My first thought was "WTF", but then I saw our campsite neighbor come out of his trailer and give the new guy a hearty handshake and a "man hug". Then I remembered the neighbor telling me his brother would be arriving here this weekend to spend Thanksgiving riding around the dunes with his dune buggy.
I told them we would be outta here in about 15-minutes and he could then move into our vacant site. All was good!
After placing our trash in the cans we headed for the front gate. That's when we noticed the snow on top of the mountains over by the town of Safford where we went to pick up our Amazon packages on Wednesday afternoon.
At about the half way mark of our nearly 200-mile travel day we pulled into a rest area to use the bathrooms. As luck would have it the bathrooms were closed for cleaning, but hey, we've been towing a bathroom around behind us all day.
This particular rest stop is at nearly 5000' and has a wall of boulders stacked up behind it. It kind of reminds me of City of Rocks State Park in New Mexico, but on a much smaller scale.
After what seemed like forever we finally made it through to the north side of Tucson, AZ (pop. 542,630) where we left the Interstate behind and headed west out into the desert.
Only this isn't any ordinary portion of the desert! This dispersed camping area is located within the 129,055 acres of the Ironwood Forest National Monument. Like most, but not all, BLM managed areas there are no visitor centers or campsites with utility hookups.
This is just raw, undeveloped land, where you are allowed to pull off the road and camp for FREE. This is what we've done to keep our 7-year average overnight cost below $20. We mix in some FREE nights, so that we can go spend 14-nights in a nearby Arizona State Park at $35 a night with hookups (water-electric).
After breakfast we're going to scout out the other three designated dispersed camping areas here in the Ironwood Forest National Monument Lands, you know, just in case we ever come back!
We got back to THE POD just as the first rain of the day started and it continued on and off well into the night.
As I was laying in bed listening to the rain and trying to go to sleep, I became concerned with what the conditions of the 150-yards of rutted clay and gravel track that leads from our campsite back to the road and what the 3/4-miles of sand and gravel road outside the campgroud would be like in the morning.
Yeah I worry about stuff like that when it's bedtime.
I was happy to see there wasn't much pooled water in the single track road leading out from our campsite. The road might be a little "softer" than it was the day before, but at least there's no puddles hiding deeper ruts below the surface.
During our drive into this campground on Friday, just before we crossed into the Monument Lands, we had a glider plane silently come flying over ROVER and THE POD from behind and land about a mile ahead of us.
Once we got set up I looked at Google Maps and noticed there is indeed a location called the El Tiro Glider Port - Home of Tucson Soaring Club about a mile south of where we are camped.
Yesterday the weather conditions didn't allow for any gliding to take place, but early this morning we heard the tiny powerful plane pulling the gliders up to 3000' and then releasing the tow rope to begin their silent return back to earth.
Tricia grabbed her "big lens" camera and went outside to see if she could capture any decent photos. I thought, why not jump in ROVER and drive over as close as we could get and take photos from there?
Tricia was ready to leave in record time. We drove down to where the runway ends and just missed another glider coming in for a landing. We stood there for a few minutes, watching the activity on the runway about 100-yards away from our location to see if there was going to be another takeoff.
I looked to the right and saw a road with a gate that had a Welcome Sign on it. I left Tricia at the end of the runway to take photos and drove down to see what I could find out.
TUCSON SOARING CLUB
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This is the road leading out towards the Glider Port.
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There is one of the gliders now coming in for a landing.
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This is the end of one of the runways the gliders land on.
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This is the middle of the main runway when the planes take off from.
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Those mountains out there is what gives the gliders uplift to remain up in the sky.
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Tricia zoomed way in tight for this photo as the plane glided by over the runway.
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It looks like they're taking the cover off of this one and getting it ready to fly.
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These gliders are all either one seat or two seats like this one.
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Here's the front seat with all the instrumentations. The seat looks well worn.
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It only takes 3-men to walk this light-weight glider out onto the runway.I wonder who's going to be the lucky person to ride in this plane?
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Why look! It's going to be the lovely Tricia going for a ride today.
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Getting ready for takeoff. What ever you do don't pull the red handle!In case you can't make it out it says "Canopy Eject".
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Too late to turn back now!
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Here you can see the long straight Pump Station Road we are camped off of.THE POD is inside the red circle about 150-yards from the road.
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Approaching the Glider Port from the east.
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The Tucson Soaring Club leases the Glider Port from the Bureau of Land Management.The club owns 7 of the glider planes in addition to the propeller plane, the rest are privately owned.
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These trailers are used to transport the planes to other locations for competions.
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It turns out the Tucson Soaring Club offer rides to the public for $160, but only one passenger at a time in the glider with a 240-lb. weight limit.
When I called Tricia and asked if she was interested in going for a ride in a glider, her first response was, "I don't know about that"? About 2-minutes later she called me back and said, "If I don't do it now, I'll probably regret it later."
That's how today ended up being anything but ordinary. At least for one of us!
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