We Fought the Law and We Won

October 24, 2024 – Day 14

Point of Rocks Campground, Prescott, AZ — White Tank Regional Park, Surprise AZ

We had a really short day today, so we did the short hike down to the water. The trail was fairly easy and pretty nice. We both shed our outer wear within minutes. It is cool in the shade but hot in the sun.

We didn’t see any interesting water birds down at the lake, it smelled pretty bad from the blue green algae, so we didn’t hang around long. We saw Spotted Towhees. There were Mallards and Cormorants. Two very successful species as we see them pretty much everywhere we’ve been that has water. Also spotted Grebes but we couldn’t ID them. And on the walk back a small flock of Western Blue Birds. Nice to have a hike before spending the rest of the morning driving.

Time to drive.

The funny thing about cacti is that they are different. The prickly pear and yucca creep up on you. You see one, then 25 miles away, another, then another 50 a small group. But the saguaro, they just go BOOM and you have a hillside of them.

Paul was white knuckling down I-17 from Flagstaff. It is nasty with lots of construction and the extreme downhills with curves. He just tucked in behind a slow trucker and put his blinkers on also. When we got to the 303, in retrospect he should have pulled over and handed the wheel to Susan. But he was so wound up he just didn’t.

On the way to White Tank we passed even more construction. When are they going to stop building in the desert? This is nuts.

We made it to White Tank without incident.

Ok, almost without incident. The ranger, checking us in, asked, “Are you aware that you have a 1 day gap between your two reservations? They left a post it note for me to mention it.” Uh, no, we didn’t. We were lucky enough to score the 2nd reservation’s site so Susan grabbed that as we made the drive to the campsite.

Frazzled Paul was in no mood to cook. Our favorite Mexican place was booked until 8:30pm. (It was around 3pm when we pulled in!) We’re in the middle of nowhere, so the options are few. There was sandwich salad place called Mesquite Fresh Street Mex, the Safeway which has a decent selection of cooked things, or Sprouts (a new to us chain). We headed off to Sprouts. Susan missed a speed limit drop when it went from 45 to 35mph without a warning sign. There was a trooper there and he pulled in behind us.

He followed us, probably ran the out of state plates, but didn’t put the blues on. Paul saw a 25mph sign up ahead, and Susan braked to 25mph and continued on with cruise control set. He must have been waiting for that. We drove the next few minutes on the same road that had been 45mph a mile back. People must have loved us. Have we mentioned that they drive like maniacs out here? No? They drive like maniacs.

We saw the Safeway and pulled in, just to get away from the Fuzz! And the ready to eat selection wasn’t bad.

The sunset, back at camp, wasn’t bad either.

Daily: 111 miles.

Total: 2,805 miles

Driving miles/Day: 312 miles/day (8 days driving)

Overall miles/Day: 200 miles

mpg: 7.1