Congress Arizona Pioneer Cemetery

Clicking the pics shows respect for the residents of the Congress Pioneer Cemetery, who are full- timers in the truest sense of the word.

It's good to be back in the desert again, the Fall weather is just about perfect, and I enjoy the desert environment.

There's not a lot to do in Congress, Arizona, which is one of the reasons I like it here. There's a very small grocery store, but the prices make it emergency purchases only. There's a nice new gas station, where the prices are a bit higher but similar to everywhere else. It's a mountainous area, so it's pretty in a desertey sorta way. And there's an 1800's cemetery that I like to visit. But other than that, it's peaceful, quiet, and a nice place to spend some time and relax.

And speaking of relaxing, the weather is just about perfect. The eighties for a high, forties and fifties at night, and humidity in the teens, makes for good relaxing weather even without air conditioning, which of course, the bronco doesn't have.

But now that I've spent some time relaxing, I think I will mosey down the road to Wickenburg and watch some Team Roping. Wickenburg, Arizona, is the Team Roping capital of the world during the winter. So it's a good place to watch some of the best Team Ropers in the world do their thing.

Wickenburg is only about 15 miles from here, so I might come back to Congress and boondock for a few more nights, or I might stay in Wickenburg and boondock at Box Wash, one of my favorite places to be sure, but I don't have my little Beta motorcycle with me so it won't be the same.

Come to think of it, I'm not sure how I could carry the little Beta motorcycle with me with a slide-in truck camper. Most people with truck campers tow a motorcycle trailer, but there's no way I want to get involved with another trailer of any size; it defeats the purpose of the mobility I'm after.

I've seen people hang them on the front of their truck, but that never seemed like a good idea to me; it blocks up the air coming into your radiator, and your transmission fluid cooler, none of which is a good idea. So I don't know what I'll do at the moment.  

Maybe I'll just find another hobby that doesn't require me carrying something heavy in whatever RV I come up with..... Maybe skydiving? All that requires is a second-hand parachute from Goodwill and an insurance policy that covers idiots.... And I've already got one of those on the bronco.

                                                                  Theboondork

This is the road that leads to the 1800's Pioneer Cemetery. A lot of it's only one lane wide but hardly anybody drives on it so it's not like there's a lot of passing problems. But once you get to the cemetery there's plenty of room to turn around.

This is the parking area at the old cemetery. It looks big enough for almost any RV to turn around in, but the road might be a little rough for some vehicles.

Some of the graves have collapsed in on themselves, which is usually what happens when the wooden casket is crushed from the weight of the dirt. And then if there is unreinforced concrete on top of the grave, the concrete breaks into little pieces.

I imagine in the eighteen hundreds there wasn't a lot available to mark the graves of the folks buried here so they used whatever was available, which in this case was quartz rock, probably from one of the gold mines in the area.

There's only a handful of headstones in the cemetery that have names and dates on them, and it's not because these family members weren't loved, it's mostly because these folks were very poor and couldn't afford headstones that actually cost money like you see in this snapshot I took yesterday.