Farther West

Arizona is once again taking my breath away. We left Cottonwood where we were working at Dead Horse Ranch State Park to work at Buckskin State Park near Parker, AZ. We are now 4 hours west of where we were before, and practically in California now. Buckskin State Park, where we are living and working, is right on the Colorado River, which separates AZ and CA. This is a place that is frequented by spring break kids and retirees. I can definitely understand why. When I leave my trailer (yeah, back to trailer life woot woot), I can take a stroll down to the beach and take in the beauty of AZ and Cali at the same time. There is tons of beach/ river rat fun going on here. People speeding by on their boats, people drinking on floating dock bars, and people hiking the mountains that are right on the river. Yup, there’s not only river beauty, there’s also mountains that make up the scenery. The mountains are not as impressive in height as the ones in the Sedona/Cottonwood area. But they still manage to be stunning. They are everywhere. Almost like rolling hills. Tons of palm trees at the base. The mountains are brownish/red and dusty looking with sparse dried out vegetation. There are lots of wrinkles that catch the sun. The sky is incredible too. It’s always blue skies and sunny and about 75-80 degrees in the day (real chilly at night though…desert). We start work at 7am while it is still dark out. As we’re working we see the moon and sun in the sun in the sky at the same time. The moon hovers above the mountains on one side of the sky, while on the other side of the sky the dawn hangs around the mountains and the sun eventually pops up. As soon as the sun makes it above the mountains, the sweatshirts come off. Our work here is pretty exhausting. It’s all manual labor. Very tough stuff too. We are still not doing any of the trail work that we were promised. So far we’ve been removing bushes, taking a barbed wire fence down, moving hundreds upon hundreds of heavy rocks, and removing weeds from the campsites… all landscaping work really. By the end of the day, I’m sunburnt and covered in three layers of dirt. I literally have a red neck and farmers tan. Sore muscles. Showers feel better than ever. The weather makes the work ten times more doable. Once again, we are surrounded by old people in RVs. They’ve been really good to us though. The other day at work a woman that we had never met, Blanch, brought us cookies for an afternoon snack. It was a nice excuse to sit down and relax. Sometimes I think people think we’re convicts though, because of the work we do on the side of the highway. I feel like I’m living a country song. There’s no cell phone service in the park so I’ve been going to a gas station right down the road a lot to make calls. At least once a day I am sitting at a picnic table at the gas station drinking a glass bottled coke. Country song, right?

Three more weeks of working here then the project is over and we’re headed back to Denver for another transition week.