interior, we
realized we had come full circle. Four years of traveling, with only the briefest visits to Phoenix, and here we were back in our
townhouse again, surrounded by the same smells, the same noises, the same sensations that had been the essence of our
old home. What had the last four years meant? Had we grown or just taken a big detour through life? There was no time to
think about that; there were chores to do!
Once our responsibilities were behind us, we grabbed the
trailer out of storage and dashed up to Flagstaff as fast as we
could go. We made a beeline for Bonito Campground, our
all-time favorite campground. Despite being die-hard
boondockers, we splurged on a weeklong stay there while we
re-familiarized ourselves with the RV lifestyle and restocked
the trailer with everything we had pillaged from it for the boat.
Here at 7000' elevation we finally began to take stock and get
some perspective on all that we'd been through. When we left
Phoenix in 2007, real estate was peaking at astronomical prices.
Now, on our return, there was a sea of homes in various stages
of financial distress and foreclosure. Few real estate signs were
visible, however. The panic was largely on paper and online,
and too often was manifested in midnight moves. Some of our
once-wealthy friends were now scrambling to pick up the pieces
of their lives, while other less well-heeled friends were suddenly
able to afford gorgeous homes.
The city's everpresent, massive expansion into the outlying pristine desert was
temporarily on hold while it adjusted to the new economy. Our memories of
Phoenix as it once was were overlaid onto Phoenix as it is today, and there
were areas where the images meshed, and areas where they were like two
different places.
Some of the changes were
within ourselves as well. Our
souls were the same, but all
this traveling had expanded our
knowledge of the lands around
us, and we had come to know
ourselves better too. These
thoughts swirled around us as we rested and strolled about Bonito's pretty
grounds. Life aboard Groovy in Mexico felt like a far distant dream.
The land surrounding Bonito Campground has changed too. Last year this part
of Coconino National Forest was devastated by the Schultz wildfire which wiped
out some 15,000 acres, mostly on the area's mountain slopes. Campers at
Bonito were evacuated twice, first to escape the fire and later to avoid the
erosion-caused floods. As a ranger explained to us, the floods altered the
landscape forever and even moved floodplains. Many nearby homes were
damaged or lost, a young girl drowned, and the water rose to about 8' in the
campground's amphitheater, leaving the place buried in sludge.
Knowing some of this before we arrived, it
was with trepidation that we approached
the campground. The meadow that is
usually teeming with bright yellow
sunflowers at this time of year was devoid
of blooms and parched and cracked in
places. But what a thrill it was to see and
smell our beloved ponderosa pine
woods. Bonito's soul is the same, just
singed a bit here and there. The
wildflowers still line the edges of the
roads and promise to return to the
meadows. The hummingbirds still
buzz the campers looking for easy
meals in feeders. Some ponderosas
have blackened trunks, but the tops
are green.
However, the
Schultz fire
was nothing compared to the volcano that erupted at next-door
Sunset Crater around 1050 AD. Spewing marble-to-football
sized chunks of rock into the air for a few months (or possibly
several years), the evacuation of the local farmers lasted for
generations. The volcano layered the land for many miles
around in a thick blanket of cinder. In its last moments it spat out
a final burst of cinder that was oxidized to a rust color. This gives
the mountain a distinctive orange-red top to this day, and the sun
and shadows spend their days playing with the color.
We took a drive through the nearby Indian ruins at Wupatki
National Monument. These were built 50-100 years after the
eruption by the so-called Sinagua people who returned to the
area to find that the blanket of volcanic ash now helped keep
rare moisture in the soil. They somehow eked out a farm
life, living essentially "sin agua" or "without water."
The ruins are like tiny
dots on vast open plains,
each located several
miles apart. The San
Francisco mountains line
the horizon, but there are
few trees or other
protection between the
open lands and the sky.
We opted to start at the far end of the drive, visiting
the more remote ruins first. These were built above
small box canyons that are essentially ditches in
the ground bounded on two or three sides by 100'
rock cliffs. The cliffs provide the only weather
protection in the area. The Sinagua people
understood real estate: location location location.
It was early morning and utterly silent. The crunching of my feet on the gravel
paths made the cottontail bunnies run, and lizards of all shapes and sizes
scurried for cover under rocks along the trail. We were the only
visitors at each ruin, lending a sense of magic to each place.
At the biggest ruin, Wupatki Pueblo, Mark
played with the natural "blow hole" air vent. The National Park Service has built a
structure around it, but the blow-hole itself is the real deal, blowing air out or
sucking it in depending on ambient temperatures and air pressures.
As we returned to the
campground the sky turned
black, thunder rolled and
lightning streaked the sky.
For seven months on the boat
in Mexico we hadn't seen a
single drop of rain. The
deluge that came now was
fantastic.
We drove through it laughing, barely able to see the road
ahead, and we jumped back in the trailer, glad to have real
shelter. It was so great to be back in our RV lifestyle again.
The rain pummeled our roof all afternoon, and we fell asleep
to the plink plink plink of raindrops overhead. Little did we
know the downpours would continue for several days. The
sun finally returned in full blaze as we took off to head north
to Dixie National Forest in Utah.