Methusala!

We met Methuselah on this first leg of our trip. We are at the Escapees' Rainbow park in Congress, AZ. Like all Escapees' parks, it is friendly, well planned, and fairly in the middle of nowhere. The area had snow on the ground yesterday morning, but had melted by our arrival about 2pm. The peak to our northeast still has a crown of white, but less than it had this morning. I hate to sound like we have sat around watching snow melt, but there are worse ways to spend a day!

Now, about Methuselah! She is a saguaro cactus said to have started life about 1600. At 4000 years old, she is very stately and home to dozens of cactus wren, sort of an ancient condo. Methuselah sits in a beautiful cactus garden on the north side of the RV park. The interesting paths circle around rock gardens of a wide variety of cacti, each labeled. Rabbits and other small burrowing animals live in the garden and throughout the complex. We really enjoyed our walk and the houses in this neighborhood.

North Ranch, the name of the RV park, has about 100 RV hookups and about 400 housing sites. The houses are all well kept, varying in size from single wides to roughly 2000sf. An interesting building restriction; you can only have 1 bedroom, but numerous dens! This is done to avoid having an age restriction in the community, but amounts to about the same thing.

Tomorrow we head to Phoenix and our first Rally. We will be dry camping for 5 nights, another new experience. We have been looking forward to this trip, now I'm starting to think about the logistics of showering and such basics.