4 March 2025 – Tucson: Much easier day today, a short 1 hour cruise to the border, easy border crossing into USA with very friendly border guards and then another hour into Tucson where we will be camping on Brett & Yvonne driveway for the next few days while attending to Landy repairs.
10 March – Sasabe, Buenos Aires Wildlife refuge: After a very lekker week with in Tucson,in which the Bells joined for the last few days we are back on the road but instead of heading north as would seem logical we have headed south and down to the Mexico border. Feels very nice to be in the “bush”
11 March – Arivaca Area, Buenos Aires Wildlife refuge: A gentle cruise on some of the off-road tracks in the area until we got to the border wall where it “ends”. Had a great chat with the border guards who were guarding this open section (who gifted us a badge/coin) before cruising along the road that follows the wall to the real tiny dorp of Sadabe (population of 9) and then looping back to a different campsite
13 March – Coronado National Forest, Piedra Blanca: An awesome day slowly cruising through (and exploring some 4×4 side tracks) the Coronado National Forest area. Scenery changed drastically from the dry grasslands of yesterday to hilly and quite wooded hills with lots of valleys branching off.
14 March – Coronado NF, Hunter Canyon Road: Lots of rain overnight and very cold this morning so we decided to take a slightly longer drive and play tourist in the old historic mining town of Bisbee. Burger and MacNCheese for lunch before a quick backtrack to another wild camp on the west side of Coronado, camped below a peak which has a light dusting of snow.
15 March – Hot Wells BLM – Safford: After a very windy and cold night (even had ice rain drops) we got a great idea from the Bells for Hot Wells BLM campsite, which has hot pools in the middle of the desert. It didn’t take much for us to decide to head this direction for a few days before we double back to Tucson. Got a bit lost on the the way in and landed up on a few 4wd tracks but Mr J took it in his stride.
17 March – Tucson: After a few very lekker days at the hot springs, we are back at Brett & Yvonne to collect and install a new geyser and the clutch master cylinder
21 March – BLM near Saguaro National Park: And we are back on the road ! (Hopefully for an extended period now after replacing the clutch slave cylinder and the gas geyser). Overall a super chilled day, stopped at cool water tap behind a diner to fill up Mr J tanks, then cruised via “Gates pass” to the west side of Saguaro National Park. The Saguaro’s can be up to a 150 years old.
22 March – BLM Ironwood Forest Nat Monument: After a quick explore of the area around where we camped last night we made a short hop across to the other side of Ironwood Forest National monument. Spent rest of day chilling by Mr J and enjoying the silence of the desert, which has only been interrupted by the calls of coyotes this afternoon and the occasional ATV roaring past on the main access road about 300m from us.
24 March – Lava Trail trailhead: Another short and easy day as we work our way towards Phoenix. One short stop at a gas station to refill water tanks and use stable internet to order new “takkies” for Mr Jones before heading off the highway and into another remote BLM campsite
25 March – Sonoran National Monument BLM Land: Another short hop to another spectacular desert campsite and once again because it is BLM land it is free.
26 March – Gilbert, Tatum & Bryce pozzie: New tyres for Mr Jones, a stop at Home Depot for plumbing components so that we can rebuild / replace Mr Jones snorkel head and then on to Tania niece and her husband’s new place in Gilbert outside Phoenix. Another chilled but good day, travelling in the USA is certainly pretty easy
28 March – Clifftop, Tonto Nat Forest: Another entirely different part of Arizona. After checking out a possible future storage spot for Mr J we head east of Phoenix and what turned out to be a really scenic drive. And once again we find ourselves in an entirely different landscape (on a clifftop) with much more grassland and small shrubs
30 March – Hot Wells BLM, Safford/Bowie: Back south to the desert hot springs as the weather forecast for the week is chilly and even minus temps for Grand Canyon which is the direction we were headed… So we decided to backtrack and enjoy the hot pools.