CHASED DIRT: Roper Lake S.P. AZ

We have officially made our way into the land of the Arizona snowbirds, where plotting our stays has become more challenging since all of us birds need roosts. Originally, we thought we would be headed out to the Quartzite and Yuma areas for some work on our solar system, but full-time RVer plans can turn on a dime, and it looks like we will happily be kicking around the Tucson area for longer than we thought while getting the solar work done here. Let’s back up, though, to find out how we got here from there.

Last we met, we were leaving Texas to cross through New Mexico to get to Arizona. We’d planned to do a quick parking lot over-nighter in El Paso, but once we actually reached El Paso, we both said “Ew!” and pressed on to Las Cruces, which was only another half hour away. Sorry, El Pasoans.

We stayed at a large RV park we’d visited four years ago, and familiarity was nice, even if the cost was not. It was worth the price, though, to re-visit a favorite little coffee shop and reminisce on a morning walk around Old Mesilla. Las Cruces remains high on our list of ‘settling down’ places.

You haven’t changed a bit.

I took the wheel in the morning to further my technical driving skillz, and motored us out of the RV park, onto the highway, and to our first fuel stop over an hour away in Deming. TBG assumed the duties from there and rolled us into our first Arizona destination at Roper State Park.


“Did you bring any fish?”

“How ’bout some fish eggs, then?”

We set off for a late afternoon walk to locate the park’s natural hot tub. It’s not hard to find, unless you’re us and climb up the wrong trail at first. When we finally located it, TBG knelt to feel the water and pulled his hand back with a “Yeow!” Hooray, methought, nice and hot! “Ice cold!” he proclaimed. Disbelieving, I tested it for myself, and yep, positively freezing. Turns out the hot tub was a not tub! It seems that whatever naturally warms the spring had stopped doing so sometime in the last year, and no one knows if it will ever be a hot spring again. Dear Arizona Parks People, please update your website to include this information. Thank you.

We thought this park was very pretty, and the following day we took a long walk all around its nicely maintained interior pathways and the paved road encircling the lake. There were more camp hosts than guests, which made for a remarkably peaceful time. We stopped in the Visitor Center, chatted with the volunteer, picked up some really good (free!) Arizona maps, and I bought a little black light flashlight to try some nighttime scorpion spotting. (None were spotted, which was only somewhat disappointing.)

I had sussed out a hike for us to do in the nearby Coronado National Forest, and we headed out to see if we could find the Round The Mountain Trail.

Found it!

We decided the 3.5 miles to Marijilda Creek sounded like a good goal and off we went.

Not Marijilda Creek

After dropping to a creek crossing, the trail climbed up to follow a ridgeline. We encountered a couple of bow hunters along the trail and were glad we were wearing bright non-deer colors.

I’m not a deer!

Believe it or not, the possibility of being run through by an arrow was not the scariest part of this hike.

This was.

In some places, I had to tap the ground ahead of me with my stick to be sure there was trail under the grasses. Nothing like worrying about stepping off into oblivion. Again. Every time we get into one of these predicaments, I tell myself I will turn around and never continue on such a trail again. The voices in my head start screaming, “You’re over 50! You could fall! This is stupid, you freaking idiots!” Then we do it again.

Riding high in the saddle.

We did not find Marijilda Creek and called reaching this saddle good. We could see that the trail dropped off the back, still following a precipitous ridge in complete (brrrr!) shade, which did not appeal to us. Besides, we had to retrace the ‘invisible’ trail and needed to reserve our wits for that.

Nearly imperceptible.

Blaze orange not-deer.

We met more hunters on the way down, who were also kind enough not to shoot us. All we shot were pictures, but we wouldn’t turn our noses up at a good piece of venison.

Indian Paintbrush, another familiar sight.

I don’t think you’d want me to relate all the trifling tasks we do each and every day. If I did, I’d start a Twitter account. But I have to mention that we got to shop at a Safeway for the first time since being on the road. For those of you who don’t know, Safeway is a grocery store native to the west, primarily the northwest. It was the first grocery store I set foot in when I got to Washington state in 1992, the very night I arrived, in fact. Sure, it’s a colossally stupid name for a grocery store, but it was — are you sensing a theme here? —familiar. I knew where everything was. I knew what brands they would have. I almost cried a little bit. You see, when you grocery shop as a nomad, you are often in stores that are completely foreign, and you find yourself pushing your cart around in circles, biting your tongue to keep yourself from screaming out, “Cheese! Where the EFF is the CHEESE?!”

A few doses of the usual on the road help keep you centered, as does finding the lemongrass paste I needed to make a new batch of yellow curry that we’d been out of since the last of it fell out of the freezer a couple of months ago.

The rest of our short stay at Roper was low-key, mostly walking the trails, enjoying the park and the birds and the quiet.