Episode: 3750
Title: HPR3750: Southern Arizona
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr3750/hpr3750.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-25 04:56:07

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 3,750 for Friday the 16th of December 2022.
Today's show is entitled, Southern Arizona.
It is part of the series Travel.
It is hosted by Aoka and is about 17 minutes long.
It carries a clean flag.
The summary is.
We move into Southern Arizona near the Mexican border.
Hello, this is Aoka, welcoming you to Hacker Public Radio on another exciting episode.
In the ongoing series on our RV trip to the southwest of the United States.
And this is where we're moving, we're going to move into Southern Arizona in this episode.
So on Monday, January 3rd, we had a cold night, but it looks like things will warm up over the week.
Still not much connectivity.
Wi-Fi is non-existent, and the phone data connection is barely there at all.
But it was enough to do a quick Spanish lesson.
So just, I've talked before in Hacker Public Radio about my studying Spanish.
And one of the things that I did, even though we were gone for a few months,
was I could do a Duolingo Spanish lesson every day.
So that's what I did.
So also on Monday, I've got a cold, I'm taking it easy, and there's a lot of trip ahead of us.
You know, we're just a couple of weeks into the trip at this point.
We left our home on December 20th, it's now January 3rd.
And so I picked up a head cold.
It just makes sense to take a little time off and get better.
Tuesday, January 4th, still taking it easy, but we did get out for a bit.
Just up the street with the Visitor Center for the Cabezza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge.
So we went up for a little look around.
We're in the middle of the Sonoran Desert, and it was great seeing the birds, animals, and plants,
particularly the Soaro Cactuses.
When we got back, we discovered that Wi-Fi is actually workable if you go into the laundry room.
It's probably just as good outside the laundry room, but in the Arizona Sun, I can't see a screen.
So I meant at least I could catch up on my email a little bit while doing the laundry,
and also that the Wi-Fi makes it a little easier to get in a Spanish lesson.
Wednesday, January 5th, another quiet day.
Cheryl went out for a long walk in the center of Ajo, and we'll probably both go there Saturday morning,
based on recommendations from a fellow RVer.
We also dumped the tanks successfully and without incident.
We seem to have worked out a procedure that is effective here.
Thursday, January 6th.
The first anniversary of the day democracy almost died in the United States.
During breakfast, we experienced some electrical issues, and it turned out our power pedestal had stopped supplying power,
and we were overloading our inverter.
For those of you who aren't familiar with all of this, our v's have batteries, and we do have batteries in our RV,
and we have solar power.
It's probably not enough to do everything we want to do every day, so that's why we're tied.
We connect to the 120-volt AC power at the camp station.
Now, if you have things that run on a 120-volt AC power, and you're trying to pull 12-volt DC power from a battery,
you need to do a conversion, and that's what the inverter does.
It takes power from the batteries and turns it into AC power, and we were overloading it.
Once we figured out what was going on, we checked the spot next to us.
It was empty. We plugged in there, and everything was fine.
Then we did the laundry and arranged to get more propane.
Now, what it turned out, what had happened, was that there's a circuit breaker somewhere in the RV park.
We had tripped it.
Once they put it back on, we could have moved back to our own power pedestal, but we weren't bothering anyone, so we just left it alone.
The folks at this park are very nice.
We mentioned we wanted propane. They said, well, just put your tanks out in front of the trailer.
They would come by and pick them up, fill them, bring them back, and tell us what we owed them.
There are a number of long-term residents in this park, so it is a great service to offer.
After getting the tanks back and reinstalled, we went for a walk in the surrounding desert.
I just mean we went out back behind the RV park.
Because we're in the middle of the desert out here, and it's almost the same as going to an actual park.
I still had a bit of a frog in my throat.
By this point, it was getting better, and so we're planning a real expedition tomorrow.
Friday, January 7th, one of the days that sticks in our memory in a good way.
The day we went to the Oregon Pipe Cactus National Monument.
It's right on the border with Mexico, so it's just south of Ajo.
The way it works is this thing called the Sonoran Desert.
Part of it is in Arizona, and part of it is in Northern Mexico.
You know how it is. The wildlife and the environment don't care about borders.
It's only people who think that that matters.
Now, the Sonoran Desert in size is about as large as the state of New Mexico.
Now, the Oregon Pipe Cactus is an unusual one, because it will send up as many as 20 cactus trunks from a single root.
And that's rare.
The Soaro, on the other hand, is a single trunk, though it may grow branches after about 70 years or so.
They can get up to 50 feet in height and live as long as 200 years.
Then there are the choias, which are like little trees with fuzzy branches and the ocateos,
which at this time of year look like dead sticks, but they are merely dormant until rain comes.
And so you might see a bundle of what looks like dead sticks, you know, 5, 6, 7 of them coming up from a root.
That's the ocateo.
So, first thing we did is we went to the Visitor Center to get oriented.
And, you know, say, you know, what kind of hikes do we have?
And we tried to find one that is going to give us a good amount of exercise,
but not be too much for our aging bodies.
And we found a perfect one with something called the Desert View Trail.
It took us up a hill, kind of a foot hill to the mountains all around us,
and along the way had guides to all of the plant life posted along the trail.
So, we able to read about all of these different plants as we walked the trail.
Now, working pipe cactuses seemed to love hillsides more than anything.
Most of the ones we saw were on a slope, while the saguars tended to be found more on flat ground.
Now, later on we discovered saguars are just fine being on slopes as well.
They're pretty hardy.
With the climbing up and down the hill, we actually got about as much exercise as we wanted.
And then, after lunch, we went just across the highway to the Ajo Mountain Scenic Drive.
Now, it was not an easy drive. It's a bumpy, unpaid road,
but again, many stops along the way to view the plant life.
All in all, we had a full day of the Sonoran Desert, and it was wonderful.
This is the kind of day I pictured when we were planning this trip,
and we both had a great time.
Okay, Saturday, January 8th.
Saturday is the Mercado in Ajo. Mercado is Spanish for market.
So, you know, there's farmer's market, craft market.
Okay? Now, there's no farmer's market in January, because it's winter.
So, there's still really nothing being produced for sale here as produce.
But there were lots of arts and crafts available.
Cheryl brought several raffle tickets for a beautiful quilt,
and we walked through a couple of galleries in the buildings around the plaza.
We stopped into the Arizona Tourist Information Office and picked up some brochures for our next stop,
which is Benson, Arizona, and that's just southeast of Tucson.
We checked out the tables, set up around the plaza, then went walking through the historic district of Ajo.
We spent a few hours there before returning to the RV.
A very pleasant way to spend a Saturday.
Sunday, January 9th.
It was a very nice day, sunny, and warm, so we went for a walk towards Ajo,
but turned off the main road to find a park.
And we got there. It had ball fields, exercise stations, paths, and even a pool.
It wasn't really anyone there at this point.
It looked quite nice, though nothing to compare to our Rolling Hills Park back home.
Still, it made for a very nice walk, and we both got our 10,000 steps in.
When we got back, we prepared for our departure in the morning by dumping our tanks.
Monday, January 10th.
We got up and packed up the RV, and then a major improvement in our situation.
It turns out that the RV park we were staying in, belly acres, is owned by an RV repair shop right next door.
So we had made an appointment for 9 a.m. Monday morning.
They installed our new steps, which means we no longer have to go in and out using a step ladder.
While they were at it, we had them fix a few lights.
They were very nice, and we loved the care they gave us.
So if you're ever in Ajo and need RV service, check out Cords right on Route 85.
When they were done, we got on the road and headed for Benson, just southeast of Tucson, where we will stay for a month.
We passed Kit Peak Observatory. It's on Route 86, but it is not open to the public.
Too bad, I would like to go there.
But there is a Pima Air and Space Museum, which we will check out, and lots more around here.
We got to the Valley Vista RV Resort just after 4.30.
And got set up, but by the time we hit everything in place, it was getting dark.
The wind picked up, and the temperature dropped.
Benson is at about 3,500 feet above sea level.
And in January, it does get down to the mid-30s.
But in the afternoon, you get up to the mid-60s. These are all Fahrenheit temperatures. That's what's done in the United States.
For comparison, back home in Michigan, it's 15 degrees right now. Cheryl checked.
We had a little electrical problem when the electric space heater and a few other appliances started shutting down, so we went to bed.
Tuesday, January 11th.
Some more of those electrical problems in the morning, appliances would shut off and then come back a few seconds later, then go off again.
This happened repeatedly until about 7.30 and suddenly stopped.
We mentioned it to the office, and an electrician came out. He found some issues, and we tested it.
I turned on the microwave, the toaster oven, the space heater, and the refrigerator all at once.
But nothing stopped, so we're hoping that fixed it.
We tried hooking up cable TV, but that did not work, so we'll have that looked at when we get home.
Then we went shopping, and picked up a few more DVDs while we were there at Walmart.
By the time we got home and put everything away, we both decided we had done a full day, so we relaxed.
One of the things we like to do when traveling in the RV is have some entertainment while we have dinner.
We brought some DVDs with us, but soon realized we'd run out long before the trip ended.
So I ordered some for Amazon to be sent here.
One of the things you can do if you're going to have a long enough stay in a place.
Most RV parks are fine with this. They'll allow you to have something sent to the park office, and then you can pick it up.
So that's what I did. I went on Amazon and got a couple of box sets of DVDs.
One was the original series of Star Trek, and the other was the Jeremy Brett series of Sherlock Holmes.
And we eventually started watching some of those.
Wednesday, the 12th of January.
The electrical problems continued, so we moved to a new site.
It's hard to figure out what the problem is, but we had no issues before getting to this park.
Turns out we had no issues after we left the park, but we were the only ones in the park complaining.
The park staff suggested we'll take off the surge protector, but I'm not going to do that.
The problem could be caused by a low voltage condition, and I bought a protector that guards against that.
Low voltage can damage appliances just as much as voltage spikes can.
After lunch, we went to the Pima Air and Space Museum.
There was a lot more air than space, but we had a good time when we were on seeing all these different planes,
some military, some civilian, some experimental, there were lots of planes to see.
And it made for a nice afternoon.
Now we had put together a list of things to do in this area.
And the way we do that is pretty simple.
We just go on Google and say, you know, best things to do in and fill in the name of the area you're in.
And you get back all kinds of suggestions that way.
And some of the tourist places will say, you know, here's the top 10 things and what have you.
And you just read through it and say, okay, that looks interesting.
I had a pad, a paper with me, and just started writing down all the things that looked interesting.
And I think there were so many things that we could do something different every day of our stay here.
Although, you know, we do take days off.
You know, when you're on a trip as long as this, you don't want to push yourself and go, go, go, go, go all the time.
That's no fun either.
Now, as it turns out, we did at least half of the things on that list.
We could, and they were probably the best ones.
But, you know, if we're ever back in the Tucson area, there's still a few things we didn't get to.
But, I think this is a good time to wrap this up.
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