Off to the North Ranch and Wickenburg

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I’ve got this THING now – whenever I need to do laundry and we’re heading to an Escapees Park, I will put it off for a few days or even buy more underwear to stall til we get there. If there is such a thing as a good laundromat, it can usually be found at an Escapees RV Park. It happened again as we headed to ‘North Ranch’ near Wickenburg, AZ.

We took a different route to get there from Laughlin and went up through Kingman on Highway 40 and then south along highway 93. Fred calls that the kind of road that helps clean out the holding tanks as we went up and down and around through the hilly country between the Hualapai and Aquarius Mountains. Lots of Pinion Pine trees, Mesquite, and Palo Verde and still the Saguaro Cacti sticking out above the bush throughout the hills (are we not impressed that after nine years, I am finally remembering the names of the various trees and plants?).

Now, every Escapees Park is different but they usually have a few things in common like the afternoon social (or happy hour); the Sunday ice cream get-together; and laundries that are reasonably priced, clean and well maintained. ‘North Ranch’ turned out to be a bit different. Yeh, they had the happy hour but nobody came (as far as I know); there was no ice cream on Sunday; BUT the laundry was clean and well maintained.

Besides the laundry, we did manage to explore an area we had never visited before as well as re-connect and enjoy the company of a couple (Dianne & Andy) we met at the Escapees Park in Pahrump.

We went out to an old mine (the Vulture Mine) that supposedly was started by Wickenburg (the town was named after him) and were very disappointed by the guy who wanted you to pay, pay, pay to look at a bunch of junk and get your picture taken with a donkey. BUT the area around was hilly and speckled with Saguaro.

Fred is not one to like museums but even he will tell you that the Cowboy Museum in Wickenburg was fantastic. It has a lot of exhibits of the old days in Wickenburg and you can actually touch them.

Most impressive was the art work and sculptures . . . a great collection, mostly donated by one family.

Parked next to us at North Ranch was Steve. Now Steve was an interesting character. I would say he was just barely old enough to stay at a 55+ park. He had taught most of his working life seemingly with students who needed to be led through every step of every activity they ever did. What made him so fascinating was that his hobby was astronomy and he carried a humongous telescope – all automatic. All day long, Steve locked himself in his Motorhome with the windows covered and at night, he brought out the telescope and showed us all the wonders of the various celestial bodies . . . the craters on the moon; Jupiter; twin stars in the Milky Way.

We stayed at North Ranch over the USA Thanksgiving and then headed over to Quartzsite but not before I discovered Trader Joes. Gotta go there again!