Here we are, on the road: We’re in Albuquerque, NM

Sunday May 26, 2013 Lorraine’s report

It's time to write the blog, so here goes.. We moved today from The Dancing Eagle Casino, where we spent $10 for the night if you had their players card. Dancing Eagle is in New Mexico, off of the Interstate 40, in the middle of nowhere. It was a nice spot, 50 amp, water and sewer. We pulled in and first thing I did was start some laundry; usually I do laundry several times a week, but with no sewer, I had to wait most of a week. Usually we don't move on Sundays, so today was a bit special.

Before that we were at Red Rock campgrounds just outside of Gallup, NM. We enjoyed the natural red rocks where we were parked, but alas, no sewer, but we did have water and power-50 amp, Chuck still needs the air conditioning going most nights, so it is imperative we have it. Most days it has been in the mid to upper 85-95 degrees, with lows down to the 60's.

Last Sunday we were in Flagstaff; and went and looked the area over. The Grand Canyon was pretty impressive!

Tuesday found us moving into Sun Valley, AZ. From Sun Valley, AZ, we went into Winslow, AZ,

Remember that song from the late 60's by the Eagles:

Well, I’m standing on a corner

in Winslow, Arizona
and such a fine sight to see
It's a girl, my Lord, in a flatbed
Ford slowin' down to take a look at me
Come on, baby, don't say maybe
I gotta know if your sweet love is
gonna save me.

Well, we went there, it was along the way and we both wanted to see what they had. Sure enough they had a flat bed Ford, a sign saying we were on Route 66 and a statue of a person. Was pretty neat, and cars from out of the area were taking lots of pictures. Of course, they had all your touristy kind of stuff, but we just looked.

Wednesday found us going into the Petrified Forest and the Painted Dessert. I was pretty amazed by seeing such beauty in the Petrified Forest and the Painted Dessert. Both were so different, one was from many eons ago, when the waters covered that part of the land; and the others was just the starkness of that part of the land. Both were equally beautiful and who knew lush, green forests covered that part of AZ. I really liked that part of our tour.

Not writing too much today, I had a migraine this morning again. Sure wish I could shake them. So that's it for me...

See you down the road.

Lorraine

5/26/13 Chuck’s report

Today was a moving day but we wanted to get the blog out anyway so we are working on it after moving this morning.

The only time I’ve been in Albuquerque was in Nov. 1969 when I was in the Navy and transferred from Oxnard, CA. to Whidbey Island, WA. I drove back to Missouri to see the family first and drove what was left of Route 66. I was impressed with Albuquerque as I drove through it at the time, even wrote to the mayor for info about schools and such for after I got out of the service but never followed through. But I want to check the area out while we are here, just to see what it’s like.

This week started with us in Williams, AZ. Our main reason for being here was to tour the South Rim of the Grand Canyon but we also wanted to see Flagstaff as well. Last Sunday we drove into Flagstaff, a nice, fair sized town but not anywhere we would settle down, too much winter here. But we did like the town, spent a couple of hours just driving around and checking things out. We stopped at a Cracker Barrel for dinner, once again this is one of our favorite chain restaurants.

Monday we checked out Williams a bit more, still were underwhelmed I guess. But the surrounding area is nice, we checked out a couple parks too.

Tuesday we headed out for our next planned stop, this time it was to Sun Valley, AZ. This place is sort of between the freeway exits for Petrified National Forest and Painted Desert, both of which we wanted to see. After we got set up, we headed back West to Winslow, AZ. Those old enough may remember the Eagles’ song, Take it Easy when they sing about standing on the corner in Winslow, AZ. We wanted to see the corner, ha. Winslow is another small town that got bypassed by I-40 and I think the biggest thing it has going for it is “The Corner”.

As we were heading back to our rig, we saw a motorhome pulled over on the side of the freeway with it’s tow car on fires. Not a pretty thing to see. Later the folks pulled into the same campground as us and I talked to them. Seems just the day before they got started out on a three month trip when the transmission on their tow car seized up. They called their traveling buddies back home and told them what happened. They brought their tow car from Phoenix to Winslow so they could borrow it and could continue their trip. They didn’t get but maybe 10 miles down the road when the replacement car caught fire. Lucky for them, the only damage to their motorhome was some melted plastic lenses on the taillights and some blistering paint on the back.

They were delayed for about 4 hours alongside the road and everyone knows bad things run in threes, right. They had to pull into a station to fuel up and darn if he didn’t hit one of those yellow posts and scrape the side of their motorhome. So they were going on without a tow car and hoping their bad luck was over, we wished them all the good luck we could too.

Wednesday morning we headed out to tour the Petrified Forest National Park and Painted Desert. I could try to describe it but I know Lorraine took lots of pictures so I’ll just say look at the pictures I will include. But if you are ever in the area and have at least two hours (we took over 4 hours), I’d recommend you take the time to see these amazing places.

Thursday we headed out, Red Rock Park near Gallup was our planned destination. They have a RV park and it’s right next to the Red Rock. This is a HUGH rock, a place the Natives have held as a spiritual site for many years, we can understand why. Once again, if you are in the area, less than an hour and you could at least see this place.

Friday we headed back West to check out Gallup, NM. Now this is a nice, small town too. There were lots of gift shops, all of them had the normal travelers’ junk and lots of turquoise jewelry, blankets and other native stuff. Lorraine really enjoyed stopping at these shops, even found some stuff she really liked.

For the last couple of days, our GPS has been acting up and it stopped working on our way into Church Rock where Red Rock is located. We stopped by a Wal-Mart and I got a new one but wouldn’t you know, the old one started working fine the next day so we returned the one back to Wal-Mart. We bought the one we have from Costco and may replace it next time we are in one, just in case. But it seems to be working fine once again.

Yesterday we left Red Rock, heading for Albuquerque but noticed signs alongside the road about two Indian Casinos, both with RV parks just ahead. One of them said only $10/night, almost free huh? So as we do often, we made a quick change in our plans and pulled into there for one night. I usually don’t have reservations but because of the Memorial Day holiday, I made them for this weekend. It was no problem to call them and tell them we would be a day late however.

As for the casinos, lets just say we may need to come back to harvest some of the seed money we left there, I won a few dollars in the second one but we left the area with less money than we had when we pulled in. But we did have a good dinner in the first place, prime rib with all the fixings.

This morning (Sunday) we got ready for travel once again, our planned stop was here in Albuquerque and we made it this time. Most of the places we’ve stayed on this trip have been Passport America parks, one of the memberships we have that allow us to stay for half price. The parks do have lots of restrictions on using Passport America but we just check them out ahead of time and work within their restrictions. A good deal if you are traveling and stay at RV parks.

We are staying at Enchanted Trails for two days, a nice place with all the hookups we like. They have some shade trees and even a swimming pool. They have a few classic trailers on site, restored as original that they rent out too, petty neat. Even with it being a Holiday weekend, it’s only about 20% filled, didn’t need reservations after all.

The weather has been pretty nice this week. It was in the mid to high 70s in Williams and we needed to have the heat pump on at night as it got down into the low 40s at night. Sun Valley was a bit lower in elevation and therefore a bit warmer, it got up to the mid to high 80s during the day and only dropped into the mid 50s at night.

In Church Rock the temperatures were about the same, 80s and 50s. Yesterday the temperature got to the low 90s and only dropped to the low 60s last night. I’m expecting warmer temperatures as we continue dropping in elevation and heading for the prairies of mid-America.

The only side note about the weather has been the winds. We have experienced windy conditions almost everyday, sometime heavy winds. Last night the wind was blowing the slide out cover almost enough for me to get up and pull in the slide. But finally the winds died down about midnight and it was ok from then on. We are sitting in the rig now, writing our blog and just experienced a wind gust of probably 40 MPH, lasted less than a minute but sure came up out of nowhere. We had one hit us while we were driving this morning too, almost blew us into the next lane, luckily no one was beside us at the time. But mostly the winds have been steady 10 – 15 MPH, especially in the afternoons.

Our plans are to stay here in the area until Friday. We will continue on I-40 East with planned stops in Amarillo, TX and Oklahoma City, OK. We hope we are out of the tornado “season” but will use our weather radio while in the plains. Wish us luck and thanks for those who have already checked up on us to make sure we are ok. Sure a bad thing about the big one that destroyed the suburb in Oklahoma City last week.

And too bad about the bridge back home that collapsed. This bridge was only about 30 miles or so from where we used to live, I know the traffic will be a mess back there for a long time. I’ve commented a few times in the past about the infrastructure in our country, let’s just say it’s past time to spend some serious money on our roads!

Enough of that, time to go through all the pictures we’ve taken this week. I expect this blog to be picture heavy, we’ve been in some really pretty places and have lots of pictures to prove it. I’ll try but no guarantees about the number of pictures.

The Grand Canyon Railway at our RV park. Cataract Lake outside of Williams.