WELCOME TO WILLIAMS, ARIZONA: RELIEF FROM STUPID HOT

April – May, 2020

The story of stupid hot begins this Mid-April (!) day in Mesa, Arizona.  Awaiting the heat of the day, which is expected somewhere around 4pm or so it’s 102 degrees Fahrenheit at 11:00 in the morning,   Mesa has experienced 15 days in a row of temperatures above the century mark.  Now this would be normal if these temperatures occurred during the expectedly hot and hell-simulated summer months, but this was MID-APRIL (!).  Past mid-day it is barely tolerable to sit in the shade.  If out in the sun you can guarantee to burn your flesh and bake your soul.  It can easily be above 90 degrees at midnight, and the 80s a hopeful goal to be reached before sunrise.  So the window to be out and about is before 10am and after sunset.

We’re probably exaggerating just a little bit, but the heat was incredibly oppressive.  Dry heat? No Stupid Hot!

The heat was restrictive, but shutdowns and ordered quarantine associated with the coronavirus further limited our activities.  Golf courses were paradoxically open, but local businesses, restaurants, entertainment venues, and gym and health clubs were closed.  VDO shuttered and/or chained and locked up all of their usual activity areas.  Contact for needed central office or maintenance services was available by phone, but no new camping reservations were being accepted; i.e., no new people in the Resort.  The exception to the no contact rule was the post office; their staff stayed at risk.  I guess the mail must get through!

We knew of 3 cases of covid-19 in the Resort; none of our close friends became ill.

So, on a daily basis it’s above 100 degrees Fahrenheit and the sun’s ultraviolet rays are relentlessly flesh-eating, the pool is not open, air conditioned indoor facilities like the gym and sewing room and internet café are closed, and there’s no pickleball, tennis, bocce ball or softball.  We did find lots to do between working out (shout out to Tom and Kelley for our exercise bands), Barbara’s sewing (quilts for kids’ project), visiting and happy hours with friends (of course with proper social distancing), walks to strengthen Brian’s quad tendon repair, Messenger for Kids visits with grandkids, and occasional Zoom meetings with friends and families.  But friends were leaving VDO to return to their homes and the days were getting longer and longer.

We realized that our time in Mesa had come to a close for the season.  We had taken time over the past few months to schedule, what we thought would be, this year’s spring and summer trip.  We would break camp in Mesa April 1, and we were planning on spending a couple of weeks in Palm Springs with our friends Jack and Chris, then moving onward to Death Valley and Great Basin National Parks, working our way to Coeur d’Alene then over to the Olympic Peninsula, up to Victoria Island, British Columbia and Vancouver, back down through Washington and Oregon to spend a month camping alongside Jack and Chris in Portland before ending our summer in the Redwoods.  We’d then head back to Mesa, planning on arriving around October 1 in time for next season’s workkamping. But given the current situation of closures and who-knows-what about the coronavirus, with a heavy heart we decided to forego the trip for a year, cancelled our RV Park reservations, and remembering the fine time we had in the Arizona Mountains last August, we reserved a site at the Railside RV Ranch in Williams for the Summer.

After our mail arrived on April 26th we beat feet 200 miles north and into the Arizona mountains.  By the way, the daytime temperature in Williams has not gone above 75 degrees and it stays in the upper 40s overnight…ahhhhh.  We figured that as things opened up we might still have a chance for limited travel throughout the Summer, and maybe, just maybe we could still visit a couple of the national parks that had been on our 2020 wish list.

When the Full Moon or New Moon occurs during the Moon’s closest approach to Earth, its perigee, it is called a supermoon.  Because of its closeness to the Earth a supermoon appears in the night sky and is seen as incredibly large and incredibly bright (the “moon illusion”). We were fortunate to observe a supermoon at the tail end of our time at VDO, and the pictures are a fitting farewell to our overall wonderful season.

Time has a way of moving far too quickly, and, as we write this, we’ve been in Williams for the past 3 weeks.  We’ve found that being away from the Phoenix area has been liberating  — there’s so much to do within a short distance.  We’ve been taking walks into town, and hiking up and down and over and through with no negative repercussions on Brian’s leg.  We’ve been able to sit outside and enjoy our campground, and thanks to Graham, Ben, Spencer, and Jordan, when there’s nothing going on after dark we have been enjoying connecting to streaming services for TV and movies via a chromecast device.

Founded in 1881, Williams was named for William Sherley “Old Bill” Williams (1787-1849), a famous trapper, trader, scout and mountain man.  A statue of “Old Bill” stands in Monument Park, located on the west side of the city.

Bill Williams Mountain is just south of town, and offers several hiking trails, the longest of which takes the hiker to the top of the mountain.  Views are pretty spectacular.

The Historic Downtown District covers six square blocks of nostalgia, restaurants and bars, businesses, murals, souvenir shops, and stuff.

During tourist season there is a nightly “Wild West Show” performed on Main Street — even in a time of social distancing we couldn’t resist!  The story was of 4 bank robbers who had hidden their loot only to find that it had been dug up and was missing.  Usual and customary hilarity and threats are exchanged before the ultimate shoot-out.

After the show it was time for a couple of beers at the World Famous Sultana Bar.  Why World Famous? The town wanted us to believe that the Sultana was the roughest of the rough saloons and brothels from the 19th century and the local “watering hole” for gangsters that would come to the town as a get away. One of the locals wasn’t sure if the original owner of the bar had served aboard the Riverboat Sultana in 1865 or aboard a yacht outfitted and designated the USS Sultana patrol boat during World War I? Personally we like the more nefarious lore. In any event the tap held any number of cold beers, and the hospitality was terrific.

In North-Central Arizona and at 1.6 million acres the Kaibab National Forest borders both the north and south rims of the Grand Canyon, and literally surrounds the city of Williams.  Two trailheads close to downtown provide access to 4 interconnected trails, the longest of which is the 8.4 miles (out and back) Bill Williams Trail.  We figured that the Buckskinner Trail loop at 1.7 miles would be enough for us; however, and as things go we should have zigged at a time we zagged and rather than end up back at the trailhead found the Bill Williams Trail trailhead instead.  A couple of Park Rangers gave us directions, but once again our badly miscalibrated internal compass lead us astray, and we ended up in downtown Williams…oh, about a mile and a half from our car.  We were well over 3 miles and Brian’s leg had had it…thankfully Barbara hoofed it back to our starting point and retrieved the Jeep.

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Williams, Arizona will be our home-base this spring and summer for as long as our Country continues to struggle with solving the puzzle of how to keep our citizens safe.  Simple as that…

Barbara and Brian