Sunday September 17th 2017

Today was a rare Sunday travel day. I prefer to travel in the middle of the week, but I wasn’t paying attention to the day of the week when I made my current reservation. I was looking for a two week stay and the first opportunity happened to fall on a Sunday. So I packed up and got on the road with all of the RVers returning home from the weekend. I’ll have another Sunday of travel in two weeks when I move on from here.

I had lots of little issues on today’s journey. First the wind was a problem in the wide open areas east of Flagstaff AZ. It was a quartering wind that caused issues when a gust came through. I traveled into the rumble strip on the side of the breakdown lane a few times before I caught it and eased back into the lane. The ninety or so miles from Holbrook to Flagstaff was mostly up hill. I traveled from around five thousand feet in elevation to over seven thousand in the Flagstaff area. Uphill into the wind meant using more gas.

Site 95 in the Cooper’s Hawk area of the Dead Horse Ranch State Park.

I stopped for gas and had more little issues in the RV lanes. A motorhome that had finished fueling was parked at the pumps that filled on the drivers side. I waited for ten minutes and they never moved. When the next lane over emptied out, I moved over to it. This lane had remote filling nozzles on the drivers side with the main pump on the passengers side. I’ve used the remote fills before, but don’t really like them. Unfortunately, this time they weren’t working. A fact that I learned after I’d swiped my credit card and got authorization to pump. I tried to stretch the passenger side hose to my fill location on the driver side rear of the coach. It didn’t make it on the first try. After moving the motorhome ahead a foot I got it to work at maximum stretch. If anyone was watching it must have been a real show. The people in the motorhome blocking the other lane weren’t watching. When I was almost finished they came strolling back from the store.

The gas station saga continued when the machine didn’t print a receipt. I use them to keep track of gallons pumped and cost. I had to grab a piece of paper from the RV to write down the pertinent information, but I forgot two things. First I didn’t write down the mileage and second I forgot to put the cap back on the fuel tank. Forgetting to right down the mileage isn’t a big deal, I just can’t calculate how bad the wind and the uphill climb impacted my miles per gallon. The cap issue I discovered on a walk around at a rest area sixty or so miles later. It was still attached by its plastic lanyard. So I dodged that issue too.

The last part of the trip was downhill from the seven thousand foot level of Flagstaff to around 3500 in the Verde Valley home of Cottonwood AZ. Most of that elevation lose is in less than 20 miles on Interstate 17. I don’t look forward to climbing back up the mountain in two weeks.

I’m at the Dead Horse Ranch State Park in Cottonwood AZ for the next two weeks. The park got its name from its previous owner in the late 1940s. When looking for property they found this parcel with a large dead horse in the road. It seemed like an appropriate name for the ranch when they bought the land. So far I haven’t seen any horses alive or otherwise.