And back to Texas

We were at our son’s in Visalia for a bit. We did some dog sitting for them while they took a short trip. We were going to get back on the road shortly after their return but Roxie got Covid, or at least that is what the test said. She was pretty much down for about 2 weeks with it. I think I got it also during that time, but I didn’t test. I was affected for about 2 days.

When we did our cross-country with the Chen’s we went through the upper panhandle of Texas. We usually look at house prices whenever we go through a town. We are, after all, still looking for a place to ‘settle’ down in. One place we went through was Amarillo and the prices there are very affordable. So we headed there to look around a bit and to get a breather from California.

We high-tailed it back east again on I40, doing one-night stops along the way. Adelanto CA, Kingman AZ, Winslow AZ, Paraje NM, Santa Rosa NM before Amarillo, and we only had to disconnect once. We stayed at a favorite stop of ours in Winslow, Homolovi State Park. Then in Santa Rosa, we discovered Santa Rosa Lake State Park (a nice place off the beaten path and only $18 for water and electricity):

We spent a week in Amarillo to get the vibe of the town and to look around at what properties there are. Amarillo is an OK town, it has more run-down areas and some nice ones. We concluded that we are more interested in being outside of the major city but still close enough. We also want space for the trailer to park by our house and you can’t really get that frequently in the cities. There was one house that interested us and was going to be an open house that weekend. We went to it but no open house, we contacted the realtor and there was an offer on it already. Oh well, off to Lubbock.

Lubbock is less than 200 miles south of Amarillo and is a college town. I like it better than Amarillo but it is a bit more expensive. We didn’t find anything that was a good match but there were some possibilities. One thought was to wait until we sold the house in California before really looking in earnest. Actually, this was my thought, not so much Roxie’s. Ironically, the house in Amarillo that supposedly had an open house was back on the market but we moved on further south to Midland/Odessa.

As we headed south, it wasn’t quite so nice. The scenery changed to a less lush look also this is where the oil wells really started in spades. It kind of reminded us of Bakersfield/Oildale but without the mountains. A benefit is that they don’t have as big of issues with bad weather (read tornados).

We found some interesting properties and actually enlisted the help of a realtor this time. We found locales outside the main cities and found that there were possibilities here if we wanted to live here. We were looking at one property in our price range and the realtor found out that there was one that just fell through that she really wanted to show us.

It appears the owners, children of the parents that owned this property, accepted a contingent offer for $100K less than the asking price. However, the contingency had fallen through. We went to see it. This property was 5 acres and part of it was kind of an ‘oasis’ in the area. The previous owners used it as a venue for weddings, photographs, etc. It, sadly, had fallen into disrepair. The house was old and very unique. The property was huge with many outbuildings but lots of yard work. But we put in an offer on it, the same offer that had fallen through but ours was not contingent so that was a positive. We had to wait now.

We had to wait a few days to find out if we were going to be homeowners in Odessa but it was not to be. Someone came in and offered them full price for the property which was $100K more than ours. It was a disappointment to not get it and it was a crazy 3 weeks of looking in Texas so we decided to head back to CA for the holidays. We would be tourists for change on the way back.

We next headed to Carlsbad, NM, for one primary purpose, the caverns! We tried to do it about 2 years ago but the elevator down was not functioning and that would not work for us. The first day we tried something different and went to the Living Desert State Park. They had a nice little pathway to walk around and see various indigenous animals:

The next day was the Caverns visit. The cavern tour cost is only $1, not including park admission. You can enter the caverns either via the elevator or the natural entrance. The natural entrance is pretty strenuous so we opted for the elevator. Roxie had been here before but she was so young she stayed in daycare at the top of the caverns. I had been here before also and remember eating a box lunch down in the caverns. This was essentially our first visit. Here are some shots:

It was very moist and a bit cool in the caverns. There are numerous loops you can take to see all the sights. Most of it was wheelchair accessible but there are some inclines to navigate. It was definitely fun.

My parents came here before, I think it was in the early ’50s on a west coast trip they took. Here are some comparative photos:

Time to keep heading back west. Trying to get through New Mexico as soon as we could. It was much more restrictive on lockdowns, etc. Going to Arizona!

We stopped for a few days in Tucson to visit some friends there. It was good to see them. We also looked at Tucson as a place to find a home and of course did our laundry!

The next stop was somewhere I have wanted to go for a bit, the White Tank Mountains State Park west of the Phoenix basin. Since Thanksgiving was very close, I could only get 2 nights. We enjoyed the two nights. They have some nice hiking trails and good views of the lights of the city.

Thanksgiving would put us in Kingman AZ. We had a small turkey breast in the oven with the requisite sides. It was a nice little meal but odd to be just us two on Thanksgiving. We keep getting drawn back to the Kingman/Golden Valley/Bullhead City area in house hunting. It has a good central location, 400 miles to our son, a bit more to our daughter, 90 miles to Vegas (for shopping), the desert life doesn’t scare us (we will be gone in the summer). The local towns have enough shopping, the taxes are not too restrictive and the prices are pretty affordable. We also know at least one person in town, Doug. He and I went through some grade school, JR high, and some high school together:

We contacted a realtor about some houses that we wanted to see. There were a couple that were interesting and one had just fallen through (sounds familiar).

We put in an offer on the one that fell through and it was accepted. We are currently in escrow on this house (in Golden Valley) and it is going on right through the holidays! Stay tuned about the status and eventual move.

Go east, old man!

We set up a plan to meet the Chen’s(George and Marcia) in Kingman, AZ about a week after we were to leave Redding. We drove down to Sparks NV and stayed at the Sparks Marina RV Park. It was a nice place to stay but it was HOT! We stayed in a back-in space around the perimeter and ended up with a bad black ant infestation! After a few cans of ant spray and not having any part of the trailer touch the dirt, we recovered. We headed toward Vegas but stopped overnight in Tonopah, NV. Not much there but more than I thought!

We planned to stay in Vegas and found a different place to stay there. The Clark County Shooting Complex! It is in North Las Vegas, very north, up an incline with a great view of the entire basin. This is a pretty amazing setup. They have different shooting areas for pistols, rifles, shotguns, and archery. They have a campground (think tents) and a very stark RV park. It is gravel parking with full hookups for $30/night. We needed the 50amp because it was hot there also! It was good to stop as we had to sign some papers for refinancing our home. The mobile notary came to our trailer and we signed away. She said it was the first time she ever signed in an RV.

We did an overnight in Kingman to break up the drive to Flagstaff. The morning we left Kingman we stopped by the Discount Tire store. When I had them put in the TPMS senders in the trailer in Visalia, I had always had issues with one specific tire slowly losing air pressure. I had stopped previously about this in Redding and Medford with no great resolution. We had to wait at least 2 hours for them to look at but they DID fix it!

We headed to the Flagstaff KOA to meet our friends. We have been trying to stay in this campground for years! It always seems to be booked when we want to go there. The story with this KOA is that the owner (before he passed) was my mother’s boyfriend for many years. A few years after my father died in 2002 my mother moved to Arizona and started the relationship. The KOA has since been sold to the owners of the Chula Vista KOA and time moves on!

Then Chen’s arrived about 2 hours after us (they drove from the LA Basin that day) and we knew they would be tired. We went out to get a bite to eat. The weather was so nice and cool in Flagstaff! On the drive to Flagstaff, we hit some monsoon-like torrential downpours which dirtied up our nice clean trailer.

The next morning we all headed off, caravanning east! The weather started to heat up a bit and we started doing touristy stuff. We stopped off in Winslow AZ to stand on the corner:

We had stopped here before in 2009 on our way to the Balloon Fiesta with Bob & Phyllis:

A new addition is the Route 66 sign at the intersection:

We had lunch at La Posada hotel and continued down the road. Heading to Gallup NM for the next one-night stop.

We figured out a great way to travel together that was easy for both of us. We both don’t mind using our cruise controls when traveling. However, no two vehicles have cruise controls that will be perfectly synced. One will be either too slow or too fast compared to the other one. My truck has a feature called adaptive cruise control. It uses a radar system to keep a specific distance between you and the vehicle in front of you up to the speed you set. So George would travel in front at a specific speed set on his cruise control. I would follow with mine set also and it would keep us just the right distance apart.

Day 2 of our travels had us destined for Santa Fe NM. George had a friend he wanted to visit just outside of town so we stayed 3 nights there. We stayed at The Trailer Ranch RV Resort. It is a great little RV park in town but not downtown. I recommended a stay there if you can.

We had two incidents with the trailer while staying there. We had to disconnect the trailer to get in the spot, which we would do anyway. We had to put the orange lego blocks under the tires to level and we used the lego wheel chock to keep the tires on there. Ever since the trailer rolled off the blocks in Desert Hot Springs, I have been gun shy. We disconnected and moved the truck away and the trailer rolled off the blocks again! The chock was not attached correctly. This time we jacked up the trailer and put it on the ball and set it up right this time!

George and Marcia went to visit their friends a bit and we met all of them later in the afternoon. We went to Bandelier National Monument which is a site of some ancient dwellings. There are a lot of these locations throughout this area. We went on a hike and saw the sites.

The next day we got to do laundry but in the evening we went to downtown Santa Fe and walked around the old church there:

We were preparing to leave Santa Fe and I was dumping the holding tanks. Then the second incident happened. I have started a procedure where I block off the sewer hose with an attachable valve, I then backfill the tank (grey or black) with a hose. This works best when you DON’T block off BOTH tanks with their valves. This is what I did. I filled it with the hose but there is only limited space in between all three closed valves and something has to give. What gave was a rubber connector between two pieces of hard pipe. It appears that the pressure built up and relieved it right there. However, I did not know that when it actually happened. I thought the worst. I had just repaired/rebuilt the entire valve setup under the tanks. I thought I had broken a piece. George was nice enough to crawl under the trailer, take off the metal plate covering the valves and investigate. We found nothing wrong. I felt much better but still thought about it numerous times.

Off to our next stop near the eastern border of New Mexico. It was here that we were able to find alternate routes to travel instead of sticking on the Interstates. We continued east from Santa Fe to Las Vegas (NM), and then started on New Mexico route 104. The road takes us to Tucumcari over 110 miles of a lot of nothing. It was wonderful. We started up at a higher altitude and dropped down over the course of the route.

We had some lunch in Tucumcari at Del’s:

A few other sights in Tucumcari. The Blue Swallow Hotel:

The Route 66 Memorial:

We ended up the night at Ute Lake State Park for a whopping $18/night.

The next day was a big day. We had a lot of stops to make on our journey east. We were heading into our state. Texas! The first stop was in Adrian, the mid-point of Route 66:

Our next stop was Amarillo TX. We were going to have lunch at Longhorn Steakhouse as it was my birthday and I love to go to Longhorn. We needed to stop at Sam’s Club for fuel and Walmart for supplies. However, as we drove into Amarillo from the west we noticed a bunch of people on the frontage road. It was Cadillac Ranch!

Obviously we want back to see it. After lunch we stopped at Conway to see an alternative to the Cadillac Ranch. The Slug Bug Ranch:

The next roadside attraction was The Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ in Groom TX. A 40 story high cross with the stations of the crosses around it. A replica of the tomb and much more:

And at the other end of Groom was the Leaning Tower of Texas:

We ended up the night just over the Oklahoma border at the Double D RV Park, a Passport America park for $14/night:

So, this old man, his wife and friends are still going east!