Saturday, December 17th - Tucson to Phoenix

 Lots of traffic today but we are wedged in to our spot at Covered Wagon RV Park in Phoenix. It is supposed to be a Big Rig friendly park. NOT!!! Kathy did a masterful job of getting our coach backed into a spot. She knocked a couple of grapefruit off a tree getting in, getting out may be even more of a challenge.

Yesterday I mentioned the Super C coach from with Alaska plates, below is a photo I took as we left the campground this morning.

The Pima County Fairground had propane available so we topped of our tank before leaving. We burned 12.9 gallons over the past 19 days compared to 27.9 during the previous 17 days parked at Kelsey's.

We filled up with fuel when we hit the I10, $4.33/gal. With all the strong headwinds, and hills, our fuel mileage has only been 6.0 & 6.4 the last two fill ups, compared to 8.1 the previous fill up. We will top off before getting into California where fuel prices appear to increase a dollar a gallon when you cross the state line. It is 270 miles from here to the campground in Cathedral City, CA.

We were surprised to see a fair amount of cotton. We just never associated Arizona with growing cotton. The yellow is bales of cotton.

The rest area south of Phoenix where we stopped for lunch.

We did associate Arizona with cactus. Looking the other way from the parking lot.

The cactus on the hillside to the left in the above photo.

The cactus near the top of the peak to the right.

Further down the road a hillside full of cactus.

Having coffee on the patio.

The Weather Channel app forecasts tonight and tomorrow's lows as 45 & 39 here in Phoenix. It is so good to not have any worries about below freezing temperatures.

Some of my daily Old Testament reading has been in Psalms. Psalms 105:26-37 retells the story of the plagues God sent on Egypt. I was reading the New Living Translation. Verse 37 reads "But he brought his people safely out of Egypt, loaded with sliver and gold; there were no sick or feeble people among them." Certainly there were some sick and feeble among the 2 million(?) Jews in Egypt. I'm so easily sidetracked. This is certainly not something that has any significant impact on the Good News. The NET Bible translates 105:37b as "none of his tribes stumbled." while the NIV translates it as "and from among their tribes no one faltered." Its good to read several translations to get the better feel for Scripture.

God is good. I pray that He blesses you and yours.

Friday, December 16th - Day 14 - Some Scenery

 I spent 3 hours this morning searching for a campground in the Phoenix area. I found lots of campgrounds, but I'm to cheap to pay $60-80/night for a place with a pool and hot tub that we won't use when the high temperatures are in the mid 70's. Also, I'm not keen about staying in one that is fenced with chainlink and where previous campers describe the area as "sketchy". (I don't have enough ammo with  me.)

After that I finally got the car washed. It had a coating of scum on it after being towed behind the motorhome in the rain.

While washing the car I noticed that a Super C RV near us has Alaska plates. Didn't see the travelers. 

The it was off to Omar's Hi-Way Chef restaurant, another place we had eaten at when we were here 11 years ago. The service and food is good but the prices are surprisingly high for a truck stop restaurant.

Then we took a drive out south of the fairgrounds. We stopped south of Corona De Tucson and I took some photos from the location of the red dot.

Looking SSE

Looking South

Looking SSW

Looking SW

Looking east.

When you stand and slowly turn a complete circle it appears that you are in a valley surrounded by mountains.

Heading back north, towards the fairground. Note the road sign on the right. We encountered multiple cattle crossings/guards across the paved surface as we traveled down this road. Fences came up to the edge of the paved surface on both sides of the road at each crossing. After the first crossing one of these signs said "Open Range", some just showed a cow. There were not fences running parallel along the edges of the road. The photo is looking north.

Lord willing we will drive to Phoenix tomorrow, and spend two nights there before heading over to Cathedral City, CA.

God is good. I pray that He blesses you and yours.

Thursday - December 15th - Biosphere 2

Last night didn't get nearly as cold as had been forecast. Weatherbug had forecast 26 degrees for the low and local news forecast a "hard freeze" at 30 degrees. I think 30 was the low, not low enough to have bothered unhooking our water and sewer hoses. (If I had not unhooked them and put the softener in the coach I would have worried about it all night.😀)

When we were here 11 years ago we both went to tour the Biosphere 2 facility. It was really interesting and this morning I went to tour it again. It is a 75 minute drive from where we are parked. Kathy decided to stay home. Below are a couple of photos but if you have any interest you need to check out the story, its quite interesting.  https://biosphere2.org/

The Virtual Tours at https://biosphere2.org/visit/visit-biosphere-2 didn't work right on my laptop, but maybe that was because my Internet connection was to slow. The Biosphere 2 app tour has some interesting information.

My self-guided tour took me 90 minutes. I couldn't resist taking the photo below, before heading into the facility. The dome at the center of the photo was the original crew's library. It is accessed by a long spiral stairway that wraps around the inside of the cylinder that supports the dome. It closed to the public

The complex is huge. Below is a Google map of the facility.

This was out by the parking lot. I saw no information on it. I think it must have been a huge ray gun (laser) to fend off aliens, or perhaps an antenna to contact aliens. Not!

After returning home I picked up Kathy and we went to El Guero Canelo's for Sonoran hot dogs. They were as good as we remembered from 11 years ago.

My Sonoran hot dog at the top and my taco at the bottom. The buns are awesome!

I'm sure that there is a story behind this old tractor that is in front of the entrance.

They must be concerned about someone carrying it away.

I wanted to wash the grime off the car today, but after a stop at Costco on the way home, the sun was set by the time we arrived home.

I think today's high was a mostly sunny 57. It was a nice day. The forecast for tomorrow is 58 and mostly sunny.

I visited with Andy, our campground neighbor, today, just briefly (Kathy was waiting on me. I had a bag of trash to take to the dumpster. She was waiting on me to get back so that we could go get hot dogs. Andy was outside his unit as I walked by.) He and his wife started full timing last fall, after selling their home in Bellevue, WA. The have a 5th wheel unit. I hope I get to visit with him a little more tomorrow.

As I walked around the campground most of the plates I noticed were from Arizona. I also saw plates from Ohio, South Dakota, Wyoming, Texas, Florida and Washington.

God is good. I pray that He blesses you and yours.

Wednesday, December 14th - Tucson, AZ

In the El Paso area, where we spent the night, it was cold enough last night, 26-28, that I unhooked our water hose before going to bed. Haven't we been promised Global Warming for over 50 years? I'm ready for a little of it during the winter. Tonight's local news had a segment about the thousands of illegals who are in line to cross our open southern border and be turned loose into the US. The concern was not that we have no control over our southern border, instead it was that we don't have facilities in place to provide these illegals with a warm place to stay. Rather than enforcing our laws, and enforcing laws on the southern border the same as we would on our northern border, the federal government wants to borrow, piling more debt on our children, to be sure to make it nice enough that more illegals are enticed into heading for the US.

To night we are near Tucson, AZ. We plan on spending the next 3 nights at the Pima County Fairgrounds.

Today's scenery was spectacular. We crossed the Continental Divide. The elevation of the highway went up  and down between 3,000' and 5,000', I think 4,960' was the highest. It occurred at the rest area with the rocks.

At least the state of Arizona is worried about what is happening near the border. This was a checkpoint on I10, quite a ways from the border. Cars went through the structure on the left. There was a "traffic" light letting officials stop vehicles for random checks.

We probably should have followed the car route but we went through the truck check point. We didn't see any trucks stopped.

We were both surprised to see snow on the tops of distant mountains.

Photos from a rest area along I10.

This truck was parked next to us at the rest area. These tires were used and mounted on rims. They looked to be in good condition.

More rock formations.

Parked at the fairgrounds.

It's a big place.

I wonder if the people parked in the area in the photo below are longer term residents. Night rent is $35 and weekly is $210. I didn't see a monthly rate. The overnight rate for other campgrounds I checked out ranged from $50 to $80. Many of them had pools but who needs a pool when the high doesn't reach 50 and the low is below freezing.

I dumped our waste tanks and added enough water to our fresh water tank to allow us to take showers tonight and even tomorrow night. It isn't a big deal to hook back up tomorrow, dump the gray water tank and add more fresh water if tomorrow nights low is also down in the 20's. A guy across the way from us appeared to be adding heat tape to the hydrant and his fresh water hose.

We traveled 279 miles today, I drove 135 of them. This is only the second time I've driven during this trip. One other day I drove around 170 miles. Kathy would rather drive, and she is a better driver than me. If she gets tired I take over.

God is good. I pray that He blesses you and yours.

PS. We came through this area in December/January 2011. If you want to see more photos check out https://bertdsblog.blogspot.com/2011/ 

Tuesday, December 13th - Overnighting in Anthony, New Mexico

 We were at the Cummins Service Center in Odessa at 7:50 this morning. Ricky, the service guy I  talked to, said as soon as he could break a Tech free they would send him out to read the Codes our coach has been throwing. About 8:30 he came out, plugged in a machine and got the Codes. Three Codes showed up. 

He went back inside and came out with a Service guy who knew more about the Codes. Two were communications issues between the coach and the Cummins system and the third was to high a pressure in the crankcase, due to a dirty filter on the crankcase vent. The Service guy wasn't overly concerned about the communication issues but said we would need to go to someone who worked on RV chassis issues to get them straightened out. He thought one of them related to a dirty sensor that counted revolutions of the rear wheels. He didn't think they were overly  important. 

The crankcase vent filter needed to be changed. They were short staff (the Service guy is temporarily helping out at the Odessa site, he normally works in the El Paso Cummins Service Center) and said they  couldn't change the filter until tomorrow. They asked if we could leave the coach. I explained the we lived in the coach. I  told them that we could stay at a local campground overnight and be back at their facility  when they  opened at 8AM tomorrow morning. They asked me to give them 15-20 minutes to confirm they had the part in stock. When I went to check with Ricky he told me the easiest way to deal with the issue was for me to buy the filter from the Parts Dept. He walked to Parts with  me and told the guy what I needed. $128 for the filter. Then he told me to take the filter out to the coach. He sent a different guy out and had the guy change the filter. It required pulling up a section of coach floor that is above the engine. It took him less than a half hour. Ricky wished us well and sent us on our way without charging us for the labor. By 9:30 we were back on I20. God is GOOD!

My photos don't even remotely come close to presenting the grandeur of the scenery. Note that we are definitely out of the pine trees both sides of the roads section of Texas.

We stopped at a rest area, where Kathy fixed us some lunch. Other than travelers the place seemed abandoned. It was interesting, even though there wasn't much around.

Inside the building was the "skeleton" of an airplane fuselage. Sadly the kiosks weren't active.

The we headed into the mountains. Over many miles we climbed to 4,450', dropped back down to 3,500', climbed back up  to 4,660' before dropping back down to around 3,800' in Anthony.

Miles later the mountains looked more impressive. Not in the sense of the Smokies, or the Rockies, but just seeing them popped up out of the landscape was impressive. Note the beautiful sky today.

Soon after leaving Odessa I checked my Gas Buddy app looking for "cheap" diesel along today's route. It showed a station selling diesel for $4.19, along I10 but in the middle of nowhere. The app also said the place was a convenience store & truck stop. The store was good sized and packed with stuff and diesel was $4.19/gal. We saw it as high as $5.05/gal at brand name truck stops. We did see one other station at $4.19 some miles down the road but I don't remember any others where diesel was less than $4.40/gal.

Looking back east in the photo below. You won't be able to see it but off in the distance is a string of vehicles traveling on I10.

Looking west.

The size of El Paso surprised us, as did all the traffic and road construction. El Paso has a population of nearly 700,000, well over twice the size of St. Louis. 

We saw several interchanges with more levels than this.

Parked at El Paso West RV Park in Anthony, New Mexico. Anthony seems to be included in the El Paso area urban sprawl. I  asked Google Maps to give me directions to El Paso from here, the distance is 23 miles.

The sunset was beautiful. I  didn't even try to capture the beauty of the colorful sky after the sun went down.

God is so good. I pray that He blesses you and yours.