Day 2

Day 2 – April 24, 2018

This was a long driving day. We left Ryan Campground at 9:00am and got back to I-10 via the road through Cottonwood, which is the south entrance. Our first stop was at the Skull Rock Trailhead. Karen was a little leery of the trail when, at about ¾ of a mile we still had not seen Skull Rock. It was getting hot already, so she turned around to go back to the car. I went ahead a short distance and found the end of the trail – it emptied into the Jumbo Rocks Campground. I turned around and jogged back to the start of the trail where we saw a group of Slovenian tourists dressed in Harley Davidson biker garb and taking selfies next to Skull Rock –right next to the roadway where we started our hike. Karen was not amused when I pointed this out, especially since she had earlier told me she thought Skull Rock was probably close to the trailhead!

As we dropped in elevation from +4000 feet, the Joshua Trees faded away and we drove through a large ‘forest’ of Cholla cactus that looked like it was glowing in the morning sunlight. We also went past a large grove of Ocotillo trees in full bloom.

By the time we got to I-10 it was close to 11:00am so we headed off to Quartzite for gas. We decided to bypass Phoenix by taking Highway 85 to I-8 and catching I-10 at Gila Bend. It probably didn’t save us much time, but we were able to keep moving at highway speed the entire time.

We pulled into Pichaco Peak State Park a little after 5:00pm. The rangers were gone and it was about 96 degrees and we couldn’t determine if there were electrical sites at the campground. So we went down the road to the Pichaco RV Resort (Good Sam) and checked in. This was the first time we’ve used the air conditioner in the Aliner and it works great. Tomorrow we plan to drive down to both the east and west districts of the Saguaro Cactus National Park and do some sightseeing. We may also stop in Tucson. We’ve booked three nights at Kartchner Caverns State Park (with electrical) and this should allow us time to visit the caverns, along with Tombstone and Bisbee before we head off to New Mexico.