Friday March 31st 2017

The temperature today never made it to 70. It was more than 20 degrees less than yesterday. The morning sun turned into afternoon clouds. Thankfully, the wind never got as bad as it was late yesterday. The 30 mph winds kept me awake until around one in the morning when they seemed to die down.

Today was a cleaning and packing day for tomorrow’s move. I vacuumed the latest accumulation of dust out of the rig and started to pack the inside things I won’t need in the morning. Outside I stowed the chairs in the basement storage and loaded the bicycle onto the back of the car. In the morning, I’ll finish the inside, disconnect the utilities and hook up the car.

I don’t have to rush my departure. I’m only going down the road about twenty miles to the Picacho Peak State Park for a few days. This is the same park I decided not to visit as a day trip a couple of weeks ago. At the time, I couldn’t see the value of paying a high day use fee for about 20 minutes of visiting. Staying at the campground is a good solution to seeing the park and staying in this area for another few days.

I also settled up my electric bill with the office this afternoon. I had to run the air conditioner and the electric heater this month so I used a few more kilowatts than I expected. It still amounts to less than two dollars a day. If I was paying a daily rate which included electricity, I’d have paid more than twenty dollars a day more than the monthly equivalent. Staying in one place for a longer amount of time often has significant cost savings.

On my evening walk around the campground I saw many people working on packing. The box trailers have come out of storage and the toys and extra cars are getting loaded. I suspect that there will be several leaving tomorrow and a steady stream of departures in the next few days.

Last sunset from Silverado RV Resort.

I’ve enjoyed my stay at Sliverado RV Resort. It worked out good for access to the Tucson area and the eastern Phoenix metro area. I would consider returning for another stay, but will probably try other areas first. It worked out OK for seeing spring training games, but it was not ideal. I had to do a lot of driving.

Tomorrow begins my summer travels. I have four stops of one to three nights in duration before I get to Las Vegas. I want to stay in Las Vegas for a couple of weeks before moving further north in Nevada. I’m still not sure where I’m going to stay in Vegas. One of the expensive places that I didn’t want to stay at anyway is listed as full on its website. So I am getting a little concerned about getting a reservation. I need to make some calls tomorrow. As I written before, this making reservations business is painful.

Thursday March 30th 2017

Another storm front is making its way across the country. Here in the Arizona desert that means wind. Today was sunny with a high temperature almost ninety degrees, but with every passing hour the wind increased in intensity. The evening news indicated that thirty mph sustained winds with gusts to fifty mph were in the area.

Hopefully, the wind will quiet down over night. The noise it makes as it interacts with my slide out room awnings and antennas on the roof can be very distracting. The forecast for tomorrow has the wind dying as the day progresses with a high temperature twenty degrees cooler than today.

Today’s agenda included more planning for my travels this summer. I found a couple of Web forum discussions of the road conditions on my proposed route. The consensus seems to be that it’s a picturesque and only mildly challenging. I’ll settle for that right now. My route north is now locked in jello. I’m in the process of checking distances and looking up campground reviews. I should be in the Glacier National Park area in the middle of June. The Going to the Sun road across the park is usually plowed and open by the end of June so, I’ll keep my fingers crossed.

My other major agenda item for the day was another run to Walmart. In addition to the groceries that I can seem to live without, I bought a new Rand McNally Road Atlas. The one I have been using is four years old and looking a little trampled. The paper atlas is good for the big picture. The zoomed out view of google maps doesn’t provide the detail the paper atlas provides.

The wind is spoiling the symmetry of the palm trees at the RV park.

Walking around the campground this evening was difficult. The blowing wind made walking in a straight line difficult. The eight foot block walls around the RV resort keep the dust devils out of the park, but the wind still has an impact. Out in the open desert beside the highway several little dust circulations are visible. The large open areas in the campground where people have already left for the north also allows the wind to get a clear shot that it didn’t have at the beginning of the month.

Wednesday March 29th 2017

After two days of playing tourist I took today off. Today was a beautiful day for planning. It wasn’t too hot and more important I was in the mood to plan. Overall I have a good idea where I’ll be between now and the end of May. All the reservations aren’t made, but enough to know it’s possible.

I leave here on Saturday. I’ll spend the next ten days in western Arizona working my way to Las Vegas. This is a major change in plans from last week when I found out that I wasn’t the only one looking at central and northern Arizona. Getting reservations in the Verde Valley and areas near the Grand Canyon wasn’t possible. I’ll get to that area this fall as I come back south through Utah.

I’ll spend two weeks in Las Vegas touring casinos, going to a few shows and visiting some of the out lying areas like the Valley of Fire, Lake Mead and Red Rock Canyon. From Las Vegas I’ll take about a week to relocate to the Reno Lake Tahoe area of Nevada for another two weeks.  Along the way I may a side trip to Death Valley NP.   The Reno area will be the first brand new territory on the journey north. I’m looking forward to Lake Tahoe.

From the Reno area I’m going to head northeast to Idaho. I’ll spend a couple of weeks in southern Idaho. The Snake River, Sun Valley and Craters of the Moon National Monument are all possible tourist destinations in the area. The plan is to be in this area until the beginning of June.

Going north from southern Idaho is harder to plan. My ultimate northern destination is Glacier National Park at the Canadian border in Northwest Montana. I need to be aware of the mountain passes over the continental divide. Long hauls, hairpin turns, narrow roads and my motorhome are not necessarily compatible. The truth is I really don’t know my capabilities on such roads. If I keep to the Interstate highways this isn’t a big deal, but that’s not always possible. The internet and trucker’s directories are a great planning tool.

My current plan is to find a way north on the west side of the continental divide to the west side of Glacier National park for the second half of June. Then work my way back south to the Salt Lake City Utah area to be near the airport for the last third of July. I’ll then tour Utah into September and move south to northern Arizona for October. By November, elevation, latitude and weather become a concern again.

I’ll book a couple more reservations tomorrow and continue checking the routes. My tablet ran out of battery juice this afternoon so I had to pull out the paper maps. I’ve got the near term locked in, but I still have the Holidays to worry about.

Empty row of campsites with flowering bushes separating the sites and citrus trees between the rows. The bushes and trees all get drip irrigation. 

Here at the campground the exodus continues. The row of campsites across from me is down to one trailer and they are packing. I suspect that I won’t be the only one leaving on the first of April.

Tuesday March 28th 2017

Today I went to my last spring training game for this year. It was the Texas Rangers versus the Colorado Rockies at Salt River Fields in Scottsdale.

Rockies warm up before the game

This game started an hour earlier than previous games at 12:10 so I got an early start to arrive in plenty of time. Things were a little different today. There seemed to be fewer people working at the stadium. The number of vendors in the stands and the staff at the gate seemed to be reduced. This is the next to last game of the spring at this stadium, so maybe employees have started to move on to other jobs. The facility is not as active at other times of the year.

Dinger the Rockies mascot

The game was pretty good. It had the right amount of action and defense. Every game seems to have a theme. I’ve been to games this spring that had several injuries, games with strange defensive alignments, and today it was broken bats. There were three obvious broken bats and a couple of odd sounding hits. Luckily, no one was hit by flying pieces of bat.

Pitching change

The Rockies scored first in the fourth inning, but the Rangers found their bats in the top of the fifth to go ahead. The Rockies tried to come back in the bottom of the ninth but fell short. The final score was Rangers 4 Rockies 3.

Final Score Rangers 4 Rockies 3

I thought the trip home would be easier with the earlier start time and relatively short game. I was wrong. The traffic on the loop roads was as bad as it was every other day. The road has an HOV-2 lane that is only separated from the rest of the lanes by a solid white line. Traffic near major intersections needs to cross through the other 3 lanes to enter and exit the HOV-2 lane. It seems to slow things down more than it helps smooth the traffic out.

Once I got out the metro Phoenix traffic into the open desert the traffic went down, but the wind came up. There were high wind and Red flag warnings today. I think the area dodged the fire danger, but the wind was a challenge to drive through.

Monday March 27th 2017

I got back into tourist mode today with a visit to a Cold War relic. It was a sunny day around 80 degrees with a strong wind this afternoon. About mid day I headed south to the Tucson area.

Titan Missile Museum

About 30 kilometers south of Tuscon is the Titan Missile Museum. Interstate 19 from Tucson south to the Mexico border uses metric measures on signs. The only signs in non metric measures are the speed limit signs. I don’t know if this is some strange experiment or a legislative curiosity, but it is apparently the only place in the country that uses the metric system. It’s just weird. The museum is located at an old Titan II missile silo that was decommissioned in 1987.

The site was one of a 54 Titan II missile complexes in Arizona, Arkansas and Kansas. Today it is the only site the silo hasn’t been demolished. This one is dedicated as a museum complete with the original training ICBM in the silo. A tour takes you down to the control room and view portal to the missile in the silo.

Launch control room.

The control room is at the bottom of 55 stairs about 35 feet underground. You pass through what was several levels of security to reach the heavy blast doors. After passing through two blast doors you are in an area that is stabilized by huge springs and hydraulic equipment to withstand nearby strikes from incoming missiles. The control room and crew quarters are further isolated to withstand attack.

Missile visible through a Plexiglas window in an access door. 

The docent very dramatically describes life during a 24 hour shift and the actions that the crew of four would go through if they received a launch order. The two keys getting turned at the same time you see in movies is true, but there is no big red button. The ICBM was capable of delivering its 9 megaton payload 6300 miles away in 30 minutes. An air burst over the target would do up to 900 square miles of destruction.

Blast doors over the top of the silo

After the tour you can wander around the surface area of the missile site. The heavy blast doors over the silo have been modified with a Plexiglas viewing window. You can look down at the missile and the fake warhead. It’s interesting to remember that the titan II rocket was also used to launch the NASA Gemini missions.

I enjoyed the tour very much. The Titan II missile systems had there life during my life. This provides a particular context for me to appreciate the tour. Some of the younger people on the tour weren’t born until after the missile was decommissioned. One boy around twelve or thirteen was most impressed with the dial telephone on the wall.

Sunday March 26th 2017

I still haven’t gotten back into touring mode after my week attending the Escapade, but I’m making progress. I left the campground today for the first time since the Escapade. It wasn’t for anything exciting, just essential. I went grocery shopping.

It was another beautiful day with only a little wind. The temperature peaked around 80 degrees. After watching the Redsox spring training game on TV, I went shopping. The grocery stores are in Casa Grande about ten miles north west of my RV home in Eloy. To get there I needed gas in the car. The price turned out to be five cents higher than last Wednesday. In fact, gas prices have gone up around 30 cents a gallon since I arrived in Arizona. They claim it is the refineries changing from a winter formula to a summer formula. It’s still better than a few years ago.

The old adage of not going to the grocery store with an empty stomach came into play today. I was hungry and I’ve been eating out of the freezer and the cereal cabinet the last couple of days. I over bought a few things. I bought both fresh baked bread and prepackaged sandwich bread. From the meat counter a package of two steaks jumped into my cart. The cookie aisle also contributed to my cart. It didn’t get too extreme, but I was questioning my judgment when I unloaded the groceries into the cabinets and refrigerator.

To solve the hunger problem, one of the steaks got grilled. I added a microwave baked potato and a small can of corn. Desert was a couple of the cookies from one of the packages that jumped into my cart at the grocery store.

Another interesting sky at sunset. 

Today’s other major accomplishment was the laundry. I drove over to the campground laundry with the intent of getting it started and returning to the rig. The significant supply of books in the laundry book exchange changed that idea. The number of books available has increased significantly as people departed the campground for the summer. There were about twice as many books available today than last time I did laundry. A Vince Flynn paperback, Separation of Power, caught my eye. I’ve read the book before, but didn’t remember the details of the plot. Once the wash was started, I started reading. About 10 minutes or so after the wash finished I looked up from the book long enough to start the dryer. I ended up bringing the book back to the camper with me for the evening.

Saturday March 25th 2017

One of the reasons I write this blog is to document my day to day life on my Rambling Road Trip. Today’s entry is not going to be very long or very interesting. For the second day in a row I stayed at camp all day.

Early in the day the sky was pure blue and the wind was nowhere to be found. 

It was another beautiful day weather wise. The first two thirds of the daylight hours were sunny and calm. At times the wind was not blowing at all. A very unusual occurrence in the desert. The last third of the daylight into the evening has made up for the lack of wind. It started to cloud over just before sunset and the wind has been howling.

My day has been focused on TV watching and computer based web surfing. These activities were interrupted by chores around the RV and a couple of walks around the park. On TV I managed to find and watch most of the Redsox vs. Phillies spring training game. The game ended as a nine inning three three tie. Since baseball, even in exhibition games, doesn’t recognize ties, by some quirk of the rules it is recorded as a loss.

At sunset the clouds had moved in and the wind was blowing strong.

The computer use was mostly frustration. For some reason my connection to the network is very slow today. I’m using my Verizon cell phone data plan. It had been running at reasonable 4G speeds since I got here. Today my speed tests have shown speeds under one meg down and even less for uploads. If you don’t have at least three meg down some web pages won’t load. I’m concerned that the slow upload may make this blog post take a very long time to complete. Time will tell.

Friday March 24th 2017

Today was a beautiful sunny day. The temperature topped out a little below the seasonal average at 75 degrees. It was a perfect day to rest up after the Escapade. It was great not having to drive one hundred and forty plus miles.

I really didn’t accomplish much other than rest. I intended to get the laundry done, but when I checked the laundry all 8 washers were in use with a backlog of dirty laundry to be loaded. I’ll try again over the next couple of days. I’m long way from running out of clean clothes.

Train heading northwest toward where my RV home is located.  I think there are two or three an hour going by.   (Picture taken through dirty car window.)

Another intended activity was making reservations for when I leave here in a weeks time. Last week I decided to head north toward the Verde Valley, Sedona and the Grand Canyon area, but I didn’t select the campgrounds. Today I prioritized my choices and started calling for reservations. One, two, three strikes and your out of the travel planning game. I could only find a couple of nights here and there. I don’t want to have to move more than tour. I’m now considering other options for the next couple of weeks. Las Vegas toward the end of April is still viable, but I don’t want to make the reservations until I get the beginning of the month booked.

I also did more research on the significant dates during the rest of the summer touring season. In particular the Memorial Day holiday, Fourth of July and late July when I want to be near an airport. The real problem continues to be the conflict between my desire to just go where I want when I want and the need to make reservations. The obvious solution is to book the major elements way in advance then fill in the gaps as the time approaches. I did that when I booked my current site last November. The downside comes when I extend my stay in one area and have to make a speed run to the new location. I didn’t enjoy my rapid cross country trip from Florida to Arizona. It would have been fine if I’d used the entire month of February as originally planned, but I delayed leaving Florida. Knowing my tendencies, It will happen more often than not when I book way in advance.

Today was one day that having the TV on for background noise was a distraction. The networks interrupted the regular broadcast at least four times to talk about the health care bill. First it was speculation, then fact, then the speaker of the house’s statement and finally the president’s statement. Each interruption got my attention and my frustration. The politicians and the reporters are equally annoying. I would have been happier if they had just interrupted once to say the bill had been withdrawn from consideration. I could then decide if I wanted to here the details or not. I watch the evening news or a news channel for the details.

I took at least three walks around the campground today. Over the last week it has continued to empty out. I’d guess that it is less than half full now. One of my neighbors started his diesel motorhome around seven thirty this morning. The low rumble woke me up and lasted for about a half an hour until he pulled out. Several of my immediate neighbors are from Canada and don’t plan to head north until late next month. I don’t anticipate any other noisy nearby departures until I leave at the end of the month.

Thursday March 23rd 2017

The wind blew and the rain fell over night. This may be a desert, but there was water on the road in front of my RV this morning. It struggled to clear off and break 70 today.

I started slow this morning. There were not any interesting seminars at the Escapade this morning. I spent the morning slowly drinking my coffee while watching the morning TV shows. I had a hard time convincing myself that it was only Thursday morning. All of the activity with the Escapade had me thinking it was Friday or even Saturday morning. Around 1PM I left for Tucson and the closing ceremony of the 57th Escapade.

Picacho Peak. One of the sights on my commute topped with fluffy clouds.   

View out the side window near Picacho Peak.

I got there early for the 3PM event. Walking around the fairgrounds it was evident that many attendees had already hit the road for home or their next destination. The long rows of RVs now had large gaps where people had departed. Other people were working on readying their rigs for an early departure tomorrow. Some may have paid for an additional night or two to avoid the rush to the dumping station.

The other big difference today was the temperature. It was very windy and the thermometer was reading in the sixties. Jackets and long pants replaced short sleeve shirts and shorts. In the sun, sheltered from the wind, it was fine, but out in the open the wind chill was uncomfortable.

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More fluffy clouds over the fairgrounds. 

The closing ceremony got started on time at three. The attendance was announced as somewhere in the excess of 900 RVs and over 2500 people when weekly walk-ins like me and daily walk-ins were included. I didn’t take notes so the generalization will have to do. I didn’t win either of the big door prizes so my travel plans for the year don’t have to change. The prizes were attendance at an Adventure Caravans Mega rally and the Escapee’s Rose Parade HOP. The winners seem to be very happy.

The next Escapade was announced for May of 2018 in Missouri. The idea of a rally at a fairgrounds in the middle of Tornado Alley during the peak of the tornado season seems scary. I would like to fully attend an Escapade, but I’m not sure about the next one.

Commuting back and forth to the Escapade had its drawbacks. It wasn’t easy to get to the early morning events. I would have had to leave my camp at 7AM. When I stayed for the nighttime events I didn’t get home until almost 10 and that’s leaving early. The other issue is the downtime between events. Those staying on site could go back to their rigs for and hour or more. I had to find other ways to kill time. You can only walk around the grounds so many times. I also drove around the area east of Tucson a couple of days, but the desert is the desert.

Wednesday March 22nd 2017

The long run of ninety plus degree days ended today. It only got into the mid 80s with some clouds and lots of wind. Tonight the wind is picking up and there is a possibility of rain. Tomorrow is forecast to be cooler than normal with a high just over seventy.

I drove back down to the Escapade in Tucson this morning. I arrived in time for the 10am set of seminars. My first seminar was on using custom Google maps to document my travels. This was another very good presentation by the Geeks on Tour. When I get some dedicated time in front of the computer, I’ll try to add some custom Google maps to this blog.

My second seminar of the day was on working as a Gate Guard at Texas oil drilling sites. I don’t anticipate ever doing this, but the presentation was by Greg and Jan White. I’ve been reading Greg’s daily blog on their life full time in a motorhome. Their Our RV Adventures blog was one of the blogs that influenced my decision to live and travel full time in my RV. Unfortunately, they were surrounded by people asking questions after the presentation so I didn’t get to introduce myself.

I have seen other people that I know from reading blogs. It is a very strange thing to know things about people I’ve never met. I’ve yet to walk up to any of them introduce myself. I’m sure for some of them it’s a common occurrence, but it sure seems strange to me. I would fear a dialog something like: “Hi Joe. How’s your recovery from that major operation you wrote about last month? Who am I? Oh just a reader of your blog.” Obviously I wouldn’t do that, but as more people start reading this blog … who knows?  I try to remember not to say things I don’t want others to remember.

The last presentation I went to today was a panel discussion on full timing. I’m happy to say I didn’t hear anything new. I take that to mean that I’ve learned or experienced the basics of this lifestyle. That is not to imply I won’t have something new come up tomorrow or surprise me the next day. I’m sure it will. It is part of the adventure.

It was a cloudier day today with much stronger winds.

Tonight’s entertainment was a talent show. Some of the acts were very good. I only stayed for the first half. I fought the wind on the last half of the trip home. There was also a lot of dust in the air from the wind passing over the desert. The wind has been blowing hard against the side of the RV as I write this blog entry.