Category Archives: Arizona

Go east, old man!

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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!

Scoping out Arizona

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We are still looking for a home base. The criteria is close to California but not IN California. I would like a decent sized town, with a WalMart, a movie theatre and some restaurants, or we could be within 20 miles of such a location. Arizona seems to be a bit better than Nevada just due to more population areas that meet the criteria.

We left our extended hiatus in Visalia and head to our first stop in Arizona, Lake Havasu City for a week. This area meets the criteria but with all the retired and recreational people there, the home prices are a bit more than we are looking for.

The next week was just north of Wickenburg, near Congress. Prices were a bit better here but Wickenberg is a bit too small for my tastes. We could drive to Surprise for anything we could want but I think we would get tired of that drive over and over.

We had heard good things about the Cottonwood area and went there for a whole month. The RV park had a pretty good monthly rate and there were a lot of areas to check out there. To the south is the whole Prescott/Prescott Valley area, a very grown up area with accordingly priced homes. To the north is Sedona, very nice but VERY expensive. You can also get to Flagstaff and Payson in a decent amount of time. The Cottonwood area is a real possibility, pretty much the right size and lots of area to find housing. The prices are not too bad.

We are looking for a home that is not necessarily in a subdivision, has room for the trailer on the lot and is not too big. We are not against a mobile/manufactured home. We can also just get some land and put something on it over time. All these options are in the Cottonwood area.

Here are some photos from our month in the area:

The remnants of a cold storm passing through
Towards the Sedona rocks.
Toward the mining town of Jerome.

Since we were there for a length of time we went to see some local sites:

Montezuma’s Castle NM
Tuzigoot NM
Montezuma Well

Since we were staying in the center of Arizona, there was one more thing to see. The Geographic ‘center’ of Arizona. We have done this type of thing previously with the Geographic center of California and the Geographic center of the contiguous US. This was just a memorial to the center being that nearest town close to the center. The center had no roads to it, alas:

We finished our month in Cottonwood and heading to another locale to checkout, Kingman AZ. We have been through Kingman many times but never really considered it as a ‘home’. This was our chance to give Kingman a chance. It turns out that this size of Kingman is very good and only about 90 miles to Vegas. The altitude tends to make the area run cooler at times even with snow sometimes. It is in the running but it would have to be the right place.

We are currently back in Fort Mohave (we were here in November) which is just south of Bullhead City, and Laughlin NV. We are here for more than our normal week due to a scheduling issue. We received our first Covid vaccine in Cottonwood, primarily so we can see our grandson sometime when we get back to California. The scheduling issue was due to having to get the second shot in 4 weeks. Since we have already left our initial dose location we had to find a different location for the second dose.

The logistics on this has been very interesting. The first dose was at Walgreens, but when I tried to change the second dose for a different location, I could not do so until the day BEFORE the scheduled second dosage day. In the interim I setup second doses that were given by a women’s health group at the local community college. When they verified our appointment, they stated a need of proof of residence in this county (Mohave). However, the state of Arizona says that residence does not matter. More issues to deal with. It is now the day before so I try Walgreens, but I cannot change the location of the 2nd dose. I tried Safeway, they don’t have an online way to schedule the second dose. I try Smith’s grocery (Kroger) and we were able to schedule both second doses. Whew!

After Fort Mohave, we are heading to Vegas for a week, then to visit my sister in Bishop and back to California for some medical appointments. We are also now very close to putting our house on the market to sell, so that will be yet another adventure for us!