Where’s Nico?

Hey everyone! Welcome to 2025! After four and a half months back in our fair city, it’s time to move on. As Tom Petty sang:

Yeah, it’s time to move on, time to get going
What lies ahead, I have no way of knowing
But under my feet, baby, grass is growing
It’s time to move on, it’s time to get going

“Tom Petty? What happened to the Talking Heads?”, you may be asking. Well, it’s a new trip, and time to start a new playlist. I had a couple folks ask me what I’d use for musical introductions on blog posts for our next outing and they offered some great suggestions. But in the end, ‘Time to Move On’ was the song I had playing in my head as we left KC. For this trip, we’re gonna let Tom Petty be our guide.

My favorite Petty album by far is Wildflowers, which is where you’ll find this little gem, “Time to Move On”. Rick Rubin produced the album, and he’s a guy who, despite having no musical abilities of his own, has a way of really getting great stuff out of the artists he teamed up with. Even though this is officially a ‘solo’ record by Petty, most of the backing players are the guys from his usual band, the Heartbreakers. But Ringo Starr and the Beach Boys’ Carl Wilson show up on some tracks too. If you haven’t heard the album (or better yet the extended version ‘Wildflowers and All the Rest’), I highly recommend you queue it up on Spotify!

Anyway, besides asking about where the Talking Heads went, the other question you may be wondering is…. Where’s Nico?

Red Rock, Arizona!

But before I tell you about this area, between Tucson and Phoenix, let’s talk about how we got here. (And as a quick aside, you can follow our path as we move along this journey here)

Initially, Kristen and I had planned on leaving KC in March. Then winter started, and reminded us with all the subtlety of a wood chipper that being cold sucks.

So we took the RV out of storage, spent some time getting it prepped for the trip, and then, just before we hit the road… we got caught in one of the top 5 blizzards that KC has ever experienced. Eleven inches dumped down on us – depending on where you live, that may or may not sound like a lot. I certainly saw bigger snow storms growing up in Iowa. But I’ve been in KC for over thirty years, and this was the biggest storm we’ve had in that time – we’ve had plenty of winters where we haven’t seen eleven inches over the entire season.

It’s safe to say, Nico was not a big fan.

Not a fan, but still incredibly stylish in that coat! I will say though, once Nico saw we were getting the trailer prepped, he was definitely a huge fan of that – this guy couldn’t wait to get back to his mountain dog ways!

So, we didn’t beat the storm in getting out of town, but we did get out as soon as we could afterwards.

Our first destination was Caprock Canyon State Park in northern Texas. A good friend of ours named Chad came over for dinner one night as he was passing through KC.

Chad has travelled to more places than anyone else I’ve ever known, and we picked his brain for some fun spots to hit in the American Southwest. Caprock is one of the spots he spoke very highly of.

As we were planning the trip (and I use the word “planning” somewhat loosely, as we really don’t know which way we will head next), we were going back and forth between starting out in the southeast or the southwest. The southwest certainly offers a lot more boondocking options, but the southeast has a lot of spots that offered warmth, which was one of our primary interests. In the end, we chose the southwest, and as I write this on January 23rd, I’m glad we did as the southeast ended up getting a historic and rare snow dump of their own this week.

Caprock Canyon was about nine and a half hours from KC, so it was doable in a day’s drive, and a great first stop as we headed out.

Caprock is a very cool state park. We were greeted by a herd of bison upon entering the park, and we saw quite a bit of wildlife, as we had a group of deer wandering through our campground that first evening, and a range of prairie dogs right by the campsite. We also had roadrunners coming through, and we saw plenty of puma scat (but thankfully not a puma) on the trails.

There are plenty of pretty hikes among the red rocks there, and the scenery is very nice. Eagle Point Trail was nice, and we particularly liked Haynes Ridge, although it is a bit of a climb to get up to the ridge. We ended up only staying for a few days, because a cold front was pounding down through to the area the weekend after we arrived, but it’s a place we’d like to come back to so we can explore it further.

To stay ahead of the weather, we did a day’s drive to some open land just south of Alamogordo, New Mexico, where we just stayed for a night, and then on to our current location just outside of Red Rock, Arizona.

For $20, you can get a recreational permit from the State of Arizona that lets you stay on state lands, which is good for a year. We found a nice place to set up where we had some space to ourselves, about a mile or so from I-10.

If you noticed the red shirt Nico had on in the first of the three pictures above, that’s his lucky Chiefs jersey. The pic is from a celebratory walk around our campsite that we took after the Chiefs beat the Texans to advance to the AFC Championship. I know a lot of the country is tired of seeing the Chiefs win, but for those of us in KC, we are loving it. I should point out, that every Chiefs season since Nico has been born has ended with the Chiefs as Super Bowl champs – here’s hoping that tradition continues over the next month!

Aside from watching the Chiefs, we’ve been spending a lot of time at the Sweetwater Preserve. It’s an area full of nice hikes around all kinds of different cacti. The place is full of saguaros (the tall ones you see in Road Runner cartoons), teddy bear cholla, barrel, prickly pear, and ocotillo.

Minor segue here… between talking about saguaros and mentioning the birds we saw at Caprock, I’ve now twice referenced Road Runners in this post. I should be very clear – I love Road Runner cartoons. By far, my favorite Road Runner was the one where Wile E. Coyote breaks the third wall to talk to the two kids who are watching the Road Runner cartoon on TV. It was very meta. One of the kids asks why the coyote even wants to catch the Road Runner, and so Wile E. produces this chart explaining all the delectable parts of this fine creature.

It’s the only Road Runner cartoon where I remember Wile E. Coyote talking, and I love that he has a slightly British accent as he goes through the chart. Sheer genius.

Anyhoo… we saw a lot of great cacti! Here’s a few pics from the trails.

I will say, sometimes when you look at saguaros, you anthropomorphize them.

Look at me, usin’ a ten dollar word there!

But seriously, their side shoots can look like arms. Check out this guy in the center of this picture, and tell me it’s not a guy in a tutu taking a bow:

There are these two saguaros near the main trailhead that look like they’re in a confrontation. One is getting all in the other’s face, and the other is leaning back, just saying “relax, man…”

If you don’t see it, here’s my dramatic reenactment, in two frames:

Before I say “bye for now”, I have one more thing to discuss – and it’s actually the word “bye”. Sometimes, someone shows you another way of looking at a thing, and it can kind of blow your mind. Kristen isn’t really a big sports fan. She enjoys going to a Royals game or two, but it’s not a big thing for her. I mentioned the Chiefs playoff win a few paragraphs back. That was their first playoff game, even though it was the second week of the playoffs because, having the best record in the AFC, they got a bye week for the first week, which means they didn’t have to play and automatically advanced to the next week.

Now, that sounds totally natural if you enjoy sports – the idea of a bye week. But Kristen mentioned the first time she heard the phrase was orally, not seeing it written out. She mentioned that she assumed it was a ‘buy’ week (you bought yourself a week off!) or a ‘by’ week (we’ll just skate by this week without having to play anyone, or short for bypassing the week, or this week, we’re just standing by). Both of those make more sense emperically than ‘bye’ week (well, we don’t have to play, so bye bye, week!).

I have to admit, she has a point. I googled it, and it looks like it has an origin from a cricket term – but I have to say it seems like an unsatisfactory answer. Anyway, mind blown.

Anyway, by buy for now!

– Ken, 1/23/2025