Monday March 30th 2020

Day 1 of our trek north

This was a mixed feelings, kind of day, as we leave our little piece of the Arizona desert on Cottonwood Canyon Rd in the Box Canyon on State Trust land and head to Tucson. Our stop in Tucson is to prepare ourselves for the journey back north to Ontario, Most of today’s drive was on two lane road, AZ-79 to AZ-77 then onto I-10 for a few miles, to our spot for the evening at Crazy Horse campground, nothing outstanding, but it will serve our need for laundry and the like.

We met up with Ronda and Pat McDonald of Wyoming today as well, we originally met the McDonald’s back in mid January at the Beaver motor coach rally in Quartzsite. And Miss Laurie has been keeping in touch throughout the winter, they are visiting relatives in the Tucson area, so they stopped by the park before we went out to get an early dinner. Whataburger was the establishment of choice, as Laurie and I have never eaten at a Whataburger we thought it would be a good choice. The Whataburger chain is based in Texas and has over 500 locations there, with another 150 scattered through a few surrounding south western states. Because of social distancing we knew there would be no opportunity to eat in so we took our lawn chairs, went thru the drive through, and then sat in the parking lot enjoying our burgers, a little weird, but so are the times we are living in.

Of course as life is very interesting right now, to say the least, but while we were sitting in the parking lot eating our burgers a reporter from “The Arizona Star” happened to notice and wanted to take our picture, for an article she was doing on how people are coping with all the new coronavirus rules, we all agreed so we may make it to tomorrow’s Tucson paper … I’m lot rushing out to buy a subscription or any thing but we could be really famous here in Tucson … just saying.

So it was a short travel day only 98 miles (157 kms) and only a couple of hours, travelling time, during our time before being hooked up though the solar brought in 208 amp hours of power. Our cost for the site was around $41 but taking into consideration what it would have cost to dump and fill, and the expense to do laundry it justified the price. We fuelled as we exited the interstate, our first fuel purchase since March 10th back in Parker, so we added 43.9 gallons (166.2 litres) at $2.65 per gallon, the first of many refueling stops as the journey begins.

As Always: Be Well, Be Healthy, Be Safe …

Saturday March 28th 2020

Our last Saturday in Arizona, as we start preparing to head north, we are not likely have the barbecue out again until we get back to chilly Ontario. So we are making good use of the barbecue before putting it away and we head north, so on Friday we had some fresh asparagus and some ribeye steaks, we each eat half and froze the other half for warm up meal later, tonight we are barbecuing burgers, and cooking the whole package, so we will have some extra patties pre-cooked for a quick meal on the road, and Sunday we are grilling a large package of chicken breasts that can warmed, sliced, and be used for multiple meals over the next couple of weeks.

It’s been a good day, we got a chance to speak with Butch & Betty by phone, and they are both well but are still locked down at home in Ohio, and as always Butch put this whole coronavirus thing into perfect perspective, in Butch’s words: “so some bat shits on a goat in China, and the world as we know it is over”. Sounds a little bit crazy but it’s almost true … but as long as people have the ability to move around the world so easily, someone in China farts, and we smell it here in the Arizona desert … or maybe that was just from the herd of cows that have been wondering around our coach here on the Arizona state land.

We will be moving on Monday, as the return north journey begins, Google says we are about 2200 miles (3550 kms) back to Ontario and our summer home. So if we average 200 miles a day we are only 11 or 12 days away. So that brings us back on Easter Weekend, usually a large family event of which I’m sure will only be a mere shadow of a normal Easter celebration, no matter the orange squirrel in Washington says. We are down to choosing between two routes, both have us starting our trip by driving about an hour south to Tucson Arizona then heading East to Las Cruses New Mexico. There we have to make the big decision whether we stay on I-10 to I-20 through Texas, or head north east to catch I-40 through Texas. The later is the shorter 2200 mile route and if weather co-operates it is our preferred route of choice, and while we are expecting some cold wet weather we do want to avoid heavy rain or god forbid any snow, so it is a case of picking points on our possibly routes and comparing temperatures and watching for possible storms. Either route has us aiming to cross the border at the Blue Water Bridge at Sarnia Ontario.

We are expecting lighter traffic than normal as we head back, also expecting to find no restaurants open, other than fast food drive thrus with many states are asking for people to stay home. Many camp grounds apparently are closed and while we do not use them ourselves it also means many people who do may be trying to find alternative spots to park. We have also heard all about the mandatory quarantine once we re-enter Canada, and the large fines for not obeying the rules, and even about a “snitch line” to report the rule breakers. All this means that we will need to have a full 14 days of all supplies which means food, paper products, a full tank of fuel, and very large supply of cocktails when we get back. Supplies have been hard to find with lots of empty shelves still, although it seemed to be getting better this last week, but it will be one of our main task as we start the journey.

So Monday we are going to a full hookup campground in Tucson, to dump our tanks, refill the fresh water, catch up on laundry, make a Costco run, and say goodbye to some new friends that we met at the Beaver motor coach rally in Quartzsite that wintered in Tucson, we said our goodbyes to Ray and Karen on Wednesday, and then we can take a serious look east and start rolling on Tuesday. We had planned to try to see the Ward family on our trip back but we think in the best interest of all parties, we probably should pass on a visit this trip. Because in reality everyone knows (or at least should know) that this is not even close to being over and will leave lots of painfully reminders for years to come, both financially and the loss of life, but we will move on and meet the challenges head on.Please be well and stay safe!

As Always: Stay safe, be careful, and be well!