Date(s): 28OCT – 30OCT2025

Location(s) Visited: Whetstone, Bisbee, Kartchner Caverns State Park & Saguaro National Park, AZ

Distance Driven on Trip (miles): 296 miles

Weather/Temperature (°F): It was still quite warm in SW USA and the temperatures were in the low 80s during the day and into the low 50’s overnight. The temperatures at our campsite were 10 degrees cooler than at our house and it was an additional 8 degrees cooler in Bisbee than at our campsite. Overall, quite pleasant weather. We also had blue skies and full sun during our entire trip.

Road Conditions: Road in the US are a mess! They are littered with garbage, broken glass, dead animals, giant potholes, uneven pavement, and rough surfaces and this was both on the expressways and on back and more rural roads. The roads look like a crack/seal spaghetti mess and are still so bumpy that it is almost uncomfortable to drive on. There appears to be a lot of deferred maintenance of road infrastructure in Arizona. We miss the smooth roads of Germany and Denmark.

Health Update: Tony received good news about his fractured shoulder at a follow-up visit to a local sports orthopedic physician. The doctor was shocked at how well his arm has healed in the last 15 weeks and said Tony is a “super healer” and in the top 1% for flexibility and strength at this point in his recovery. The doctor was shocked that Tony only had one assessment physical therapy visit at Week 6 and has only done “YouTube Physical Therapy” on his own. He told Tony to keep doing what he is doing and there is no need for any further follow-up with him or physical therapy but it will take a full year to recover. The doctor was just shocked looking at the original and new images and could not believe they were from the same person. Yeah Super Healer Tony!

We have been home just over 3 weeks and we are still not 100% recovered from our viral illness we came down with when we got home. Although we tested negative (but we tested too late and with expired kits ☹), we feel we both had COVID-19 based on symptoms. Tony has 99% recovered, but Tracey has only 85% recovered and is still coughing. Boo on viruses!

Tofu Mechanical Status: When Tony went to pick up Tofu her battery was dead which is not entirely surprising as she was not started or driven for almost 7 months. A jump start and a bit of driving and she was back in business. Even the Webasto heater we have had issues with on previous trips worked like a champ. Overall, we both forgot how much we really love 😍 Tofu. First, we built her ourselves and we know her ins and outs intimately although she is obviously much less polished and finished than Chickpea. What we love about Tofu is the more quality components and finishes, a larger refrigerator and freezer, dual ceiling fans, a HUGE garage that was designed from the ground up to easily store our bikes, SO MUCH STORAGE, open cabinet shelving, more walking space and a generally more open feel due to no overhead cabinets. Before returning the van to storage, Tofu had “The Works” done at our local Ford dealership (and got a clean bill of health), a deep clean inside (she was dusty!) and a good exterior bath.

Highlights:

• One of our goals for this winter is to bike all 130 miles of the Chuck Huckleberry Tucson Loop (https://tucsonloop.org/) and so we crossed off another 6 miles on this trip. We biked a section near the Davis-Monthan Air Force base on the SE side of Tucson. This path is car-free and winds through lovely Sonoran landscapes. We love riding on this path as it usually follows along a wash, is clearly marked, smooth and usually not terribly busy. This cycle path is a real Tucson treasure, in our opinion.
• Our GPS directions took us on a different route than we have previously taken when heading towards Bisbee, AZ. This route was gorgeous and took us through both hills and desert terrain. What always surprises us is the riparian areas that are along the rivers with their large leafy green trees gracing the immediate area. This is not something most people would expect to see in the middle of a desert and feels a bit like an oasis.
• Tony booked us at a Hipcamp called “Karla’s Hummingbird Ranch.” The owner was a lovely woman who is a former horse trainer and also an artist. Her initial messages to us were a bit terse and she openly shared her dislike for children and dogs in her listing so we weren’t sure what to expect. In the end, Karla was lovely. She was friendly, knowledgeable, and a wonderful host. She shared her property with us (we were the only campers) including her pool, patios, firepit and all her outbuildings. We also were under a tall RV cover and we had full hook-ups, too. We got to meet and pet Reba, the mama donkey and her baby, Rhett who is a 3-month-old hinny. What is a hinny we asked? Well, a hinny is the offspring from a mother donkey and a male horse and typically has more horse-like features and characteristics. They were both very friendly and Rhett’s coat was soft like an alpaca. The nights were so quiet all we could hear were the coyotes howling. We will certainly return to this Hipcamp again in the future.
• We had been to Bisbee previously and liked the eclectic artist vibe, so we decided to re-visit again on this trip. We took a self-guided walking tour of the city and we learned much we did not know about its mining history. The Bisbee Library, called the Copper Queen Library might be our all-time favorite library and it is also the oldest continually operated library in Arizona. In 2019, the Library Journal named it the Best Small Library in America. It really is an incredibly special library with historical architecture and a huge observational balcony overlooking Old Bisbee. Tracey is a lover of all things library and can’t wait to go back again. We also saw the old High School which is being converted into swanky lofts, drove through the ghost town of Lowell, visited the 300 acre open-pit copper mine called Lavender Pit and saw the Warren Ballpark which was used during the Bisbee deportations in 1917 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bisbee_Deportation). Bisbee is a chill and funky place and we really enjoyed our visit again.
• We passed the entrance to Karchner Caverns State Park on our way to our Hipcamp resulting in some googling. We  learned this park just opened in 1999 and consists of 2.4 miles of underground passages, although only 20% of the caverns have ever been explored. We were able to purchase same day tickets for a guided caverns tour which included access to the Throne Room which holds one of the world’s longest (21 ft) soda straw stalactites and a 58-foot-high column called Kubla Khan. No camera or cell phones are allowed in the caverns, so we only have our memories but the caverns were awesome and we learned so much from our volunteer guide. One thing we learned is a cave is a single cavity with a single roof whereas caverns are multiple rooms or cavities under a single roof.
• Saguaro National Park remains one of our favorite national parks and we try to visit whenever we are in the area. We did not expect access to the park to be completely closed to vehicles due to the US government shutdown when we arrived, but that is what we found. The entrance gate at the street was closed and locked. There was still limited bicycle and foot access so Tony biked two loops of the 8-mile Cactus Forest Scenic Loop Drive, one of his favorite routes.

Lowlights:

• Tony attempted to cycle near our Hipcamp but the speed limit on the adjacent roads was 65 mph and frequented by lots of semi-trucks. After “white-knuckling” about 4 miles in this area, he wisely made the decision to abandon his ride for the day. This area is quite beautiful and the flowy roads lend themselves to cycling, but they are just not bicycle friendly from a safety standpoint. Boo!
• The further south we drove into Chochise County, the more law enforcement vehicles we saw including local police, sheriff, and border patrol. The shear number of law enforcement vehicles was a bit mind boggling and we would guestimate that about 25% of all vehicles we saw driving on the road in this area were law enforcement. We saw more people being pulled over on this trip in just a few days’ time than we saw over almost 6 months of traveling in Europe this past summer. It was a bit of a shock to our system to see that our country has become such a militarized police state (yes, we saw surveillance blimps in the sky, too). Double boo!
• We had to pass through a temporary/mobile border patrol checkpoint as we were heading north. These checkpoints never sit well with us and we just don’t think they should be allowed within our borders. There were at least a dozen (quite young looking) border patrol agents plus several sniffer dogs that stopped and questioned every vehicle, including us. The agents were polite enough asking questions about our citizenship, where we were headed and how many people we had in our vehicle. None of these questions are inherently wrong, we just feel that there should not be interior border checkpoints and allowing them to do warrantless searches is a violation of our Fourth Amendment’s protections against search and seizure (even though the US Supreme Court disagrees with us). What a waste of taxpayer time and money for 12 agents to be milling around at one interior checkpoint 40 miles north of the US/Mexico border where a car might pass through every few minutes.
  

Up Next: Our plan is to take at least one van trip every month to explore our AZ backyard. Next month we will visit Prescott, AZ.