Las Cienegas National Conservation Area

After leaving our New Years get together we moved onward, towards our ultimate winter destination of New Orleans. There are a large number of places in Arizona to stay for the work week, but we went for a location that neither of us have been too in the past (greatly shortening the list). Las Cienegas National Conservation Area has been spoken highly of for many years, and this year we both finally got to drop in for a stay. But first, the challenge of getting there…

The GPS in the tuck, affectionately known as “Barbara”, who has a history of intentionally misleading us down roads in her repeated attempts to kill us,  made yet another attempt. Normally she would route us along the shortest route, even if only shorter by a few inches and by saving those few inches it would cause us to cross a moat full of flame-breathing-alligators… or extremely rutted dirt road, I guess. In this instance, not only did she *intentionally* route us *past* the shortest route, she then tried to convince us that the old wagon trail from the mid 1800’s leading off the main highway was a valid option for the 50+ foot combined length of our truck and trailer. Seriously, the cattle stopped using this trail decades ago, and Barbara was like, “this will get you there, just trust me… suckers!” I quickly vetoed the turn off, to Kerri’s initial angst, followed by many miles of continuing down this small highway road before we could find a place to turn around.

On our return trip to the area, Barbara insisted we keep to her plan to kill us, but I once again vetoed the assassination attempt and we simply followed the signage provided by the Historic Empire Ranch Foundation. We quickly and easily found our boondocking destination at that point and setup camp for the work week. The camping area was peaceful and pleasant enough, with cows dropping in from time to time and tons of acreage for Moose to haul some serious ass through the tall grasses. In the end it was less eventful then the final few miles of the drive with just the boring errands and work being completed during out stay before rolling our first thing Saturday morning.