“TOE OF SATAN” was one of the ghost chili pepper sauces in the “over 18 tasting room”, warning it would “melt your face off” due to 9 million Scoville units of heat. Given the cold outside and all the brew pubs nearby in the Texas Hill Country, many people were not shy about “getting their sweat on” with some tasting. Llano TX also had some iconic dry rub BBQ brisket coming out of huge cookers alongside sausages, ribs, pork roasts…all by the pound and with lots of friendly, communal picnic tables and endless napkins.

Our continuing Southwest road trip, though now veering north and west toward home, continued to provide great federal access free camping as above, and strange local art installations like this concrete Stonehenge in a field in Texas Hill Country…

…and amazing sights like White Sands National Monument that is entirely gypsum based sand dunes so it looks like you are driving through a snowy landscape. Not so good for birding, however!

Snow flurries dogged us through New Mexico and gave us solitude at the VLA: “VERY LARGE ARRAY” (radio telescope facility) near Socorro, NM.  27 huge portable radio telescope dishes are set on rail lines up to 23 miles apart at the maximum array, and tilt their dishes all at once in the same direction every six hours to focus on a different area of the sky for research purposes. Moving the dishes on rail lines allows 6 different configurations for viewing. Brand new galaxies similar to our own are forming and can be seen with this massive tool capturing gamma ray and x-ray images. The images of the “burps” of flaming gas emitting from supernova black holes is dramatic! Set in a huge flat basin, the surrounding mountains block electric transmission so these dishes collect data 24 hours a day, not needing darkness and clear skies like an optical telescope. We appreciated this as we had to cancel both reservations for star viewing parties at both MacDonald and Lowell Observatories due to cloud cover.

Upon reaching the very touristy Sedona, AZ the back edge of the cold front finally reached us with blizzard conditions. We got to Flagstaff on the heels of a snowplow and hunkered down in a motel for 2 days to let the roads clear. It made our visits to Sunset Crater and the South Rim of the Grand Canyon just so pristine and beautiful in the snow. What a treat!

The trip west thereafter was pretty uneventful…which is a good thing after the challenges of federal facility closures, blizzards, being towed for repair, and leaving some of our portable home on the desert floor. Uneventful is good.

Winter is a wonderful time to explore the Southwest, thus the migratory birds linger, and the “Snowbirds” from Canada and the Northern US flock here in RVs and to seasonal second homes. We nestled in next to them on golf courses, in community hot springs, and in National Parks while we explored the Chihuahuan, Colorado, Sonoran, and Mojave Deserts during an 8 week road trip to the Southwest. Much of these deserts are managed by the Feds with free camping through the Bureau of Land Management and the National Forest Service. You cannot imagine the glory of boondocking at Whitewater Wash Draw with 20,000 honking Sandhill Crane taking off and landing en masse at 5 AM and 5 PM within view of our camp.

Kicking off our trip with a return to the Blythe Bluegrass Festival near the Colorado River, as returnees and early arrivals we were placed as close to the main stage as you could get and not be in the sound tent or in the seated audience. A brief but furious dust storm drove us and our RV neighbors inside for a few minutes while most concert attenders had to flee quite a ways to a solid building as the wind leveled even the sound tent. As usual at these festivals, the jamming at night in the campground was extraordinary as many of the featured musicians sat in with very talented amateur musicians.

Crossing into Arizona brought us to the ugly town of Quartzite, with the rudest and most disorganized U.S. Post Office; it only exists to house mailboxes serving the seasonal visitors living all winter out in the open desert; there is NO MAIL DELIVERY in the town. Unfortunately, Steven was unable to pick up his new hearing aids that were located somewhere inside that post office for a week! Once you clear the town traffic to head south, KOFA, the King of Arizona National Monument has thousands of acres of free, open desert with lots of slot canyon hiking. Unfortunately, the dirt roads are graded to leave big mounds on each side that have to be crossed up and over to get off road to a level camp site. We misjudged our entry into one site and scraped off some bolts from the bottom of our rig. Some plumber’s metal strapping kept the car parts snug against the bottom of the vehicle for the rest of the trip but we had to eschew many of the free, off road/BLM and Forest Service sites we would normally have utilized for camping and hiking.

We skedaddled around Arizona and New Mexico’s bigger cities, favoring little mining towns and artsy towns like Bisbee, AZ and Silver City, NM (above). Of course the kitschy tourist towns like Tombstone, AZ called for some dress up formal portraiture…

Marfa, TX required roadside photos of the art installation Prada store set out in the desert in the middle of nowhere…

Our two major hiking destinations were Chiricahua National Monument in Arizona, and Big Bend National Park in West Texas. They did not disappoint.

Chiricahua had great hikes among the amazing rock formations and the prettiest campground. It also had large families of Coatimundi identified in the bush by their thick, long stripey upright tails.

Unfortunately, we were towed early one evening from a trailhead when we returned from a long hike to our immobilized motor home needing some emergency electrical work. That was a first, and we hope a ‘never again’.

Big Bend National Park is enormous and we were glad we had a week to hike four different areas in the park. The southern end had a “hike-in hot spring” on the edge of the Colorado River…Ah! Bliss! …especially as a cold front blew in (and dogged us for the rest of the trip). Smaller rock formations out in the flats made for fun, short hikes and “bouldering” (below).

We also booked a lot more campground time than we needed as the National Parks were possibly closing due to federal government shut down; campers with paid campground reservations MADE IN ADVANCE were allowed in. Below, gorgeous hiking at the north end in Santa Elena Canyon.

For Valentine’s Day, we bought into all the hype about the romantic RiverWalk in San Antonio, TX and stayed at a riverside hotel next to the Alamo with a 23rd story hot tub overlooking the city. The Tub at the top of the world was awesome, especially in the freezing fog, but…neither the TexMex food nor the touristy Riverwalk would ever draw us back to San Antonio again.

Austin, TX however was greatly enlivened by our fabulous host Sherry who dragged us to a great local dive music club after Sally quickly bailed from the crowded “iconic clubs” downtown. Instead we assuaged our disappointment with ice cream cooled with nitrogen gas…actually quite a perfect texture and it melts more slowly!

Off to Sherry’s local neighborhood dive in East Austin, we stayed and danced to the blues until 2 AM and then went to all night street tacos and all night donut shops. Not bad partying behavior for a trio of old farts!