Matt's New Mexico (Formerly Airstream) Adventure

[Matt]

Raven with a pancake…

[Dishelveled]

Awesome shot of the raven, Matt! We are swimming with crows in Seattle/Puget Sound, but the Raven is the bad ass bigger biker version–hooked beak and Uber guttural call--who I only see when I get out of town and into the Cascades etc

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[Matt]

@Dishelveled we don’t have them at home in Baltimore, ironically.  We just started seeing them at Big Bend and I love them.  Especially when they are eating stolen pancakes.

[Chris]

@Matt:

we don’t have them at home in Baltimore, ironically.

That is pretty amusing 

[Matt]

The Saguaro cactus can get to be about 150 yrs old and 70’ tall  ???  The park has a more deserty west side with extremely dense cactus growth and a more mountainous east side that’s a totally different environment with less Saguaro and pine trees.  This is the Sonoran desert, we’ve been in the Chihuahuan desert until now.  We didn’t make it to the east side but we’ll be back through this a was a in Feb.  I believe that Saguaro will be blooming by then.

[Matt]

Petroglyphs from about 8000 years ago.  These are etched into the rock ad opposed the tjevpsined pictographs we saw at Hueco Tanks.

[Snowy]

That's some amazing cactus!

[Matt]

We’re staying at Kartchner Caverns St Pk and did the cavern tour last week.  Unfortunately they did not allow cameras but I lifted these off the internet for you…

[Matt]

Just got to Lake Pleasant Regional Park near Phoenix and apparently wild donkeys are a thing.  A thing they have lots of in this campground.  I read up on it and found some articles that quote “wild ass experts.”  Subsequently I’ve found out what I want to be when I grow up.  Pics to follow as soon as I get some wild ass up in this piece.

[A Former User]

As opposed to the less temperamental “domesticated ass”. So many kinds of ass, who knew?!? What a fascinating field of study.

[Matt]

I studied it informally in college.  If only I’d known a degree was offered I could have really taken advantage of the time spent.

[A Former User]

A “tenure-track ass expert”. Sitting on a gold mine there. Hindsight is 20/20 they say

[Matt]

We’re in a non electric non water hookup loop for the first 4 days here then we move to a hook up loop which I believe is nicer and nearer the lake.  This ones ok for now.  We had to book this site on short notice after cancelling our New Mexico stops when they shut everything down.  Now California is shutting down so Joshua Tree and Death Valley will have to be put on hold.  Disappointing but it will be nice to do CA with no restrictions next year.  Maybe we can fit Channel Islands Nat Park in…

[Matt]

Here’s the view from our current site…

[Signal11]

Thank you so much for sharing your adventure with us.
I love this thread

[Matt]

@Signal11 thank you so much for looking at it!  I love sharing our adventures.

[Snowy]

Another thanks for continuing to share along the way. Enjoyable to see where in the world you end up/what you see. Great camp site! Some old girls there - 100+ years old..

[Matt]

Old in deed it apparently takes decades before they even stat to grow limbs.  Looking forward to seeing them blossom when we go back to the other side of Saguaro in March.

These weren’t so old…

[A Former User]

Jailbait 

[Matt]

Happy New Year everyone!  Thanks for sharing our adventure.  We’ve got some more of Arizona to see then it’s off to Nevada and Utah for some pretty epic Nat Pks and other stops along the way.  Hang out and we’ll see some cool stuff together.