May 12, and we are finally leaving Casa Grande and starting our journey to Minnesota. We like Casa Grande and will return next winter but had planned to leave March 12. Between my medical stuff and Covid, we stayed here longer than
Our first stop is Show Low, Arizona. Denny and Meg have a summer home here and Denny’s sister Connie lives here also and we wanted to see them again.
The landscape changes a lot between Casa Grande and Show Low.
We found a beautiful camp ground for our 3 nights in Show Low.
Woodfield RV Park
Right after getting parked and halfway set up, we headed to Denny and Meg’s for a delicious turkey supper. The next evening, they came out to the trailer for a good old Minnesota goulash supper. Boo loves both of them from the time they watched her for a week and can’t get enough hugs from them.
Our last afternoon in Show Low was with Connie and Meg. They came out to the campground for the afternoon.
There were a couple of things I wanted to see before leaving Arizona. The first was “standing on a corner in Winslow, Arizona”. How fun! Dave had been here before but the memorabilia was not here at that time.
The scenery is changing as we drive north.
We saw a couple small herds of Arizona wild horses but we always came upon them so suddenly that I was not able to get pictures so stole one from the internet! They are beautiful.
I also wanted to go to Four Corners, the only place you can stand on 4 states at once, Arizona, Colorado, Utah and New Mexico. Unfortunately, the marker is on a reservation and all reservations were closed due to Covid 19.
A short distance away was our campground for the night, La Mesa RV Park in Cortez, Colorado. We could see the snow covered mountains in the distance.
Our next stop for 4 nights was Vellecito Resort near Bayfield, Colorado. This is a really neat family style campground, something we rarely stop at.
Bloody Mary Sunday in Colorado…
Even though Colorado was still closed. there were still a lot of scenic things to see.
First, we drove out to the beautiful lake nearby, created by a dam. We had to park on the side of the road and and walk down a short dirt road to the lake.
The next day, we decided to drive up to Silverton. Several people had mentioned the Durango/Silverton narrow guage train to us. Unfortunately, it was not open because of Covid. It was a 3 1/2 hour trip each way plus a couple of hours in Silverton and and hour from our campground. That would have left Boo alone for close to 11 hours and I wouldn’t have been comfortable with that anyway. The drive was beautiful and proved to be a good decision.
The drive took us through Durango first. We saw a herd of antelope as we headed in.
We also saw (several times) a pasture with 8 or 9 pure bread palominos. There were a couple of roans and several colts in the herd also. There was always too much traffic to get a picture of them.
Boo saw snow for the first time and was not impressed. We couldn’t get her to walk on it.
Silverton is a quaint little town but nothing was scheduled to open for another week, except the gas station and grocery store. We walked and drove around for a while, then went to the grocery store to buy a sandwich before heading to the Old Hundred mine. The grocery store had a pet-friendly deck where we enjoyed our lunch.
Our Harley riding friends might like this store.
The Shrine of the Mines stands above the town.
Off to see the mine.
Ore buckets overhead.
For our last day, we ventured to the town of Durango. Again, most things were closed but we did a self-guided walking tour of the historic town. Those are always interesting. We ended the day at a winery that advertised fruity wine drinks. I went in to purchase two. We sat on a bench outside drinking them. It was our first “bar” drink since mid March.
