Whitewater Draw....Cranes

How far is far?

The noon fly-in was beautiful. We’ll see how the evening goes under the moonlight. The early morning is the most amazing as they all take off before dawn.

So we pulled into Whitewater Draw late morning to find two perfect sites for our rig and George and Cynthia’s rig. And then the magic happened. The noon fly-in of cranes was spectacular. Then lunch. Then nap. And now we’re settled in for a bit of a quiet afternoon.

A scene from the hike above the campground at Organ Pipe; on our first tandem camping trip with Barry and Audrey years ago we stopped at the art show in Tubac (famous) and the only art piece we had room for was this lovely coffee scoop, which we now use with our new English moka pot.

Whitewater Draw is in the southeast corner of Arizona, Mexico to the south and, past the Chiracahua’s to the east, New Mexico. A patch of the Chihuahuan Desert, it hosts the Dragoon Mountains, Bisbee, and 40 thousand sandhill cranes. We come here often on our winter sojourns to dryer parts, partly pulled by close friends, Barry and Audrey, in nearby Tucson (who are now somehow in the east) and our love of seeing the cranes. It’s all desert boondocking and, except for sometimes wind, the weather is pretty excellent for the middle of winter. This year we seem to have cornered the country for the best weather anywhere, at least this week. This seems to be as far from home as we will be going this trip: about 1000 miles which is 20 hours traveling at our rate. We don’t currently have a deadline to be home. We were planning to be out through most of February, coming back early as it will be nice to get Jim cleared to lift, cycle, and drive asap.

We are tandem traveling with our friends George and Cynthia, and George has brought along this fabulous telescope (Seestar). An image of last night’s moon. We will be going to see the eclipse in Texas with G&C and some of our kids and grandkids. And this great telescope. (It fits in a backpack.)

We will be starting back west after this, though it will take us, with various stops (including 4 days at Quartzfest (ham-radio event)), 10 days to two weeks to get there. By the end of the month, Jim’s heart monitor report will be back and he can get a follow up xray of his collar bone. He’s gotten better each day and is able to help with most of the camp chores now; except the driving. We promised he wouldn’t drive until we get the all clear from the docs. And I am doing pretty well on that front.

We hope your year is getting off to an elegant start. Ours has put itself back on a normal trajectory after a pretty bumpy start.