New Mexico – Page 2 – TooBusyForWork

A Grand Canyon detour

It always takes a long time to restore order in the motorhome whenever we have been in one place for a while. After two weeks at Furnace Creek NPS campground, it took us about an hour and a half to get ready to leave. It is amazing how much stuff gets pulled out of the storage bays when we are stationary for a while – grill, Dutch ovens, picnic table cover, chairs, mats, and even more. The inside was a mess too with dust and dirt everywhere. I do vacuum every 4-5 days so the tile floors don’t get scratched, but that wasn’t even close to enough. Wiping counters and other surfaces, dusting, vacuuming, and even mopping was the order of the day. We didn’t leave until just after 10:00.

Sunday night we stayed at Fort Beale RV park in Kingman, AZ – back to mountain time. Not a bad place, though we just barely fit in the big pull through we had. The Grand Cherokee is a big vehicle, and we didn’t want to unhook. We did do some serious thinking about the route back to Iowa though, and spent some time on various weather apps checking forecasts for later in the week. It is nasty in the central part of the country right now, but it is forecast to be much better by when we would be driving through. Therefore we decided to take I-40 instead of the longer (and more boring) I-10/20. The other major consideration is when we will travel through Albuquerque, the only big city on the trip. I much prefer going through any big city between 9:00 and 3:00, so that generally means staying close to the city one night, if possible. Balancing all of that, we chose to spend last night at Twin Arrow Casino that provides free overnight stays in their parking lot. And since it was only a bit over 120 miles from Kingman, we took a quick detour to the Grand Canyon!

I love this view because it shows the river

Even with the smoky haze blurring the view, the canyon is amazing.

We did get a bit of a surprise at the southern edge of the park with these horses.

They were just grazing at the side of the road.

A shy foal was hungry. Mom was keeping an eye on us.

Since they were right by a sign for a riding stable, we called the number, thinking they were escapees. Nope, they were wild horses the man responded. What a nice thing to run across.

We are now at the American RV Park on the west side of Albuquerque, a drive of about 300 miles. Nice place, and mostly empty this time of year. We have a huge pull through so no unhitching needed. Tomorrow we will be in Double D RV Park in Texola, OK, right at the TX/OK border. It will be a long day, 400 miles, so I may even let Kevin drive some! Then we will arrive in the OKC area for two nights, setting the rig up for storage. No more posts probably until I can recover at the house in Iowa.

We are RVing again!

We spent Sunday night in a La Quinta on the north side of Tucson, and it wasn’t very nice. It was more expensive than the others, and we got upgraded when they didn’t have our room cleaned at 5:30 (really?), but it just wasn’t very good. We had a wonderful lunch of green chili chicken enchiladas at Adele’s in Las Cruces on the way in. Definitely will be remembering that spot!

We got into Needles just after noon Pacific time on Monday, New Year’s Eve. I was slightly nervous about the power in the RV, but everything was fine. We had left a penny on top of a frozen container of water to make sure the freezer didn’t get warm, and it was fine. The coach’s batteries were fully charged on the solar, and we happily pulled it out of storage into Desert View RV Park that was only a few blocks away. It is so nice to be in our own space again. The park is nice with mostly long term residents. Our site isn’t very big, but the long term sites are bigger. The park was having a karaoke night for NYE, and Kevin and I joined them. Well, I did some singing, and Kevin was a great audience. Nice folks here, and we have a good rate because we are staying a week at a significant discount.

Tuesday we just relaxed. I had enough driving! We did some organizing, cleaning, and shopping, but mostly we just relaxed. We weren’t too interested in doing much since there was a dreadfully cold wind on both Tuesday and Wednesday. We had planned on going to Oatman, AZ on Wednesday, but we chose to just visit Davis Dam.

There wasn’t a lot of power being generated which matched the low levels of the river. We also drove through the Davis Camp Campground, a public campground just below the dam on the Arizona side of the river. The dry camping sites were gorgeous – right next to the river. The full hookup sites were very crowded though, and I doubt we would want to stay there in the future.

Today we took the belated trip into Oatman. I love the views on the way there.

The drive past Oatman is spectacular too.

And of course, if you go to Oatman you have to take pictures of the “wild” burrows.

Kevin has been doing some organizing in the motorhome. He put together a shoe rack I bought, and luckily it fits perfectly on the closet floor. I was tired of a confused pile of shoes on the floor, and now we can see them all. Even better is the cabinets he has modified for a spice rack. The doors were hinged, but had no pulls. Kevin rearranged the pile of wires and flexible hoses behind the door and added the pull.

He had ordered this spice shelf and bottles while we were home. They fit very well. There are actually two cabinets, so he is going to order another spice cabinet when we get home this spring. It will be awfully handy.

That is enough pictures. I am recovering from a sinus cold, and I am now going to bed!

Back in Iowa

We left the motorhome in storage in Needles, CA on Tuesday, 13 November with both the solar and the refrigerator running. I am nervous that something will go wrong and I will have a disaster in the refrigerator when we get back, but logic says it will be fine. I hope so!

We spent the first night in Santa Rosa, NM at the Super 8. Not bad, and we would go back if it was convenient. They did charge an extra $10 for Lily, but is was clean. The second night we stayed at the Days Inn in El Dorado, KS. We intended to stay in Wichita, but it was challenging to find a place close to the road so we drove a bit farther. We did eat at a totally fantastic restaurant in Wichita called Mediterranean Grill. Absolutely wonderful, and I will drive out of my way to eat there again.

As for a route, we chose to just drive I-40 to I-35. It was a bit longer than taking some state highways, but it was just so much easier we did it anyway. Since we bought an Oklahoma PikePass on our way to Death Valley even the Oklahoma and Kansas turnpikes were easy. We got home on Thursday, 15 November in the late afternoon. The house feels huge! What doesn’t feel huge were the televisions, especially in the bedroom which is much smaller than the ones in the motorhome. Of course that gave Kevin the perfect excuse to shop for a new living room TV so we could move the old one to the bedroom. Haven’t figured out where to move the bedroom one yet, but we will figure something out!

My daughter in law had ordered me a wonderful turkey from a local specialty house, so I picked up a 20 pound bird on Friday. It went straight to the refrigerator. We will be having my daughter’s family and my unmarried son for dinner, so five adults and a toddler. The turkey is definitely overkill, but that’s what they had. Kevin also smoked a glorious 14 pound turkey, but it pretty much all went to leftovers for the kids (my married son and his family showed up in the evening). Two pecan pies, one pumpkin pie, turkey, cranberry sauce, green bean casserole, sweet potatoes, and mashed potatoes made up the menu, and it was wonderful. I brined the turkey for the first time, and it was a brilliant idea.

The other particularly nice thing about being back in the house is that I get to be back in choir. We are practicing for a cantata by Mark Hayes that is filled with Christmas carols. Lovely, and I so enjoy singing with a group again. Our performance is on 9 December.

I admit the cold here is pretty intense for someone just coming back from the Southwest, but we will survive. I just had to pull out all the big winter coats!

Out of Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona and into Nevada

Yup, lots of driving. No pictures either because I never remember to take any when we are just driving to a destination. We left Oklahoma on Friday morning after visiting my sister, my niece, niece’s husband, and their four month old baby. The baby was such a solemn little guy he was inadvertently hilarious. We stayed in a lovely campground in Oklahoma City, Twin Fountains near the Cowboy Hall of Fame. I definitely will stay there again on another trip.

We ended up Friday night in Santa Rosa Campground in, surprise, Santa Rosa, New Mexico. It was an old KOA so the sites were a bit narrow, but it was a nice and quiet place. Surrounded by that classic New Mexico landscape, I could smell pinons and enjoy the sunsets in that clear New Mexican Sky. Another one worth a repeat for sure. There is a little restaurant at the campground that wasn’t too bad, so no cooking! Nice after a long day of driving the motorhome. I am getting in the grove for 400 mile days: drive a few hours, take a nice long break (30-45 minutes) then finish it up.

Saturday was another 400 mile day. We spent the night in the parking lot of the Twin Arrows Casino outside Flagstaff. We ate in the (well-reviewed) buffet at the casino, but it was so-so at best. Add into it the smoke that you had to walk through to get to the food, and it is definitely not a place to return to. The parking lot was nice though! Many RVers say they only pull into parking lots late at night, but we like to stop our drive no later than 4 or so. Here it was a good thing because the RV parking got quite crowded by evening. We got to position the coach so the driver side windows looked east onto the sage, and it made for a lovely sunrise. The long ride on I-40 made me want to plan a much more leisurely trip where we can stop and see all the lovely places we just drove by on this trip. Maybe 2-3 weeks, just sightseeing.

Last night we made it to Pahrump and spent the night in the Wine Ridge RV Resort. Very nice place though we didn’t use all the facilities. We did do lots of laundry and got our shopping done though. We will be in Death Valley for almost two weeks, and there isn’t much shopping there so we really stocked up. We actually stocked up more than I intended to since the baby back ribs and the meatballs were both BOGO. We should have plenty of meat! I also used the convection oven to cook up a bunch of maple bacon for future BLTs. Surprisingly the little store at DV generally has nice produce. We plan on leaving today with empty waste tanks and full fresh water and propane tanks. Weather shouldn’t be too bad though the forecast is for higher than average temperatures in the low 90s-upper 80s.

It is hard to get internet in DV, so posting will be limited except when we get into a town.

A short and windy day

We were planning on making it somewhere just east of Tucson and doing some sightseeing, but the weather changed our minds. We knew there were wind and red flag warnings to the New Mexico border on I-10, but our trailer/truck combo handles wind very well. It does help to have an oversized truck! However New Mexico and Arizona closed I-10 west of Lordsburg, NM (I don’t remember where the Arizona closure began). They identified a detour using Highway 70, but that is a long way out of the way. We thought about it, but decided to stay in Lordsburg for the night. We had a choice between the Flying J parking lot or a KOA, and we chose the KOA. It was a good thing too! When we went to dinner (a nice little local place called “Ramona’s”), the line on 70 trying to get back on eastbound I-10 was miles long and moving at a crawl. There were city police, county sheriffs, and highway patrol trying to move the traffic along, but it was a mess. I am sure the westbound end was just as bad. You can’t take the traffic traveling on a high speed interstate and easily put it on a two lane state highway. I understand the issue west of Lordsburg is a large playa (dry lakebed) where the wind blown dust provides zero visibility.

The KOA is a decent place to spend the night, though the train does sound a whistle occasionally. I just slept through it all after having two glasses of Pastis, an anise flavored liquour introduced to me by my oldest son. Oh, and the truck picked up a nail in the tire driving into town. Everything was fine as we set up, but by the time we went to dinner we had lost 1/4 of the air. No tire shop was open, but Kevin headed off to one this morning after airing up the tire (it was down to 20 pounds). We bought a high capacity air compressor just for this reason! The truck needs about 80 pounds in the rear tires to hold the trailer weight. Thank goodness for the TPMS that now comes standard in most vehicles. Having a tire blow out at 65 mph while pulling a trailer is not minor.

Today we continue generally north and west, heading back home.

I hate being sick

In my last post (a very long time ago!) I noted I had a bad cold. That bad cold morphed into a truly horrid sinus infection, and I have not posted our locations since then. Here is an update.

17-20 February: We ended up in Loveland, CO at Boyd Lake State Park the nights of 17-19 February. It is a very nice park in the middle of a housing addition, rather odd but ok. It was expensive since there is a park entry fee in addition to the camping fee so we paid $34 for a water and electric site. It was roomy and much nicer than the parks in town, so I don’t regret the money. Of course, I was sick the entire 3 nights we were there so I don’t remember much either. We did go to Rocky Mountain National Park, and that made enough of an impression that I have some memories of it.

Gorgeous as usual. It was the first time we have been there in the winter, but it was very warm with only a little snow in the lower elevations.

20-21 February: After Loveland we took I-25 to Sugarite State Park in New Mexico. We camped one night in the Lake Alice campground, the only campground open. The sites are small, the roads are dirty, and there was a boil order for the water, but it was set in a lovely piñon forested area. The cost was incredible at only $18 for a full hookup site (though no water). My sinus infection was getting worse, and I couldn’t do any walks let alone hike. The canyon had a number of historic sites, but all I could see were the ones viewable from the road. I basically stayed in the trailer and coughed my lungs out. I didn’t even take any pictures.

21-24 February: Off to Albuquerque and an Urgent Care center! We camped at our favorite Albuquerque campground, the KOA North in Bernalillo. It isn’t as fancy as some of the newer ones on the west side of town, but has nice people and doesn’t feel like a parking lot even though the sites aren’t large. We stayed three nights, and I got to a doctor. After Z-pack antibiotics and codeine cough syrup, I decided I would survive. I basically just hibernated the entire three days though.

24-28 February: (OK, it is just 27 February now, but we will be leaving in the morning.) The weather was warmer down south, so there we went. We ended up a few miles south of Alamogordo, NM at Oscar Lee State Park. What an absolutely gorgeous place and only $10 a night for a large, well separated dry campsite. This is the first time since Quartzsite that the weather and I both were good! Warm but windy meant I could sit outside and finally kick the infection. Alamogordo is a pretty poor town, and we didn’t enjoy it at all. We did get to the city museum (quite nice) and the International Space Museum which was very good. Kevin and I worked in Aerospace for many years, and we related to many of the displays. I didn’t get any pictures there, but I should have!

The road into Dog Canyon where the park is.

The view off our campsite. Lots of variety in the desert flora. We have also seen roadrunners and Gambrel’s Quail.

Yesterday I actually did a short nature walk here at the park. We also went on a tour of the historic home of the park’s namesake.

The house has been reconstructed, but it was hard to have anything but sympathy for the people who were making a living in this very tough and unforgiving land. They were successful, but what challenges they must have had! We also went to White Sands National Monument. I was there as a teenager with my family, but Kevin had never been.

Umm. I sure can see a difference in the quality of the pictures I took with my camera (RMNP) and the ones from the iPhone (all the rest of them). It is a pain to transfer the pictures from the camera to the iPad I post to the blog from, but I may just have to do it more often.

We leave tomorrow morning (28 February). The current plan (subject to change tomorrow morning) is to head to Las Cruces and I-10 tomorrow morning. I have no idea where we will end up, but that is part of the fun.

Out of the warmth

Yesterday was one of those glorious desert winter days. The sun was shining in a clear blue sky, the wind was light, and the air was warm. Ahhh! I did a lot of just sitting in my recliner outside. We also took the bikes out for a ride to pick up a funnel cake for breakfast (don’t judge LOL!) and to visit the Quartzsite Museum, a surprisingly nice place. We also had a nice campfire with some of the RV Forum folks who were still around. Most people had left on Sunday morning, the official end of the rally, but there were enough to enjoy a nice chat.

We decided to leave today, as originally planned. We intended on heading through southern Arizona towards Albuquerque, waiting there until my daughter called to say she was in labor. Well, she called us this morning as we were finishing packing that she was headed to the hospital tonight to start her induction. We finished packing, but instead of just driving a few hours down the road, we made it to Grants, New Mexico after a bit over 9 hours of driving. The roads were clear, though there definitely was snow along the sides of the roads in a number of areas. We are staying the night in a clean RV park called Bar S, only $21 for full hookups. We really needed to dump the tanks and fill up with water. The complication is that it is going to be colder tonight than we have ever stayed in the trailer, 19 degrees! (I almost used a dash instead of a comma, but it looked like negative 19, a bit much even for us.) There is a train that comes by frequently, but it doesn’t sound its horn, so I think I will sleep fine. The cats are just glad to be out of the truck. (I know it isn’t a great picture, but she keeps moving her head.)