090124_Arizona
January 23, 2009
Dear friends,
Its hard to believe that today marks 2 months since we left home. If you think that you may have missed some of my travel notes, don’t despair – I haven’t written any.
Another fact that may be hard to believe is that in the past 60 days we have only been on the road driving less than a week and have logged less than a thousand miles on the odometer.
In the past we tended to do most of our traveling between spring and fall when the weather tends to be on the warmer side, especially at night. Even here in the southwest, the weather has been colder than usual and the nighttime temps have dipped below freezing sometimes. Below 32 is not compatible with Peter, me or the Beast – from cold toes, noses and frozen pipes. When the weather report for Christmas in Las Vegas is SNOW – we get concerned.
Therefore, we have tended to be less footloose and fancy free by not doing any boondocking (urban camping, blacktop camping) at local Wal-Mart or off road sites. We like to be able to plug into an electric pedestal and fire up our electric heater. We do have a propane furnace that can keep the RV pretty warm if needed, but it really uses a lot of LP and at $3 a gallon, we would rather not use it.
Peter and I have spent most of our time around the Tucson area, visiting with some friends and just enjoying the scenery. We have had some excellent home cooked dinners as well as some hard fought and sometimes victorious games of Mexican Train. ( a domino game that has noting to do with Mexico).
As far as sightseeing and visiting little known and out of the way places, that too has been put on hold.
We usually do that between campgrounds so our road time has been limited.
We plan on heading back towards Yuma next month and then the Palm Springs area and pray for an early spring thaw. Where is Al Gore’s global warming when you need it.
I am suddenly realizing that some of you live in Washington, Oregon, Michigan, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Connecticut, so my complaining may seem cruel and whinny, especially since my roots are from Brooklyn – but please remember, once I hit the west coast, I became a weather wimp like most east coast transplants.
Tonight, we are in one of Arizona’s state parks (Picacho), surrounded by the classic landscape of tall cactus plants and lots of other vegetation that resembles scrawny trees and bushes. On the ground is some green and brown coverage that is trying to become grass without success. It's coarse and dry. This has been very confusing to Peter. He has been raised and housebroken on green grass and brown, moist soil.
Even though he has had some bad experiences with those green pointy things, he still gets closer than he should and I constantly have to keep a tight leash to keep him from becoming a reverse porcupine.
As a footnote on the economy, the campgrounds are not as full as prior years and there is definitely less RV sightings on the interstate., but the people that are traveling are happy campers.
I was tempted to make up some good stories to keep you entertained but I’ll hold off on the fiction until I really run out of things to report. Hope it doesn’t come to that – I’ll have to put Peter in front of the keyboard and the last time he tried checking his own email he popped off 3 keys with his long nails.
Till next time,
Dear friends,
Its hard to believe that today marks 2 months since we left home. If you think that you may have missed some of my travel notes, don’t despair – I haven’t written any.
Another fact that may be hard to believe is that in the past 60 days we have only been on the road driving less than a week and have logged less than a thousand miles on the odometer.
In the past we tended to do most of our traveling between spring and fall when the weather tends to be on the warmer side, especially at night. Even here in the southwest, the weather has been colder than usual and the nighttime temps have dipped below freezing sometimes. Below 32 is not compatible with Peter, me or the Beast – from cold toes, noses and frozen pipes. When the weather report for Christmas in Las Vegas is SNOW – we get concerned.
Therefore, we have tended to be less footloose and fancy free by not doing any boondocking (urban camping, blacktop camping) at local Wal-Mart or off road sites. We like to be able to plug into an electric pedestal and fire up our electric heater. We do have a propane furnace that can keep the RV pretty warm if needed, but it really uses a lot of LP and at $3 a gallon, we would rather not use it.
Peter and I have spent most of our time around the Tucson area, visiting with some friends and just enjoying the scenery. We have had some excellent home cooked dinners as well as some hard fought and sometimes victorious games of Mexican Train. ( a domino game that has noting to do with Mexico).
As far as sightseeing and visiting little known and out of the way places, that too has been put on hold.
We usually do that between campgrounds so our road time has been limited.
We plan on heading back towards Yuma next month and then the Palm Springs area and pray for an early spring thaw. Where is Al Gore’s global warming when you need it.
I am suddenly realizing that some of you live in Washington, Oregon, Michigan, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Connecticut, so my complaining may seem cruel and whinny, especially since my roots are from Brooklyn – but please remember, once I hit the west coast, I became a weather wimp like most east coast transplants.
Tonight, we are in one of Arizona’s state parks (Picacho), surrounded by the classic landscape of tall cactus plants and lots of other vegetation that resembles scrawny trees and bushes. On the ground is some green and brown coverage that is trying to become grass without success. It's coarse and dry. This has been very confusing to Peter. He has been raised and housebroken on green grass and brown, moist soil.
Even though he has had some bad experiences with those green pointy things, he still gets closer than he should and I constantly have to keep a tight leash to keep him from becoming a reverse porcupine.
As a footnote on the economy, the campgrounds are not as full as prior years and there is definitely less RV sightings on the interstate., but the people that are traveling are happy campers.
I was tempted to make up some good stories to keep you entertained but I’ll hold off on the fiction until I really run out of things to report. Hope it doesn’t come to that – I’ll have to put Peter in front of the keyboard and the last time he tried checking his own email he popped off 3 keys with his long nails.
Till next time,
posted by The Highway Guys @ 12:00 AM
2 comments
