Tag: arizona

Day 2380

Tuesday, April 9th, 2024

Day 1 of our trek north

Dear Journal:

Lets start by saying today is going to be a busy day. Our planned departure time was eight o’clock and let me just quickly say that we failed to meet that first objective. It looked like I was in good shape for meeting our departure time but everything just seemed to take longer than I had anticipated. This happening doesn’t change our destination plan, it just means that we will be a wee bit later.

Because of tightness in maneuvering around the host camp area we have to pull into the RV lanes of the Arboretum parking lot to hook up our towed. This will be the first time I get to try all the improvements that I made to the towbar, the new safety cables seem great, the new power cord connector and having the power cord ran through the towbar is a real game changer. The chance of damaging anything has all but been eliminated, in the past I have cut up the power cord when it got out of position and I had damaged the safety cables a number of time probably to the stage of compromising their integrity.

With a quick check of lights we are pulling out of the Arboretum parking lot and heading east on highway US-60, this is the most direct route back east and although the Salt River Canyon is a challenge for any large vehicle. You work your way down into the canyon bottom with numerous switch backs and with lots of “Jake Brake” operation to cross the Salt River and start the climb back up the north face of the canyon. A terrifying yet beautiful journey, as we climb the north face we are reaching higher elevations and the temperature is dropping as we are climbing and the first town we pass through is Show Low and as we look north the clouds look as if they could be snow clouds.

This group of photos was from the Salt River Canyon as seen from the drivers seat, the decent and climb back up the northern face, there were even some Mexican poppies in bloom.

We will be east bound on US-60 until we have crossed the New Mexico state line. Our first time change as we move from Arizona Standard time to Mountain Daylight Saving time. We had driven US-60 last spring but we had taking it all the way to Interstate I-25, this spring we are going to head north on State Highway NM-36 to NM-117 which will meet up with Interstate I-40 west of Albuquerque. Our destination is a RV park at a casino in an area called Casa Blanca. We had stayed there way back in November of 2019, a small park with 5 pull through sites, full hook-ups for around $20 American. We are at around 6000 feet of elevation and expect the temperature to be low enough that a heater may be required.

As we move on eastward on US-60, the weather is turning a wee bit nasty with a shower with some snow flakes. it just happens that there is a rest stop a few miles up the road and we decide to have a late lunch and give this storm a little while to blow through. Lunch today was some left over pizza warmed up in the microwave. The temperature has dropped off as we have lost the sun and the temperature is now 48ºF (8.8ºC), after lunch I tried to laydown for a nap, but I was unsuccessful, so we started Thunder and continued east to NM-36. We have never been on this stretch of road before so it is a new adventure, and while NM-36 didn’t offer much when we hooked up with NM-117 that all changed, this had to be one of the most pleasant surprises that we have had for a while.

The photos above were pulled from the dashcam that is mounted on the windshield of our coach, the data line on the bottom records date, time, speed of the coach, and the last numbers are the coordinates from each photo. This camera is ten years old so not the best picture quality, but it is reassuring to have documentation is any issue should occur.

We made it to the Dancing Eagle Casino RV campground by five o’clock, and managed to get one of the pull through sites, I only connected the power cable as we had no need of the water or sewer connection tonight. We watched television and Miss Laurie made a curry shrimp dish on rice for dinner, there was a lot of light from the casino, truck stop and the grocery store, but overall the noise level was good and we were able to operate the heater overnight.

Day 1 Stats: 305 miles (491 kilometers) and the solar harvest was 132 amp / hours the cost of camping was $20.40 US or $27.90 CDN.

Day 2309

Monday January 29th 2024

Dear Journal:

Monday the 29th and as we enjoy another sunrise with a blessed cup of perked coffee, we are looking forward to today’s adventure. We are leaving our spot at the Arboretum this morning and heading south to visit Tom & Kathleen, at their campground in Casa Grande but first we need to get some breakfast and pack up our coach. Because we are travelling light this trip as we are not taking our towed, which means that we can leave some items at our spot for our return later this week. We are not loading our Napoleon barbeque, or our beaver mascot, we are taking our chairs, the rug from patio and leaving our propane fire pit and propane tank.

We are heading to a boondocking spot so NO HOOK-UPS which is not unusual for our way of travel, but this will give me some insight as to how much the extra draw on our solar system the new DC powered cooling unit on our refrigerator may add. We have no issues on travel days because the system is helped by the chassis alternator. and we have not really just sat for a couple of days disconnected, and we are to have a bright sunny week. And while unlike on BLM land we are not going to get set up for the best harvest and we will not be tilting any panels so we will get some great information for the future.

Breakfast was some biscuits and preserves’, while watching some morning television, my schedule would be to start the preparations by eight o’clock, and I was headed out the door by 8:05. Because of our location, I need to pickup the “rat lights”, dump the black tank, add some water to the freshwater tank, remove the sun shades from the windshield and front windows, check tire pressures, tuck away the rug and chairs, clean the windshield glass (mainly just desert dust), disconnect the sewer, water and power, start the coach, bring in the slide, raise the jacks and get ready to roll out. I’m not aware of what all Miss Laurie does to prepare for the interior but I do know the first travel day involves a lot of work. This short excursion will determine if all the cabinet door latch adjustment last week does the job of keeping the cabinet doors closed and if the new soft close drawers will stay closed during our travel. If it works than Miss Laurie will not need to tie cabinet handles and bungy drawers, not a huge task but still time consuming.

Shortly after ten we were backing Thunder out of our spot, and while getting out of the Arboretum has some tight spots, we maneuver around with out adding any new “Arizona pinstripes”. As we pull onto US-60 westbound toward Phoenix it feels good to be back in the pilot seat, and while it is unusual not to have our towed it is a nice change, we are climbing in elevation as we exit “Gonzales pass” and make our way into the “east valley” area, our first major road is AZ-79 which will take us south toward Florence, this section of State highway has just been resurfaced and is a pleasure to drive along, just as we reach the town limits we turn west on “Hunt Highway” a secondary road that heads us toward Coolidge where we stopped at a Walmart to pick up some supplies for the week. We had visited this Walmart in the spring of 2020 while we were boondocking on State land “Cottonwood Canyon” just north of Florence and I remember thinking it was a terrible Walmart then and I can now report it is still a terrible Walmart almost three years latter.

As we make our way south now through Coolidge we hook up with AZ-287 which will take us to Interstate I-10 in Casa Grande, we need to turn East on I-1o, it is actually more south than east but we are only travelling a few miles to exit 200. Here we are going to top off Thunders fuel tank, and get Thunder a quick bath at the Blue Beacon truck wash at this location to wash off some of the Arizona dust. There was quite a line up of vehicle but the majority seemed to be RVs, so you may wonder what is the cost of wash on our coach, and for an RV over 30′ long a wash with some citrus shine on our aluminum rims total cost us $51.00 US dollars. One of the reasons I wanted the wash is that they spray off the roof which will clean the solar panels to help with our solar harvest this week, and Thunder looks better all spiffed up. From the fuel stop we are only ten miles to our destination, one of the joys of a motor home is the ability to eat lunch while sitting in line for our wash, Miss Laurie made us a little lunch that involved the operation of the microwave while waiting for our turn.

At 2:05 we pulled in to “Rovers Roost RV Park” and were greeted by Miss Kathleen & Tom as were were guided to our site, a back in site on the south side of the park. As with most campgrounds in Arizona the surface is gravel, the sites are back in at 45º from the main road the sites accommodate vehicles up to 40′ and I would say the lot is 30′ wide plenty of room for our rug, some chairs as well as Mister Sam’s tent. We back up to a small gravel road with a cinder block wall and a Oleander hedge separating us. The cost of our boondocking site is $7.00 US per night, there is water available if needed and a dump station on site for a donation, there are not a lot of amenities in the park no pool or hot tub, there are laundry machines, a club house but not much more. This is a co-op park so the leaseholders self govern. And the park feels old, not the park, as much as the attitude of the leaseholders. You need to be an escapee or excapers member to stay here, and with most of the co-ops there is a waiting list to become an leaseholder.

So after parking , tipping out the slide and putting the jacks down we wandered over to Tom & Kathleen’s site on the north side of the park where we enjoyed a couple of cocktails while waiting for the Monday afternoon “meet & greet” at the clubhouse. Now we have not been to a lot of meet & greets but the one we have usually involved snacks and beverages, this one did not. It was more about introducing new visitors to the park and making announcements about upcoming events, not a bad idea but I think snacks and beverages would bring out more people. Although this was well attended because it involved an auction to sell off front of the line tickets for their next week western themed events and meals, the first in line tickets include bragging rights and a table of honour, and a number of people paid hundreds of dollars for that privilege. The meet & greet was followed by “happy hour” at Tom & Kathleen’s site with Miss Laurie suppling some snacks.

Dinner was Miss Laurie’s lasagna served with a salad, we sat on Tom & Kathleen’s patio as they have a table with chairs under their awning so we had lighting as well. Tom and I enjoyed a couple of bottles of wine, we sampled the wine from Haak Winery in Texas that we had used as a Harvest Host stay. It was a lovely evening giving us a chance to catch up on everyone’s most recent adventures. This park is around 200 sites and is a combination of leaseholders and renters, as I tried to explain before the leaseholders buy their lease which gives them the right to use their site anytime they want it, if they are not going to use it they may place their site it into the rental pool which consists of all the properties for rent either daily, weekly or by the month. The rent collected goes into the rental fund and every site owner that has their property in the rental pool get a piece of the pie. So your site may not be rented all season but you still get some remuneration toward your yearly fees, the annual fees at this co-op run near the thousand dollar mark, any major park projects would be tackled by a special assessment that could be levied for a couple of years until enough funds are raised to complete the project.

If we were still escapees members we could rent a site here for around $450/month plus electric. That amount is around average for the amenities offered and the location, we are on the southern limit of Casa Grande and are near a half hour drive to get supplies. This is not a park that would draw us in if we did not have close friends here, although it would make for a great overnight boondocking spot just two miles north of Interstate I-8 in southern Arizona. After dinner we headed back to Thunder where we watched a little television before turning in for the night.

Blog 507