Tap on the title above to go to the website to view pictures and see information about each picture.

Bellvue Watson Fish Hatchery

Hello everyone, Jodi and I have been here in Bellvue, Colorado for a little over 2 months and working at Bellvue-Watson Fish Hatchery feeding the thousands of rainbow trout. We have four raceways about a thousand feet long full of fish. We feed them just about every day with about 800lbs of fish food, using a truck of course. It has been very interesting and very fun working here. We do other things like grounds maintenance, painting, and cleaning. The hatchery is open every day from 8am to 3pm and we even give tours of the hatchery. We enjoy hosting here so much that we are returning again next summer. We like the area a lot. It’s quiet and has a beautiful surroundings, plus Fort Collins is a fun town and full of entertainment. We go to live music events in town and Lory State Park to hike. We worked at Lory State Park two years ago. Some pictures of the area we live at and around us. 

Hiking at Lory State Park

Some live music we went to while in Fort Collins

The nice thing is Fort Collins being a college town, has a lot of art & music fests going on all summer, so we try to go to them when we can. We get caught in the rain almost every time, but then it stops just in time for music.

Wildfires of Colorado

While here in Colorado, we have been worried about the wildfires that spark up here and there. Two years ago, when we were at Lory State Park, we had lightning start a wild fire just 4 to 5 miles away, but they got that one under control quickly. Well just a week ago, there have been 5 wildfires start up around us and they all happen within a week. The largest one, the Alexander Mountain fire was the first one to start and it is 16 miles away.  About 25 people have lost their homes, and it’s growing. About 10,000 acres has burned and only 35% is contained, and all 5 wildfires are still going. This is scary for sure. That is really the only thing that does concern us when we are out west. We don’t have to worry about the hurricanes and the hundreds of tornadoes out east. Just hail and wildfires.

We are here at the hatchery till September. After that we head to Florence, Arizona for our winter hosting job at Desert Gardens RV Resort. We will be there for 6 months and then head back to the Bellvue Watson Hatchery for the last hosting job. We will then winter from then on at Sierra Vista, Arizona at the Vista View RV Resort that we found last winter. We fell in love with that resort and we have a real nice RV site with a storage shed and great view of the mountains. There are some awesome people that stay there for the winter or all year-round and they have lots of games, fun events and dinners. We plan on staying at that RV resort for winters, about 9 months, and head north to the upper United States to site see areas like Wyoming, Montana, Colorado, Washington, Utah for about 3 months during the hot summers of Arizona. We will be pretty much done with the traveling all over the United States for hosting jobs and just head to Arizona for winters, and up to the northwestern states for summer visits. We are happy we finally found a permanent winter location in Arizona. We will continue to travel and site see a few places up north each summer. We can’t give up this lifestyle of traveling and seeing the many beautiful places we have still not yet seen. Many more adventures ahead of us. The pictures below is the Vista View RV Resort in Sierra Vista, AZ that we will be spending our winters at. Great place.

We hope all is well with everyone, and you are staying cool and safe. We will do the same!! If you have any questions or comments, please leave them on here. I will answer you as soon as I can. Keep following us on our travels and see where we BOBBLE TO NEXT!!!!!!

THE BOBBLE HEAD TRAVELERS JODI AND MARK

“Click on photos to get information on each photo”

A Sunset shot from Western Way RV Resort becomes a memory encapsulated in the hues of an evening sky, where the sun dips below the horizon in a gentle yet profound goodbye. At Western Way RV Resort, guests are often treated to this spectacular display, where the sky transforms into a canvas painted with strokes of pink, orange, and purple.

Hello everyone, we are heading north to Colorado from Arizona. We have stayed in Tucson for a month before we headed up north. So we wanted to tell you about our trip up through Arizona and then through New Mexico, then up to Colorado. We are in Cottonwood Arizona at Dead Horse Ranch State Park just outside of Sedona AZ. Sedona is supposed to be gorgeous. While at Dead Horse Ranch, we will visit Tuzigoot National Monument and Red Rock State Park in Sedona, AZ. Then we head to go stand on the corner in Winslow Arizona and will be staying at Homolovi State Park in. While there, we plan on seeing the Meteor Crater and the Petrified Forest National Park. Then we travel back through New Mexico past Albuquerque and will be staying at a casino, Sky City RV park in Acoma, NM. There we may check out some indigenous areas around the area. After that we head straight up to Fort Collins and hit about two more state parks before getting to our destination place in Bellvue, CO, where we will be working at the Bellvue-Watson Fish Hatchery. We are excited about getting there and giving tours and feeding the fish..  Fun fun….

I want to leave you some photos that we took while in Tucson, and show you the four main attractions we went to while there.

We stayed at Western Way RV Resort for a month, and it’s a pretty nice resort with activities and a pool, with hot tub. Sites have a concrete patio, but you are on top of each other. The resort is close to two places that Jodi and I went to. 

Old Tucson Studios (Western Theme Park)  3 miles up the road from resort. This is the location that they did over 500 western movies and are still filming to this day. Shows like Bonanza, High Chaparral, Little House On the Prairie, Tombstone with Kurt Russel,  Three Amigos with Steve Martin, Chevy Chase and Martin Short. It also boasts older movies with John Wayne like the first one filmed there in 1940 called Arizona. Plus many many more.  Jodi and I took a one hour tour and the guide showed us where a lot of the film sets were, and who and what movies were filmed. Since it was a private tour with about 10 people, there was no one else around to get into any of my photo shoots of many of the film set locations. Since the theme park was closed for just tours, we went again the next day to see the rest of the place and ride the old carousel that dates back to 1907.  So enjoy the photos we took. 

Saguaro National Park where there are over 2 million saguaros and 28 other cactus species throughout the national park. The park is divided into two sections; one on the West side of Tucson, and one on the East side of Tucson, 25 miles apart from one another. We were on the West side so Jodi and I of course went 7 miles up the road to the West side. Next year we will go visit the East side of the national park. We spent about 6 hours driving around and hiking with a short picnic. It was an awesome day and we got some nice pictures.  Enjoy…

We also had a chance to go into Tucson and see the Van Gogh Immersive Experience which was a good 4 hours of pure enjoyment. What an experience to see.  You learn all about his life and his art. The exhibit had a huge room with all four walls and the floor with his moving artwork. It just blew you away with all the beautiful creations that he did all his life. Enjoy the Pictures.

We got to see the SpaceX launch from our site in Western Way RV Resort. We climbed up on top of our RV roof and got a great view.

April 8^th we happened to see a partial eclipse of 69% of the covering of the sun. This is our second eclipse in less than a year; one annular and one total. We had seen the annual one that was October 14^th 2023 while we were staying at City of Rocks State Park, New Mexico.  We did the colander shining on something white to see a bunch of half circles. We also had the glasses to view it as it was going on. We took a picture of it with our phone using the glasses.

Just a few Pictures from Dead Horse Ranch State Park

A sneak peak of Red Rock State Park, will post more beautiful pictures of Red Rock State Park on the next Blog Post….

We will be seeing much more heading up to Colorado, but will have to wait for the next post to see all of the new photos and attractions that we will see during the travels up north.  So as we always say, wait to see where we Bobble to next and check out our next post…..  Take care be safe and stay healthy and stay tuned in for our next Adventure..   

The Bobble Head Travelers

Jodi and Mark

If you get a post in your email click on the Title of this post STILL OUT IN NEW MEXICO to go to the Blog site, this is when you can click on the pictures and see more info on all the photos.

City of Rocks State Park, Faywood, NM

Hello everyone, We are staying at an RV Park in Silver City, NM now. We camp hosted at City of Rocks State Park the end of August to the middle of November. The park is an awesome place to stay and hike through the rocks in the park, which we did while hosting there. I did get some real nice sunrise pictures and some sunset pictures. The place is perfect for star gazing because of no light pollution at all. We were supposed to camp host till February, but things just didn’t work out for us. We weren’t appreciated and the park tech had a big chip on his shoulders. We’ve had enough “gigs” to know how volunteers should be treated and that place is NOT it. So, we just moved on.

Rose Valley RV Ranch, NM

We do like the park we are in now, Rose Valley RV Ranch in Silver City. We are here till mid-January. This RV park used to be a dairy farm back in the early 1900s, then it became an RV park about 2000. We head to Sierra Vista, AZ from here for a month and then Tucson, AZ for a month. We will arrive in Colorado for our summer volunteer job at the fish hatchery in Bellvue, CO. It’s just down the road from Lory State Park where we volunteered at two summers ago, outside of Fort Collins, CO. We are looking forward to getting back to Colorado.

While we have been here in Silver City, we went to the Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument, Established 1907 by President Theodore Roosevelt. The Gila National Forest is north of Silver City, NM. These cliff dwellings are one of only a few in the world that you can actually climb up and explore the dwellings. Archaeologists have identified 46 rooms in the five caves o Cliff Dweller Canyon, and believe they were occupied by 10 to 15 families. Mogollon Culture people are believed to have inhabited the region from between 1275 and into the early 14th century, during the Pueblo III Era. 

Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument, NM

Just FYI, if you want to check these cliff dwellings out, you will be in for a big surprise when you drive to and from the Gila National Forest to get to the cliff dwellings. It’s a very slow-going road for 44 miles starting in Silver City, NM. Route 15 is a windy and curvy road to take to the cliff dwellings as you can see from the picture below. When you leave, you may want to go Route 35 to 152 to get back to Silver City, that way is not so bad. It’s very scenic but most of it is a white-knuckle drive for many many miles. It’s worth the long two-hour drive when you get to see those Cliff Dwellings.

Chino Mine also known as the Santa Rita Mine

On our way home from Gila Cliff Dwellings, we went by the Chino copper mine, also known as the Santa Rita copper mine, located in south-western New Mexico, in the US is one of the oldest copper mines in North America and one of the first low-grade, open-pit copper mines in the world. It seems they do tours only a few times a year in big groups.

Day of the Dead Parade / Christmas Parade

Gila National Forest Whitewater Canyon (Catwalk)

Just 65 miles north of Silver City up in Gila National Forest is a place they call the Catwalk through a canyon. 2.5 mile hike, plus a nice picnic near the water.

Silver City, NM Murals

Throughout the town of Silver City, there are a lot of beautiful murals, on buildings, playgrounds and walls.

Rock Hound State Park, NM

Stayed at Rock Hound State Park before we went to City of Rocks State Park. A very nice park

We are here in Silver City for the holiday season, so hope all is well and that you have a great, safe, healthy, and festive Holiday season. Take care and stay in touch by making comments on the photos or posts we do and I will be sure to answer you back.  Miss you all and hope to see you all again on the road in the future.

Bobble Head Travelers Jodi and Mark

Hello everyone out there in the United States!! We are now in NY State and starting to head west from here. We left Tallahassee, FL April 1^st and slowly headed up the east coast up to NY, heading to Rochester, Hamlin Beach State Park. We will be visiting with family while there. We did stop at our hometown of Hammondsport, NY. Keuka Lake, one of the Finger Lakes. We got to see some friends we have not seen in over 5 years, and it was good to catch up. Unfortunately some of our other errands required extra time from us so we ran out of time to see everyone that we wanted to. Now from here we are heading West to New Mexico for our Winter hosting job at City of Rocks State Park starting in September and ending December 1^st.  Then we will head to Arizona for the remainder of the winter. I will now post some pictures that we took along the way up from Tallahassee.

Georgia State Park / Laura S. Walker State Park

Georgia State Park / Jack Hill State Park

South Carolina / Lake City / CrossRoads Resort

South Carolina / / Myrtle Beach Travel Park

North Carolina / Apex / Jordan Lake State Park

Virginia / Mount Solon / Natural Chimneys RV Park

New York / Hammondsport / Elmbois RV Park

New York / Campbell / Camp Bell Campground

***WARNING***

Lots of fun activities, but a very noisy park with many screaming kids all day and lots of barking dogs. Jodi and I really did not like this place. Too noisy!!!! UGH. If you like a lot of noise this is a place for you.

We are heading to Hamlin Beach outside of Rochester, NY. I wanted to get this out so the time heading to New Mexico would be another post. I wanted to post so everyone would know where we are now, and to see some nice pictures from Florida to NY.

Hope you like and please comment and let us know you following us. We will be in New Mexico by September. So stay in touch and we will post again soon.  

Stay safe and stay tuned.

The Bobble Head Travelers

Mark and Jodi

Hello everyone out there. Long time, no hear, right?!!

Jodi and I have been pretty busy hosting / volunteering at the Alfred B. Maclay Gardens State Park here in Tallahassee Florida for the past 4 months. This State Park was a plantation that was purchased by Alfred B. Maclay in 1923, 100 years ago this year. He purchased close to four thousand acres, sold off some to the surrounding areas. It now has 1,189 acres and consists of 3 parts, the recreation area for swimming, boating, picnicking, fishing, and kayaking on Lake Hall. The gardens covers 28 acres of many different flowers, plants, Live Oak trees with Spanish Moss hanging down, a reflection pool and a walled garden, The 3^rd part is about 11 miles of hiking and biking trails that go around Overstreet Lake.  It’s a beautiful park. The garden consist of assorted Japanese Camellias, Japanese Cherry, Southern Indian Azaleas, Red Buckeye, Saucer Magnolias, Sago Palm, many Live Oak trees with Spanish Moss and Resurrection Fern and many more. Too many to list. Its a State Park you need to see if you going through Tallahassee, FL off of I-10.

Some hosting duties we do is good hard work, I collect fees at the entrance booth of the park, and at times sit at the visitor center. I work sometimes outside clearing trails, raking lots of leaves and picking up trash. Jodi does all outside stuff like working in the garden weeding, transplanting plants and flowers, worked in two pollinator gardens, some trail work, raking leaves, cleaning the playground and other small stuff. We have had a great time hosting here at Maclay Gardens.

Some pictures of Alfred B. Maclay Gardens State Park

These Alligators were in the Park

Jodi took this picture on the left of the alligator in the garden pond. He was about 3 feet long, but looks big. The picture of the alligator on the right, one of our rangers took in the parks lake, Lake Hall. A bigger one, about 7 feet long.

The park has two lakes. One has a swimming area and a dock for boats, fishing and kayaking. The other you hike/bike around. We do not do lakes with alligators. NO THANK YOU….

Visited Edward Ball Wakulla Springs State Park

We went to another Florida State Park just down the road. Edward Ball Wakulla Springs State Park for a boat tour. This tour is a 2-mile loop downstream and back among majestic bald cypress trees, elegant wading birds and toothy alligators. Manatees are often sighted. We had a great tour guide, funny and full of information. We did see a lot of alligators and 4 manatees, but they were not that close. The movie Creature from Black Lagoon was filmed in this park back in 1954.

Here are some pictures Jodi and I took.

We are staying here till April 1^st and then heading up north to NY. We are going to stop in a few states on the way up. We plan on spending a good long month at Myrtle Beach for a vacation break, then up to Jordan Lake North Carolina to visit some friends. Making our way up to NY to see more friends and family. Then we are heading WEST for our next hosting job for winter.  We happen to find a hosing job at City of Rocks State Park, NM. Outside of Silver City, NM. We have visited that state park when we were hosts of Poncho Villa State Park in Columbus, NM, back in 2018.  We really like it out west, so we may be out here for a very long time. So this will be a quick post so everyone knows what our travel plans are from here in Florida, to up north and back out west for the next 4 months starting in April.

Will try to post again on our trip up north and out west when we can. We are sure looking forward to seeing some friends and family. Till next post, hope all is well, and stay safe. Stay tuned to see our next travel adventures.

Mark and Jodi, The Bobble Head Travelers

Hello everyone, Jodi and I are getting ready to leave Colorado to head to Florida for our Winter hosting job outside of Tallahassee. We are leaving October 17^th and we are going to go through six states. KS, OK, AR, MS, AL and GA. We are going to have 40 days of travel and vacation time before we get working in Florida.

We have had a great time working and having fun here in Fort Collins and at Lory State Park. We have enjoyed the 4+ months here and do hope in a few years to come back again for another Summer hosting job. Its so quiet and beautiful here. Here are some beautiful pictures of around here, and our place we called home for the past 4+ months.

Click on photos for details of each photo.

This is Jodi and me hard at work with Jodi all suited up to clean and power wash one of 12 pit toilets throughout the park, I am about to do some landscaping, along with emptying trash.

We have many animals and critters that we have encountered. Here are a few pictures I wanted to post of our friends that has visited us while staying here at Lory State Park. We had a bear just outside our RV one night messing with the dumpsters, and we scared him off! Sorry no pictures of him or her.

Click on photos for details of each photo.

I also want to post some of our best pictures that we took in the past year of traveling. From September 2021 to September 2022. We have seen a lot of interesting and beautiful places in the past year that most people see in a lifetime. 

Please enjoy and comment..

September 2021, We went to Zion NP and went on a few hikes and got some good shots.

Click on photos for details of each photo.

September 2021 We went to Bryce Canon NP. Don’t we look like a cute couple? We want to come back again and camp at the campground for a few day. LOVE THIS PARK.

Click on photos for details of each photo.

September 2021, The Grand Canyon is one of the most spectacular National Parks we have visited. The campground is right there at the South Rim. Loved the campground with Elk walking all around day and night.

Click on photos for details of each photo.

October to April 2021, Benson, AZ was our Winter vacation stay for 6 months. The town is known for its wall murals and some wild west history.

Click on photos for details of each photo.

October 2021, Tombstone Arizona is a must small town to visit, lots of Wyatt Earp action, shootouts in the streets, and just being there makes you feel like you are back in time of the 1880s. Boothill cemetery, saloons, casinos, horse and buggies, hotels and restaurants. It is a fun place to see. Lots of history.

Click on photos for details of each photo.

December 2021, The town of Bisbee is just 11 miles north of the Mexico border, 18 miles from Tombstone. This is a very interesting town with many mines and minerals. Just outside of this town is Lowell street. Again going back in time. There is a street of the early 1900s.

Click on photos for details of each photo.

Jan 2022, Jodi and I went on a nice hike in Chiricahua National Monument and got some nice pictures. This is a hidden jewel outside of Wilcox, AZ.

Click on photos for details of each photo.

April 2022, We have been here before and love this place; Lost Dutchman State Park. What a view of the Superstition Mountains. I seem to get a site that you see the mountains just outside our door.

Click on photos for details of each photo.

April 2022, This place is in the mid part of Arizona heading north to Flag Staff. Cliff dwellings in the small town of Camp Verde, AZ.

Click on photos for details of each photo.

May 2021, One of those places you must go and experience such natural beauty of the (Dine’) Navajo Nation. What a 3 hour tour we took to see most of Monument Valley.

Click on photos for details of each photo.

May 2022, Arches National Park was just tremendous. I never thought we would make it to the Delicate Arch, which is pictured below. Jodi and I hiked 3.2 miles round trip to get a beautiful picture of this Arch with the mountains in the middle. I also did not really know how big it was, its huge. About 52feet high.

Click on photos for details of each photo.

We then arrived in the middle of May 2022 and have worked at Lory State Park till we depart next month. When we arrive in Florida, it will take me a little while to get out another post, But I will be taking lots of pictures on our way and then you will be able to check out what we did on our way to Florida. Forty days of travel. We do hope to hit some interesting places.

Till next time, we hope everyone is well and staying healthy and safe. Please comment on our blog so we can stay in touch.  Thank you everyone for following us in our travels.. 

The Bobble Head Travelers!! Mark and Jodi.

Good day everyone, Jodi and I left Benson, AZ to head to Lory State Park, CO. In the town of Bellvue, outside of Fort Collins, CO. We left Benson, AZ the 1^st of April and took a month and a half to get to Colorado. We have seen some really interesting places on our trip.  Everyone calls the places you most want to see a “Bucket List”. We have seen a few bucket list places along our trip.

For Information on each photo, please click on the photo, then scroll through the photos. You must view the blog through the web page. Click on the title of your email to go directly to the blog web page. The title to this blog is:

“Exciting trip from Arizona to Colorado”

Our first stop was Lost Dutchman State Park, Apache Junction, AZ

We were at Lost Dutchman State Park 5 years ago and had a great camp site with a view of the Superstition Mountains. Well, I got us another site with a great view, and it was really fun being there again and doing some hiking. We got some good pictures..

OUR NEXT STOP

Our second stop Camp Verde, AZ Montezuma Castle Monument & Fort Verde

Here we visited the Camp Verde, AZ Montezuma Castle Monument: cliff dwellings dating back to the 1100s. This was amazing to see. Fort Verde, was a military fort back in 1871 – 1891. It was Camp Lincoln before it was called Fort Verde. During the Indian wars they used this little fort as a supply base for the patrols and scouting expeditions eastward into the Tonto Basin. It was at the time of the end of the Indian resistance in central Arizona.

Montezuma Castle Monument, Camp Verde, AZ

Camp Lincoln/Fort Verde

The pictures below of Camp Verde/Fort Verde were taken from the Website of Fort Verde, I take no credit for any of the photo of the Fort.

OUR NEXT STOP

Our Third Stop Was Tuba City, AZ Navajo Nation Reservation

Tuba City is the largest community within the Navajo Nation. Tuba City is considered the western regional hub of the Navajo Nation. The Navajo Nation covers 17 million Acres (26,000 Square Miles) which is the largest land area assigned to a Native American Jurisdiction within the United States. The Navajo people traditionally call themselves DINE (din AY) which means “The People” in Navajo. This was the area that we were able to see fossilized Dinosaur Tracks just 5 miles outside the town of Tuba City. The Moenkopi Dinosaur Tracks are located on Highway 160 just west of Tuba City on the Navajo Nation.

OUR NEXT STOP

Our Fourth Stop Was Cadillac Ranch, Bluff, UT  Bluff Fort / Monument Valley

Hole-in-the-Rock Trail

We stayed here for two reasons, we wanted to see Monument Valley and Fort Bluff, a small fort by about 260 or so Mormon settlers, men, women and children that did the impossible by settling this area of Bluff, UT.  The story below of how Bluff Fort got started, helps to understand what this area of Bluff, UT is all about.

Bluff, the first Anglo community in southeastern Utah, was settled in April 1880 by Mormon pioneers seeking to establish a mission on the San Juan River in the present-day Four Corners area. The San Juan area of southeastern Utah was then known as a refuge for lawless men. The San Juan Mission would act as a buffer for the rest of settled Utah, establish law and order, and maintain friendly relations with the Indians in the area.

A “mission call” went out in December 1878 and was answered by numerous southern Utah families, many of whom gave up fine homes to move with all their possessions to the remote San Juan area. Seventy families consisting of around 250 men, women and children, left Escalante in south central Utah in October 1879 intending to establish the mission at Montezuma on the San Juan River.

Hole-in-the-Rock, Kane County, UT.  Photos above by Kenneth Mays.

Using a route advised by a previous scouting party known as the “Escalante short cut”, the pioneers expected the 125 mile trek would take 6 weeks. Instead, the journey extended 260 miles over 6 months via the Hole-in-the-Rock-Trail in arduous, winter conditions.

Historians consider the Hole-in-the-Rock Expedition one of the most extraordinary wagon trips ever undertaken in North America and a fine example of pioneer spirit. Many sections of the trail were almost impassable. To allow wagon passage, the men spent 6 weeks blasting and chiseling a path through a narrow, 1,200 foot drop in the sandstone cliffs known as the Hole-in-the-Rock, which is still visible at present-day Lake Powell (Glen Canyon National Recreation Center). Brothers Hyram and Benjamin Perkins had experience using explosives from their days as miners in Wales, and were put in charge of drilling and blasting to make a path for wagon passage.

Most of the Hole-in-the-Rock Trail is still visible and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Two sites on the Hole in the Rock Trail are part of present-day Bears Ears National Monument, Shash Jaa Unit.

By April 1880, the pioneers were too exhausted to continue to their intended destination 20 miles upriver and chose to settle along a flat area in the river valley. Calling the new location Bluff City, the pioneers began dividing the land, building log cabins, and digging a ditch from the river for crop irrigation.

We had reserved and paid for a 3.5 to 4 hour tour of Monument Valley and for some reason there was a mix up on our reservation. They were going to tack us onto another 2 hour tour so we were not going to get our 3.5 to 4 hours. We contacted the company and they ended up giving us a private tour with just the two of us. The tour guide was a young indigenous individual from the Navajo area and he was very knowledgeable. We had a long 4 hour tour and it was amazing.  Here is what we saw of Monument Valley.

MONUMENT VALLEY TOUR Utah/Arizona

If you have watched any western movies with John Wayne and other famous movie stars back in the early 1930s to 50s, the backdrop of many of them were filmed in Monument Valley. Monument Valley became famous due to John Ford, a director that filmed many movies there, drawing many people and tourists to Monument Valley years later. The first western movie by John Ford with John Wayne was “Stagecoach” released in 1939 filmed on location of Monument Valley.  Other movies were “Fort Apache” with John Wayne and Shirley Temple released in 1948, and Tom Hanks in “Forest Gump” in 1993 when he did the “Run Forest Run” scene with Monument Valley in the background of Tom running up the road, then stopping in the middle of the road.

Click on photos for more information

OUR NEXT STOP

Our Fifth Stop was Moab, UT Arches National Park

We started nice and early and had to have a reservation time to get into the park. This park gets really crowded fast and we got there at 9am. We had an awesome day seeing most of the park. It got really windy later in the afternoon, and we did see just about everything we could during our time that we had. Here is what we saw.

OUR FINAL STOP

We are here at Lory State Park hosting for the next few months. We arrived here the 16^th of May and have been hosting a little over three weeks. Such a beautiful park. Its just outside of Fort Collins, Co. Cheyenne, WY is about 50 miles due north of us, and Denver is about 70 miles due south of us. Fort Collins has a lot to offer, shopping, breweries, wineries, live music, and it even has a Drive In Theater.  The State Park is a day use park and has over 26 miles of hiking, biking trails and some horse equestrian trails.  Jodi and I have gone on two nice hikes so far, and plan on doing many more on our days off.

The job we are doing here is kicking our butts, but we are getting in shape. A lot of it is grounds maintenance like mowing, weed eating, cleaning BBQ grills, emptying trash cans, power washing, painting picnic tables and keeping all of the restrooms clean and stocked. Its an all day job, but we do have 4 days off to recover from working very hard at doing all the above. Its rewarding. We work hard and then play hard. 

Here are some pictures of our view from the site near the park’s maintenance building. This is our home for the next few months.

Pictures of our first 2.8 mile hike in Lory State Park. The Well Gulch Nature Trail

Pictures of our second 2.5 mile hike in Lory State Park. The Quarry Ridge Loop Trail. Such a beautiful park full of hiking trails.

This Blog has been a long time coming, and we worked hard on this blog to get you some good information on our trip from Benson, AZ and our travels to Colorado. It was full of some of the best tourist locations such as State Parks, National Parks and private parks. We had a great time and enjoyed all of our travel adventures on this 1,000 mile trip.  We are excited to be here at Lory State Park and we are enjoying every day we work and the days we don’t. Exploring this State Park and exploring the surrounding areas of Ft. Collins. Hope you all enjoyed our blog and pictures. We do work hard and we also play hard when we do our travels from place to place. We enjoy hosting and volunteering at various State Parks, National Parks and Corp of Engineer parks. 

To everyone out there, we are thinking of you all and hope you are all doing well. Stay tuned and keep your eyes pealed for the next adventure blog that we post… 

The Bobble Head Travelers,   Jodi and Mark

Good day everyone!!  It’s been a while since we have done our travel blog. We have been in Benson, AZ for the past 4 months, since October.  Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years have come and gone. We had our tripod Christmas tree set up and our little Christmas tree inside. The holidays just didn’t feel tremendous this year. For one, the tornadoes that wiped out close to 9 states; Mayfield, Kentucky is totally gone. What kind of Christmas did they have? Not a very good one. On top of all the bad weather, we have the new Covid variant that is now in every state in the US. On the first of December we had one case in the U.S., 22 days later it was in every state. When are we going to be done with Covid?? Maybe in the year 2025…We shall see!!  If only people would just do what they should, this would get better much faster. I’m not saying it’s going away, it will be around for very very long time to come.

Pictures of our RV site and some pics of a nice rainbow that was during one of our rain storms here, and a few sunset pictures.

One of the biggest tourist and popular places to see is Tombstone “The Town Too Tough To Die”, and it’s just 20 miles from Benson. The history of Tombstone is very interesting. You may know the famous gunfight at the O.K. Corral with the Earp brothers and Doc. Holiday against the outlaw Cowboys that included the Clanton and McLaury brothers. This is what made Tombstone famous. The finding of silver was really the main thing that made Tombstone get its name and put this little town on the map. They still do reenactments of the O.K. Corral shootouts in downtown Tombstone. There are a few mines that you can tour when you visit this unique little town, along with some great saloons and restaurants.

Mr. Ed Schieffelin was told when he was looking for his big bonanza of silver in that area, he was told all he would find is his own tombstone, so when he found millions of dollars worth of silver, he decided to call this town Tombstone, hence the name of this small town in Cochise County..

It’s a fun town with much to see and great places to eat. There are a lot of original historic buildings and saloons. One is the Bird Cage Theatre, a popular saloon and still one of the original buildings with memorabilia from the late 1800s, we still need to visit this saloon which is now a museum that you can walk through for a small fee.

We still have a few more sites to see here in Arizona. There are a few places around Benson and at this time we have visited Tombstone, Kartchner Caverns, Bisbee, Chiricahua National Monument, Amerind (American Indian) Museum and Triangle T Guest Ranch. There are so many things to see in these small towns. We are going to Bisbee again. It’s such a small town but there is a lot to see and we needed more time. We are going to try to see The Desert Museum outside of Tucson, as well as a few movie set locations where over 100 western movies have been filmed; The Old Tucson studios, Tucson, AZ,  Mescal studios, Mescal, AZ (between Tucson and Benson)and few others. Parts of Tombstone movie was filmed in Tombstone too.

Pictures of Tombstone, AZ

We went to Kartchner Caverns State Park. This park has two large caverns to tour and we had a chance to see the better one of the two. You can not take pictures while touring the caverns, so there are no pictures to show, but I will show you some from the internet. (I did not take these pictures shown below.) The State Park also has a really nice campground and a few hiking trails.

Pictures of Kartchner Canvern State Park, the two caverns

Just a few miles south of Bisbee is a town called Lowell, AZ.  This town was left in the time zone of 1900s. This is Erie Street, “historic” Lowell, Bisbee, AZ. It felt like we went back in time walking down the street of this little town.

Pictures of Erie Street Lowell, AZ (Click on a Photo for more Information)

We went to Bisbee, a real neat quaint town that seemed to be the biggest Copper mining town in all the United States back in the late 1800s. It ranked1 of 5 Copper mines in the world, producing 25% of the worlds copper back in the days. Bisbee is just 11 miles from the Mexico border. When we went to Bisbee we didn’t have enough time to see all the fun stuff in this town, so we are going again soon.  There are lots of little shops, museums and neat little hidden treasure’s. 

Pictures of Bisbee, AZ (Click on a Photo for more Information)

We had a chance to see another awesome National attraction;. Chiracahua National Monument. This place is similar to Bryce Canyon, but smaller and without the red stone color. This place has a lot of green moss all over the rocks and a lot of balanced rocks, and pillars. There is very good hiking throughout the canyon. 

Pictures of Chiracahua mountains

The Amerind Museum just 15 miles down east I-10 from Benson, is dedicated to the preservation and interpretation of Native American cultures and their histories. Just a walk around this place with the landscape of hundreds of rocks and boulders on this 1600 plus acres is just amazing.

Pictures of Amerind Museum area, (Click on a Photo for more Information)

Less than a mile from the Amerind Museum is a place called Triangle T Ranch with 160 acres that has some history to it. Established in 1922, the Triangle T Historic Ranch boasts a colorful and exciting past. Apache Chief, Cochise, and his band used the ranch as a winter camp for many generations. Other well-knowns that stayed on the ranch include President John F. Kennedy, General John J. Pershing, and Dr. Leon T. Silver just to name a few. High ranking Japanese from WWII were detained on this ranch: 22 adults and 15 children. Japanese war criminals were detained here for about 5 months, then were exchanged for American POWs. In the 1950s, Part of the land was made into the Amerind Museum as mentioned above. The new owner then built a Saloon/restaurant and opened it up for western movies. Some more famous actors and great western movies and shows were filmed here: the original 3:10 to Yuma 1957, with Glenn Ford and Van Heflin, some of the original Lone Ranger, the High Chaparral TV series 1967-71, Stagecoach with Kris Kristofferson, Johnny Cash, & Willie Nelson. A few other movie stars that have stayed at the ranch are Gene Hackman, John “the Duke” Wayne, Roy Rogers, and Dale Evens.  It was a very unique place to visit and maybe get a drink or dinner at the ROCK Saloon. 

Pictures of Triangle T Guest Ranch (Click on a Photo for more Information)

This is only some of what we have done here in Arizona. We will be doing some more between now and the time we head up to Colorado for the summer. We will post some more interesting travels when we get settled up at our Summer hosting job.  

So we were going to head back to Spooner Lake State Park at Lake Tahoe, NV after leaving Benson, but they are still renovating the park with a new Visitor Center, a new picnic area and adding an amphitheater.  They’re not quite done and won’t be when we want to arrive there, so we found another summer hosting job in Colorado.  We did want to go back to Spooner, but we will have to try to get back there in a few years when they are done with the renovations.

We are leaving Benson, AZ April 1^st to head to Lory State Park near Fort Collins, CO.  Jodi got online and looked for a few State Parks in Colorado, Lory State Park contacted us.  We had a Virtual interview and got the hosting job. We are so excited and ready to get back to hosting/doing some work.  Fun Fun.. It is a day use State Park, so yes we are all by ourselves during our evenings.

So on our way up to Lory State Park, we have to burn about a month and half to get to up to Colorado without us getting snowed in at some locations. We hope that arriving to the State Park mid May will be good and clear of any snow or snow storms. We shall find out.  When we leave Benson we are going to stay in the area of Tucson for a couple of weeks. After that, we are going to Lost Dutchman State Park for a week, then we go to a park in Apache Junction for another week, just a few miles from Lost Dutchman SP. We have been to Lost Dutchman SP before and loved it there. Such a beautiful place and a great place to hike…

We are going to start heading up to Monument Valley, where lots of western films have been shot. This is the Navajo Nation territory covering about 17,544,500 acres. We are going to get a tour of the area, so do hope to see and get plenty of pictures…

We then head further north to Utah up towards Moab, the Arches national Park. Another one of our Bucket list Parks.  We do hope again we don’t get snowed out. 

Picture of Arches by Adhemar Vargas Baigqorria

From Moab, UT, we are heading into Colorado by way of I-70 into Denver and then up to Fort Collins. Wish us luck.   We will be posting some great pictures when we get settled into our summer spot at Lory State Park. 

Do hope you have enjoyed this big informational Blog. We want all of our friends and family to be safe and healthy. Stay tuned and see what we will venture to next… Stay in touch and make some comments about any of the photos and or posts and we will respond back. Miss you all and hope to see you again someday soon.

Bobble Head Travelers Mark and Jodi

How is everyone doing during this hot, stormy, wildfires Summer of wildfires??? Along with covid-19/Delta not going away, life is a very big challenge for us all. Jodi and I are doing our best to stay safe during all the above.We left Federation Forest the 31^st of July and started heading south towards Arizona for our Winter stay. We plan on taking 6 months off from hosting/volunteering.On our trip down to Arizona, we had to visit some states and made sure to see some bucket list places along our way down South. We went through the rest of Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Utah and into Arizona. We added two more states to our travel map and have seen 29 states so far.

Oregon and Utah..

When we got to Utah, we felt like our vacation had started. Our first adventurous stop was in Promontory, Utah. The Golden Spike National Park, Promontory Point was the site of the dramatic completion, on 10 May 1869, of the first Transcontinental Railroad, which linked the Union Pacific on the East and the Central Pacific on the West. The show Hell on Wheels is what got us hooked on the Transcontinental railroad development of the early 1800s. Great TV show to watch..

Names of the two trains from the West and from the East.

Jupiter train number #60 facing East the Central Pacific train that came from Sacramento, California and the United Pacific’s Number #119 facing West the Union pacific train from Omaha, Nebraska.

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This was the Golden Spike that was the last spike driven when both the Jupiter train #60 the Central Pacific and Union Pacific’s train #119 the Union Pacific met on May 9th, 1869. Finishing the Transcontinental Railroad from the West, Sacramento, CA and from the East, Omaha, Nebraska. 6 years in the making. Period of 1863 to 1869.

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We then stopped in Ogden, UT for the Ogden Union Train Station Museum. This was a continuation of the Transcontinental Railroad. Ogden was supposed to be the junction point, but it ended in Promontory.  Promontory wasn’t equipped enough to be the main train station, so Ogden was made the main transfer train station for the Transcontinental Railroad.

Just inside the Union Station, there were some beautiful murals at each end of the station inside, they show all the hard work and laborers working the railroads.

We visited the Museum of Ancient Life. Located in Thanksgiving Point, Lehi, UT. The Museum of Ancient Life is one of the world’s largest dinosaur museums. We have never been to a dinosaur museum…

As we were driving to our RV park to get to Zion and Bryce, we happen to pass Butch Cassidy’s childhood home right off of Highway 89. Didn’t know he lived here right near Bryce Canyon National Park, Circleville, UT.

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Jodi and I had a chance to visit Zion National Park, and Bryce Canyon National Park, Utah. Both are very beautiful in different ways. We both took lots a great pictures…

Zion National Park

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Bryce Canyon National Park

We wanted to see the Utah Arches but was too far out of our way. We will hit that another time.

Once we finished Utah, we headed to The GREAT GRAND CANYON OF ARIZONA….  We stayed at the Trailer Village Campground at the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. It’s a very nice campground with lots of elk walking in and around the camp sites bugling to each other. We even saw a very old large elk, and he was using his big antlers to bring branches down so he could eat the leaves.

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Both of us took many stunning pictures of the Grand Canyon. At the visitor center you can take a shuttle bus to most of all the viewpoints along the canyon. We did that our second day, and took plenty of pictures, the third day Jodi and I hiked the Grand Canyon Rim trail. We hiked about 5 miles. Such an amazing view and sites to see on the Rim trail.  BREATH-TAKING VIEWS

I got up one morning early, 5Am to get a great shot of the Sunrise over the Grand Canyon. It wasn’t as good as I was expecting, but it come out pretty nice. A lot of folks were out to catch it coming up over the Grand Canyon.

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The evening came and Jodi and I went to the far eastern side of the Grand Canyon, Lipan Point to catch the sunset. Also not as good as I was expecting. It was a bad hazy, smoky evening. This is what we got….

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We have a few more weeks to go before we get to Benson, AZ our Winter destination to rest up for 6 months. We have seen what we wanted during our trip south. The rest of the stops we will be taking will be just a few days each to get us to Butterfield RV Resort. Just 3 more stops. Our six months starts the 1^st of October, so we must stop at a few more RV parks before getting to Benson, AZ. We plan on checking out Kartchner Caverns state Park, Tombstone the O.K. Corral, Bisbee mines, and a few other places around Benson, AZ during our stay.

Glad we had a chance to give you all an update with lots of pictures of our travels through 4 states heading to Arizona. Till we post again, take care and please be safe.

The Bobblehead Travelers,    Jodi and Mark

Picture taken by Jodi in Enumclaw, WA.

Jodi and I are here at Federation Forest State Park in Washington State. Been here now for a little over a month, just 30 miles away from Mt. Rainier. The Mountain that they say is a large active stratovolcano in the Cascade Range of the Pacific Northwest. Hope it stays quiet while we are staying so close to it.. The Elevation is 14,411 and last eruption was 1894….

This giant tree is probably 800 to 1,000 years old, stands about 250 feet tall and about 8 feet in diameter. One of many large Douglas Firs in our park. Just incredible.

We are enjoying our stay here at the park and working to get the park cleaned up from a few things that has happen in the past year; Covid-19, bad winter windstorms. A few months ago, the park had a bad windstorm that has knocked down a lot of trees and some big trees that are hundreds of years old. Most of the park was cleaned up, but we are now cleaning up some of what was left at the picnic areas and shelters that were cluttered with tree limbs and leaves. Its nice and quiet and remote here at this State Park.  We are about 19 miles from everything and Enumclaw the small town just outside of the park. It is a nice little town for our shopping, local pubs and restaurants which we now can enjoy since we’re fully vaccinated! Woo Hoo.

Some real easy not so long trails with many trees and lots of moss hanging all over the forest.

We are here not to just keep up with the few mile hiking trails but to also keep the Catherine Montgomery Interpretive Center open. This Interpretive Center (IC) has a lot of information about how the State Park was started.  The park was acquired, built and organized in mid-1920’s through the work of Catherine Montgomery and her affiliation with the General Federation of Women’s Clubs of Washington State. It was interesting to see that a few women did such a great thing to start a huge old growth forest and make it into one of Washington’s State Parks. Some of the trees in this park are 600 to 1,000 years old… There is even a trail called, “Land of the Giants”. The Park was dedicated and opened in 1949. Catherine Montgomery also donated her estate to have the IC built in 1964. Such a nice Interpretive Center with so much information on this State Park.

Women of the General Federation of Women’s Clubs Washington State break ground on the Catherine Montgomery Interpretive Center in the early 1960s. Photo courtesy of Washington State Parks Collections.

The Interpretative Center was built in 1964 by Catherine Montgomery’s Estate, hence the name Catherine Montgomery Interpretative Center pictured below, Photo courtesy of Washington State Parks Collections

These pictures are of some animals and stuff inside of the Interpretative Center, the house posts of a Muckleshoot Native American man and woman was carved by two Muckleshoot Native American members out of a 300 year old tree that was from this State Park, and was carved with real Native American carving tools used back in that time era and painted using plant based dyes.

A great place to picnic right on the White River and hike some easy short trails, right near Mt. Rainier, just down the road from the park.

We are so happy that we can do some enjoyable hosting jobs throughout the states and get to work and play seeing all the beautiful sites of the great USA… Such a life of touring the USA. Having lots of fun!!!…. 

The numbers are the States we will see in order when we leave Washington State. 1 through 18 are the only states we need to see to complete our 48 states. We can not see Hawaii and most likely we won’t see Alaska. So 48 is pretty good. (Order subject to change)

We are going to be hosting here till the end of July. On our way down to Arizona for our Winter, we will stop at Utah to see a few places that is on many people’s bucket list…. Ogden, UT., where the Transcontinental Railway met up with the Pacific Railway, and Promontory, UT. Also Bryce Canyon and possibly Zion NP. We will then finally visit the great Grand Canyon that we had to cancel two other times in the past. Now we will see it for sure in August.  We then head down south Arizona for our Winter, and we are going to take a 6-month break from hosting. It will be in a small town called Benson, AZ. Only a few miles from Tombstone, AZ.

I have been watching the 1957 to 1961 TV series of the Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp for the past year, and I am so overly excited about visiting Tombstone… From Arizona we head back to Spooner Lake State Park, NV for our 3^rd summer of hosting in that State Park. That Park is now getting a new face lift. They are adding a Visitor Center and Gift shop to that park.

Well, as soon as it stops raining so much here in Washington State, Jodi and I will go visit the Mt. Rainier National Park and take some real nice pictures. We knew that it does rain a lot here in Washington, but boy, we didn’t know it rained this much. We have been told after the 4^th of July it stops raining for a few months. Our last month here, great!! So we get one month of nice sunny weather…. 

Hope all is well with everyone. We do see that the weather in the East and even Mid-West is hot with lots of rain, flooding and tornadoes. The weather is bad just about everywhere. So we do hope everyone is being safe. Also trying to enjoy the lessened Covid restrictions and still being cautious. We hope we are on the down side of all of this Covid stuff.  Stay in touch and say high by commenting on our blog.  Take care and be careful out there.      

Best wishes everyone, The Bobble Head Travelers,     Mark and Jodi!!!!

Hello Everyone, hope all are well and staying healthy.. We are now heading to Washington State for our next hosting job. We have left Desert National Wildlife Refuge and will miss it and our beautiful view we had all Winter. We will also miss the people we have met and some staff we have worked with. Wishing them all the best for the upcoming year. Please stay healthy and safe.

All Winter we had one Coot in the pond at the Refuge, and he had the pond all to himself till just a few weeks ago when some American Wigeon ducks were passing through the area. Our Cute Coot was photo bombing my pictures of the Wigeon ducks.. lol

There are many places to see outside of Las Vegas. It’s not just about the glitter, lights and casinos of the Vegas Strip. Many other great sites to see all around Las Vegas. Red Rock is a National Park we went to visit.

We are heading North and hitting a few places on our way and plan to take our time so we don’t run into any snow or bad weather on the way. We will take about 40 days to get to Washington State, Federation Forest State Park, in Enumclaw, WA. It is about 30 or so miles from Mount Rainier. We can’t wait to go to that National Park. Looking forward to our new Summer Gig…

Inside of the visitor center at Desert National Wildlife Refuge is a large raised geographic map of the Refuge. Jodi took a picture of the northern boundary of the refuge, and you can see a white spot on the left and our boundary on the right, that is how close we were to Area 51….

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We stopped at a small town called Ash Springs near Area 51. We traveled on E.T. Highway (Extraterrestrial Highway). Our first stop was the Alien Research Center which of course, had a lot of alien souvenirs and t-shirts. We got “Paul” our refrigerator magnet. This place is found in Alamo, NV, outside of Ash Springs, NV.

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Checked out the Black Mailbox that has made it in some movies out in the middle of no where. One movie you need to see, funny as Sh-t, is Paul. This mail box is for people to communicate to the Aliens. You may leave a letter or something for them. As we were driving we saw off the road, a cow head??? Hmmm, experiments!!??

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We drove a little farther on E.T. Highway to get to the infamous Little A’le’Inn.  A nice little place to get an Alien Burger with fries and a few drinks. Cool place. Got to hang a Dollar Bill on the ceiling over the Bar. This small Bar Restaurant was very popular during the Storming of Area 51 back in 2019, which did not happen by the way. We did not try to drive the 12 miles from Little A’le’Inn to Area 51. Driving to Area 51 just gets you into lots of trouble when you get too close, and you can’t see anything anyway, just a gate with signs saying stay out. It’s all a dirt road and I don’t want to do miles of that. We did that at Desert National Wildlife Refuge a lot.

Little A’le’Inn found at Rachel, NV. Outside of Area 51.

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Just down the road from our RV Park, there was a little area they call Ash Springs Rock Art Site. We drove to it and here we see the Petroglyphs all over some rocks. I like to see this old ancient kind of art. Found at Ash Springs, NV.

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We are slowly heading North and we are still hitting places with snow on the ground. Ely, NV had a snow storm a few days ago, and it was 18 degrees in the morning, and mid 50s during the day. We do hope we are not going to run into any snow storms in the next few weeks. We are in Ely, NV now and have about 7 more places to stop at before getting to our hosting job at Federation Forest State Park, Washington.

Hope all is well with everyone and staying safe and healthy…. When we get settled in at Washington, we will update you on our new summer gig… Take care and stay in touch, and see where we will Bobble to next.    

The Bobble Head Travelers,  Mark and Jodi

From our RV Home

Hello Everyone, Jodi and I want to wish you all a Happy, Healthy and Safe Holiday. We do hope you are all staying healthy and avoiding this horrible virus… We just want to update you all on our new Winter hosting adventure here at Desert National Wildlife Refuge outside of Las Vegas; Corn Creek, Nevada.  We are about three weeks into our fun working here.

There are a lot of really beautiful and interesting sights in this refuge; many Joshua trees, cacti, and Yucca plants.  Then when you get higher up at 6,000 ft. elevation you have many different types of trees, mainly pines that mix in with the Joshua trees. It’s unique and feels special.  This Refuge we are working at is the Largest Wildlife Refuge in the contiguous United States. This Refuge has 1.6 million acres of land and contains six major mountain ranges, including the Sheep Range, Las Vegas Range and Desert Range, just to name a few. This Wildlife Refuge was created to protect a variety of species, but specifically to establish a protected habitat for Desert Bighorn Sheep. Desert National Wildlife Refuge is home to 320 bird species, 53 mammal species, 35 reptile species, four amphibian species, and over 700 plant species. Pretty impressive!! 

Just a few of the Species… None of these are pictures that I took..

Some of our duties while here at the Refuge are to do trail maintenance, and setting up an information table outside so we can meet and greet visitors.  Due to Covid the Visitor Center is closed but we try to answer questions at the table or while walking around the trails. A very important duty of ours is to take care of a Refugium (Refuge Aquarium) that holds about 100 to 200 Pahrump Poolfish. These fish are considered an endangered species that are found in only three other places in the world. Here at DNWR (Desert National Wildlife Refuge) NV, Spring Mountains State Park, NV and Shoshone Springs southeast of Ely, Nevada.

There are 5 walking trails less than a half mile each that surrounds the visitor Center. On these trails you see many birds and animals, and maybe at times even a Tortoise. There is a pond for the endangered Pahrump Poolfish, an orchard with all types of trees that a family, the (Richardson’s) planted back in the 1920s.  They were Mormon ranchers. They planted Pomegranate, Walnut, Pecans, Peach and Apple trees among a few others.

While during our second week, Jodi and I had a chance to drive to the rough and bumpy backcountry roads of some of this refuge. Also very impressive! This vast landscape includes flora and fauna from both the Mojave Desert, as well as the Great Basin Desert. It was breath taking, and also very bumpy. We drove 25 miles to the only campground with 6 very nice primitive camp sites, that includes picnic tables, fire rings and a nice pad for a few tents at each site, with two pit toilets. There are a few spots about a mile or two on each road going into the Refuge for campers to dry camp. The rocky 25 mile trip took us an hour and a half one way. Did we mention it was very rough and bumpy? HAHA. A high clearance 4×4 vehicles is recommended for any travel to the backcountry of this Desert Refuge.

We are looking forward to heading to Washington State for our Summer hosting job at Federation Forest State Park, a day use park. It’s outside the town of Enumclaw, close to Mount Rainer. We are excited to check out that National Park.

We will be enjoying the couple of months here and learning more about the Refuges around Nevada. Near Death Valley is another Refuge called Ash Meadows Wildlife Refuge, we did visit that refuge and it was a nice place full of interesting history. There are other endangered fish there that they call Amargosa Pupfish. The Pahrump Poolfish are here at Desert National Wildlife Refuge and the Dace Fish at Moapa Valley National Refuge. All 3 of  these endangered fish are about 2 inches big, they’re NOT related to each other, and the only kind in the world.

While we are here we plan to check out Red Rock National Conservation Area, Moapa Valley National Refuge, Pahranagat National Wildlife Refuge, Lake Mead National Recreation Area, Henderson Wetlands and the Hoover Dam. All right outside of Las Vegas. Valley of Fire is a very beautiful State Park that we visited last year, and that is a must place to visit. That is another place to see Big Horn sheep. I took a few nice pictures two years ago. It’s not just all about the Las Vegas Strip, gambling and the bright lights…  lots of other beautiful areas to see all around Vegas.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Years to you all…..

Stay Tuned and keep an Eye out for our next Adventure…..

THE BOBBLEHEAD TRAVELERS,   MARK AND JODI

Our Spooner Lake State Park Camp Site.

Hello, Everyone. This is a quick update on our adventure to our new location for the Winter. We have left Spooner Lake, Lake Tahoe State Park area once again. We have had a great second Summer here at Spooner Lake. We were very fortunate to have been able to go back to Spooner Lake State Park for another Summer. Because of this Covid19 we were not able to head to Washington State. This Summer has been so different with Covid19 and other things going on. We have had such a busy and wild summer because of people’s behavior. The Covid has brought out the best and the worst in people. We had record breaking attendance and record breaking rudeness. Hope it gets better.

We are slowly heading to Vegas in a few days. We will spend about a month traveling and enjoying some good time off. Heading to Washoe Lake State park just down the road for 7 days, Hawthorn, NV for a few days, Long Street Casino a few days, then our last stop at Nellis AFB for 25 days. We then head to our hosting job at National Desert Wildlife Refuge, December to March. We will send a new update and pictures of our time and adventure there. After we are done in Vegas, we head to Washington State for our summer stay. We do hope this time it will happen.

Now is the time for Fall Colors of all the Aspens in our park. We are used to fall colors in NY, but this is the best they have of this area.  Many people come from all over to hike all around Spooner Lake and up to Marlette Lake in our park to see the Fall Colors. 

I want to leave you with some photos of some of our nice spots of this park. Fall Colors are doing well this year.

I did take these Pictures

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There are a few people we work with that we worked with last year and we had fun working with them again. During our times working in the back country cleaning up the trails we would see much wildlife. For some reason we didn’t get a chance to see any bear for the past two years. Many visitors and our co-workers Byron and Brian have been seeing a momma bear with two little cubs.

These Pictures are from Byron Hibshman

The momma bear and her cubs.

Byron took to night pictures and colors of Aspens during the day.

These pictures are From Brian Montes

We went to Washoe State Park about two weeks ago to check out some of the camp sites, and spent the day there. They have a lake and a lot of wild horses all over the place. Lake is a little low because of a real hot summer and drought here. We are at Washoe Lake SP now and have an awesome spot with an great view…Wild horses throughout the park Here we are..

Wanted to leave some pictures of the Staff that we worked with at Spooner Lake State Park..We worked hard and we also played hard. A Great team we all were for this very difficult and unusual year. Going to miss them all..

From left to right / Steve M. Spooner Lake State Park Ranger / Brett H. Cave Rock State Park Ranger / Brian M. Spooner Lake State Park Tech / Byron H. Seasonal Employee with Wife Carol H./ and Jodi and Myself as Park Hosts.

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So we are moving on and will update you when we get to Vegas.. Please take care and stay safe. As always, stay tuned and stay in touch and see where our next Adventure will take us…  

The Bobble Head Travelers,   Jodi and Mark See you Soon!!

Hello Everyone, It is the Bobble Head Travelers out in the Lake Tahoe State Parks having fun as we always do. 

We have been here at Spooner Lake State Park for about 2 months now. We really do enjoy this area of the country. It is beautiful and we just don’t get much bad or nasty weather like most places in the states. We have to be very concerned about the forest fires, but that is about it.. Oh, and maybe a few tremors here and there. Nevada had a big earthquake about 4 months ago. A 6.5 Mag  about 36 miles outside of Tonopah, NV.  We had to travel North on Hwy 95 to get here and that road was badly damaged by that quake and had to get a quick fix. It was patched by the time we went through, but a week after they closed the road down to repair it the right way… A few after shocks were felt later that month. Never had I experienced a quake before this year.  We even had a 5.4 hit just outside of Yuma while we were there and felt that one too. We are done with Tornadoes, Hurricanes, Flooding and Snow… We will take the 76 – 80 degree clear days every summer in Lake Tahoe area. As of now its like 116 in Phoenix and the Hurricane Isaias just hit South Carolina and North Carolina, New York and New Jersey, as it headed up the coast. Wishing everyone up and down the east coast the best of luck in this mother nature and pandemic crisis… Stay safe and be smart.

When we got here last year, we arrived in April, and had 5 to 6 foot snow drifts and 5 feet of snow all around the RV and all over the Park. When we arrived this year June 1^st there was no snow, but come 8 days later we got snow.. Really!!

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We are doing trail maintenance and clean up of the park, small projects, Two other co-workers and I rebuilt a deck on one of the cabins we have in the back country, Jodi and another co-worker stained the deck. Jodi and I stained 9 memorial benches around Spooner Lake.

Before and After of Staining

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The Park is going to be getting a new face lift starting this Fall and going on next Summer. A new visitor center and gift shop is being built, with restrooms, and an amphitheater and expanded parking lot. The park is busy enough to get all this done. So when we come back to Spooner Lake in the summer of 2022 it will be all done.

This area is just so beautiful, and just about every photo you take does not come out just “so so”, or just “okay”..They are Stunning…and yet still don’t do it justice. Here are a few…

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The NEOWISE comet was a sight to see, I did not take any pictures or even had a chance to see it. Where our RV is, it’s surrounded with huge trees. I have some pictures that I found that were taken on Lake Tahoe, in the Tahoe area. I am not going to take credit for these pictures.

Here are three pictures. NOT MINE…

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The bears are all over the Back Country here at Spooner State Park and they like to climb trees. We have a lot of Aspen trees here and see lots of claw marks on many of them. We still have not seen a bear yet here this year. But the year isn’t over yet, so maybe will see one soon…

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We do plan on being park hosts here at Spooner Lake for years to come.  We also plan on park hosting in other states for a few years for states we have not got a chance to see yet, like Utah, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana and Washington. We were supposed to host at Federation Forest State Park in Washington this Summer before heading back to Nevada for a position at Desert National Wildlife Refuge for the Winter but Covid 19 messed up those plans. We were lucky to get back in at Spooner Lake for another summer.  We found out that even if the Visitor Center at Desert National Wildlife Refuge is closed due to Covid-19, they said we will still be able to host there, because there will be plenty of work for us to do. So we are going to head there this coming winter… December through February, then we will slowly head to Washington State for Summer and hopefully host at Federation Forest State Park.

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We do hope all are doing well, and doing the smart thing to stay healthy and away of the Covid Virus.. Wear the mask like we are supposed to and we should be able to kick this virus in the ASS…. Stay tuned and keep looking for updates on our travels…. 

The Bobble Head Travelers,   Mark and Jodi

Well, we have left Beatty, NV and are now at Whiskey Flats RV Park, which is in Hawthorn, NV. We are about 150 miles from Spooner Lake State Park, near Lake Tahoe, the same State Park we were working at last Summer. Yes we were supposed to head to Washington state, but the State Parks don’t know when they will begin allowing volunteers in. Since we have been invited back to Nevada State Parks we are there, and we love it there, too.

While we were traveling to Lake Tahoe area we stopped at the small town of Beatty, NV whose population is a little over 1,000. We did go check out a place near by called Rhyolite. It was a mining town established in 1905 and it was booming with gold and over 6,000 people. But it only lasted till 1910. The pictures that Jodi and I took were what was left of the town, it is a ghost town with ruins all around. Plus, there is a small area down from the town that is called the Goldwell Open Air Museum. This was started in the early 1980s and art was added up until the 2000s.. Some cool art.

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One of the many burros of Beatty

We went on another hike to one other place just outside of Beatty, NV..  Torrance Ranch which is part of a Nature Conservancy. Then we went to a place called Spicer Ranch which is a private property open to the public with bike and hiking trails and at times do music events. There was some unique art here too. People in the desert get eccentrically creative. We made the best of our time in this small town. The town is also close to Death Valley for those who may want to visit the Death Valley National Park someday.

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While we have been here in Hawthorn, NV we checked out the Walker Lake Recreation area. The sad thing is the lake is drying up and lots of algae is growing on the shoreline, so no swimming. For some reason it’s getting very hot again, 100 to 102 for the next few days.. Here are some pictures of the Lake and area. 

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In about three days, we will be at Spooner Lake State Park getting settled and getting ready to start working this Summer. We’ll keep you posted and share some great pictures of the Tahoe area. Such a beautiful area to be for the summer, and temperatures are nice and cool; the weather is great. We love the area..

Jodi and I are doing everything we can to be careful and stay healthy. Wearing our masks and cleaning our grocery’s when we go shopping. We are so tired of doing it, but it is keeping us healthy. Please everyone do the right thing and stay safe and healthy.

Stay tuned and see what we are up to next, The Bobble Head Travelers

Mark and Jodi

Hello everyone. We are in limbo here in Parker Dam, California. The park is called River Lodge Resort. We had to get Jodi into a cleaner air quality place. The cow smell of Wellton, AZ had to go. So we had to go to a better smelling place with fresh air. We found out that the hosting job in Washington State was closed down through all of May and may even go into June. We have been invited back to Spooner Lake at Lake Tahoe for the summer as a backup. We want to go to Washington but if they tell us they will be closed through June, and are still unsure about July, we will be going back to Lake Tahoe, as long as nothing changes there. For now we wait, in Limbo.  This COVID-19 is really messing up everyone’s lives, including ours. But it could be worse, at least we are healthy and alive at this time, and we are being very careful and following the SOCIAL DISTANCING which many people around us here in Parker and even at our last location were not following. We just keep to ourselves, and do not chit chat with anyone around us. We quarantined ourselves for two weeks when we arrived at our new location but couldn’t believe how many are unwise, not so smart, OK…. how STUPID people are around us NOT distancing themselves. We are near a golf course, and we see groups of golfer’s just playing and ignoring distancing, WRECKLESS. We are staying away from everyone…

Here are some pictures of the area and around the River Lodge Resort.

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ANYHOO…  This place has some beautiful landscape; mountains, the Colorado River, boating, LOUD speed boats racing almost every day.. But it is really quiet at night..

Its funny, we have been watching  a lot of the life and legends of Wyatt Earp lately. The park address says Parker Dam, but we are just on the outskirts of Earp California.

It’s starting to get warm, no HOT, getting up in the 90s and 100s…. We have already had a few above 100 degree days. We are going to head up north in about two weeks to get out of the 100s… We have to.. Here are some pictures of our temps…

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Well we have two more hot hot weeks to go, so we are looking to head north where it is much cooler and boy is this going to seem to take forever…

Jodi and I are hoping that everyone is staying very safe and healthy, please be SMART and do what is expected for us not to spread or catch this horrible Virus… We do expect to continue our RV Bobble Head Travel Adventure for the next 10 years, at least….. We will keep you informed as we know what is next for us… We do plan on heading to Washington State, so we are keeping our fingers cross. Stay tuned and see where we are traveling (Bobble) to next….   

Bobble head Travelers,  Mark and Jodi..

Well, we are not going anywhere for another month. We were supposed to head to Washington State next week, but now we are staying in place here in Yuma (Wellton, AZ) for another month.  With the Covid-19 we were not having any luck in keeping our reservations to some parks heading up North. One would cancel and then another, I would find a replacement, then another would close. All State parks and Corp of Engineer parks, National Park are closed. Arizona State Park Campgrounds are still open, shouldn’t be, but may close soon. Getting real tough RVing now.  We just this morning cancelled all of our reservations heading to Washington State.. It amazes me that there are a lot of people who are going about their day like nothing is happening… What stay in place do you not understand?? STAY HOME!!!

Our next hosting job is a day use place at Enumclaw, WA, (Federation Forest State Park) near Mt. Rainier. We will be leaving Arizona when the “All Clear” has been posted. So now since we will be a month behind, we won’t need to take our time heading north to Washington. We will take maybe 15 days instead of 30. We want to get there and start our hosting job. This is only if Washington does not shut down for even longer. The good thing is if our Washington host job falls through because of the COVID-19, Spooner Lake in Tahoe said we are welcome to go there for another Summer if they are open… Yaaaa, Love that place….If we can’t get to Washington, or Tahoe we will be without a host job for the summer. We are not sure where we will be.. This is such an uncertain time for everyone..

We have done some good stuff here at Arrowhead RV Park in Wellton, AZ, just outside of Yuma. We accomplished good things for the park and it was a great experience for us both. Now time to move on to some new places and new adventures. But we have to wait for now.

Mostly what I did was help the manager with projects or worked on weeding the cactus garden, worked on the park sprinkler system, helped clean the Recreation Center and two laundry rooms. Jodi had four bathrooms to clean, the Recreation Center and at first she was in the park office for the month, then broke away from the office to paint a big 6 Panel mural next to the office. 150 + hours of painting.. The before and after shots are down below..

Here are some details of a few panels she did.

Arizona is known for its sunsets and many beautiful places with rock formations and many other places to see. We want to visit other places in Arizona, but it will be a while before that happens. We still need to see the Grand Canyon..

So Jodi and I do hope all is well, stay safe and keep your distance from others and please stay healthy…  We’ll keep you all posted on when and where we are heading when we know things are getting better, and we are moving on to our new adventures…

We would not mind hearing from some of you that are following us, how you all are doing?? Please let us know…. Thank you, all of you!!!

Stay healthy and we will update you when we can..

The Bobble Head Travelers, Jodi and Mark…

So the last post was of Castle Dome mine museum. Well, another host position bites the DUST, or is gone with the wind here in Yuma, AZ.. To let you know we are doing fine at another host location in Yuma, just 53 miles from Castle Dome. We had to leave Castle Dome Mine Museum due to the owner not being totally up front with us when we inquired about the host position about 3 months ago. It’s a long story, but just wanted to say, we left after 30 days. It again did not work out for us. IE; the power situation, working situation and was taken advantage of.. So we left.

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We are now working at a RV park that is for folks that are 55 and over. Arrowhead RV Park, Wellton, AZ. There are some RV sites, but mostly permanent park models. There are about 13 RV sites open for people who want to stay for a short while. Nice place. A lot of Snowbirds come here for the winter. What’s sort of funny is that we may be the youngest couple here. We are one of 3 couples hosting here. We do TWO 5 hour days of work and 5 days off. What else could we ask for? Oh, did I tell you the park has a Jacuzzi, a heated pool, exercise room, darts, pool table, horse shoe pit, shuffleboard, pickle ball and a 9 hole putt putt course. A nice quiet retirement community. We were fortunate that Jodi did a lot of calling around for us to just to find a place to stay for the winter here in Yuma, and we did, but at the same time, the new managers at this RV park asked if we wanted to work while here for the next 3 months. Fun Fun and staying warm too…

We want to wish you all a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to come… Stay safe and warm for all you people who have lots of snow…

Bobble Head Travelers, Mark & Jodi

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Hello everyone, hoping everyone has enjoyed their Thanksgiving.  We are just 40 miles North East outside of Yuma, at Castle Dome Mining Museum; a ghost town mining town that dates back to the 1863-1864 time era. We have been here now about a month and we are enjoying all that is out here to do and offer. We are getting ready to conduct some tours of the mine and ghost town. Jodi and I have seen this place and we are just amazed with all the history and mine information on this area. We are getting ready to re-enact some of the things that went on in this city when it was a booming mining district. There are over 300 mines in this area that brought in ore of silver and lead. Allen Armstrong and his wife Stephanie discovered a mine a few years ago, 25 years after already having reestablished the Castle Dome City town that was a booming city back in 1860s. The city is now a ghost town city in the same place it was 157 years ago. The ghost town is on top of the same foundations that were here back in 1800s. You have to see it.

Some Sites to check out about the Castle Dome Mine Museum

http://castledomemuseum.org

The Hull Mine with the Fluorescent glow of the Minerals

http://www.enchantedcavern.org

They have a mine that you can take tours of and see some of the drifts that are down 100 feet underground.

I have some pictures of some of the fluorescent minerals that are in one of the many mines here. If and when you ever come out to Yuma, AZ, you have to see this place, it is well worth it. It will take you about 2 to 3 hours to see all of this. (plan on all day)

Pictures of the Mine and Florescent minerals using short and mid-wave ultra-violet light

We are here till the end of February 2020 and we plan to have fun reenacting the Saloon shootouts of the late 1800s. The owners came out to preserve the Castle Dome Mine City and he has established about 50 or so buildings that makes up this city. It’s grown into a large ghost town museum and the mine is now offered as a tour.  I will post some good pics of this ghost town and of the area.

Jodi took all of these pictures of the Ghost Town

The beauty of the desert are the mountains and the open land with lots of cacti littering the landscape for miles and miles.. The saguaro cacti are very popular here is Arizona. I took some nice sunset pictures and some have saguaros in them..  I would like to share some of these beautiful sunsets.

Here are some other pictures that I took in the past month. We do reenactments and Jodi took my shadow of me getting ready to draw on a gunslinger at a gunfight… Its fun shooting up the town..

When the sun starts to go down the shadow that casts on the mini dome is what they call the hiking man. (can you see him?) Another mountain out here near us looks like an Indigenous Princess laying down looking up to the skies.

We do hope all are having a good Winter, it seems like the snow is causing lots of headaches out there, so please for those in the snow belt, be careful, and for those that are not, good for you.. Have a great holiday and we’ll keep you up to date on our upcoming fun and adventures.. Stay tuned and stay in touch…

The Bobble Head Travelers

Mark and Jodi

Hello everyone; a quick update on our trip to Yuma, AZ. We have stopped at Death Valley National Park and had an awesome day checking out some interesting sites. We want to post some pictures of some of the areas we stopped at and hiked.

Its something to know that the lowest point in the United States is a place in Death Valley, CA. 282 below sea level. Its also one of the hottest places in the world....

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After we got back to the Longstreet Casino RV Resort, Jodi and I went in to listen to some live music and have a few drinks, and the entertainer was hilarious. We were the main attraction; he focused on us in the audience. This place is a must if you want a to check out Death Valley and a nice RV Park, with a pool, hot tub, and casino, restaurant and entertainment.

Just down the road is a Area 51 Center, it had some cool stuff.

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We are at Nellis AFB just outside of Las Vegas. We’ve been here before; a cool place. You can of course see all the attractions of Las Vegas, Valley of Fire, at times an air show by the Thunder Birds, and go see the Desert National Wildlife Refuge, where Jodi and I are going to do a hosting job during the winter of 2020. From here to Havasu State Park Arizona. 4 days there and then we head to our winter host location for this. Castle Dome Mine Museum. Yuma, AZ..

Want to say that Jodi and I are thinking of all those who are going through the fires in California, and pray that it ends real soon… Wish these winds would just stop!! As I sit here the winds are hitting us here in Las Vegas, 40mph GUSTS, and in California 80 plus..

One more day and its Halloween.. Happy Halloween everyone..

The Bobble Head Travelers, Mark & Jodi

Good day everyone, I know its been a little while since I had a post. I wanted to take a few more pictures of this beautiful place before leaving. We only have a few days left here at Lake Tahoe Nevada State Park (Spooner Lake) and all of its surrounding beauty.  We have been here for 6 months and we are sad its ending, but we do plan on coming back in the summer of 2021. We had a blast working here and had fun with all the rangers and seasonal staff. Will miss this place.  Here are some more pictures of the area.

Jodi and I walked The Marlette Flume Trail and got some beautiful pictures up at 7,500+ ft elevation and about a week later I got up to about 8,700 to the Sand Harbor Overlook.. Beautiful…

Click on a photo to preview..

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Some shots of our snow storm in September.

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Now a few weeks later we have fall foliage..

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Ranger Steve and Myself doing Selfies.. Being Goofy too……

Pictures below were taken by Brian Montes who is a park staff member we worked with.. Great photos. Thank you Brian.

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We also visited a real small town about 15 miles from Spooner Lake called Genoa, NV.  This place, located within the Utah Territory before the Nevada Territory was created in 1861, Genoa was first settled by Mormon pioneers. The settlement originated as a trading post called Mormon Station,  now it’s the Mormon Station State Park. It served as a rest site for travelers on the rugged California Trail. In June 1850, H.S. Beatie and fellow Mormons built a roofless log enclosure and corral as a trading post near a small stream. Emigrants could obtain clothing, tobacco, meat, canned goods, coffee, beans, sugar, flour and bacon. Cattle and a dozen wagons loaded with supplies to establish a permanent trading post. By 1852, emigrant traffic thru the area was heavy and the settlement expanded,  a post office opened, a blacksmith shop was built, and sawmills were built. Here is also the oldest Thirst Parlor Bar Saloon in Nevada established in 1853.  Every year since 1919, Genoa has held a festival called the Candy Dance, where candy, food, and crafts are sold to support its town government. This is how we discovered this small town. It was a huge market of food and crafts..

Some pictures of the Candy Dance, Arts and Crafts plus food..

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Some pictures of the neat small town of Genoa, NV

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We are moving on to our Winter hosting place in Yuma, AZ. We are going to hit some places on our way to Castle Dome Ghost town and mine Museum. Just 40 miles North East of Yuma, AZ.  We are going to help with mine tours, upkeep the ghost town, work in the gift shop and at times participate in some old western re-enactments of the 1860s. We are looking forward to having much fun with all of that during this coming Winter; November to March.  Then we head to our next Summer host job in Washington State near Mount Rainier, starting May till October 2020.

While heading to Castle Dome we will be stopping at 4 locations. We have been to two of those stops before, but we are going to Death Valley, where it is normally the hottest place in the U.S.. and it also has the lowest elevation in the U.S.. -278 below sea level… Then to Nellis AFB just outside Las Vegas.. Visit Family while there and check on our Winter hosting job for 2020 at Desert National Wildlife Refuge just outside of Las Vegas. Then we head to Havasu State Park, AZ.. That’s a nice park and the London Bridge is right there too….   We have been to Havasu, but on the California side, the state park is on the AZ side… Fun fun…

I posted this on our last post about Castle Dome Ghost Town and Mine Museum. It’s a link to the site of Castle Dome…… Check it out and if you are ever out in the area of Yuma, AZ, you need to check this place out… click on site ———-> http://www.castledomemuseum.org

Stay tuned, will post some pictures of our trip South and will keep you up to date on our new adventures…

The Bobble Head Travelers,   Mark and Jodi… P. S. Happy Halloween…..

Yes we are back at Spooner Lake, Lake Tahoe Nevada State Parks area….  We prematurely left our last hosting job due to it not working out for us. It did not meet our expectations. The host that was supposed to take over our position at Spooner Lake backed out and left it open for Jodi and I to return for the rest of the summer.. Things do work out for a reason. It was meant to be for us to be back at Lake Tahoe area.. We will be hosting in the area for another two and a half months, till the end of October.  So much fun being here……

We stopped in Sacramento, CA for a few days before getting to Knight’s Ferry and checked out the train station where part of old Sacramento is located and where the Transcontinental Railroad started. The first Transcontinental Railroad” was joined on May 10, 1869, with the ceremonial driving of the “Last Spike” at Promontory Summit, Utah, after track was laid over a 1,756 mile gap between Sacramento and Omaha, Nebraska/Council Bluffs, Iowa in six years by the Union Pacific Railroad and Central Pacific Railroad. We took some pictures.

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Part of the Old Sacramento when it was in the 1800’s… Saloons, Hardware and other stores owned by part of the Big 4 that made the Railroads possible. Leland Stanford, Collis P. Huntington, Mark Hopkins and Charles Crocker–had to wait a few years for the pay-off on their seed money for Central Pacific. When the transcontinental railroad was completed in 1869, the four investors laughed all the way to the bank. Collis P. Huntington and Mark Hopkins formed a partnership and opened a hardware store shown below….

The Recreation area that we were at was very beautiful and had lots of history. Below I posted some pictures of the park and its surrounding beauty.  This is the Stanislaus river that travels through the park and makes rapids rafting a big attraction in that area. The park has the longest covered bridge west of the Mississippi.. It was built in 1863 and is 330 feet in length. We went through this covered bridge every day to get to work.

Knights Ferry Recreation Area

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Back at SPOONER LAKE

We really did enjoy being up here at Spooner Lake because it’s beautiful here and cooler, and it’s just flat out FUN being hosts here. Great Rangers and Staff at Lake Tahoe Nevada State Parks. If you have a bucket list, this has to be one of them to visit…

We started working again about a week ago here at Spooner Lake and Lake Tahoe area, the many hiking trails all over the Tahoe area that we help take care of and manage. They call it the Back Country. We have a few primitive campgrounds that we take care of and two lakes that we help manage. This place is so beautiful.  We had a chance to check out some more of this back country that Spooner Lake has to offer.  I recently took some more pictures of this beautiful place. The pictures posted here are some of Marlette Lake with Lake Tahoe behind it… These photos I took were at  8,850 feet  elevation. We felt like we were on top of the world..

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Here are a few more pictures of part of the Back Country looking north and South part of Lake Tahoe, called the Monkey Rock..

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This is the Monkey Rock, Yes it looks just like a Monkey Face…

We are trying to set up our next hosting job for the winter, we pulled out of the one we had set up for Fresno, CA because it did not sound like it was going to be very safe and not too fun for us, so we are now in the process of looking for another winter job somewhere around south Nevada or Arizona. FLASH FLASH… We may have just lined up a hosting job at a place outside of Yuma Arizona. Check it out!!  The place is called Castle Dome Mining Museum.  Click on this link………http://www.castledomemuseum.org . Fingers crossed on getting the position. It sounded promising and sounds like fun. You will see by checking out the site… We are so excited about the possibility taking this on for the winter…. November  to April of 2020…. We are also looking forward to doing our summer in Washington State… Will let you know where when we know… So much fun and adventures awaiting us for the next year……

Stay tuned and find out more info on where we will be spending our Winter…

The Bobble Head Travelers,  Mark and Jodi

Hello everyone!! Hope all are trying to have a nice summer. We are finally enjoying ours up here near Lake Tahoe. Now we only have about 7 more days left and we head to our next host spot in California. Knights Ferry, it’s an Army Corp of Engineer day use park. We have been having a great time up here at Spooner Lake, Tahoe Nevada State Park. We have done a lot of good things for this park to get ready for the many hikers to hike the 2.8 miles around Spooner Lake, and this is also a trail head for the many other trails that overlook Lake Tahoe, The famous Marlette Lake flume trail, plus the 165 mile Tahoe Rim Trail that goes all around Lake Tahoe.

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This is some of the work we have done in the park.. Our main concern in this park is to maintain and clear the hiking and biking trails. Plus we are to clean and maintain 3 primitive campgrounds up the trails along with 2 nice log cabin rentals.

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This is a trail map of all the trails that we are to maintain and clean up. Spooner lake is at the bottom of the Map.. All up and down these trails is where you can get the best views of Lake Tahoe. That is where some of the pictures you see of mine of the Flume Trail and Marlette Lake..

Jodi and I have done some awesome site seeing while we have been here, and I want to highlight some of the sites we have seen and done.

We went down to Carson City and have seen a few places. We stopped at the train museum and have seen some of the old trains that were involved in the connection of the Union Pacific Railroad and the Central Pacific Railroad making it a completed Transcontinental Railroad back in 1869… We went on a nice train ride in one of the old trains that was built back in the late 1800s.. While on our trip we saw some wild horses, deer and lots of history. We went by some old mines getting to Virginia City. 

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We recently drove all the way around Lake Tahoe; A driving tour with our own truck and drove clock wise. We got to a few scenic areas and most were so packed, we couldn’t even stop. We did our best and did see some nice spots.

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All around our park we have lots of wild flowers popping up. The snow finally has gone and the flowers are blooming. We have some squirrels that look like chipmunks and they love our bird feeder.

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We had a chance to go up one of the trails that they call the Marlette Flume Trail. It is famous for mountain bikes to go and see the views of Lake Tahoe. It is a very scary cliff trail; make one mistake you’re dead kind of trail… we checked it out… Got some real beautiful pictures of that trail and Marlette lake. Marlette Lake is 7,823 Feet  in elevation.. Still snow up here in June/July….

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Well in a few weeks we will be on our way to a new hosting position in California. Heading to another new place and another adventure. We have not even scratched the surface of all the amazing places to see in the beautiful country of ours..

Going to leave you with some more of my pictures of this awesome place they call Lake Tahoe….

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Stay tuned and when we arrive in California and settled in to our new location. I will add some good information to our blog….

Enjoy your summer and Happy 4^th of July, be safe and get ready for some interesting weather for the rest of the year.  

The Bobble Head Travelers,   Mark and Jodi

Hello everyone, we arrived on the 15^th of April and we have finally made it to our hosting spot at Spooner Lake State Park here in Nevada, just outside of Carson City, and just a few miles from Lake Tahoe. We are totally disconnected out here because it’s in the mountains. Elevation here at our site is just over 7,000 feet. The only WiFi is at the office and that is about a 5 min walk from our site, so we can go once a day to check on our messages and social media. So if we don’t respond right away we have a day delay.. LOL 

When We Arrived

Because of the elevation, when we arrived at the park it still had 4 to 5 ft. of snow. And to top it off, it was snowing our first day and night. We had 85 degree weather in the last two weeks of our travels up north, and now 32 degrees and snow. We wanted to avoid snow! This is surely a new experience for us. The snow drifts made it very difficult for Jodi and me to get our RV into our site. It took many tries to get it in but we did it. It was a tight squeeze into our site with snow drifts. The park said they have never had an RV this size come here, so we are the first ever big rig. To let you know, this is a DAY use park only, so there is no camping at this park. We are the only ones here in the park overnight and with an RV. People come to snow shoe, hike, fish, kayak, canoe and picnic then leave at dusk. So at night we are all to ourselves with nature. Peace and quiet. 

Here are some pictures of our site and some of the park with all of the snow. The snow is melting about 1 foot per week, and we have about 4 to 5 feet up here in the mountains.

NOTE: IF YOU ARE ON THE WEB PAGE OF OUR BLOG, YOU CAN CLICK ON PICTURES TO SEE THEM BETTER AND TO VIEW INFORMATION ABOUT THEM. IF YOU ARE LOOKING AT THEM ON A PHONE OR ON THE EMAIL, YOU WILL HAVE TO CLICK ON THE TITLE ON THE EMAIL TO GET LINKED TO THE BLOG TO VIEW THE PICTURES. HOPE YOU UNDERSTAND THAT.

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We took a ride towards a small town called Glenbrook heading south along lake Tahoe where we will be getting our mail, and then headed to Incline Village at the northern end of Lake Tahoe and OMG, it just took our breath away; the view and the beauty of this place. Judge for yourself, I took some of these pictures. 

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We plan on doing some fun stuff while here; i.e train museum and train tours, and other site seeing stuff, and of course hike the Spooner Lake trails.. Stay tuned…

Wanted to post some pictures of Valley of Fire just outside Las Vegas, this was a place we have been told is a must to see, and we are glad we did. It was a magical kind of place. Such beautiful colors and rock formations everywhere.  Most people say this is on their Bucket List..See for yourself…

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There were two more places Goldfield and Hawthorne, Nevada, that we stopped at just before arriving at Spooner Lake. We stayed at each place for two days. Goldfield is a mining town and has a few interesting places. It is an old mining town. Also interesting here is they have an International Car forest. Nice art work… We added our own art to the van, a heart…

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One of the oldest Saloons in Nevada is here in Goldfield, went in had a few drinks… Neat place..

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More pictures of Goldfield, NV

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One of the main interests here is the haunted Goldfield Hotel that they have been trying to get back into service since 1945. The Ghosts will not allow that to happen. The construction keeps getting halted for some reason. Wonder what that could be…This hotel has been featured on many ghost shows. Ghost Adventures and Ghost Hunters. You can YouTube it and find out..

When we arrived at Hawthorne it was nice and warm, shorts weather, and could see snow capped mountains in the distance; beautiful site to see. What’s interesting about Hawthorne, NV is it’s a small town that has an Army Depot, and a Navy base. This place has over 3,000 ammunition bunkers for storage. Part of the reason it has ammunition bunkers is due to an accidental ordinance explosion in New Jersey in 1962 that almost took out the whole city, so they wanted to move it out in the middle of the desert, here in Hawthorne, NV.. Go figure.. The town has two museums and unfortunately they both were closed when we arrived, so we could not see them, but one had a lot of info and exhibits outside, so I took some pictures.

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So since we have been here for nearly a week, Wanted to say we are going to enjoy what we can while here, hosting and site seeing.  It is starting to warm up a little.  Being up in the mountains 7,000 feet, we are getting used to the elevation with working, moving around getting winded a lot and our ear popping when we go to Carson City.  We can were shorts in Carson City, but dress warmer at our site up the mountains…  Carson City is around 5, 000 feet and the temperature is about 10 to 15 degrees warmer then where we are. So if its 65 in Carson City, its 50 to 55 where we are..  Much cooler.  We have lots of things to do and see here, so check out our blog again soon for more of our adventures while here in Nevada. Hope all are doing well, and we both do hope your weather is getting warmer and not to warm.

Stay tuned and see where we Bobble to next!! 

 

Bobble Head Travelers,  Mark and Jodi

NOTE: CLICK ON A PHOTO TO SEE THEM

Good Day everyone. We have added another state to our map, actually we have added two more, California and Nevada. We have seen 25 states in the past 3 years, some states have been repeats like Texas, where we have seen 5 places. We are in Las Vegas! What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, except some of what I post!!

Well, we have been here for about 10 days at an RV park on Nellis AFB. Its really nice. The only drawback is loud jets flying over head almost every day for hours… Loud Loud Loud… What do you expect on an AFB? LOL It’s just a few miles from the Las Vegas Strip. We also visited the largest wildlife refuge in the contiguous United States. The Desert National Wildlife Refuge outside of Las Vegas is part of the Mojave Desert. It’s 1.6 million acres and was created to protect Big Horn Sheep in 1936.

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Trail Sign with a coyote statue in the background, made us do a double take…

We want to do some more sight seeing here on the base and take some pictures so I can post them. We are NOT done with seeing some great stuff here… Here are some pictures of the Base.  I visited the Thunderbird Museum and drove throughout Nellis AFB, to take some pictures of the jets that are on display.

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We headed down to the Vegas Strip and had a good long walk up and down the Las Vegas Boulevard. We have seen a lot of the usual and some of the unusual on the strip. We didn’t win big, but 22.00 isn’t to bad on the slots.. We ate lunch at the Hard Rock Café. Walked to the Las Vegas Welcome sign, and back. Walked almost 8 miles up and down the strip. We were hurting at the end of the night.

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We are heading to Valley of Fire National Park tomorrow, so pictures of that will be in a later post.  We will have plenty of nice pictures of that visit when we get to our next location or Spooner Lake. You will have to check out our next post to see the beautiful pictures of VALLEY OF FIRE..

We have a little less than a 4 days left here in Las Vegas, and then we head up to Goldfield, NV. Only have two days there and then two days in Hawthorne, NV Whiskey Flats.. Then we arrive at our hosting spot next to Lake Tahoe. (Spooner Lake).. We are arriving two weeks late because of the snow that was dumped at Spooner Lake, over the past few weeks.. I will never drive in the snow with our home (Freedom), to dangerous, and because it’s our home, not going to take any chances..

Will post the rest of our stay here in Vegas when I get to the next location, that is if we have decent Wi Fi…

Stay tuned and keep in touch… Hope Spring is treating you all well…  Post to you soon….   

Bobble Head Travelers…   Mark and Jodi

Good day everyone,  I am updating you with our latest info on our travels to Spooner Lake, our next hosting job.  Since this was a not normal winter for many and temperatures are not warming up for some, we have extended our stay at Havasu Lake for another week, and then another week at Las Vegas. We had to extend two more weeks in warmer climate before heading to Spooner due to snow still in the area.  We are not really complaining because the temperatures here at Havasu Lake are in the upper 70s and low 80s… OKAY with us…..

I took some more pictures of the lights at night looking over Lake Havasu towards Havasu City.. Beautiful lights over the lake..

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There is a Ferry boat that can be taken to Havasu City from the California side.  Havasu City is Arizona, the State line is in the middle of Havasu Lake, California one side and Arizona on the other.. What is very interesting  is the first original London Bridge was disassembled and purchased and reassembled here in the desert of Havasu City, AZ.. This was all done in the early 60s, out here in the desert with no water. It took them 3 years to put the bridge together and reroute the Colorado river to put water under the bridge connecting to Havasu Lake.

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When we get to Las Vegas we will be staying for two weeks and we will be site seeing the Vegas Strip, checking out the Hoover Dam and who knows what else… So stay tuned and see what we do next…

Hope all are doing well and staying warm in most of the US.. Bad weather all around us.. Be safe and keep in touch…

 Bobble Head Travelers…   Mark and Jodi…

We Left Alamo Lake State Park

We are now at Lake Havasu Landing, the California side. It’s a casino and campground Resort on Lake Havasu.. Here for 11 days.

We cut our stay at Alamo Lake State Park because we did not have any WiFi signal AT ALL in the park. We literally had to walk about a quarter of a mile to get 2 bars and stand just right to check weather and or messages.  Yes you are totally disconnected and that can be a good thing, but not if you need something or to check on something. We hiked to the Alamo State Park Dam here in the park,  it was about 2 miles away and if something happened we would have been in trouble with no signal.  Anyway, we stayed for 6 days instead of 10.. It is a beautiful place. We sat outside every night looking over the lake and the mountains from our site. The interesting thing is there are about 6 to 8 burros running around all over the park. One ran straight through our site one night.  We also met a nice couple who live 3 hours away in Phoenix. We sat and chatted with them one night and got a lot of good information on Phoenix for a future winter stay. We hope to run into them again down the road..

Here are some pictures of Alamo Lake State Park

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Nice sunsets with mountains all around this place.  We went to a small bar and grill out in the middle of nowhere about 8 miles from the park,  called Wayside Oasis and got an Artillery Burger. It was very good with a beer and Jodi had wine. We then  headed back to the campground. They have a lot of trails for ATVS, so most of the people who are there have ATVs. We felt a little out of place there, but it is a nice place for a few days to disconnect from the world and just enjoy the scenery. 

Wayside Oasis Bar and Grill/RVPark, AZ

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We are enjoying full hookups on at Lake Havasu Landing Campground, California. We are enjoying the weather so far. We had some rain and winds just yesterday, but nice warm upper 70s low 80s for our next week ahead…. YAAAA!!!

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The sunrise is beautiful on the Arizona side looking over Havasu Lake from California side.

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The campground is a little congested. The sites are real close to each other with lots of permanent people taking all the good sites. We are close to the lake front but not much of a view from out site. Our view is the camper next to us. But it’s still a nice campground. We plan on taking our fire pit and our chairs over to the lake one night and relax with some beer and wine on the little beach we have here.

Our next stop will be Las Vegas for 7 days… Slots!!!  Maybe win a million or two… Ya right!!

Hope you all will continue to follow us as we head to our next hosting job at Spooner Lake, NV.. We’ll be there at the end of the month… Unless it is snowing there, then we will wait till its clear…

The Bobble Head Travelers, Mark and Jodi….

Hello everyone, we have about 40 days left here in New Mexico. We have been having a great time here at Pancho Villa State Park. We feel its time to move on and see new and exciting places. We are going to spend the month of March in Arizona before heading to our hosting job at Spooner Lake, NV…

What I wanted to do for everyone is to post a photo Album for everyone to see of our favorite photos that I/we have taken since we have been traveling. We are now shy one month of 3 years of traveling. Click on the photos and you will see them with a description of what and where the photo was taken.  Hope you all enjoy and please comment if you like.

Photo shots of Columbus, New Mexico outside of Pancho Villa State Park.

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The rest of the Photos are from places all over the United States that we have traveled to.

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I have many more, but to many to post, I will keep posting them while traveling.. Hope you like the ones I have posted. I will keep on taking many beautiful pictures as we travel out west like California, Oregon, Washington, then out to Idaho, Montana, South Dakota, North Dakota and many more. We have just scratched the surface. So much more to see….

Hope all is well and that you are staying safe with all the bad weather you are all being subjected to.  Its getting real bad all over the United states. We have been dealing with real bad winds here in the desert. 40 and 50 MPH Gusts.. Does beat us up a little… But we will survive..

We do want to say we are enjoying our way of life, and do enjoy sharing with everyone what we do, where we are and all the great things we do and see.. Hope all is safe and keeping in good health… Jodi and I wish you all a great New Year and stay positive….

Mark and Jodi,  Bobble Head Travelers