Camp Verde and travel day to Florence

Dave and I slept in Tuesday morning and then did a slow wake up and get ready.  We decided we would do a little sightseeing in the area to include Montezuma's castle, Toozigut and a look around Dead Horse Ranch State Park.

We left about 1130 and headed over through Old Town Cottonwood to get to Dead Horse State Park.  This is a VERY nice state park and we wish we would have known about it before we reserved and camped at Zane Grey.   Only because it's closer to nature and is only $25 per night.  Anyway, we marked down which sites we liked best and are keeping it in mind for next time.

Then over to Toozigut.  We walked around for a bit in this 1500 yr old Sanigua (san-ee-wau) indian site.  Beautiful views from the top of the hill.

Not the best shot of the views, but I didn't realize that until we were in the car.  Here's a shot of the ruins looking DOWN the hill.

And a little guy who was not scared away by us big people.

When we left there we headed back towards Camp Verde for Montezuma's Castle.  This is the first cliff dwelling we have ever seen and both of us reacted with "not me!".  Until about 1959 visitors were allowed to climb up a series of ladders and explore these dwellings.....CRAAAAZY.

By then it was after 4 and we decided to head back to camp, with a short stop at the car wash to get the grime off the truck.

Here are a few shots of our desert campground.

 Dave is going to go up to the office today to see if we can move to a spot where we get the morning sun (as opposed to the HOT afternoon sun) on our door side since that is where all our windows are....maybe we can run the AC less that way.

 We'll see if we get used to this desert camping.....personally, I like a few more trees.

I was excited to see my first barrel cactus....it was actually coming down the pass from Camp Verde.  Dave said "aren't you going to take a picture".  I said nope, cuz I'm sure there will be plenty of them when we stop.  Sure enough.  At the bottom of the pass it was like FORESTS of them and down here in the valley they seem to be used more for landscaping.

Anyway, we have a not-very-interesting day planned of scouting out Florence and where the Country Thunder grounds are, grocery store and maybe laundry.

Tomorrow we spend the day in Tempe with our new bosses, doing some training and picking up equipment.

I'll probably have a new post for you sometime this weekend.  Not sure when we'll be too busy at Country Thunder after that!

Doris and Dave


SHOUTOUT:
To all my facebook friends who have come to take a look!  Thanks!