Thursday March 22, 2018

Waiting For Breakfast

We both slept well last night. No blast furnace from the motor home across the way. Probably had nothing to do with the anonymous note I left on their door. We get up with the sun and I surprise Carol by making the coffee this morning. It is probably 5-10 degrees warmer than yesterday morning. We have another nice breakfast of an egg and sausage burrito. We then go about the task of breaking down camp. Everything goes smoothly and we are done by 0915. We plan on doing a guided ranger walk of the Faraway Ranch House in the park. It is not until 1100 so we decide we will take a walk along a trail that leaves from the campground and heads to the Stafford Cabin. It is an easy walk and we add to the mileage because I am not paying attention and we veer left instead of right. This puts us at the visitor center in .3 miles and that is when we realize our mistake. We retrace our steps and then continue to the cabin. We look around a bit and then head back to the campground. We pass the remnants of the CCC Camp that was here. The only thing left standing are two large stone fireplaces. Our walk totaled 2.7 miles and we walked at 3 miles per hour.

Faraway Ranch

We return to the car and then make the short drive to the Far Away Ranch parking lot. We arrive at 1045 and at 1100, we get the tour of the ranch house. It was first homesteaded by Swedish immigrants, Neil and Emma Erickson. Neil became a district ranger in the new United States forest service. When his job caused them to leave the area, their daughter Lillian took over and made it a guest ranch. She married Ed Riggs who promoted the nearby area as a wonderland of rocks. Ed was instrumental in establishing the area as a National monument and then was made supervisor of the CCC construction of the trails throughout the monument. One thing was true, the ranch was far away from everything. After our tour, we leave the monument.

Johnny Ringo Grave

We take a side road which leads to the gravesite of the notorious gunman., Johnny Ringo. It is on private land, but the owner allows people to visit. It is not well known and I found it on the geocache site. Ringo was found in the fork of a tree with a bullet in his head. It was ruled a suicide but many believed he was murdered. From here, we start our 2-hour drive to Tucson. We arrive in Tucson, just in time for the start of Happy Hour at Zona 78. We had gone here the last time we were in town. We have an antipasto platter, mussels, and a beer.

 

 

Very Happy

We decide to check out another Italian place I had read about and drive there. It is called North Italia. We get another antipasto platter with different cheeses and items than at Zona 78. It comes with a bottle of red wine for the total price of 20 dollars. We sit outside on their patio and the food and service is excellent. We decide to try the pizza of the day, the carbonara. On happy hour for 8 dollars, it is really good. We relax and enjoy our wine. After our meal, we drive to our hotel on the other side of town. We are here for three nights and the first order of business after camping 3 nights is a shower. Food then shower or shower then food is always the mantra after camping and hiking. Good night.