We’ve been home a few days and have been getting things cleaned out. The truck camper is emptied out and we’ve started to clean it thoroughly. Kathy went straight to work getting the shrubs in the yard trimmed. I noticed a bit of a leak in the patio ceiling so I got up there and applied some acrylic roofing material. I need to put a few more coats up there but we are getting rain this weekend so I’m hoping it will be enough until next week. We trimmed and cleaned the yard, got the waterfall and hot tub working, and began to get settled in. The house was actually pretty nice inside; we were expecting Arizona dust, which was not there.
I am still having clarity issues on what to do with the house. I want to rent it but storing all the furniture and the cars is costly. We may rent it furnished because that might be easier. Still working this out. We have been to three dr appointments already this week and got Maggie’s haircut. Next week we will have more appointments and hopefully will get the house cleaned out.
I ordered an air conditioner to replace the large unit in Howie. This newer DC unit should use less than 60A on high, or about 750W. The old one was pulling twice that.
We made it home by noon. We stopped to weigh the truck to see what we had actually ended up with at the end of the trip. We shed about 300 pounds during the trip. We have quite a few items that we’re planning on not taking them with us further, so that should drop some more weight. The total mileage for the trip was 19,500 miles. Diesel cost was approximately $6,600. Groceries and restaurants was about $4,000. Camping and campgrounds were about $1400. We ended up about $4000 over our budget, which we were blaming on dog treats. Lol. Here’s a map of our tracks.
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We were very surprised by the house, considering all the storms and dust storms around Coolidge. The house is in great shape. The yard was a bit overgrown because our landscaper dang near cut off his fingers a couple weeks back at another job. Kathy grabbed the shears and started working on the backyard. There’s a bit of cleanup to do, but I got the waterfall filled in the hot tub filled and we were able to relax in it last night.
We will be working at getting the house packed up and ready to rent, getting our trailer moved down to my brother’s house, and finding someplace to put the cars. The next phase will be Mexico and Central America and that will start sometime mid November in Baja Mexico. We are scheduled to finish up whenever we get done.
We had not really missed the house while we were gone, but once we got there, we realize how nice it actually is, and we settled in really quickly. I will post you every couple of days just to keep track of what we’re doing. Thanks for reading the blog (David, Garret, Tony and Debbie, Moms and Dads, and all of those following Kathy on Facebook). Thanks for all the support. I look forward to keeping up with you guys as we go further.
We left El Paso and stopped for fuel in Las Cruces. I remembered there was a great restaurant there called La Posta and since we were close, we stopped. It has been there since 1936 and serves excellent Mexican food. The place is kind of unique in that in the waiting area there are several McCaws in cages and some piranhas in tanks to look at. We enjoyed some authentic Mexican food before getting back on the road.
We arrived in Willcox around 2pm and visited with my brother, David; sister-in-law, Leslie; and my parents. This weekend it was Rex Allen Days, a local festival, and we headed to the park to look at the vendors while mom and dad napped and then went to church. We all met at Isabelle’s for dinner and a great visit.
Sunday, our last day on this keg of the trip, I cooked a skillet breakfast for my parents and then we visited with my other brother, Rick; sister-in-law, Terry. Terry and Rick invited us to do a corn maze at Apple Annie’s. That was pretty fun one only took us 46 minutes to complete the complicated maze.
Mom made lasagna and salad for dinner and we all had a really nice visit. We said good bye to my parents as we planned to head out early to get to the house. It’s been 4 months and 4 days.
We were up early to get on the road. Today was going to be the longest travel day of the trip. We planned to visit White Sands National Park and then drive onto El Paso to visit Mike and Mari. The government shutdown however thwarted our national park visit. There were two park rangers blocking the locked gate. Oh well, that would have been #57 on the trip.
We arrived in El Paso and spent some time catching up. It’s interesting the different stories we get from the boys. Mike and Mari took us to their bar, Three Pints Pub, a really popular local hang out that they’ve been building for many years. The food was excellent, the people were fun, and we loved catching up in their recent trip to England, Ireland, and Scotland.
We enjoyed coffee the next morning in their lovely backyard and planned to meet them in Honduras in May where they will be coordinating with our sons. Gonna be a great family vacation. I know Riley and Peyton are looking forward to it.
We had purchased some tickets to a play in Colorado Springs were a friend of Kathy’s was acting in. I arranged with an old friend to meet for dinner before the show. We decided on an Indian place, and the food was actually very good. It was Kathy’s first experience with Indian food, and she might have some at a future time. We talked for a couple of hours and it was really nice catching up and seeing all he has accomplished. He asked us if we had a place to stay and I told him we hadn’t figured it out yet, so he invited us to park in his driveway. We agreed and then headed towards the show.
The show is called Ms. Holmes and Ms. Watson and was an interesting adaptation of a mystery theater. Her friend Johanna, had an interesting role in that she played three or four different characters throughout the play. She’s a really good actress. We met her after the show and went down to a place called Cork and Cask, a quirky little establishment with very comfortable yet eclectic furniture.
We actually closed the place down that night talking about all the travels we’ve done, all the travel she’s done, and interestingly, she has been recovering from second and third-degree burns from a fall in Phoenix, where she burned herself on the pavement this summer.
We found my friend’s place and parked on the street, and settled in about 2 AM. We had a long drive the next day and we had to get up at six, fuel the truck and head to El Paso.
We must have been tired because we both slept in this morning. We made a quick breakfast of skillet burritos and made our way back to the freeway. Drive up into the mountains was just stunning. The orange is in yellow of the Aspen trees were such a beautiful contrast to the dark green conifers. We pass through Glenwood Springs, through the canyon, and through Aspen, Colorado. We turned off at Frisco and headed south towards Breckenridge. This place sure has grown in the past 10 years. We filled up in Breckenridge, got some snacks, and then stopped at the Continental Divide at Hoosier pass.
We made it to the fluorescent fossil beds national monument around 3 PM. It’s funny because I lived up here for seven years and I had never visited this monument. There are petrified trees, ancient redwoods, that used to live here as well as a very productive deciduous forest. Apparently this area was more of a wetland during those times. Kathy was not feeling well due to the altitude, so she went back to rest while I hiked a bit on the trails. There was a little Homestead about a quarter of a mile back that was part of the park, so we went down there to tour that. The buildings are open during summer hours, but unfortunately we missed that, so we just peered through the window windows.
It was starting to rain, so we got back in the truck and finished out the 15 miles to Cripple Creek. My son recently purchased a home up here, a cute little log cabin, and he gave us a grand tour before we went to dinner. Very cute place. We’ll be here for the next few days before finishing out this leg of the journey.
I took the dogs on a morning hike at dinosaur national monument. They have a trail between the two campgrounds where dogs are allowed, so we partook in the adventure. It wasn’t really long, a couple miles, but it was nice to get some good views. We packed up and headed to the visitor center to pick up a book about Josie Bennett, and I made breakfast in the parking lot. On the way out, we stopped to watch the herd of Hulk again for about a half an hour. It was cool seeing them battling in rut.
The drive to Colorado National Monument took about about three hours and climbed up and over a really beautiful pass. We stopped in a little farming town just before Fruita for fuel and a snack. It’s nice to see the diesel prices at around $3.50 a gallon when we stopped to fill up. We made it to the national monument around 2PM and checked out the visitor center. We couldn’t take the dogs on any of the trails so we drove the Rim Road, which is about 20 miles long and exits in the southern part of Grand Junction.
On the Rim drive we stopped to view three bighorn sheep next to the road. Further down the road and just before the exit there was a herd of 10 next to a popular serpentine hiking trail. We parked the truck and hiked a little ways up the trail to get some good photos. We have done some traveling in this area and it is incredibly beautiful. The whole area from Grand Junction over through Moab in the Canyonlands is one of my favorite spots. I miss having the FJ when driving around areas like this.
We spent about a half an hour, watching the sheep and then hike back to the truck. We found our way into Grand Junction, stopped at an AutoZone for some fuel additive, and then headed up I 70 to find a place to camp. The pickings in this area, pretty slim, but we did find a small piece of BLM land next to Rifle, CO that worked out for the evening.
The next week we’ll finish out our first leg of the journey. We are heading to cripple Creek, Colorado, to visit my son, Peyton, as well as some friends in the area. We may be able to make it over to great Sand dunes, national Monument, and Bent’s Fort as well. Will be in this area until Friday morning, when we’re going to continue south and try to visit a couple more parks. We should be back home by Sunday or early Monday. We will be there for 30 to 45 days before starting the next leg of our journey: Baja Mexico.
We woke up and the mosquito and fly swarms had subsided, with just a few flying about. The pups didn’t get their walks this morning because of this. The night before I had taken them on a walk down the road to see some old farming, equipment, and if I stopped and looked behind me, there was a swarm of mosquitoes trying to get to the back of my legs. Shout out to chemists, who created DEET.
We got to the Golden Spike National Historic Site visitor center just after they opened. It turns out they had two functional locomotives to simulate the historic event on May 10, 1869. The first train arrived around 10 AM, and the second closer to 11. It was really breathtaking to see these pieces of machinery in action, something we typically read about. Both of the originals had been scrapped (for a $1000 scrapping fee) but these re-creations were built to the same specifications.
I have always been incredibly impressed with the earliest explorers, the pioneers, and the vision that our forefathers had in this new country. A particular book comes to mind written by Simon Winchester called The Men Who United the States, the describes the influential characters andhow the United States was built from inception to modern times. We have traveled extensively across the west in a very modern, comfortable vehicle, and we are always amazed at the ruggedness of the terrain, as well as some of the inhospitable areas that Americans have built upon. One of the major advances for the United States was a completion of the transcontinental railroad. It brings tears to the eyes watching these engines operate. One can only imagine the hundreds of thousands of people to traveled around at 25-30 MPH in these now nonexistent lines.
We finished up at the visitor center and headed to our next stop. But along the way we found an audio tour of the site through the NPS app. There are 7 miles to the west with about a dozen stops, and 4 miles to the east with the same. Although sometimes I have a hard time with the National Park System and how crowded it is, they have been making some major strides with technology and I recommend using their app. Visiting the parks also seems to make a major difference when you’re outside of summer, high peak times.
We headed back eastward and drove through some very very beautiful towns. I LOVE rural America!!!’ This area was all settled by the Mormon settlers back in the 1800s, and the Victorian and early century homes and buildings are beautiful to look at. The drive-through Logan and over to Bear Lake was filled with fall colors and absolutely breathtaking.
We finally arrived at Fossil Butte National Park in the early afternoon. The visitor center is incredibly informative and has a massive timeline for all of the different periods that are demonstrated in the area. This particular region is an ancient sea bed, and the fossils contain turtles, fish, plants, and mammals from that particular timeframe. The park had this incredible little display to choose one of the fossil fishes and see it swim as a 3-D image that swam in the virtual lake. The Ranger gave us some tips for finding fossils (although you cannot collect them ), and told us that the elk were moving into the park. It took Kathy only a few minutes to find a large herd up on the lower slopes of the butte. We took the scenic drive to the top of the butte and actually did find some BLM camping at the top. If we had the FJ or a side-by-side, this area outside the park is filled with beautiful trails on BLM land. We decided not to camp here because our next stop was still about three hours away and we wanted to split the difference. We ended up stopping in a little town to get fuel and had a fantastic Chinese dinner. The pups were glad to walk on grass. We headed out of town and up into the hills where we found a beautiful campsite on my favorite type of land, BLM.
We have been carrying apples around for a period of time, and I finally got around to making an apple pie. It came out delicious. I had these visions of baking in the Dutch oven over a campfire while on this trip, but in all reality, the oven is easier, and gets around fire restrictions.
Today was a busy day for parks because there were three of them very close together. We camped right near the Hagerman Fossil Beds, so we stopped there first. We talked to the Ranger at the site and he was filled with information about the fossils in the area. We noted that we have been to several other fossil beds in Oregon and Idaho as well, and he recommended that we see the human footprints at White Sands NP, which apparently are now the oldest known human evidence in North America at about 35,000 years old. Hagerman was a shared monument with the Thousand Springs State Park, and he explained that all of the area to the east was the basalt rock from the lava flows and was incredibly porous and filled with water. At the edge of the snake river all of this cascade down into the valley There are more than 1000 springs in that area.
The ranger relayed an interesting story as we were discussing the pioneers coming across the Oregon Trail. He told us of a local rancher that had a cow that was using a cowboy boot for a head scratch. The boot was protruding from the ground, and apparently it was from one of the pioneers from the mid 1800s that had died and was buried there. The body was exhumed and is being studied and will return to the monument, but It’s still just amazes us at the tenacity and the fortitude of the Pioneers that forged their way west.
Our second stop was a national historic site called Mindoka. This was actually a very interesting site as it was one of the internment camps that the US had created for the Japanese during World War II. The camp was monstrous, but we found it very interesting at how quickly the Japanese forged communities and built a very productive camp. Many had sold their homes and businesses (as required) and started again out here. For example, in the first year they planted and harvested enough to be self sustaining and in the next several years provide provided agricultural goods for other camps. They even had sports like swimming, baseball, sledding in the winter and other activities that they created out of a bare desert. It’s definitely one of the sad points in American history, however, the American spirit was large in those camps when it came to creating something out of nothing. And as it turns out, the Japanese brigade of volunteer soldiers was one of the most decorated brigades in the army in World War II. In the attached album, I’m gonna put some of the placards that were there, as they were very interesting.
Kathy stopped a couple in the parking lot who were driving a class C motorhome. It turns out they were from Tempe and have been traveling for the last four years on and off. We had some great conversations with them about travel, ways to find deals, and how to rent out our house. We actually contacted their agent and may move forward with this soon. Thanks Chris and Christine!!!
The next stop for the day was a city of rocks national historic site. The drive out to the site was absolutely breathtaking. We were seeing the fall colors on the side of the hills and within the canyons. The city of rocks is actually a site where the Oregon and California trails diverged. There are still inscriptions from the pioneers carved into the rocks or were written in axle grease. We actually did the driving tour through the city rocks and then down the western side for about 100 miles of dirt road; very desolate, but beautiful country. We decided to make this a long drive day, so we push forward to the next national historic site, the Golden spike to find a place to camp. We noted that there was camping at the lot beyond the visitors center, and we got there about sunset. This place, however, was probably the worst mosquito and fly infested place we experienced thus far on this entire trip. Kathy had six bites before she got out of the truck. That’s the desert for you.
We had about 270 miles to drive to get to the next stop so we left Tuesday night to knock out an hour of driving through the pass. We found a fantastic campsite at a place in Idaho off the Salmon River called Bobcat Gutch. Lots of grass for the pups abd there were 6-8 free sites with fire pits. Maggie was in grass heaven.
We got up to a beautiful morning and headed the 190 miles to Craters of the Moon National Park. This is a place you probably don’t want to visit during the summer. They say that the rocks get up to 150°. The site is basically a very large area that collapsed millions of years ago and caused volcanic activity near the surface. It’s a really unique area to learn about lava, lava flows, and the different types of cinders. The park has a very nice drive and a couple of really interesting hikes to take you to some Cinder cones and lava spouts. They do have a visitor center where you can get passes to go into the caves and look at the bats. We opted out of that.
we finished the day camping in a boat ramp/camping area next to the snake river. The snake river is jammed up in this part of the canyon so it was definitely right from a full summer season. But there was a nice little stream. It was running behind the camp spot and the dogs were able to have some good walks.
