Tuesday around the campground and visiting friends

On Tuesday, we decided that we'd like to try hiking around the campground. We don't usually eat breakfast, but decided that having some sustenance before we left would be a good idea. We had some sausage gravy left over from a few days ago to use, so decided to cook some biscuits.

I had gotten the rack out for the convection oven, and was going to put foil on it to bake the biscuits, but Carl suggested just putting them on the rack directly... turned out not to be a great idea as they sunk through the rack and dripped a lot of shortening on the turntable. Now we know!

But... we pulled them up through the rack (they kinda look like brown-and-serve rolls, don't they?) and they worked fine as a base for the sausage gravy!

The rig directly across from us is a seasonal site and they have beautiful spring bulbs blooming!

We walked past the management building and Carl was telling me that one of neighbors at Venture Out had one of these plants and that it had attacked him (scratched his leg) when he was over there spraying for weeds -- the end of each "leaf" has a long spine. It almost looks like a metal sculpture.

We decided to hike down to the lower part of the campground and then back up -- we were going down to the area where those RVs are parked.

From the bottom -- way up there is the building where we started.

We found a different path for the way up, and it had an information paper at the trailhead about some of the plants and sites along the path. There were nice markers at many of the plants.

Prickly Pear Cactus

Creosote Bush

Soaptree Yucca

Back up at Gracie -- we like our site, although there is a huge electric box to the side, and a dumpster beside us too.

Gracie in her site -- there is nothing behind us...

Taking in a little Vitamin D facing the desert area behind Gracie.

We met friends Mike and Dori in Cottonwood. We walked around in a couple stores and then stopped at Burning Tree Cellars where we enjoyed a wine tasting while chatting.

Then we headed out to Hog Wild BBQ for delicious pulled pork sandwiches and cole slaw. They had SO much meat on the sandwiches -- the server said that they put 1/2 pound of meat on them -- and it was so tasty too!

It was good to get a hike in the morning and to get to visit friends in the afternoon!

Pulling stuff out and moving on up

On Sunday afternoon, Carl engaged in what Jimmy thinks is one of our favorite activities, pulling everything out of the rig (well, at least everything out of one bay), going through it, and repacking it.

Carl is saying, "Don't let Jimmy see that we're pulling all the boxes out again!

Meanwhile, I pulled out all the bungee cords, sorted them according to size, and stored them in the two containers we have for storing them with labels indicating sizes in each container.

Monday morning, I had a followup test from a questionable mammogram the previous week -- since Sue died from breast cancer, we're a little more sensitive about this -- but a diagnostic mammogram along with an ultrasound gave us the all-clear. We're very thankful to God!

I headed back to Venture Out where Carl had gotten Gracie all ready for travel -- he was just completing the airing up of the suspension when I pulled up in the Jeep, so we went ahead and got on the road toward Cottonwood, Arizona -- a couple of hours north of the Phoenix area just off I-17.

When I was going for the followup mammogram, I saw a Portillo's that was just off the route we were taking around Phoenix, and it was at the edge of a large strip mall that seemed to have lots of parking...

... so we decided to stop and park Gracie along our route and get an early lunch.

At the pickup counter...

... there was a picture of the original Portillo's, in Villa Park, near where Carl grew up in Elmhurst, IL.

Carl got a "Big Beef" and I got a regular Italian beef sandwich, along with fries. Yum!

We made it around Phoenix and then up on I-17 -- north and up about 2400' in elevation -- until our stop at Sunset Point Rest Area:

 

Carl had gotten a phone call just as we were walking out to see the view -- that's him over at one of the view areas completing his phone call!

There was a sundial (with the right time for Mountain Standard Time... just after noon) and a commemorative plaque for highway construction workers who had lost their lives serving the people of Arizona.

We headed down a few hundred feet to Cottonwood and checked in at Verde Valley Thousand Trails. We had called ahead and reserved a 50A site so we would be at the top of the valley and able to get a better signal on our MiFi device.

View from our campsite -- there are two campsites across the road and then a beautiful view across the valley.

We walked over to an overlook area behind the campground office building -- this is looking over the campground below (the white things are RVs in campsites down below).

More of the campground below.

This is a very large park, very spread out. We're hoping to get some walking/hiking done, and also visiting some friends in the area.

Morning walk around Venture Out on Sunday

Before our planned leave date on Monday, we took a walk around a few of the streets at Venture Out on Sunday morning before our church's livestream. We had been doing a lot of bike riding in the past months, but, Carl is still out of commission for bike riding, so we're walking instead.

So many of the cacti are blooming now

The fellow who owned this one offered to give us a cutting to grow one in our yard... but we declined (we are hoping to put a fruit tree in). I think he indicated (and Carl had said too) that these blooms only last for a day, and they actually bloom at night, and we just happened to see them before they closed up.

This orange tree was definitely working hard to get its fruit out between those two Saguaro!

There was a *huge* catio on this front porch -- Carl doesn't want Miss Kitty to see a picture of this cuz she'll figure out how to put it on our to-do list!

The lawn bowling grounds - evidently primarily played by the Canadian visitors to the resort. I think we saw folks on the grounds once or twice while we've been at Venture Out.

Some of the implements for maintaining the lawn bowling grounds.

Lots of pretty things to see around Venture Out!

Yardwork on Saturday

The yard at our lot at Venture Out used to have a cactus on it. I had written earlier that the cactus fell last summer and I was doing some rock sorting (https://journeyinamazinggrace.blogspot.com/2020/12/sorting-rocks.html).

Once I removed most of the darker rocks, it left pretty much a bare dirt spot...

We aren't sure that we want to put more of the "greenish" rock in -- we're not exactly sure *what* we want to do! But the bare spot was not looking great.

So, we raked up some rock that was behind the shed and Carl carried it to the front by shovelfuls...

We think it looks a lot better than the bare spot!

We still want to do something to the yard... the *next* time we come to Venture Out.

We are currently thinking that we will rent out the lot for the 2021-2022 season... but things are still up in the air due to the fact that we don't have the awning for Gracie yet. We're still hoping!

A Friday Hike

We finally have made a plan to leave Venture Out on Monday (March 29) so, on Friday, decided to take advantage of one more opportunity to hike in the Superstition Mountains before we left. Carl had previously done a hike with his daughter and granddaughters just up from Lost Dutchman State Park to a rock formation called the Praying Hands so we planned to do that. He had the route from Alltrails (https://www.alltrails.com/trail/us/arizona/praying-hands-to-slot-rock).

The day was cloudy and one weather forecast earlier in the week had indicated rain but none of the ones we checked on Friday morning listed rain, so we headed out.

Our objective is over there...

The trail was nice...

Seemed to be wide and easy to stay on it, though there were multiple places where other trails went off, so Carl used Alltrails to keep us on the right path.

An ocotillo

Another view of our objective... but... this is about where we turned around. It had been spitting rain, but as we got further along the trail, the more it turned into pretty steady rain, and it looked like the rain would continue as we got further up and into our objective.

Out to the west the sun was out though!

So... we headed back toward the Jeep.

Carl took a last picture --

And I got a picture with him in it.

We had seen a deer when we were first on the trail, and as we were heading back, we saw this rider with his two mules.

Toby is the larger one and Will is the smaller one (a pack mule). Their owner/rider was clever to be in rain gear!

On the way back to the Jeep, we saw this bush with pretty pink cottony flowers.

We took a slightly different path back to the Jeep and realized that we could have parked further in so our hike (if we had made it to the Praying Hands) would have been a little shorter. But, since we had to turn around, it we got a nice 2+ mile hike for the part we did. And now we can look forward to doing this hike at another time!

As I indicated above, we are planning to leave Venture Out on Monday -- we're going to go to a Thousand Trails campground near Cottonwood, Arizona, for about a week (just over 100 miles north on I-17) -- then we are *hoping* that we'll be able to return to National Indoor RV in Surprise, Arizona, to get the long awaited awning. We're not holding our breath... but... we're *hoping*!