Off to Western Arizona
......from Roper Lake State Park we headed to Tucson for a week.  There is a campground called Gilbert Ray.  A county park that is amongst the Saguaro National Forest and next to Old Tucson where they made a lot of old western movies.  We love this park. 

Next off to Quartzite for a couple of nights.  Here we caught up with some friends from Custer and my bro and sis in law.  This time of year Quartzite grows from a small town to one with thousands of campers, like a 100,000 campers most of them dry camping in the desert.  There is a huge rock show, about 5 huge areas set up with people selling items and rocks, a huge RV show, and a big tent.  By big tent we mean a huge tent that takes about 2 hours to walk through filled with vendors selling anything you may need for your RV and beyond. 
One of our favorite parks is River Island State Park along the Colorado river and the border of Arizona and California.  We spent a week here mainly for the annual Hot Air Balloon Festival that we had never been to.  Unfortunately the wind did not cooperate...so the ballooners were only able to inflate their balloons but did not untether the balloon ropes due to the wind. 

That was Friday, on Saturday the winds were really crazy so all the vendors and tents set up at the festival were taken down and it was over.  But on Friday we were able to see the balloons being filled with hot air, watched a small kite fest, and watched a presentation by the area police and their police dogs.  Oh well another year.

Currently we are at Congress Az in an Escapees park.  Escapees is a membership group that has several RV Parks in different states that the coop owns plus many private campgrounds will offer discounted camping to members.  In this park individuals own lots on which they may or may not have a home or building on.  Plus there is a very nice cactus garden and walkway here and all the facilities you want as a full timer.....like a good laundry!  Lots of cute bunnies here and we do not hear the coyote like we did in Tucson!

Congress is a short distance from Wickenburg and Prescott.  We can make many day trips in all directions to see different things.
The other day we drove to a ghost town called Stanton.  The road to Stanton is an old stage coach route.  Most towns in this area sprang up because of the gold found around here.  Stanton is currently owned by Lost Dutchman's Mining Assoc. and in order to camp there you do need to belong to the club. 

The host on duty gave us a nice tour of the ghost town.  One of the campers came up to us to show us a small amount of gold he had sluiced.  Many of the campers were sluicing the whole time we where here.  They go out and bring back buckets of dirt and sluice and repeat all winter.  The remaining old buildings here include a stage coach stop, opera house, old hotel, and of course an out house. 

According to our tour guide and the residents there are over 13 ghosts confirmed here!  We did not feel or find any, which is just fine with me!  But they were serious about the presences.  At one time this had been a very rough town with lots of unscrupulous residents.  After the tour we continued on the old gravel stage coach road up to Yarnell...another town started when gold was discovered in the area.  The old road got quite narrow, steep and very rocky at times.  Al was not really liking it, and then......here comes a FED X truck.  What! 

We toured around Yarnell and headed back home....on the paved tar roads.
Along with mining and ghost towns this is horse country.  The other day we went to Wickenburg for groceries and to explore.  A calf roping competition event was going on so we stopped for awhile and took it in.  Some beautiful horses.

love grey horses!!!

It has been in the mid 70s to mid 80's, warmer than normal here.  Next week will be getting a bit too warm for me...high 80's.  Tomorrow we will be in Parker again for the Parker 425 desert road race.  We saw some of this race two years ago and wanted to come back to see more.  So check back in a few days for some crazy race photos!  These guys can fly!  There will be dust in the air and hopped up trucks off the ground for a good 20 yards!  You may have seen the race on wide world of sports...awesome!