Lost Dutchman State Park, AZ

Site 47 & the Superstition Mountains, Lost Dutchman State Park

Sunday, December 1, 2013, Picacho Peak State Park, AZ, Day 4 - 103.8 miles, 4,619.4 For the Trip

Back on the road for a short trip up I10. I stopped at an IHOP outside of Phoenix to meet with Arizona Eileen, a Casita owner who is very active on many of the fiberglass forums, and publishes the Casita Bible - "Love My Casita Guide", a PDF eBook available on a CD that many consider far better than anything the Casita factory produces. We had a good brunch, talking about fiberglass trailers, travel, the west (and a bit of the east) etc. I hope to see her again at the Quartzite Gathering in February.

After that I continued on towards the Lost Dutchman. I stopped in Apache Junction to do laundry. Definitely time! Since I tried to use a $20.00 bill in an unmanned machine to wash my car a while back, and discovered that all it would do is give me $20.00 worth of quarters, I was ready to do laundry for many stops. Unfortunately, the place I stopped used a card rather than quarters. Actually, it worked well, and after washing & drying I was able to trade the card back in for the remaining funds.

Lost Dutchman State Park sits at the base of the Superstition Mountains. It is named after the lost gold mine that people are still trying to find. A beautiful setting. I took the usual site photo, but had to include the background. I also took a few photos as the sun was setting. The color got better and better as the sun was setting, although the clouds were heavy enough that it never got the beautiful red color I found at Catalina State Park. The last image was a long exposure just after the sun finished setting. Photos at today's LakeshoreImages page.

My site is far enough from the bathrooms that it looks like it will actually get dark (other than the Christmas lights on some of the other trailers). Unfortunately, while a photo of the stars over the mountains would be neat, it was a cloudy day and it was even more socked in at sunset. I'll check a couple of times during the night, but it doesn't look good. On top of that, the predictions are for much cooler weather along with rain during the week. Since the new moon (no moonlight to obscure the stars) is tonight, I may not get the photo I was hoping for.


As I mentioned, dinner was leftover rice & chicken. I did do some shopping at Food City in Apache Junction. An interesting store. I don't know why since we are not as close to Mexico as some of the other towns I've shopped in, but the amount of Mexican food was impressive. Much of it was actually Mexican rather than American made.

Until Next Time -