Our time at the Kansas State Fair ended and it was
uneventful but we had a wonderful time. Many
of the folks there are farmers and they are the nicest people we have dealt
with in a very long time. Some of the
workers we had to work with were a bit on the cranky side but we soon realized
that was their issue not ours. We also
had the opportunity to work with some of the best people as well. We worked many hours but we also just had
some fun.
We usually try to travel under 200 miles and then take days
off in between but we needed to get to Chula Vista for our next job at the
Pumpkin Station so we became what we consider truck drivers. But in reality we do not come close to the
miles that they put on daily. We were
traveling 300 miles per day for 5 days…
Day one had us leaving at dawn with cool temperatures,
clouds but no storms and very little wind.
There were some rough roads but nothing like back east and we had a
mishap with our wipers but it was an easy fix which kept us on schedule. All and all it was a great first day travel
to
Corral RV Park in Dalhart,Texas. This
place had some good and then some bad points, read our review for the entire
scoop.
For our second day of travel we left in the fog, rough road
with truckers on our butts. The speed
limit was 75 and we usually do about 59 so it was a little tense ride until we
got to New Mexico when the road got so smooth it was as if we were gliding and
we gained an hour.
We arrived at
Route 66 Casino to do some boondocking for the
night and to get a free buffet and other freebies. When we pulled in we later realized we had an
issue with our house battery, we just recently replaced our engine battery but
now it was time for the house one to stop working. We had no lights and realized our
refrigerator was not working either but we really did not have much in way of
food in there and we kept it all closed for the rest of the night. We slept in the well lit parking lot and got
an early start the next morning.
There were two Walmart locations on the way to our next stop
and we chose to stop in Gallop, New Mexico, not the best choice of the
two. We are true believers that things
happen for a reason and this time we were able to witness it ourselves. When we pulled up all of the sudden I had
this uncontrollable urge to go potty that just would not wait so I got back
into our rig to go and then realized we forgot to lock our house door…ooops!
Wait that is just the beginning of the story…
We did our shopping and then on our way out while we were
pushing our cart to our rig we witnessed a homeless man come around our rig to
the door and attempt to open the door…when we yelled to him he just turned
around and asked us for a handout. We
were both in shock and just told him to go on his way. We were both shook up and then when I
explained to Jerry what had happened earlier when I went back into our rig he
truly understood how things do happen for a reason. We know that if I did not answer my urgent
call then this man would have been in our home and who knows what might have
happened.
We replaced the battery and got back on the road swiftly and
we were not going to allow Hurricane Odile to ruin our drive, it was wetter than
usual in these areas but we were so lucky because you could see by the radar
and the puddles how we missed the major downpours and only had to deal with
some periodical drizzling. Not only did
we feel safer from the weather than we had in months, we also felt aligned with
the Universe again and knew that we were coming home.
Our next stop was at the Twin Arrows Navajo Casino Resort east
of Flagstaff, Arizona to boondock for another night. We gained another hour and they were also
giving away some freebies and/or deeply discounted items which we enjoyed. We again slept well in a well lit up parking
area and woke at dawn for our next adventurous day.
Being at over 6,000’ elevation caused Maggie to hiccup a few
times when we first started out in the morning but we tried to stay calm and
she came around. The drive was nice
through Flagstaff and Williams on I-40 but then we turned onto 89 at Ashfork
and enjoyed an even better route…that is until we went where we had not gone
before as we continued on 89 to 71 to 60…over the mountains to I-10. The views were absolutely spectacular and it
was really not as bad as some of the other roads we had been on before but we
do not plan to take this route again. It
may have saved us miles but the time it took us to climb and descend we could
have saved a few hours by going miles out of the way but it would have been hot
so we probably made the best choice. We took so many photos of this days drive of the spectacular views so check out our
Google + Web Albums for all of them.
The cool temperatures came to an abrupt end when we landed
in Ehrenberg, Arizona around noon and the temps were in the 100’s. We did not want to push it further to even
hotter weather so we opted to stay at the
Colorado River RV Resort using our
Coast to Coast membership for $15. We have stayed
here many times before but this time there were only a few others there and
unfortunately the laundry room air conditioning was not working and we needed
to do laundry so we suffered through it to get it done.
We finally awoke to our last day of travels and knew we
needed an early start to get through the Palm Desert area where wind and heat
was always at its worse and this time was no different. Temperatures were already into the 80’s by
the time we were passing through and the wind was so rough we thought for sure
Maggie was going to lose some of her outings but as usual she hung on tight and
we all made it through without any incident.
Once we turned onto 79 off of I-10 the weather once again
cooled at least 15 degrees and it was a great ride into Chula Vista. We did stop at Walmart for our huge grocery
stop for our stay at the
Pumpkin Station.
We are so grateful to be back and we love the work, the owners, the area
and above all else the weather is the absolute finest of all. It is so nice to be able to just sleep
without worries and to look at the weather and see every day the highs in the
upper 70’s to lower 80’s and the lows are mid to upper 60’s. We will take boring over all the east coast
exciting weather anytime.
For more photos, check out our
Google + Web Albums.
