Day two at Dutchman

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Before we did anything else on our second morning at Lost Dutchman, I had to do some work on the truck. We had noticed when we left Bisbee that we had some trailer light issues. The left turn/brake light was not working on Fred, and my tester had shown that the trouble was in the truck wiring. The right turn/brake had failed some time ago, and I had added a trailer light converter in the back of the truck as a work-around. The only other fix would be to replace the fuse box/relay control computer to the tune of about $900 -- I don't think so. Anyway, now the left trailer light relay had failed, so I had to connect that circuit to the new converter as well. It wasn't a bad job, and in about an hour the bulb was flashing away on command again, as it should. Then, after a little unscheduled work on the chain from Cathy's bike, we were free for some more exploring.

We drove out past the park a few more miles through some very twisty roads, to Canyon Lake. As the name would imply, it was a beautiful body of water, set deep in a sandstone canyon. We thought about launching our Sportboat, but we had not yet refilled the gas tanks after our time on Lake Amistad, so we stayed ashore. After some pleasant time walking around the shoreline, we headed up the road a few more miles to Tortilla Flat. There, we had some lunch at the only restaurant for many miles -- good food, fun place. We also had some gelato. Cathy, being brave, opted for the prickly pear cactus flavor. Her judgement -- not bad, but kinda weird.

Then it was back to our campsite, for Cathy to read, and for me to attempt a lap of the State Park mountain bike trail. I'm sure that for any of the younger bikers we saw there, that loop would be a snooze, but for this old codger it was a challenge. Most of it was pretty easy, but there were a few places where it led down steeply into dry washes, and I scared myself a bit in those, but, against all odds, I survived unscathed.

That night we enjoyed a small campfire with some mesquite wood that I had collected outside the State Park in the Tonto National Forrest, and that was great. There is just something so elemental about staring into the flames of a campfire, it's something we humans have done for many thousands of years I guess.

We'll be off again in the morning, headed north, this time for Dead Horse Ranch State Park near Cottonwood AZ. I plan to do some fishing on the Verde River, and we also want to drive up to near-by Sedona for a visit there.

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