hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr3810.txt

Episode: 3810
Title: HPR3810: Clifton, Arizona
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr3810/hpr3810.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-25 05:47:32

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 3,810 for Friday the 10th of March 2023.
Today's show is entitled Clifton Arizona.
It is part of the series Travel.
It is hosted by Aoka and is about 16 minutes long.
It carries a clean flag.
The summary is.
We move to another Arizona town, Clifton.
Hello, this is Aoka, welcoming you to Hacker Public Radio.
And another exciting episode in the series on RV Traveling.
And we're going to pick up the story this time in as we move out of the Tucson area to
our next stop, which is Clifton, Arizona.
So on Wednesday, February 9th, that was our travel day, so we packed up everything, dumped
the tanks, and checked out from Valley Vista.
We headed for Clifton, our next stop, and the trip was uneventful for most of the way until
we found our road was taking us into mountain slopes.
It ended with a long, steep downhill that was not fun with the trailer behind us.
We made it safely, but it was not something we wanted to do again if we could avoid it.
At the park we head back in again, but each time we do it, we get just that little bit
better at it.
The way we do it is that I get behind the wheel of the truck and I do whatever Cheryl tells
me to do.
She's standing outside and can see everything that I can't see.
Now the park itself is absolutely lovely.
The views here are spectacular.
The park is in a valley surrounded by mountains, and just the view out the window is great.
This is why people get into RVing.
We were told that sometimes you see wild sheep in the mountains.
Now, next day, Thursday, February 10th, we got all settled in and went for a walk to
see what was around us.
Our campsite is along the San Francisco River.
The thing that if you're not from the United States, you have to bear in mind is that San
Francisco is one of those names that pops up all over the place.
This river has nothing to do with the city in California.
It's just another thing named after St. Francis.
San Francisco River runs right alongside the park.
In fact, the park is in a place where originally there were houses.
At one point, the river overflowed and took down some of the houses and the town decided
to just get rid of the houses and turn it into an RV camp.
The advantage, of course, is that if the river ever rises that high, again, you can just
move your home away.
It's on wheels.
Now there are bridges across the river at either end of the park, and there are homes
and buildings on the other side of the river, so we crossed one of the bridges and walked
down a street along the other side of the river.
Looking back, we saw a couple just getting settled, Lin and Denny Caulfield.
They were originally from New York City area, but had moved to Arizona and bought a house
in Arizona.
But they liked to travel around the country in their RV, and they were the opposite to
Cheryl and I, as they would go to places like Michigan in the summer to get away from
the Arizona summer heat.
It's not unusual to get 120-degree days in Arizona in the summer.
That's 120 Fahrenheit.
Not sure what that is in centigrade, it's certainly in the 40s.
So Friday, February 11th, we went into the neighboring town of Marancy to do some shopping
at the Basha supermarket.
The pickings were a bit slim there.
It seems that supply chain problems are plaguing all of the stores.
Now at the time we were doing this towards the end of 21 beginning of 22, all of the supply
chain problems were still going on.
It does ease up later, but the thing that affects us is that Cheryl and I have a diet that
is, we eat a lot of fresh fruits and vegetables, and that means we have to shop every couple
of days because freshness is not something that lasts.
So a regular part of our daily activities is stopping at the store.
Well after we did the shopping, we went for a walk this time across the other bridge.
The roads here have a constant problem from falling rocks because they are literally
carved out of the mountainside.
So on this road to be safe, we walked on the side farthest from the rock face.
Oh, Saturday, February 12th, where we are in Clifton there is basically no cell
coverage, at least for T-Mobile, and no Wi-Fi.
Fortunately, my Kindle is well stocked with books, so I'm getting a lot of reading done.
And of course, we try to get out for a walk most days.
Today we were joined by Lin and Denny and walked to Veterans Park.
We were looking for a nature trail, but it turned out we had already walked most of it
on a previous walk.
We also stopped at the Visitor Center, but it was closed because of COVID.
Never did open while we were there.
They did leave some pamphlets on the door though.
Now the Visitor Center is in the train station building, and so we spent some time watching
the activity of the engines moving cars around.
And this is a point where I would just mention that most of these days we took some photos
and there's links in the show notes, you can view any of the photos, and I have a flicker
account and I upload them there.
So Sunday, February 13th, I sent birthday greetings to my sister Eileen first thing in
the morning.
I have learned that I get brief LTE connections throughout the day, and something like a text
message will be picked up whenever that happens.
I know it worked because I got a reply from my sister.
Cheryl decided she wanted to turn doing the laundry, okay, I'll let her do it.
So I got to have a leisurely breakfast.
After the laundry was done and lunch was over, we went for a walk, joined by Lynn.
Then we borrowed her phone, which had connectivity to change our plans.
Cheryl had looked up our next plan stop, which was in Silver City, New Mexico, and found
that it was even higher in elevation and required mountain roads to get there.
In fact, she had talked to another person who was staying in the campground, who told
her about what the roads were like.
One of the things we learned on this trip, I've always had a certain fear of heights.
Starting to think, Cheryl has more of one than I do, and steep roads, high mountain roads,
drop-offs on either side or whatever, she doesn't like any of those things.
If she ain't happy, ain't nobody happy.
We took a look at that and said, okay, we'll change our plans.
Now because we made that decision on a Sunday, we really couldn't get anyone on the phone.
So while we were discussing this, a couple did pull in next to our camper, and we met
them, Stuart and Tanya.
They also live in Arizona, but like to get out in their camper from time to time.
Here dinner, Lynn and Denny brought out the propane-fueled fire pit, and the six of us
had a nice evening chatting before the sun went down, and it started to get cold.
One of the things about the desert, it does get cold at night, and even if it's warm during
the day.
Monday, February 14th, Marancy, as I mentioned, is the town next to Clifton, and there's
a huge open pit copper mine there that dominates the landscape, and getting there means a long
steep climb on the road and a long steep descent coming back.
So I'm figuring out how to use the gears, the engine, and the exhaust brake to handle
all of that.
What you don't want to do is ride the brakes going down.
At some point they burn out, and then you don't have brakes anymore, which is a real problem.
We borrowed a phone again, made our plans, we contacted the park that we were scheduled
for in Anthony, New Mexico, just outside of El Paso, and that would have been the stop
after Silver City.
They could only get us in a couple of days early.
We canceled the Silver City reservation and tried to extend our stay here in Clifton,
but they could only give us a couple of days more.
So we called some places in Deming, New Mexico to find a place that could put us up for
the other nights, and we were successful.
After that we went shopping.
On the way back a group of wild, big horn sheep was walking along the rock face next
to the road.
Cheryl also had a card to mail, so we were going to look for a mailbox, but I found there
was a Clifton post office just up the street.
And after getting our groceries put away, we went for a walk, this time heading towards
the post office via the historic district.
The historic district I'd have to say was not terribly large, was mostly run down and
not terribly interesting.
We did get the card mailed though.
We saw the sheep again as we were returning, and they eventually made it to the campground.
After dinner, Lynn and Denny again brought out the fire pit, and again the six of us gathered.
We stayed a little bit longer this time, and I think it may have been because Lynn and
Denny were going to leave us in the morning, so it was our last time together.
Tuesday, February 15th.
The sheep were grazing about 30 yards from our camper this morning.
Imagine getting up to that, you know, big horn sheep just grazing in the area.
After Lynn and Denny took off, Cheryl and I went for a walk.
Our objective was to cross the river, but as we approached the bridge, we saw activity
in the train yard and stopped to watch.
The train brought in a long line of cars and was going back and forth to bring the cars
forward, disconnect a group, then move it back onto another track.
This continued until they had put the cars into four different groups.
Afterwards, we chatted with one of the train yard employees, and each almost at the cars
we saw were coming from the mine, and that they would later be picked up by engines from
the Arizona Eastern train line.
So after this was done, we crossed the bridge and went down to the river bank.
While we were there, a fellow came up on a motor scooter and explained that there were
hot pools which he showed us.
So, you know, geothermal pools on the San Francisco River, and we could see the steam coming
off of one.
He explained that the mountain behind us was actually a volcano, which explains the
heating.
Okay, Wednesday, February 16th, that was a overcast cold and rainy day, so good day to
stay in and relax, and that's all we did.
Thursday, February 17th, we spent the morning on errands, went to the bank to get quarters
for doing laundry, refilling the propane, grocery shopping, so good all of our errands done
after lunch, we went for a walk and went to check out the dike.
It is on the bank of the San Francisco River, which right now doesn't look like it needs
a dike at all, but I have heard people talk of a spring monsoon season, and the rocks
all around us won't absorb much water, so maybe it is needed then.
Coming back, we checked out the high ledges, the local sheep used to traverse the cliff
faces.
We checked them out from street level, but we could see where they were walking, and
these mountains sheep are absolutely amazing, they walk around on these slopes that you
would think they'd just keep falling to their death, but they don't.
Okay, Friday, February 18th, another gorgeous day, not a cloud in the sky, so after lunch,
we went for a walk that took us into the residential section of Clifton.
We saw an Arizona eastern train bringing in cars to the train yard.
We came back via the dike and also saw the floodgate that would block rising floodwaters
from the residences, as this section was downhill.
As we came back, we saw the mine company train taking the cars brought in previously and
located the tracks and where they split.
Saturday, February 19th.
We did laundry and grocery shopping, and after lunch went for a walk.
We picked a road we had been down before, but went a little further this time.
We found an access point to the river bank, and there were some people fishing there, but
we left them alone and walked elsewhere.
Then we went into a pull-off, full of rocks, and Cheryl wanted to see if there was anything
interesting there.
The problem was that neither of us know anything about mineralogy, and that's a bit of a
magic cap if you're looking for interesting rocks, so we walked back to the RV without
any rocks.
It was another sunny day with not a cloud in the sky and warm.
It was so nice to be here in February, rather than in Michigan.
I get notices every day about winter storm warnings back home.
Sunday, February 20th, our last day in Clifton, which is fine because we've run out of things
to do here.
This was not a stop with a lot of fantastic sightseeing.
This was kind of a relaxation stop between the Tucson and New Mexico, where we did do a
lot of things.
We went further up Route 191 to see more of the mine operations, but at some point, Cheryl
just said, get me out of here, so we turned around.
It was just too many twisty, turning mountain roads and came back down and just spent the rest
of the day relaxing.
So that was the story of our stay in Clifton, and so this is a hookah for Hacker Public
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