We’re In Apache Junction, Arizona (GA9)

Mary is no longer available for RV traveling, but we remain good friends.
Because we have 4,000+ postings, I’ve invited her to continue posting entries on this blog.

I’m currently in my 22nd year of full-time RVing and my lifestyle is changing, For more info click Here

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The motorhome is parked at Thousand Trails Palm Springs RV resort at Palm Desert, California. I expect to depart February 27th.

 

 

Since my RVing life is changing (see above), I’m starting to re-visit previously visited places. So rather than constantly re-blogging past entries, I’ve decided to do something different.

 

 

In 2012-2013, Mary and I did a 682 day, 12,679 miles in the motorhome and 8,000 miles in the Bronco, circumnavigation of the United States, which I called The Great Adventure. I called it so because other than my oldest granddaughter’s high school graduation in June in Connecticut, I didn’t know where we would be going or when we would be there!

 

 

So, unless I do something really different and unusual warranting a new blog entry, I’ll be posting entries from that trip.

 

 

 

This entry was posted February 3, 2012…

 

 

Yesterday we transited the about 175 miles from Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument to Apache Junction, Arizona….which is about 25 miles east of Phoenix.

 

 

Along the way as we traveled north on Arizona Highway 85 and about 30 miles from Mexico we came across a United States Border Patrol checkpoint.

 

 

 

As always you may left click upon an image to see an enlarged view and then click once again to see an even larger view…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

About another 30 miles north we came across a second checkpoint…

 

 

 

We passed through both checkpoints with no problems.

 

 

We decided to press on to Apache Junction where we are parked behind Moose Lodge #2039. This in my home Moose Lodge where I joined a number of years ago. I seldom get back here. Last time was two years ago…

 

 

 

 

 

Last night’s sunset wasn’t as pretty as some we have seen recently…

 

 

 

Today we will enter the Golden Sun RV Resort for a ten-day stay during which time we will visit friends in the area.

 

I HOPE YOU ENJOYED THE PHOTOS.

 Yesterday was partly sunny and 73 degrees. Forecast for today is partly sunny and 66 degrees.

Enjoying nice weather is another joy in the life of a full-time RVer!

The red dot on the below map shows my approximate location in the State of California. You may double left-click the map to make it larger…

Enjoying 65-75 degree temperatures with low humidity most of the year is a primary joy in the RVing lifestyle!

“Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving”…Albert Einstein

My current travel rig is a 2006 Fleetwood 26′ Class A Motorhome and a towed 1986 Ford Bronco II, Eddie Bauer Model. This photo was taken in the desert at Slab City near Niland, California…

On October 27, 2012, I created a two-minute video titled America The Beautiful. The music America The Beautiful is by Christopher W. French. The photos, which I randomly selected, are from the states of Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Montana, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas, Tennessee, Washington and West Virginia (not shown in that order)…are mine. Yup, That’s me standing in front of the Post Office in Luckenbach, Texas…Y’all!

Click this link to start the video. Make sure you have your speakers turned on and go to full screen asap.
http://youtu.be/FfZUzEB4rM8

If you would like to see my YouTube videos, click this link… http://www.youtube.com/user/JimJ1579/videos

There are more than 700 photo albums in my Picasa Web Albums File. To gain access, you simply have to click this link… https://get.google.com/albumarchive/110455945462646142273?source=pwa

If you have not checked out my Ramblin Man’s Photos Blog, you can do so by clicking this link…http://ramblinmanphotos.wordpress.com/

For more information about my books, click this link:
http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/panamaorbust

All original works copyrighted – Jim Jaillet -2017

A Touch Of Nostalgia (GA3)

Mary is no longer available for RV traveling, but we remain good friends.
Because we have 4,000+ postings, I’ve invited her to continue posting entries on this blog.

I’m currently in my 22nd year of full-time RVing and my lifestyle is changing, For more info click Here

---

The motorhome is parked at the Paradise Casino in Yuma, Arizona. I’m planning to depart here February 12th.

 

Since my RVing life is changing (see above), I’m starting to re-visit previously visited places. So rather than constantly re-blogging past entries, I’ve decided to do something different.

 

In 2012-2013, Mary and I did a 682 day, 12,679 miles in the motorhome and 8,000 miles in the Bronco, circumnavigation of the United States, which I called The Great Adventure. I called it so because other than my oldest granddaughter’s high school graduation in June in Connecticut, I didn’t know where we would be going or when we would be there!

 

So, unless I do something really different and unusual warranting a new blog entry, I’ll be posting entries from that trip.

 

This entry was posted January 28, 2012…

 

 

Yesterday Mary and I drove the about 65 miles from Painted Rocks Historic Park to Ajo, Arizona. Along the  way we passed through Gila Bend, Arizona where we started south on Arizona highway 85 towards Mexico.

 

It was the first time I’ve driven this highway since January 2, 2004…the first day of my 343 day, 16,000+ mile RV trip through Mexico and Central America. Gila Bend, Arizona was our meeting-up and kick-off point…

 

 

As always you may left click upon an image to see an enlarged view and then click once again to see an even larger view…

 

 

 

 

 

That’s me in the blue vest and white hat just to the right of center. 17 people in 11 rigs started the trip. Only two people in separate rigs went the full pre-planned route. Myself and Bud Kuball (then new friend and now good friend) fourth from left.

 

 

 

 

 

As I drove south on Route 85 it was fun to reminisce those days of a little more than eight years ago. We had not a clue of what we would see and experience. It turned out to be much better than my best pre-trip imaginations. A true life experience!

 

 

 

 

 

Here are three photos from yesterday’s trip on Highway 85…

 

 

 

 

A Border Patrol check point…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To help celebrate my nostalgia… (remember these photos were taken with a film camera and developed along the way…)

 

 

If you’ve got the courage and the time…

You can see 468 photos from the Mexico portion of the trip by clicking this link…
https://picasaweb.google.com/110455945462646142273/Mexico2004

And 60 photos from Belize…

https://picasaweb.google.com/110455945462646142273/Belize2004

And 208 photos from Guatemala…

https://picasaweb.google.com/110455945462646142273/Guatemala2004

And 97 photos from Honduras…

https://picasaweb.google.com/110455945462646142273/Honduras2004

And 117 photos from Nicaragua…

https://picasaweb.google.com/110455945462646142273/Nicaragua2004

And 41 photos from Costa Rica…

https://picasaweb.google.com/110455945462646142273/CostaRica2004

And 4 photos from El Salvador…

https://picasaweb.google.com/110455945462646142273/ElSalvador2004

And 136 photos from Panama…

https://picasaweb.google.com/110455945462646142273/Panama2004

 

 

We’re parked at VFW Post #3570 and just in time for the chili cook-off today!

 

 

 

I HOPE YOU ENJOYED THE PHOTOS.

 Yesterday was partly sunny and 80 degrees. Forecast for today is partly sunny and 84 degrees.

Enjoying nice weather is another joy in the life of a full-time RVer!

The red dot on the below map shows my approximate location in the State of Arizona. You may double left-click the map to make it larger…

Enjoying 65-75 degree temperatures with low humidity most of the year is a primary joy in the RVing lifestyle!

“Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving”…Albert Einstein

My current travel rig is a 2006 Fleetwood 26′ Class A Motorhome and a towed 1986 Ford Bronco II, Eddie Bauer Model. This photo was taken in the desert at Slab City near Niland, California…

On October 27, 2012, I created a two-minute video titled America The Beautiful. The music America The Beautiful is by Christopher W. French. The photos, which I randomly selected, are from the states of Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Montana, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas, Tennessee, Washington and West Virginia (not shown in that order)…are mine. Yup, That’s me standing in front of the Post Office in Luckenbach, Texas…Y’all!

Click this link to start the video. Make sure you have your speakers turned on and go to full screen asap.
http://youtu.be/FfZUzEB4rM8

If you would like to see my YouTube videos, click this link… http://www.youtube.com/user/JimJ1579/videos

There are more than 700 photo albums in my Picasa Web Albums File. To gain access, you simply have to click this link… https://get.google.com/albumarchive/110455945462646142273?source=pwa

If you have not checked out my Ramblin Man’s Photos Blog, you can do so by clicking this link…http://ramblinmanphotos.wordpress.com/

For more information about my books, click this link:
http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/panamaorbust

All original works copyrighted – Jim Jaillet -2017

I Walk Into Mexico…

Mary is no longer available for RV traveling, but we remain good friends.
Because we have almost 4,000 postings, I’ve invited her to continue posting entries on this blog.

---

The motorhome is parked at Shady Acres Mobile Home and RV Park in Yuma, Arizona. I expect to be here a couple of months hiding out from the cold, wet weather. Average temperatures in January are high 69.6, low 47.6. In February, high 73.8, low 50.1. As nice as Yuma is, I wouldn’t want to be here in August.  🙂

Yesterday morning I drove the Bronco the 25 miles south of Yuma, Arizona to San Luis Rio Colorado, Sonora, Mexico for my annual visit with my dentist. I’ve been going to Dr. Sergio Bernal for about 10 years. I leave early so I can be first in line which means no waiting when he opens at 9:00 AM. The sun does not break the horizon until 7:40 AM which means difficult photo conditions with the sun so low on the horizon. (The below  photos are from last years trip.)

As always you may left click upon an image to see an enlarged view and then click once again to see an even larger view…

 

 

Right at the border on the Arizona side, last year I parked the Bronco in a city park. This year it’s all changed. The park is now closed to vehicles and now San Luis has street parking meters…

 

 

Then walk across the border crossing. No cameras allowed beyond this point…

 

 

Once into Mexico, it’s only about a one minute walk…

 

 

Turn left and here’s his office…

 

 

Sergio has a nice two chair facility where he provides very good services (he’s a dental surgeon) at very good prices compared to the United States. In my case a checkup and cleaning was $20. Such a deal!. Here he is with his dental assistant…

 

 

About a one minute walk back to the border crossing to re-enter the United States took about a 15 minute wait in line last year. This year security has been greatly increased, but, no waiting in line. I walked right up to the border patrol checkpoint and within a few seconds I was back in the United States…

 

 

Even with six lanes in progress, entering the United States by vehicle is about a two-hour wait in a very long line. The car line this year still looked very long…

I’m all set dental-wise (hopefully) for another year. Sergio told me that for an old guy, I’ve still got really good teeth!  🙂

 

Recently I’ve been running blogs about my 2004 Central America trip. While here I’m intending to continue those postings while also alternating with Yuma area blogs.

I hope you enjoyed the photos.

 Yesterday was sunny and 58 degrees. Forecast for today is sunny and 59 degrees.

Enjoying nice weather is another joy in the life of a full-time RVer!

The red dot on the below map shows my approximate location in the State of California. You may double left-click the map to make it larger…

Enjoying 65-75 degree temperatures with low humidity most of the year is a primary joy in the RVing lifestyle!

“Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving”…Albert Einstein

My current travel rig is a 2006 Fleetwood 26′ Class A Motorhome and a towed 1986 Ford Bronco II, Eddie Bauer Model. This photo was taken in the desert at Slab City near Niland, California…

On October 27, 2012, I created a two-minute video titled America The Beautiful. The music America The Beautiful is by Christopher W. French. The photos, which I randomly selected, are from the states of Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Montana, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas, Tennessee, Washington and West Virginia (not shown in that order)…are mine. Yup, That’s me standing in front of the Post Office in Luckenbach, Texas…Y’all!

Click this link to start the video. Make sure you have your speakers turned on and go to full screen asap.
http://youtu.be/FfZUzEB4rM8

If you would like to see my YouTube videos, click this link… http://www.youtube.com/user/JimJ1579/videos

There are more than 600 photo albums in my Picasa Web Albums File. To gain access, you simply have to click this link… https://picasaweb.google.com/jimjrver

If you have not checked out my Ramblin Man’s Photos Blog, you can do so by clicking this link…http://ramblinmanphotos.wordpress.com/

For more information about my books, click this link:
http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/panamaorbust

All original works copyrighted – Jim Jaillet -2015

Kingsville, Texas

Yesterday we drove the motorhome the about 120 miles from Brownsville to Kingsville, Texas.

As always you may left click upon an image to see an enlarged view and then click once again to see an even larger view…

About 75 miles North of Brownsville we passed through a Border Patrol Station with no problems…

Kingsville is the headquarters of the famous King Ranch which you can read about by clicking their website link…
http://www.king-ranch.com/legacy_overview.html

Here’s a Wikipedia link about King Ranch…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Ranch

Upon arrival we went to the King Ranch Museum…

The King Ranch Museum is one of those museums that I give a GREAT BIG BOO too because they do not allow photography. Once again and as always, I saw nothing in the museum that would make the World stop turning if a few photos were taken. Most uncommon for me, I did not care for this museum for I saw it as shamelessly flaunting its wealth which I have never cared about. It seems so funny for me to be saying I didn’t enjoy a museum.

After the museum we went to Elks Club #1926 where we parked for the night. The folks there were very friendly…

They suggested a location where we could plug into electricity so we ended up with this very colorful view from our dinette window…

Enjoying interesting museums that don’t flaunt their wealth is another joy of the full-time RVing lifestyle!!!

The red dot on the below map shows our approximate location in the State of Texas. You may double left-click the map to make it larger…

Enjoying 65-75 degree temperatures most of the year is a primary joy in the RVing lifestyle!

The weather here in South Texas has been erratic lately. First it’s too hot like in the mid-80’s with high humidity and then it’s too cold with highs in the mid-50’s and mid-30’s at night with the wind …which seldom stops blowing…providing a really chilly wind factor. Like yesterday at 6:00 AM it was 78 degrees and this morning at the same time it was 54 degrees. Crazy!!!

“Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving”…Albert Einstein

If you have not checked out my Ramblin Man’s Photos Blog, you can do so by clicking this link…
http://ramblinmanphotos.wordpress.com/

All original material Copyright – Jim Jaillet 2013
For more information about my three books, click this link:
http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/panamaorbust

JOHN SLAUGHTER

One of the toughest men the West ever saw was John Slaughter,  a diminutive man who learned young that life was full of cheats, murderers and danger.  A Civil War veteran, trail driver, cattle baron, legislator, lawman and gunslinger, Slaughter was soft-spoken, with hard penetrating eyes and no desire to pick a fight. He simply wanted to raise his cattle and his family.

The Slaughter Ranch is now a museum and sits on the Mexican border. It feels as though you are walking through history to visit this remote site where Geronimo surrendered the last time in Skeleton Canyon about 10 miles distance, where the Mormon Trail and Butterfield stages passed by, and where John Slaughter met Pancho Villa, if met is the proper word. Villa came to his remote ranch with his men. While Slaughter was sitting on his porch watching him, he began to harvest his crops and slaughter some of his cattle. He watched the melee for a day and then mounted his horse to go talk to the bandit. He asked  him for payment.  Villa gave him a bag of gold coins.

Wild West Magazine, the December 1993 issue did an excellent article on Slaughter which is posted in the ranch house where they lived. His father was a Texas Ranger and cattleman. John followed in his footsteps. In Texas, he married and had two children by his first wife who once held off a band of attacking Comanches with a servant and two shotguns. She died shortly after they arrived in Arizona. He married a sixteen year old girl by the name of Viola, and together they built the ranch and lived the wonderful life of  cattle barons in the wilds of Arizona territory.

The ranch is now a tame place with these tiny baby lambs only two days old.

And some handsome long horns,  well fed,  in an enclosed pasture. John Slaughter was one of the first Texans to introduce short horns with long-horned cattle.

I enjoyed the ranch, and the kind of life that was lived here. It was well worth the 16 mile dusty, gravel road to see it, but my mind kept drifting back to John Slaughter and what it took to make Western Arizona a safe and civilized place to live.

To that end, Slaughter became Sheriff of Cochise County and it is said he did more to clean up Arizona than any other man. His method was polite. He would first warn a man to leave town and never come back. Those that didn’t ended up dead in the dust. It is said he killed a lot of men and he did. But, as they say, they needed killin’. That was the way of the West.

He really wanted to live in peace, but he always carried a shotgun and revolvers to do so. He was a wary man, always watched his back. He loved his family and he and Viola adopted an Apache daughter they named Mae. She died young. He and Viola took in many young people, helped them out, gave guidance and support to friends and neighbors.

The ranch is composed of several buildings, all thick adobe that fended off those hot summers. They employed 150 people on the ranch and kept a commissary for the families and neighbors to buy needed goods without having to trail all the way into town. They carried flour, sugar, tobacco, tack, chaps, etc.,  an all around assortment of goods

An artesian well still feeds this small lake beside the ranch house. When John Slaughter bought the 65,000 acres that made up his ranch, the grass was stirrup high. Many springs, and a creek served the ranch until a terrible earthquake in Mexico shifted the plates  in 1937 and the springs and the creek dried up.

We enjoyed photographing this place. It is now a preserve and a bird haven. The rare blue mockingbird was spotted on the ranch and drew 30,000 people to see it.

The Slaughter Ranch was partly in Mexico because nobody really knew where the border was located. It is now very obvious and Jim and I hiked to see the type of fence they use in the wild areas like this that still allow wolves, cougars, leopards, deer, etc. to wander back and forth in their own natural way.

On the 16 mile journey back to the town of Douglas, we met a Border Patrol car every mile, just as we had on the way in. Some have trailers with ATV’s on the back to get out into the desert like a four wheel drive.

This agent is dragging tires to erase any footprints. That way, they can see where any new illegals are trying to cross. John Slaughter also founded the town of Douglas. There is still a bit of wild in the West.

A good website about John Slaughter can be found at this link:
http://www.jcs-group.com/oldwest/saints/slaughter.html

We’re In Apache Junction, Arizona…

Yesterday we transited the about 175 miles from Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument to Apache Junction, Arizona….which is about 25 miles east of Phoenix.

Along the way as we traveled north on Arizona Highway 85 and about 30 miles from Mexico we came across a United States Border Patrol checkpoint.

As always you may left click upon an image to see an enlarged view and then click once again to see an even larger view…

About another 30 miles north we came across a second checkpoint…

We passed through both checkpoints with no problems.

We decided to press on to Apache Junction where we are parked behind Moose Lodge #2039. This in my home Moose Lodge where I joined a number of years ago. I seldom get back here. Last time was two years ago.

Last night’s sunset wasn’t as pretty as some we have seen recently…

Today we will enter the Golden Sun RV Resort for a ten-day stay during which time we will visit friends in the area.

All original material Copyright – Jim Jaillet 2012
For more information about my three books, click this link:
http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/panamaorbust