Day 2764

Departure Day Spring 2025

Ontario bound

Monday morning and another sunny start to the day here in Superior Arizona, I am up before sunrise this morning. I wouldn’t call it excitement as much as just an earning to get on the road again, and today has so many elements that will take us from the highest highs to some of the lowest lows. We are saying goodbye to our volunteering family at the arboretum and will spend the afternoon with Tom & Kathleen some of our RV family that we have became very close to and in between them is a hundred miles of some white knuckle highway.

This morning we took advantage of our full hook ups at the arboretum, topped of the new fresh water tank, dumped the black and grey tanks after showers and breakfast. the only thing left to pack away were the rat lights (in the Arizona desert we always run a string of lights under the coach to deter pack rats from finding a home) and packing our connection hoses and power cord. We fired up Thunder by twenty to nine and proceeded to build air pressure and warm up the big diesel while retracting the jacks, with the final task being the retracting of the slide. Every thing went as planned, and we were backing out of our spot a few moments to nine.

It is always difficult to say so long after extended stays, and today will be a difficult one we have volunteered with some of these people for four years, enough time to grow very attached. So there would be tears as we were greeted by much of the staff as we attach Ruby to Thunder in the parking lot, and our departure time is pushed back till a quarter to ten, not a big deal as todays destination is only a few hours up the highway, and I use the term up because we will be moving from 2400 feet (730 meters) of elevation to 6000 feet (1820 meters) and driving the switchbacks of the Salt River canyon.

Lets just say the drive did not go as smoothly as planned but we pulled into the Walmart parking lot at Taylor Arizona just before one o’clock none the worse for the wear, this a reasonable newer Walmart and a bit on the smaller side. We were able to find a spot away from the store near the entrance where we unhooked Ruby and headed off to visit with Tom, Kathleen & Lucy (their puppy), they have settled into a park model unit in a year round RV resort and eight months in it seems to be agreeing with them, they have a nice unit on a large lot and back onto a grassed common area which is a hit with Lucy.

They met us at the gate in their golf cart to get us through the security gate, and we had a great afternoon catching up on the latest details of their new adventures. We were treated to burgers, corn on the cob, and blueberry crumble for desert. They had just completed a bathroom renovation removing old fixtures and replacing them with updated ones like a walk in shower instead of a tub, and other that some painting the job looks complete. It amazes me how fast an afternoon can slip away when friends are involved and as we headed back to the coach the sun was setting on the end of day 2764.

We arrived at the coach to an unhappy Mister Sam who’s dinner was three hours late and who had been left in the coach unattended in a Walmart parking lot, Mister Sam is never pleased when we are travelling, and does not like noisy trucks at any time and a Walmart parking lot is not a quiet place at the best of times, But is is seven o’clock on a Monday evening and Miss Laurie enjoys watching the Voice on NBC. And I wanted to check up on the Canadian election on CBC, I have to mention here that this is our first real test of our version 3 Starlink, that we have mounted on the roof of Thunder and so fat it seems to be working well. The election back in Canada seemed to be unfolding as I expected with the usual East / West divide, we turned in for the night shortly after the Voice.

So lets look at the drive today which was close to one of the worst, it started to go bad in the first three miles as we found ourselves stopped on US-60 in the town of Superior, the previous US administration was committed to infrastructure repair and the replacing of a bridge and widening of US-60 was some of the work and three days a week US-60 is closed for six hours to all traffic the rest of the time the traffic is restricted to one alternating lane during construction hours. So our travel today was interrupted by multiple construction hold ups along with some of the prettiest and difficult canyon driving in the country but here are todays numbers.

The above is direct from Thunders computer just over 3 hours of run time, covering only 132.3 miles (212.9 kilometers) at an average speed of 42 mph (67.6 kmh) and a horrible 6.0 mpg (39.2 Liters/100km) consuming 21.7 gallons (82.1 liters) of diesel fuel, not the best start to our 2400 mile (3800 kilometer) adventure. Today we travelled east on US-60 from Boyce Thompson Arboretum to Show Low Arizona then swung north on AZ-77 to Taylor Arizona.