GTW Hop 23: Sun City, AZ, to Williams, AZ

Posted on November 4, 2012 by Sparky

170 miles via I-17 and I-40. Cumulative distance: 3,929 miles.

GTW Hop 23: Sun City AZ to Williams AZ

I knew that this hop would involve some climbing as there is no way to explain a 20-degree change in temperature in less than 200 miles without some serious altitude adjustment. But I didn’t expect the climb we got: we topped out at over 7,000 feet (starting from about 1,200′ in Sun City). The truck had to do some heavy lifting on this hop. There were signs warning about engine overheating. If you did this in the summer, with temperatures above 100 degrees, then there is no doubt that you would have to give your engine some rest along the way. Our temperatures were mostly in the 70s and the engine still heated to more than 250 degrees – a good 30 degrees higher than it has been at any other point on this GTW.

We stopped along the way to eat lunch at a rest area that, like every other rest area we have seen in Arizona, was beautifully landscaped and white-glove clean.

The rig taking a well-deserved rest

Rest area landscaping, with Patience in the background

Rest area garden

Jett didn’t enjoy the climb. Already convinced that we are going to die a horrible death, the steep downhills and dire warnings about overheating engines and failed brakes just fed her fears. She was too busy praying to get many shots of the rugged mountains, but she was entranced by the earlier, flatter landscapes north of Phoenix. Lots of cacti there.

Field of cacti

Despite Jett’s fears, we made it to Williams without incident. We are staying three nights in the RV park behind the Grand Canyon Railway Hotel – a very nice hotel at which we are considered guests.

Grand Canyon Railway Hotel

Hotel pool

Most of the guests in the RV park are traveling in either top-of-the-line motorhomes or very nice fifth wheels. However, there is one guest who is reminiscent of the Beverly Hillbillies. His tiny trailer was festooned with milk crates, all strapped on with miles of bungees. Never seen anything like it.

The Beverly Hillbillies?

We took a walk around the property at sunset (about 5:30 – Arizona is not on daylight savings time, so it gets dark early here). I always knew that I cast a long shadow, but this one was ridiculous.

Long shadow

There are two reasons that we are in Williams. One is to get a taste of old Route 66 (which doesn’t seem to exist anymore in Williams, having been supplanted by I-40) and the Grand Canyon Railway, which we will ride up to the Grand Canyon on Monday. I will report on both of those more completely later, but I have a couple of photos to offer of the train depot – we watched the train pull in at 5:30pm.

The depot, decorated for Christmas

The arriving Grand Canyon train

Categories: AZ, GTW, Places, Routes | 1 Comment

Sun City, AZ

Posted on November 3, 2012 by Sparky

We didn’t see anything in Tucson because we hated the RV park there and got out as quickly as we could. We also didn’t see much of Phoenix, but for the opposite reason: we loved the park so much that we didn’t want to leave its gentle embrace.

I don’t think we will run into another park with a deeper sense of community than Rainbow’s End in Livingston.  But the Paradise RV Park in Sun City comes in a close second. Everyone we met there was friendly, engaging and just downright happy. I had to wonder if they were putting something in the water.

Like Rainbow’s End, most of the residents of Paradise are owners and most of the owners are snowbirds. We happened to be there on November 1, which is the official start of the winter season. There was a big “Welcome back to Paradise!” sign at the office and we noticed a lot of cleaning activity going on, presumably by newly arrived snowbirds. It seems like a very good place to while away the winter.

Another indication that this park caters to long-term residents: the office is closed on weekends. I have no idea how we would have checked in if we had arrived on Saturday.

Paradise is larger than Rainbow’s End – about 1,000 sites versus about 300. Because it is larger it can support more activities. It has a wonderful pool, with water aerobics classes every morning and water volleyball every afternoon. The community center also sports lawn bowling courts, shuffleboard courts, tennis courts and a pickleball court (like table tennis played while standing on a very large table; see this video). There are also two large card rooms, a very large library, a post office, a woodworking shop, a ceramics shop, a sewing room and probably several other activities rooms that I didn’t see. It also has a cafe that is open for breakfast and lunch (weekdays only) and a huge laundry. There are lawn bowling leagues, tennis leagues, shuffleboard leagues, golf outings and who knows what else – a VERY active community. There are over 30 activities available every day.

The pool where we basked on Halloween

Tennis courts

Lawn bowling

The grounds are well-maintained. The common area has a very nice pond and gazebo between the lawn bowling and the tennis courts. Very relaxing. A good place to read or write. And because it is so dry, there are very few insects.

The pond

Common grounds

The residents also take pride in their sites. Many have beautiful shrubs, trees or cacti.

Cactus

Flowering shrub

Of course there are a few who go over the top. Our neighbor had a very gaudy Halloween display, which, because this is an over-55 park, was most definitely NOT for the benefit of the trick-or-treaters.

Neighbor

Patience basking in the sun

The park also has some other long-term residents: rabbits. Not jackrabbits, but furry cottontails. The dogs loved them.

Bunny

Most of the long-term residents live in park model trailers, but a few are in motorhomes. There were a couple of interesting ones that we saw here. One looked like a stretch limo. The other was a Freightliner chassis with a motorhome body – a very odd hybrid of Class A and Class C.

“Limo” motorhome

Freightliner hybrid

We really enjoyed our three days here and wish we could stay longer. Today we drive to Williams, AZ, our base for our Grand Canyon trip. While we are looking forward to seeing the Grand Canyon, we are not very eager to move into colder temperatures. We expect Williams to be 20 degrees colder than Sun City.

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Passport America

Posted on November 2, 2012 by Sparky

We have been having a good time here in Sun City, AZ. The weather has been great. We lounged by the pool on Halloween. Never done that before.

I will give a full report tomorrow, but I thought I would say a few words about Passport America. We are using our Passport America membership to stay here, which means that 4 nights in this beautiful resort is costing us less than $100. The discounts vary from campground to campground, and the limitations vary even more, but the basic idea is that you can stay a few days for about half the normal rate. We have now used PA to stay at about half the places we have been and it has saved us a bundle.

The quality of the campground varies tremendously, as evidenced by Whispering Palms and Paradise: one was horrible, one was wonderful. But if you look carefully at the campground websites (and about 90% now have websites), you can usually get a pretty good idea of what you are getting.

I think the annual membership fee for PA is $44. We have saved that many times over in just seven weeks of travel. You can recoup the membership fee in one week, easily.

Recommended.

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GTW Hop 22: Tucson, AZ, to Sun City, AZ

Posted on October 31, 2012 by Sparky

133 miles via I-10 and US 60. Cumulative distance: 3,759 miles.

GTW Hop 22: Tucson AZ to Sun City AZ

We opted for a good night’s sleep, vacated the “Whispering” Palms park and hot-footed it up to Sun City. I found that Phoenix is snowbird central: it has numerous mega-parks that cater to long-term occupants. They look more like trailer parks than RV parks. Many have over 1,000 sites and one has nearly 2,000. Because they are designed for long-term residency, vary few pull-through sites exist. I finally convinced Jett that a back-in would be fine as we would be staying for 4 nights. I thought I opted for one of the “small” parks – just 144 sites. But that was 144 transient sites; it has many more long-term sites. I haven’t seen a full count, but you can estimate from the map. Our site number – 2126 – suggests that the park might contain nearly 1,000 sites.

Paradise RV Park site map

We are looking forward to our time here as we think it will give us a taste of the “snowbird” lifestyle. I will report on it fully after we leave.

The trip itself was easy until we got to Phoenix. We did see some interesting geological formations along the way.

Picacho Peak(?) on the way to Phoenix

Traffic in Phoenix was very heavy and the drivers there could compete with Boston or New York on the asshole scale. I was trying to get over to the right lane on Route 60 and put my turn signal on. I let two cars pass (they love to pass on the right in Phoenix), then saw a small gap and started to move over. But the approaching car would not stop to let me in. And when she passed, she gave me the finger! Like I had done something wrong. Unbelievable.

Good thing I didn’t have the shotgun in the cab.

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GTW Hop 21: Las Cruces, NM, to Tucson, AZ

Posted on October 30, 2012 by Sparky

280 miles via I-10.  Cumulative distance: 3,626 miles.

GTW Hop 21: Las Cruces NM to Tucson AZ

This was another hop that was easy to navigate: get on I-10 west and keep going until you get there. The only difficulty was that the ramp closest to the RV park was closed (which we were told when making reservations), so we had to get off a little farther away and travel a few more local streets. No big deal. The hardest part of the trip was turning into the RV park. More on that later.

Arizona is beautiful in a stark, dusty kind of way.  We thought that west Texas had a lot of nothing, but southern Arizona has even more of nothing.  We stopped at two rest areas – one to eat and to walk the dogs and another to check out a cut on Grace’s paw that she apparently got at the first one. The first rest area had several prominent signs warning that “poisonous snakes and insects inhabit this area,” so we had a few moments when we wondered if she had gotten bitten. But I think it was just a sharp rock.

Dog walk area

Cactus, railroad and mountains

The second rest area had some incredible rock formations.

Split rocks at rest area

Rest area 2

Lots of rocks

Shortly after leaving Las Cruces we encountered a border patrol checkpoint. Jett was hoping that they would pull us aside and check for Mexicans traveling with us, but they just waved us through.

Border patrol checkpoint

Our destination in Tucson was the Whispering Palms RV Park. We picked it on short notice because our planned destination rejected us because Cha-Cha was a “dangerous breed.” Anyone who knows Cha-Cha will find the thought of him being dangerous hilarious. But it meant that I had to pick a park quickly and this one looked… ok.

Mistake.

The first problem was the driveway. It was a very tight turn just getting into the park. I made it, but it wasn’t easy. Then we noticed that many of the RVs were older. This is obviously a park inhabited mostly by long-term residents who are living on the cheap. The word “shabby” came to mind – the first park that I would describe that way. Another first: there was no working public bathroom. The registration person was “hopeful” that it would be fixed by Saturday – 5 days hence. We didn’t need it, fortunately. The site itself, though a pull-through, was very tight and had no picnic table or any other kind of amenity.

Whispering Palms entrance

Whispering Palms

But wait… it gets worse! We have concluded that the palms here are not really whispering; you just can’t hear them over the road traffic, the train traffic or the jet planes. It was noisy, noisy, noisy. Impossible. We are leaving today. It was cheap ($16.50) but not worth it. I wouldn’t stay here again at any price.

Patience next to the noisy street

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Las Cruces, NM

Posted on October 29, 2012 by Sparky

We stayed two nights at La Hacienda RV Resort in Las Cruces. It is very neat and clean and has a lot of amenities. It has a great community room, a hot tub (unusual), a very nice laundry (which we used) and the longest dog park we have seen yet. It is also pricy – $45 per night. I’m not sure it is worth it as the sites are barely adequate for our rig (and had no table), the cable connection was unusable (we used our antenna) and some of the rules were just bizarre. For example, they demanded that guests refrain from setting foot on any unused site because they take great pride in how well they groom the fine clay after every departure. I half expected to see Monk at the registration desk.

The tableless site at La Hacienda

The sunken dog walk

Naturally, Jett and I took great pleasure in tramping across one to do laundry. Rebels.

It did, however, have a great view of the dramatic mountains near Las Cruces. That looks like a painted backdrop (see below), but I assure you that those are real mountains.

A butt view of Patience

The sunset also produced some appropriately spooky lighting.

Spooky sunset

We really had just one tourist foray in the Las Cruces area and that was to Mesilla, just outside the city. It is an old spanish town that it pretty well preserved due to the fact that the railroad bypassed it in the 1870’s and it pretty much died on the vine then. But it was a favorite hangout of Billy the Kid, Kit Carson, Pancho Villa and other icons of the wild west. Several of the buildings have plaques documenting the history of the building and they all seem to relish the gruesome deaths of those who formerly resided there.

Plaque on home of Billy the Kid’s lawyer

The town square was quite scenic, with many authentic and colorful adobe buildings. It was anchored by a very picturesque cathedral. The square was hosting a crafts and farmer’s market (featuring locally-grown pecans and pistachios) while we were there.

Mesilla square

Mesilla shop

Where Billy the Kid was tried

The cathedral

I was very interested in seeing the White Sands Missile Range, but those plans were thwarted by a need to get Cha-Cha to a vet to check out a rash that he had developed. Finding a vet on Sunday was tricky, but, fortunately, Las Cruces had a PetSmart with a Banfield Animal Hospital attached. The vet thinks it is a minor allegic reaction and is nothing to worry about.

We still have one extra day to spend before we get to Las Vegas and we will probably spend it in Tucson. The forecast there is for highs near 90 for the next 3 days. So while those of you back east are dealing with wind, rain and flooding from Hurricane Sandy, we will be watching the news at the poolside bar.

We will be with you in spirit.

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Mid-term report card

Posted on October 29, 2012 by Sparky

As we are now more than half done with the GTW, I thought this would be a good time to assess how it has gone so far. Kind of a mid-term report card. I will start with two subjects that relate to the work we did prior to the start of the trip:

  • Preparation: A-
    • Jett and I both did a fabulous job of getting the house ready to rent.
    • Putting the RV in NH for the summer was simply brilliant.  It was both fun and great training for us.
    • Our packing of the RV was darn near perfect, mostly thanks to Jett. I have the clothes I need.  I have the tools I need.  We have a few things we haven’t used yet but overall I am very happy with the collection of “stuff” we brought with us.
    • I got enough training in driving the rig that I could do so competently.
    • We both got our computers well prepared and our finances arranged so that we wouldn’t skip a beat on anything important.
    • We should have paid more attention to the tires.  We really had no reason to think that we would have blowouts, but we should have found out what the correct tire pressures were and checked them more religiously.  And it was a major error to leave without getting the pressure of the interior tires on the truck checked.
  • Planning: A

    • The general plan, to drive one day and stay 2 nights, has worked well.
    • The target distance between stops – around 200 to 220 miles – has worked very well.
    • The selected campgrounds have been, with few exceptions, very nice.

The next two subjects concern how well the rig has done so far:

  • Truck: B+
    • The truck has proven to be capable of pulling the RV.
    • It provides a comfortable ride for all of us, dogs included.
    • The hauling mileage has been disappointing: around 9 instead of the target of 10 mpg.
    • The bad battery gave us a few gray hairs.
  • RV: C
    • The RV has provided comfortable living quarters.
    • The interior systems – lights, refrigerator, furnace, fireplace, stove, air conditioner, TVs – have all performed flawlessly.
    • But we have had intermittent problems with both the front landing jacks and the rear stabilizers.
    • The #2 slide has been sticky and one of the cables finally popped.
    • The tires were horrible – the blowouts were shocking and dangerous.

These two subjects grade me alone as I have been responsible for the budgeting and the blogging:

  • Budget: Incomplete
    • I won’t know until I run the numbers at the end of the month how well we are adhering to our budget.  I know that we are totally screwed on the “maintenance” category as we have spent way more on tires and repairs than I expected.  But other categories may not be so bad.  I will report on this in a few days.
  • Blogging: A-
    • I have blogged nearly every day.
    • I have taken some darn good photos to include.
    • I sometimes feel that with just a little more effort I could have made it even better.

Of course, the final grade in “blogging” will come from you, the readers.

These two subjects rate Jett and my team skills with the rig:

  • Setup/Teardown: A-
    • It took some practice, but we are getting really good at it.
    • There were a couple of times when Jett saved my butt by catching something I forgot – chocks still on, doors not locked.
  • Driving/Navigation: B-
    • We haven’t had anything close to a collision with another vehicle (knock on wood).
    • The use of Google maps has generally been successful, but the GPS conflicts are mighty confusing.  We have regretted relying on the GPS several times.
    • That telephone pole/fence incident the first day out is a big blemish.
    • Ditto the tire blowout from hitting the curb.

The final subjects describe how we are doing in this new lifestyle:

  • Health and Wellbeing: B
    • We have generally been healthy, though Jett continues to have sporadic stomach pains and the driving hasn’t been kind to either my hands (arthritis) or back.
    • We are eating pretty well.  We have home-cooked meals about 80% of the time.  The rest of the time we either dine at restaurants (mostly Cracker Barrel) or get subs or take-out from KFC.  We have not been to Burger King or McDonalds at all.  When on the road we mostly eat sandwiches that Jett prepares before we go.
    • I have been snacking too much and exercising too little.
    • I can’t convince Jett that a nature hike is a fun activity.
  • Companionship: B+
    • We haven’t killed each other yet, so we have exceeded our expectations. And most of yours, too, I suspect.
    • There have been some heated arguments, but we are assured by other full-timers that this is very normal.
  • Enjoyment: B
    • The first two weeks, with the blowouts and the telephone pole incident, was a close approximation of hell.
    • We have had a lot of fun since.

We have gotten approval for a long-term stay at an RV park in San Jose and Jett is looking forward to that.  I think we will still be enjoying the lifestyle when the travel ends and we set up a more static home there, but we will see.  It is most definitely a work in progress.

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GTW Hop 20: Pecos, TX, to Las Cruces, NM

Posted on October 28, 2012 by Sparky

253 miles via I-20 and I-10. Cumlative distance: 3,346 miles.

GTW Hop 20: Pecos TX to Las Cruces NM

We stayed one night at the TRAPark in Pecos. This is an Escapees Rainbow Park, but it is a mere shadow of Rainbow’s End. We missed the social hour, which is a shame, but we had a good night’s sleep in the midst of the oil fields.

View from our TRAPark site

Patience at TRAPark

TRAPark

As I mentioned, it appears that this park has a lot of long-term residents, some of them oil field workers. It is not a beautiful park and we had no interest in staying for more than one night. But the price was right ($16.50) and I saw a beautiful sunrise.

Sunrise in Pecos

On this hop we left the prairie and re-entered the mountains. The transition, like the transition into prairie west of San Antonio, was abrupt; we traveled for miles on a treeless and nearly featureless plain and then, suddenly, a little 100-foot bump appeared. That bump was quickly followed by a series of increasingly larger bumps. Within 10 miles we were deep into rugged, jagged hills.

Post-prairie hills east of El Paso

We also climbed more than I expected on this hop: we topped out at over 4800′ elevation.

We stopped for lunch at a rest area shortly after we entered the Rio Grande Valley. Though it wasn’t quite New Mexico (which bills itself as “The Land of Enchantment”), it is either a tribute to the accuracy of their slogan or a symptom of our travel-addled brains that we found the rest area – and the area in general – to be enchanting.

Jett was entranced by the open-air bathrooms with ceramic wall mosaics. I liked the trees and the arid landscape.

Open-air bathroom

Bathroom mosaic

Rest area art shot

The picnic shelters showed some imagination, too.

Picnic shelter

Picnic teepee

And, though we couldn’t really see the Rio Grande, we knew that we were looking into Mexico on the other side of the valley. This was the first time either of us had seen the border between Mexico and the US.

Looking into Mexico

Jett was thrilled by the numerous Border Patrol vehicles on the road in the valley (“my heros!”). We thought El Paso was visually very interesting, with its colorful buildings and red mountain backdrop, but we were too busy threading our way through traffic to get photos.

We finally reached the New Mexico border (hasta la vista, Texas!) and had an easy drive into Las Cruces. We had no trouble finding the RV park and we got set up in no time. Then we went to dinner at Cracker Barrel.

Have I mentioned that we are becoming Cracker Barrel addicts? Love those chicken and dumplins (sic).

Categories: GTW, NM, Places, Routes, RV Parks, TX | Leave a comment

Cafe Malta

Posted on October 27, 2012 by Sparky

I am not above unabashedly plugging a restaurant run by Jett’s nephew.  But I wouldn’t do it if I wasn’t truly impressed. Cafe Malta on West William Cannon Drive in Austin doesn’t look like much from the outside – a smallish storefront tucked between a beauty salon and a roll-your-own cigarette place in a small strip mall. But walk in the door and you will find a small, clean, tastefully decorated restaurant/bar of understated elegance.  Some of the understatement is due to the use of kraft paper for tablecloths – unusual, but it works and is very practical.  Kids love it and it is better than napkins for those business lunch sketches.

Jett and I had brunch there last Sunday at noon.  We met up with Jett’s nieces, Jessica (co-owner of the restaurant) and Aimee, and Jessica’s two lovely children, Nate and Havia.  Jett’s nephews, Nick and Mark, were working tables and didn’t get to socialize much.

I had a Bloody Mary (made with cucumber vodka, I am told) to start and it was superb – spicy and tangy and strong enough to wake me up.  I chose the Croque Madame for the entree, mostly because I have never heard of this dish before, but also because I love ham.  I wasn’t disappointed. Two perfectly-done “over easy” eggs atop a mound of shaved ham with a cheese/bechamel sauce, toasted on French bread.  Delicious!  I finished with a good strong cup of black coffee and a tasty bread pudding, with a crusty toasted top and a delectable moat of chunky applesauce.  Jett had another dish with the same applesauce and raved about it.  Nick shared the secret of the applesauce with us – an apple-based liquor from the Middle East.  I can’t remember the name, but that’s my sense of self-preservation at work: if I told you he would have to kill me.

If we had just walked in off the street I would be talking about a “hidden gen” as this restaurant is much more than it first appears.  I hope they do well.

But I don’t have any photos.  I guess both Jett and I were having so much fun catching up with family that we have not seen for many months and savoring the brunch that we forgot to take pictures.  I guess you will just have to go there and take your own.

It will be worth the trip, guaranteed.

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GTW Hop 19: San Angelo, TX, to Pecos, TX

Posted on October 26, 2012 by Sparky

218 miles via US 67 and US 285.  Cumulative distance: 3,093 miles.

GTW Hop 19: San Angelo TX to Pecos TX

I don’t have much to say about San Angelo because we were there for just 20 hours. Because we had difficulty getting the front landing jacks to work, I didn’t unhitch. But I resolved that problem and decided this morning that it would be wise to top off the diesel tanks – there is a lot of nothing in west Texas – and get some oil (I thought the truck was a quart low, though that turned out to be not the case). Jett reminded me that we needed some C-clamps (to keep the clothes in the closet in place when traveling) and, hey, since I was going out, why not get a couple more books on tape (actually, CD)? So I unhitched and went shopping. Then I had to hustle back to beat the noon deadline for getting out of Dodge. Or San Angelo.

Our campground for the night was the San Angelo KOA, a.k.a. the Concho Valley KOA. It is clean and well-maintained, has a pretty nice dog park and is operated by a very friendly couple. Many of the sites were treeless, which might make it very hot. But not last night. The temperature dropped into the 40’s overnight and the forecast high for today was 53. Windy, too. We definitely aren’t in San Antonio anymore.

Patience at KOA San Angelo

The dog park

The trip to Pecos was uneventful. We started seeing cacti growing along the side of the road and also spotted our first windmill farm. The entire route was dotted with oil and natural gas production facilities and when we got to the campground in Pecos it was obvious that some of the long-term residents were oil field workers. It’s nice to know that we aren’t importing it all.

Windmill farm

And it was coolish the entire way. Now – 6pm CDT – it is 58 degrees. There is a light frost warning out for the Pecos area tonight.

I sure hope we can get to the coast without encountering snow.

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