Snowbird Route, Part Deux

As about anyone could predict, the weather was warm and dry for our departure from Surprise/Phoenix.  Getting to Surprise brought us through some impressive desert views of saguaro cacti, sage brush and creosote bush.  We were looking forward to what today would bring.



Most of our day will be spent on I-10 and we will pass by familiar place names like Casa Grande and Tucson, and lots and lots of wide open, sparsely populated desert.

One of several old churches in Casa Grande.  Photo courtesy of Visit Casa Grande.org


Tucson on a clear day.  Not my photo.
There is nearly a 140 mile stretch with only the tiniest of widely-spread communities along the way.  I have a little bit of anxiety about making this trip with the uncertainty of the reliability of my leak-prone tire but the day looks inviting for travel.

Looking east towards New Mexico from near the AZ/NM border.
Today's goal, Dream Catcher RV is 360 miles away.  This is about 150 miles more than we prefer to do.  Now that we are not having to cram in as many miles as possible because we only have 5 days of vacation to get to where we want to go, we have set a rule of driving no more than four hours a day.  It is not a hard rule, just more of a desire to do it that way because we can now.  But we have burned up a lot of time staying extra days in North Las Vegas and Surprise and the time is growing close to our due date to be in Big Bend.

Despite the additional miles we made good time and got to Dream Catcher RV with plenty of daylight left to get hooked up.  The park is one of several that are in the Escapees system.  Escapees is a club that we belong to and it has a network of RV parks.  The headquarters is in Livingston, TX and that is where the mail forwarding business is operated from.  Some of the club parks are for members only and some will take on anyone if space is available.   One of the nice things about the Escapee parks is that you rarely need a reservation.  All but two or three of them you can just drive in and register.  We did just that and got a great pull-thru site that was just right for a one night stay.  But no matter how you look at it, this place is a typical desert RV park.  There are a few trees here and there but they are stunted from the harsh environment and pose no obstacle to our satellite dish or promise shade. 

Getting in and hooked up before the sun went down gave us time to go looking for some local Mexican food. We found ourselves at Si Senor and ordering taco salads.


The taco salad was okay, not something that would have compelled me to come back a couple of times a week, but it hit the spot.  What brought the whole dinner up a notch was a complements-of-the-chef sopapilla.  Way off our diet menu but we didn't let that stop us, or from using copious amounts of honey.  We were just finishing up our dinner expecting the waitress to drop off the ticket but instead she dropped off a plate with a giant sopapilla, very nice.

Time to get home and get some sleep.  Today may have been a longer drive than our ideal distance but tomorrow is going to be about the same as today.  Fort Stockton is 350 miles away so we will be getting up early and getting on our way.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Putting Down Roots for the Winter

Image
  October 2024 Okay, so the above pic is not our winter home, except in our dreams.  However it (The Biltmore) is just a stones throw away from where we are setting up housekeeping. As planned, our departure from Dumplin Valley RV Park in Kodak, TN was early with only about an hour-and-a-half traveling time to our destination in Candler, NC, a western suburb of Asheville.  But it wasn't quite as easy as it sounds.  The last four miles was like running a gauntlet. As soon as we took the I-40 exit to Candler a four mile obstacle course began.  The roads were just barely wide enough for two sedans to pass one another without taking a wheel off the edge of the pavement.  But that would be ill advised as steep and deep trenches lined both sides of the road.  Getting an eight foot wide and sixty foot long truck and trailer combination down these winding mountain roads was an altogether different drive.  Many of the turns in the road required me to pull ...
Read more
Image
 Since October it has been hard to tell that we are full-time RV travelers.  We dropped anchor at our daughter's family home and that's where we've been ever since.  We're starting our sixth month without moving.  But it's all going as planned.  We sought to spend the winter with our grandkids in close proximity and that has been accomplished.  And as luck would have it we had relatively easy access to replacement equipment our rig was in sore need of.  Some of it we knew about, some we didn't. The first thing to crop up was a bad circuit board on our water heater.  It was the "brains" of the water heater and we could not run on electric or propane, it was totally down for the count.  Most places we have been it wouldn't have been a big deal but in our North Carolina location the well water coming to us was running at about 35 deg F.  That's uncomfortable to wash hands in, let alone take a shower.  I didn't waste any time in getting...
Read more

Looking Ahead - Distant Destination

Image
  Not much happening since last post other than routine life.  Doing things with the grandkids and old people doctor visits.   Except! We have been applying for winter volunteer jobs for 2024/2025 and have been officially accepted as campground hosts for Furnace Creek Campground, Death Valley.  My first communications for this position date back to about three months ago.  There was a lot of waiting between the first few communications but the pace has really picked up in the last three weeks.  We have had phone interviews and signed volunteer agreement forms via encrypted communications.  And as of six days ago of this writing the medium level background checks were begun and completed.  We were told that they could see we had many background checks showing in the system from our past positions and that facilitated rapid progression through the system for this one.  All we have to do now is show up for our October report date. Maybe "al...
Read more