the best deal In camping soon to disappear

Click the pics before they fade away.

The town of Nowhere in Arizona Territory. It's a poor town, and since the townsfolk can't afford horses they take turns giving each other piggy-back rides to wherever they have to go.

When you're driving south on I-17 in Arizona, it's an easy drive, but in the winter, it's pretty chilly because you're close to Flagstaff, which gets a fair amount of snow. But when you arrive in the tiny town of Camp Verde, you're facing a pretty steep mountain climb on I-17 as you drive through dense pine forests, which are common on the north side of the climb you're facing.

But after a dozen miles or so, you crest the top of the mountain, and on the way down the other side, the landscape changes from pine forest to desert, and if you're looking to your right, you will see your first Saguaro cactus. I always look forward to seeing that cactus because I know that when I get to the bottom of the mountain, I'll be done with those 45° temperatures on the Flagstaff side of the mountains, and it will be about 60° when I get to Phoenix.

I don't know what kind of geology causes it, but it's almost always that way, and I can take off the winter coat I've been wearing since I left Colorado, and a light jacket over a T-shirt will be all I need now.

Why did I mention any of this? It's because I last came that way on my winter travels a few years ago. Because now, I usually go through New Mexico and spend time there because of their bargain-priced boondocking in New Mexico when I buy their annual pass.

But now New Mexico is in the process of doing away with their annual parks passes, both resident and nonresident, and raising their boondocking fees to $20 a night and $10 more for utilities. I've mentioned several times in this blog that the New Mexico nonresident park pass was the best bargain in camping that I've ever seen, and RVing Baby Boomers that have been around for as long as I have know that something that good cannot be allowed to exist.

It will take them a while to implement the new ripoff prices, so maybe I'll get one more winter of bargain-priced camping. My current New Mexico sticker expires the end of March 2024, so hopefully, I can buy a new one, which, with any luck, will be grandfathered in, and I'll have one more winter that I can boondock in New Mexico.

But after that, it will be adios New Mexico, and hola Arizona, which will be where I spend my winters. And I hope the geniuses in New Mexico's government have considered the unintended consequences this will have on the little towns near the State Parks that used to depend on people like me buying gas and groceries.

Theboondork

The whole town of Nowhere turned out to watch the first hanging of the week. 

He was an evil man. He turned people against one another, declared who was good and who was bad, made good people stop doing things they enjoyed, coerced people Into giving him money with threats of unending violence, and forced people to sit for hours without moving.

Loved by few, rejected by many, he will probably be the last Preacher the town of Nowhere ever sees.

This is the young widow Mrs. Grubb, she was devastated when she lost her husband of three months, the late 78-year-old Mr. Claude Grubb, and even more devastated when the sheriff found him tied up In her closet.
But by then she was learning to enjoy widowhood so she lost her husband once again.

Now she spends her days talking on the only cell phone in Arizona Territory... Mostly to herself because she has the only cell phone in Arizona Territory.

The way stores used to be.
Back in the day in places like Nowhere Arizona, doctors, and stores came to you.
if you were sick and didn't feel like getting dressed and saddling up your neighbor to ride to a doctor's house...the doctor came to you.

And the grocery stores did to. If you didn't have time to go shopping and were to busy hoeing, digging, burrowing and beating the kids, to take a day off,  somebody invented door–dash and your groceries magically appeared...and a lot faster than the doctor did.

The "Hole in the Wall Tee Pee Mart" just outside of Nowhere Arizona was the very first Indian trader to set up a store in Arizona Territory. The giant Tee Pee did a good business, with piggy-back riders coming and going all day, but when the store owner, chief "Hole in the Wall" tried to put an advertisement in the local paper he found out they didn't have enough letters to print the name of his store, so to get the ad printed he had to shorten the stores name to Wall-mart... Hey! This is history, don't blame me if you've been misinformed.