Blogs from Gila Bend, Arizona, United States, North America

Today's adventures took us to the Grand Canyon. Unfortunately, James did not sleep well the night before and was way overtired so when we tried to walk the rim he was just not having it. We went back to the car and he fell asleep almost immediately. We continued driving through the park and just got out seperately to enjoy the views. It was 6° when we started out this morning. By the time we finished driving through the park and started heading into Phoenix, it had warmed to 60°. We stopped at a Navajo-run lunch Cafe. I had a burger on fry bread and Scott had Mutton stew. Both were delicious. We made it to our hotel where James was able to find an area of dirt to play in. He needed some unbridled, dirty ... read more

One thinks of a pedigree as a sanctioned stamp of good breeding. Thoroughbred racehorses. Edwardian landed gentry. But comic books? These aren't just any comics but specimens from the Golden Age of American comics, 1938-1956, including some purchased in a U.S. concentration camp. A comic book pedigree is the rare designation applied to a collection of vintage material gathered by a single collector at the time of publishing. There are currently 61 pedigrees widely recognized in the comic book world. The Bette Okajima Pedigree is one of them.This pedigree is something of a legend. One theory has it that the collector was a 10-year-old girl at the Manzanar concentration camp in the California high desert. Another speculates that the Okajima signature on the covers was actually by the hand of Bette's brother. Would a girl collect ... read more

PAINTED ROCK Take exit 102 from the I-8 freeway west of Gila Bend and go north 11 miles to the BLM campground at Painted Rock. The campground is situated beside an amazing petroglyph site. Indians have been camping there and scribbling on those rocks for thousands of years. None of those scribblings have been done using paint though. Be careful where you step or reach. Many of the petroglyphs are snake figures. Snakes have been camping there for thousands of years too. The Gila River flows merrily along nearby. Following the Mexican War the Gila was the international boundary. The Mormon Battalion followed the Gila to California in 1846 and built the crudest of roads as they went. As the country expanded by 1857 the Butterfield Trail followed the route taken by the Mormons between Benson ... read more

No one was moving too fast, but we made our way across the desert to Organ Pipe NationaL Monument. What a beautiful park, just above the border. We got there after dark and bedded down. Ed was trying to use the inverter with no sucess. No big deal, we really don't need it. We have solar panels for lights. Then, the propane alarm kept going off. We had a propane tank filled on the way and we figured that was the probelm. No big deal, we will deal with it in the morning. The original plan was the spend 2 nights here, but we leave in the morning for Mexico! Yeah!... read more

One of the joys of being free from the ability to research and fact check is that I can ponder at will without the annoyance of challenging my own assumptions. I'll let you, dear reader, do so in the comments section. Since my last posting I have continued to consider the ubiquitousness of the border patrol and that the prime reason given in the area is the drug runners. Whatever, we are all aware that it is to keep out illegal aliens, namely, brown skinned Mexicans, not narco-terrorists so much. That being said, the drug war has made the border and parts of Mexico more dangerous than in years past. Melisse and I have given up on the idea of revisiting Baja California due to so many people dissuading us that, due to corruption, and potential ... read more