Visiting Cave Creek

We've been camping at a county park in Cave Creek. Cave Creek is a small residential community near the "big" modern cities of Scottsdale and Phoenix, but is on the opposite side of the world as far as "modern" goes. Founded in the 1870's, it was a gold mining town and a stopping place for the U.S. Calvary. While most of the original buildings are gone, the "downtown" area still looks like a western movie set, and has stores, eateries and other businesses with rustic decor and names to match.

Always on the alert for cute names for businesses, ranches and/or most anything else, we have put together a list of swell places to shop, eat and drink, for our interested readers:

For breakfast, lets head to Big Earl's Greasy Eats. Not quite that hungry? Cross the east boundary of Cave Creek to the town of Carefree, and have a light breakfast at the Big Buns Bakery. After breakfast, shop at the Town Dump, the local general merchandise store.

Now, how about a nice lunch and a chance to wet our whistle at the Buffalo Chip Saloon. That should leave enough time for an early afternoon tour through another general store, the Big Bronco Emporium, and still allow time for a dinner choice of fine eats at The Cracked Crab, The Satisfied Frog, The Horny Toad, or everybody's favorite, The Bad Donkey Cafe. We kinda covered the whole animal world there, didn't we?

In all fairness, we should reveal that the Bad Donkey is also in Carefree, a town which abuts Cave Creek and is seemingly dedicated to it's namesake. Street names there include Carefree Drive, Easy Street, Nonchalant Ave., Ho Road and Hum Road.

While we've sampled the wares at some of the above establishments, the list is too long for us to try them all in one visit. So, we'll be back again.

Lucy, the leucistic house finch

What a thrill to see a new bird at our feeders. It looked like a finch but it was white. So we took a picture to show the ranger. "Lucy" is unique and is causing quite a stir in the local birding community. Don't we feel privileged that she decided to hang around our campsite! "Lucy" is leucistic, meaning "of reduced pigmentation". Not quite albino. A new word for us. Because of the reduced pigmentation, the experts are not able to determine if the bird is "Lucy" or "Luke".

Yuma Palms Big Band Concert

Now this is something you probably can't do in Bremerton in the winter. Dick & Helen took us down to the Yuma mall for an outdoor concert by a local big band.

We brought our chairs to the mall and sat under the stars in warm weather and enjoyed it immensely.

Yuma Play Date

Dick & Helen's little Scotty invited his friends over to play with Miss Lily. Though they outnumbered Miss Lily 4 to 1,

she got into the swing of things shortly and wore herself out chasing the other dogs around.

Quartzsite Dust

Time for another visit to Quartzsite. Checked out Tyson Wells' 800+ booths and the RV show. Managed to not buy a new RV or even make any major purchases. Hooray for us!

After circling the RV's in BLM's Scadden Wash, we spent some "quality time" kibitzing with the Mundays and the Fishers.

Seems to us that there were more RV's plunked out in the low cost BLM camping lands this year. Some of the private RV parks, which are normally full at this time of the year, had vacancies.

And, even though, there was some rain in the past month, our camping experience this time was on a very dusty strip. Miss Lily got to experience her first bath after we left. Think she might have been a pound lighter after the dust got washed off.

Guard dog on duty

Aren't we lucky to have a trained guard dog on duty!

Miss Lily participating in the excitement of the Indio FMCA RV rally ----

Miss Lily on patrol protecting our camping spot at Quartzsite ---

Miss Lily contemplating the world situation and the new president ---

Ancient Egyptians - more ancient than Egyptian

It's always fun to attend an RV rally. Entertainment, seminars, friends, fun, freebies, donuts and ice cream. Our time here in Indio, CA, has been no exception! With a theme of "Wonders of Ancient Egypt" we had lots of Cleopatras and men running around in skirts (gladiators), flying carpets, camels, and pyramids.

Our day starts at 7AM and we get back to rest the tootsies at 9PM. Typically, we start out feeding and watering the dog, then biking to the coffee & donut social, from there we attend seminars on the care and feeding of our RV's with time in between to visit the vendors who if we are really lucky, might have something new "bigger" and "better" to spend our $$'s on. Miss Lily very compliantly stayed in her crate (I hate to say cage) and napped until we stopped by to give her a break which we did several times a day.

With us gone so much of the time and with only one watch dog, it was nice to know the authorities could be there quickly. At one edge of the parking area, was the "Security". We got a kick out of the number of patrol cars from various entities within this impound.

Miss Lily has been deemed an FMCA dog. One that adapts to her RV sitting mirror to mirror with another RV without aggression and no barking. Good for her.

Weather couldn't have been better: sunny and mid-70's!

Sun and snow and warmth

Up and over the "pass" from the LA area to the desert. We plunked ourselves at the Elks RV park in Indio. They have 50+ campsites and are very accommodating. We had a campsite with mountain and date palm views, green lawn, and citrus trees. Can't be beat.

The views of the hills with snow was a special treat.

Miss Lily is properly appreciative of the sun and the warmth. A "heat hog". She's also become more and more curious of anything that might grab her attention at any time. This pose allows her body to be in the sun, her nose can pick up all kinds of scents, she can watch anybody or anything going by, and she's keeping her master close.