Sitting at the public library in flagstaff, Az.,  fresh from a delightful, (at least for me and Jack–Shann got too chilled and didn’t sleep well) camp site on forest service land just south of the s. rim of the Grand Canyon National park.  After coming up  (5000 ft and 7 hours of hiking in the most amazing of geological formations) from our overnight at the Phantom Ranch, we were all three pretty pooped (jack had been  in ‘jail’ at the kennels on the south rim and was howling with pleasure to see us and get some quiet time away from the howling dog inmates).  We found a dirt road, pulled in a mile or so into another dirt road, and there was our site!  Complete with a deer hide for jack to lie (somewhat suspiciously) on, and a fire pit with some wood and an old extra large men’s vest (which is now an integral part of my ensemble).  I got a fire cracking and some dinner cooking (chicken thighs, onions, greens, garlic, and a side of garbanzo beans we got as a gift in our ditty bag at the national grange meeting in Boise), and of course a jug of wine opened up for our drinking pleasure.

The sky turned a most amazing series of crimsons and oranges and shortly after night fell (about 6pm), the full moon started to make its appearance through the pine forest we were camped in.  A little ring on Shann’s Iphone indicated a new message and cell phone connection (go figure!?) and when she opened the facebook entry, there was a newly sent picture of Mariya and Kylie Foster at the wedding of islander friend Leith, taken from a small town in Argentina; holy shit new technology!  A few seconds later there is another text message coming through the airways, and it’s Elena in Manhattan with a request to know which of two Broadway plays she should go to with her 18 cousins!  From the bowels of the earth on the Colorado River, to a camp site up on the rim in the pines, to a tele-transport to Argentina and N.Y.C.—emmmm!

It’s now 4 days later Dec. 5:  Shann and I are sitting at the Bisbee Coffee Shop, in S.E. Arizona.  We pulled in at dusk last night, after stops in Tombstone and Fairbank on the San Pedro River (once a gold/silver mining booming enterprise, now a ghost town).  There was this sign posted on the outskirts of town; “no digging or removing of artifacts”—made me flash on my old friend Bruce Haldeman, (a notorious rapscallion when it came to collecting old mining artifacts).  We also had a couple days stop over in Prescott, a place we had visited briefly 26 years ago with Shann’s family, deciding then that it was a community we could live in. 

We had a marvelous stay with Tim and Raime, two very gifted and interesting folks that came to us via facebook and a Mexican beach connection with our F.H. friends Steve and Nan Simpson….so interesting how connections are being made these days, with google and facebook and all these other new fangled electronic thingies that replace so much of the face to face networking that I have mastered as the rambling traveler in less technological times.

I digress, and Shann would like her machine back, and this is getting too long;   soooo, to wrap this up, this coffee shop is filled with a dozen codgers talking all nature of eclectic stuff that could be right out of Julia’s Cafe in Fairbanks.   I feel at home, after a fit sleep last night in our eco-van, parked in an alley way behind the downtown post office.  We had fresh, hot tamales purchased from a Mexican street vendor, for dinner last night.  Sitting in our van, drinking a beer, eating and sharing the remnants with Jack, as he sits in ‘his throne’ in the driver’s captain’s chair.  We, of course, went to a local eatery for our salad and another ‘glass’ to finish the eve and to do our toiletries.  Now, it’s explore Bisbee time.

cheers all, from the road——steve