From Gunsight Wash January 24th 2013

January 24th Gunsight Wash Why, Az (N32 14.402 W112 45.371)

Seems a long time since I wrote a few notes on the trip – New Year’s Day, in fact. Since then, several items of note:

 

I have moved from Plomosa Road near Bouse to Gunsight Wash, a BLM camp area 2 miles south of the community of Why, Arizona (approx 4 ½  hours). Here, I have been joined by Ted Webber and his friend Paul from New Mexico, plus John Porter who has been and gone. The BLM is extremely quiet, whether for reasons associated with the economy or possibly because of reports of Mexican Drug Cartel violence are both speculated by those who are in the business of conjecture. In addition to being a good camp area, Gunsight Wash offers excellent cell and 3G Internet connections from a tower located in Why. The mountains west of Ajo have limited cell and Internet access. Ted and I will undertake a reconnaissance one of these days, computers in hand, to test (the waters?) for future camping prospects.

 

Up until last week, I would say that this might have been the coolest start to winter I have spent in the south. With days averaging 50 (10 C), nights frequently below freezing by several degrees, plus strong winds much of the time, this corner of Arizona was colder than home at the Shuswap for a few nights.

 

Two trips to a dentist across the border south of here in Mexico, plus a third tomorrow, will have produced a bridge (puento) of two crowns and two false teeth (dentadura postiza), another crown (corona) and some fillings (rellenos) for $1670.00, a lot of money but considerably less than what I might have paid if I had had the same work done in Canada or the US. Due to the combination of cold temperatures and Mexican heating efficiency, or lack of, the good doctor Valenzuela’s hands were shaking as he drilled my teeth - not confidence inspiring but, he got the job done and will probably be able to afford to buy a new heater in his little border clinic.

 

Two efforts to recoup Scrabble losses of previous years were doomed to failure from the start though a spirited effort won me a close second at the house of my Ajo friends, Don and Gayle Weyers.

 

Every week, a young Mexican comes to the campground with a car full of prawns and flounder from Puerto Penasco (in Baja Mexico, about 3 hours from here on the Sea of Cortez coast). At $17/kilo, I don’t know how the prawns stack up against supermarket prices in Canada but they were very tasty – and delivered to the middle of nowhere. Since the young fellow has only rudimentary math skills, his clients have to work out the price that they are going to pay, once he has weighed out the catch on an old set of scales that need a couple of quick taps to liberate from zero.

In early January, I was checking my MasterCard expenditures on-line and noticed that amounts were off base and that 11 purchases had been made in El-Centro, California to the tune of $1600.00. Since I have been nowhere near El –Centro, I knew this was a scam, called MasterCard and got them to cancel the account. To my relief they agreed to cover any fraudulent costs and sent me a replacement card by UPS to Coyote Howls RV Park in Why. Coyote Howls has been very good in receiving packages for me without much in the way of repayment. In addition to the new card, I also pickled up a bit of door hardware that they had been keeping for me since last winter. The Emergency card took only two days to arrive, so minimal inconvenience to me. How the crooks got my number and managed to incur charges at both a Target Store and an Army Navy is beyond me. I suspect that the problem experienced by Canadian travellers in having to leave their credit cards inside Service Stations because of the lack of a zip code might be suspect here. A number of phone calls to both MasterCard and BMO made a dent in my available TracFone minutes, so I have had to buy another card. At $.10/min TracFones certainly pay for themselves when one compares this with the high average cost of Canadian cell phones when used in the US (from $1.45/min to $.50, depending on individual plans).

 

JP, Ted and I went golfing at Ajo one day (9 holes). This is a flat course with gravel areas alongside sparsely covered grass fairways. A good time was had by all – both Ted and John suffered varying degrees of pain from the experience and decided not to go again. Another day, we hiked up Alamo Canyon, about 12 miles South and 2 miles off the highway. Water pools that had existed in previous visits have disappeared and there was evidence of some fairly extreme flooding (last summer) that may have upset the water table in some way? The bike has been more or less dormant, since Ted is a hiker, not biker, and I am getting lazy in my old age.

One day, we went to visit Hugh and Christine, plus Darch, who were all camped on Mica Mine Road West of Ajo. Darch and some friends of his were overnighting and heading home to Apache Junction the next day. Hugh and Christine came to visit us at Gunsight a few days later, then travelled on to Tucson for a couple of weeks.

 

 BLM regulations state that campers may have a 14 day maximum stay on any one site. Because it has been so quiet, the host at Gunsight (Ev, from Nebraska) offers favoured campers an option to stay an additional two weeks. Apparently, campers who complain about the state of affairs at Gunsight are not considered “favourites” and get the boot. Ted and I have our extensions, me presumably because of compassionate dental reasons and Ted because he was pleasant with the host and didn’t complain about anything. The protocol is that campers are encouraged to move sites, so that other campers, who might be desirous of one’s particular location, have the opportunity to move into said position. I have moved about 100’ and Ted has moved into my former spot, so all is well for another two weeks.

 

About a week ago, temperatures suddenly shot up and we have been basking in 80 (26.6 C) degree heat. I decided that this might be a good time to equalize the trailer batteries, a function that I can do manually using a button on the (Morningstar Star 45) solar controller. In theory, this procedure is designed to desulphate the plates, even out inconsistencies between the four batteries and generally improve performance. I don’t know if this actually works but am running up to 15.3 V for several hours over 3 days to satisfy the requirement to do this once every few months.

 

This morning has dawned cloudy with the sound of rain pattering on the roof. When this happens, the desert develops a peculiar but pleasant scent (petrichor?), this mainly due to water falling on plant oils from the creosote bushes that are ever-present in the Sonoran Desert. If it rains hard enough, I may put out my plastic pail and do some laundry.