Friday April 7th 2017

I got an early start this morning. My neighbors decided to pack and leave shortly after 5AM. I was sleeping with the windows open to take advantage of the nice temperature so I was wide awake far earlier than normal. At seven I gave up trying to get back to sleep. If I had a long travel day getting an early start wouldn’t have been bad, but I only had a little over a hundred miles to go today. Check in time was advertised as 2PM, but I checked in at 1PM. To arrive that late I dawdled on the way. A long gas stop, a pause at a rest area and an attempt to pause at a truck stop helped slow me down. The attempted truck stop pause was to close to the lunch hour. There was no room in the parking lot.

One last picture of the sites and cliffs surrounding River Island SP.

Visitor wishing me safe travels this morning.

The trip today was up and down over ridge lines followed by long stretches of desert. This is the Mohave desert that goes from here into California and Nevada. It has a different characteristic from the desert south and east of Phoenix. One thing is clear the plant life is different. Most of the plants in this part of the Mohave desert are close to the ground. There are no saguaro cactus, but there are some low to the ground varieties.

It was not a good travel day. It was cloudy and very windy. The wind in this territory is tricky. The desert doesn’t have good indicators of wind. Typically, I look for trees with blowing branches to warn me of the wind. Today I would realize that I have more steering wheel cut to go straight than normal or the transmission would downshift on level ground. The worst was a head wind while climbing a hill. I had a couple of slow climbs because I didn’t get into the gas quick enough.

For the next three nights I am staying in the Kingman Arizona area at Blake Ranch RV Park and Horse Motel. It is located on a hill side north of Interstate 40. I can look down on the highway from about a half a mile away. Historic route 66 goes through Kingman so I’ll be checking that out while I’m here.

Site 22 at the Blake Ranch RV Park and Horse Motel

Cell service and internet access are better here. They still aren’t great but I should be able to maintain my daily blog posts. More importantly I can access the Internet when I want. I was starting to suffer from withdrawal not being able to look things up as soon as an idea passes through my brain. Now if I could just remember all the things I wanted to look up.