SW USA 2024: The Canadian Coddiwomplers*

  *Coddiwomple: “to travel in a purposeful manner towards a vague destination."

Gilbert Ray Campground & the Sonoran Desert Museum

 

Gilbert Ray:  What can we say?

 

We stayed at Gilbert Ray Campground in 2019.  Jerry heard about it from a Canadian RVer and wanted to see the park.  ( Ray @ Love Your RV: https://www.youtube.com/@LoveYourRV).  At that time, it was first come first served IF there was a site available.  We arrived VERY early got a site and decided to stay for the week.  It is a fave of ours.  We discovered that you can reserve sites now and returned to this lovely little campground for a few days this time.  It is a small county park right in the Sonoran desert.  It has water nearby at spigots and electric with a sanitary dump station.  You can only stay one week at a time, which is about our limit on fresh water and holding tanks anyway.  It is a very affordable $30/night and minutes from Tucson and other attractions...like the Sonoran desert out your back door!

 

It is an amazing (secret) find, don’t tell anyone.  We had a smaller trailer our first visit and this time, with our site choice and larger trailer, Jerry had the most difficult back in but finally he managed and we were home for a few days.

 

Here are some other shots of the blooming citrus, wildlife and … 

From the gravity chair

the future of RVing perhaps … a Tesla electric car pulling a trailer! 

The Sonoran Desert Museum is about a 7 km (gradual) uphill ride from the campground.  We rode there and had a very nice tour.  We had visited there in 2019 and we enjoyed our visit there again…especially the downhill ride back to camp.  It is quite a large place and the museum had scooters to rent – like the ones in grocery stores – that was great for Elizabeth

Large selection of mineral rocks and crystals at the museum

A desert squirrel

Robert Frost

We managed to get a better picture of a javelina – there are lots of them in the wilderness area.  I’m not sure I like the portion of the museum that is a zoo – there’s a mountain lion, a bear, some deer and other desert creatures.

 

These are actually "cast" Javelina and they have a slot to take donations (like a piggy bank)

Take good care all

Love from,

Jerry, Elizabeth, Misty, FJ (Flat Jesus), the Guys, Miss Adventure Too and Clifford the Big Red Truck