Getting Through it Together

If you have been following our blog recently, you will have noticed that we have been traveling with our good friends, Jim and Corinne. After leaving the desert near KOFA National Wildlife Refuge, we spent 2 more weeks with our friends before parting ways on April 24. We first joined up in Indio, CA on February 19 with a rough plan to visit Death Valley and not much else planned after that. Little did we know that things would get as crazy as they did or that we would appreciate each others company as much.

Here is a quick summary of our travels before we get to the final two quiet weeks in Arizona. After connecting up in Indio, we plotted a path to Death Valley that included a few days stay in Sawtooth Canyon. After 9 days in Death Valley, we spent a couple days on a dry lake bed south of Las Vegas before moving to Lake Mead Recreation Area and a visit to Hoover Dam. All of these stops were dry camping locations, living off solar power and the water in our tanks. The weather was about to change and we needed to get someplace where we could plug in.

Our first site with electricity was at a KOA in Williams, AZ. Little did we know that our visit to the local brew pub would be our last excursion of that type. Boy, we sure miss checking out the local craft breweries! Our next stop was to be Homolovi State Park in Winslow, AZ and the weather prompted us to move sooner than planned. We had to drive through Flagstaff to get to Winslow and if you think Arizona is all hot and desert-like, then you’ve never been through Flagstaff. The city has an elevation of around 7,000 feet and a big winter storm was on the way.

A little sidebar on the KOA in Williams. Because of the impending snowstorm, we decided to leave a day early and try to get into our sites at the state park a day early. Some places will charge you a full day’ss fee if you leave your site after the official checkout time. Well, checkout at the KOA was noon but they still refunded us a day’ss fee even though we left in the middle of the afternoon. Heck, they weren’t obligated to refund us at all! We will definitely stay there again if the opportunity ever comes up.

Things really started to get interesting while we were in Winslow. We were all supposed to attend an FMCA rally at the end of March and had concluded that it would not be a good idea to go. At the time, it had not been cancelled but as soon as we decided we weren’t going to go, it got cancelled the next day. With things getting more and more uncertain and stories of RV parks closing, we knew we needed to get someplace safe and sit still for a while. That is when we headed for the desert for 18 days. Now that you’re all caught up, the final two weeks with our dear friends were pretty quiet.

We had booked 8 days in Cave Creek Regional Park way back in February. Dan’s sister and her 2 daughters were planning to rent a time share in Cave Creek starting on April 11. Once we found out about that, we booked the site. As our time in the desert was coming to an end, Jim and Corinne decided to see if they could get a site at Cave Creek as well and, luckily, they could. Their site was a short walk from ours but it was still the farthest our rigs were parked from each other in over 6 weeks. It was strange to not be able to look out our window to see if Jim was outside reading.

While at Cave Creek, we got a nice long hike in and ran several mornings. A couple trips into town for groceries and mail pickup and that pretty much hits the highlights of our stay. Our site was a bit nicer than Jim and Corinnes, so we spent our afternoon happy hour watching the birds and enjoying the yellow flowers everywhere. The only downside was the winds would often get too much for the awnings and then the sun would be too hot, even with the temps in the 60’s.

We could have parted ways upon leaving Cave Creek but instead we both booked another stay in Homolovi State park in Winslow. We knew we were headed to Utah and our friends were headed to New Mexico and points east. Winslow was right on their route and only put us 60 miles out of our way but did shorten the one day trip to Kanab by an hour or more so it was worth it to delay our inevitable separation.

On our last full day in Homolovi State Park, we took a drive north to a small county park that has been somewhat shut down. It was still accessible to the public but all facilities have been closed for quite some time. The attraction here was a small painted desert overlook with wonderful views. We enjoyed the stop but the winds were so strong that pieces of sand would pelt your bare arms and face and was quite painful. We did have our first encounter with a rattlesnake. Dan came very close to stepping on it before he heard the sound of the rattle and jumped back. It wasn’t very big, maybe 18″-24″, but it was still a jolt to come so close. Given the high winds, he was lucky to have heard the rattle before it was too late.

Well, we are now no longer with Jim and Corinne. We will miss them a lot. We shared meals at least 80% of the time we were together. Jim and Dan worked on numerous projects around the RVs. We had movie nights with popcorn and drinks. We had game night multiple times, which was really just an excuse to get out all the various bourbons we had for rounds of tasting. Even though we are full time RVers, we pretty much stayed home other than the times we had to move our rig. Sharing the whole experience made it more tolerable if not enjoyable. We would have preferred to be visiting national parks and enjoying a local brew pub or two but we’re pretty sure we will look back on these two+ months with fond memories of times spent with good friends.