I left home at 11:00 a.m. – on a very hot Palm Springs, California morning – and arrived at the Cattail Cove State Park at 3:00 p.m. – on a very hot Arizona afternoon. I stayed at this state park once before and I like it very much. It’s located on the Colorado River between Parker and Lake Havasu City, AZ.
My last truck camper trip was in summer-fall 2019 -- a fantastic and
memorable three-month journey around Iowa and Kansas. My next trip [to Utah]
was in the planning stages when the COVID-19 pandemic became rampant everywhere
and kept me home. And kept my camper in storage, too, under the watchful eye of
David Yavelak, owner of Galaxy Campers in Ontario, CA. David is the fellow who
sold my 2005 Lance 1121 camper to me back in early 2006 and has been my “camper
guy” ever since. I said it before and I say it again – it was truly my lucky
day when I met David at the 2005 RV Show in Pomona, CA. As an outstanding, knowledgeable,
and professional Lance camper/trailer agent, David is exceptional and genuinely
cares about his customers. He has an excellent staff working with him, too!
The pandemic dragged on and I adhered, best I could, to CDC
guidelines, getting my vaccinations and boosters and struggling to lipread
people through their masks. Struggle? HA…‘twas impossible! Keeping busy with
personal projects at home, I stayed well…and then I eventually felt that itch. The
road was calling. Or was it Willie Nelson?
In early March of this year, I contacted David and asked for a
meeting. Although David and I communicate quite well, for this particular
meeting my brother Bill came along as my interpreter. I told David it’s been nearly
three years, it’s been long enough, and I was now itching to travel again. I’d
made some decisions and wanted him to get my camper checked out and prepped for
my next trip, scheduled for August-October. Giving him my “Please do the
following…” list, we discussed logistics and timelines. In addition to checking
things out and doing a few repairs, I asked David to also install a solar panel
and replace my two batteries and two propane tanks with new ones. By the time
the job was completed, just last week, I discovered that David took it on
himself to also replace the TV with a new model that provides better closed
captioning features. Such a dear man!
With both my camper and my 2006 Ford F-350 dually ready to go, I
returned to David’s lot on Saturday, August 13th. After David,
Miguel, and Juan loaded the camper on the truck, I stayed around for a couple
of hours to make up the bed there (not the easiest thing to do!) and transfer
stuff from truck to camper. I figured Ontario would be a tad cooler than Palm
Springs and David made it so much better by connecting my power cord to his
30-amp outlet and turning on the camper’s air conditioning. Did I mention he’s
a dear?
By the time I returned home, although the air was hot and humid, the sun was obscured by storm clouds. “Do it…do it…do it, Mappy, ole girl!” Yup! You see an opportunity, you take it! With the sun missing in action, I gave it an hour or so and loaded more stuff (clothes, food, and other essentials) in the camper. The camper was fully loaded and mostly organized by noon on Sunday and I FINALLY left home this morning. My travel destination – ARKANSAS!
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| My truck and camper on my driveway. |
I reached the Cattail Cove State Park via I-10E and Rt. 95N. Immediately after backing in at my reserved site I connected to the shore power. Stepping inside the camper I opened the slide-out and then activated the air conditioning. Next, I retrieved my water hose and filled up the fresh water tank. I still had a lot of things to put away and organize but…there’s the Colorado River, just steps away! Priorities!! I knew exactly where my swim suit was!
Tuesday, August 16, 2022 - I was quite tired when I went to bed last night, more mentally than physically. It does require a lot of careful thought to plan for and begin an RV trip. For me, since it’s been nearly three years since my last truck camper adventure, I started off yesterday with some concerns. Today, I’m now feeling a bit more reassured that camper-related features and necessities are coming back to me as I move about inside and outside the camper.
On a personal note, I was 56 years old when I took my first truck camper trip in 2006. I’m 72 now, which means an unbelievable sixteen years have gone by. This 6-7-week trip -- to and around and from Arkansas -- will be a test of sorts.
Firstly, can I still handle the physical aspects of traveling in a truck camper? What challenges will I discover, both personally and otherwise? For example, the camper chore I detest the most is dumping the Black and Gray water tanks, mainly because I have to get down on my knees and crouch under the camper to access the camper’s tank dump outlet. From that position, I then have to get up. I’ve tried, but I can’t spring back up like I used to. I’ll report on this particular “adventure,” definitely!
Secondly, will I have trouble finding available campground sites without a reservation? This is a new RV scenario -- a problem, and a challenge, really – as a result of the pandemic. Unable to travel by plane, train, ship, fellow Americans, primarily those with kids, discovered camping. Other folks discovered they could work remotely…from anywhere. RV sales boomed and campgrounds filled up. Advance reservations became a requisite, which is not how a spontaneous traveler like me wants to journey around the USA. Which is why I asked David to install the solar panel. If I have to boondock somewhere or look for a Walmart parking lot, I’m prepared for that.
This state park, I should mention, is not full. As far as I can see, there’s lots of empty sites. It is Tuesday, after all, and school has started. Which is why, never mind the propensity for heat and humidity, I decided to start this trip in mid-August.
Anyways, I was up at 6:00 a.m. this morning and spent a couple of hours focused on putting things away where they best belong. I slept reasonably well – AC off, windows open, bare skin exposed. It was a little bit uncomfortably warm, admittedly, but I didn’t want to leave the AC running all night. Some of the other campers here are sleeping in tents…ugh! On second thought, maybe that’s OK. Like I said, the Colorado River is just steps away and always “open.” And that’s where I was at 9:00 a.m. -- me and one friendly loon!
I was back inside my camper after an hour on the beach. With the AC back on, I sat at the dinette table, laptop open in front of me, and between frequent glimpses of the Colorado River and the mountains on the California side, I got to work on this, my “MAP’s Camper Adventures” blog. This blog is documented in my file folder as Blog #100 – my goodness!
Three o’clock p.m. found me back on the beach for another dunking in the river. This time I brought a new book with me to read -- Our First Discovery, by Marvin T. Miller, a Deaf man and single father of four, writing about the challenges and joys of his RV experience with his first Fleetwood Discovery diesel-pusher motorhome. The book is a gift from my friend, Mel – thank you!
Fluffy white clouds adorned the beautiful blue mid-afternoon sky as I sat there on the beach under the shade of a small tree. Coming our way from the California side – and impossible to ignore -- was a huge mass of dark rain clouds. There were a few people in the water and I kept an eye on them to watch for any reaction to the sound of thunder. There was none of that and those clouds didn’t release rain on us. They did, however, kick up a wonderful breeze that lasted for about 20 minutes. Brief as it was, it was a most welcome respite to today’s heat!
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| Rain clouds above the Colorado River, approaching the cove. |
Wednesday, August 17, 2022 - I slept in the buff again last night – just laid there in bed, tired, sweating a little bit, and waiting for sleep. My mind wandered to the folks of yesteryear, especially the ladies, and marveled at how they managed to do all that they did – toiling the land, keeping house, cooking over a hot fire, raising children – in those bulky clothes they wore. Those thoughts put things in perspective for me. Then I fell asleep. I didn’t wake up once, not even to go to the bathroom.
Up at 6:00 a.m., I put on my swim suit, t-shirt and shorts and took a walk. There are trails here at the state park and I found one that went up to a high vantage point. I took pictures of the Colorado River and the cove where the beach is. As I went back down the trail a young woman was coming up with her two dogs – a German Shepherd and a Doberman. The woman was petite and those dogs were huge! She stepped off to a spot away from the trail and held on to her dogs – tightly, I could see – so I could pass. The Doberman sat on its haunches and heeded her every word (whatever they were), but the German Shepherd was overly excited and kept wanting to approach me. Two beautiful dogs and a pretty girl – my morning got off to a good start! And the refreshingly cool water, when I returned to the beach, was a bonus!
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| The Colorado River, looking north. |
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| The Cattail Cove and beach. |
It was a good drive through a truly beautiful Arizona desert terrain. The road was typical – smooth here and there and patchy rough elsewhere. The other drivers sharing the road with me were also typical and there were lots of big rig trucks. Monstrous as they are, usually fast and sometimes annoying, too, I was actually glad to see them on the road. It’s a post-COVID sign that those drivers are out there transporting goods, which is what we need.
The flat landscape soon became hilly and it didn’t take me long to feel like I’d gotten my groove back with driving the truck. I had it serviced a week before I left home and, burdened with the heavy camper on top, it was handling the hills just fine. I spotted some cattle and horses and, without even looking for them, saw a pair of pronghorns grazing near a barrier fence. It’s always a thrill to catch a glimpse of this beautiful “…species of artiodactyl mammal indigenous to interior western and central North America.” At some point along the way, I turned off the truck’s AC and opened the windows. The memory of my previous two hot nights in the camper faded away as I felt the cooler air of these higher elevations.
For the most part, the day was both sunny and partially cloudy. In the distance the sky was a foreboding dark – rain, most likely. On the approach to Flagstaff -- and that rain -- I realized I was now surrounded by pine trees. The transformation from the desert landscape had been so gradual it was as if that forest of trees had appeared in the blink of an eye. And, yes, it did rain on me!
Flagstaff fell behind, I had a clear blue sky again and was back in the desert environs, heading towards and arriving in Winslow around 1:30 p.m. I stopped for fuel and then looked for a place to get a late lunch. Winslow is one of the famous old towns on Route 66 and, finding a great place to park, I went inside a small café. They didn’t have Wi-Fi, unfortunately, but their hamburger was very good. Most of the customers there, I noted, were Native Americans. Being that the revered Homolovi Ruins were nearby, it’s likely those folks were Navajo and/or Hopi descendants of the people who lived around this area and at those ruins. From that café I went to McDonald’s, ordered a Diet Coke, and used their internet to check emails on both my iPhone and iPad.
By 4:00 p.m. I was settled in at my reserved site at the Homolovi State Park. I was here once before, with Navidad, my cat, and I visited the ruins at that time. Sitting outside at sunset, enjoying the breeze with my Rum & Diet Coke, I thought about those customers at the café. It’s always an honor, it really is, to visit the lands of our Native Americans.
The nights are dark at this state park and as soon as some of the cloud cover moved off the stars became visible. Among those thousands of twinkling stars was the Big Dipper, right where it has always been for time immemorial. The Milky Way, too, but it was hard to see because of the light pollution from Winslow.
Thursday, August 18, 2022 - Last night’s sleep in the camper was much cooler and pleasantly comfortable compared to my first two nights at the Colorado River. The first thing I saw through the cabover side window when I woke up this morning was a narrow band of orange along the horizon. Wasting no time, I got out of bed and went outside to watch and take pictures of the rising sun. Looking out over that expanse of open land, it was a humbling thought to realize that the peoples of long ago watched this same sun rise over that same horizon…everyday throughout their lives.
Leaving the state park at 9:00 a.m. I made my way back on I-40E and settled in for the long drive to Rio Rancho, NM. Moving along at a steady pace, Arizona soon looked less like “Arizona” when the desert scenery morphed into a landscape of rocky cliffs and “tabletop” mesas. The “Welcome to New Mexico” sign appeared…and I lost one hour.
It was raining pretty hard when I approached Albuquerque. Traffic was steady and after I connected to I-25N I started following my sister Evelyn’s directions to the new house that she and David bought in Rio Rancho last year. I arrived shortly after 3:00 p.m. (4:00 p.m. AZ time), parked the truck camper in front of their house, switched the fridge power to propane, and brought inside the items I will need during my visit with them.
They have a lovely house – it’s spacious with lots of large windows and, looking south, a great view of the Sandia Mountains and, at night, the lights of Albuquerque. We visited, had supper, post-supper drinks, and soon called it a day.
Friday, August 19, 2022 - I slept very well on a comfortable bed and woke up just before 6:00 a.m. Wandering into the open kitchen-dining-living room area I saw, again, this band of orange and decided to stand at the living room windows and wait. I soon felt a soft tap on my shoulder and David was there with a good morning hug. He had coffee ready and we stood outside and watched the sun make its appearance. Ev soon joined us and, since we’d already determined last night that we would be staying put today, I got started on the blog-related writing that I needed to catch up on.
Around mid-morning I took a break and joined Ev and David for a walk to their community mailbox. Back at the house I invited my shorter-than-me sister to climb up into the big truck and take a seat at the wheel. She did and she took a good look at my truck’s [black] dashboard. I had described, yesterday, the optical difficulties that I’m now experiencing with my truck’s dashboard and I wanted to show Ev and David what I was talking about. Hands on the wheel, Ev looked (David did, too) and concurred that, even with the dimmer switch as high as it will go, it is indeed hard to see some of the dashboard symbols, specifically those that are green and red. It’s an issue for me now because I’m finding that I have to hunch forward, eyes off the road for a mini second, and squint to see the fuel indicator needle, the odometer numbers, a few other symbols, and the clock. A small flashlight hasn’t worked so will try a larger one. Hopefully it’s a dashboard fuse that can be remedied later.
The rest of the day I continued to work on my blog. David did his thing on his computer and Ev looked through our Mom’s photo albums that I had brought from home. Following cocktails and supper David and I exchanged thoughts and perspectives about history and today’s current events. Being British, David speaks with an accent that’s a bit hard for me to lipread, but both his verbal articulation and fingerspelling have improved immensely, making my need for Ev’s interpreting less necessary. (Thank you, David!) Before we headed off to bed, we watched a program about how a cat’s mind works. Interesting!
Saturday, August 20, 2022 - We woke up to heavy clouds, rain, and to news reports that rain and flooding are impacting certain regions in New Mexico. Safe and snug inside this lovely home, we’re staying put here again today.
Sunday, August 21, 2022 - Ahhh, after yesterday’s rainy day I woke up to a bright and sunny morning! David was also up and after giving me my mug of coffee, he pointed out hot air balloons rising from above Albuquerque. We stepped outside to the patio and, by the time Ev came outside to join us, we’d counted 17.
Around mid-morning, since I will be resuming my truck camper trip tomorrow, we did a grocery run for me to get milk and other items for the camper. Back home, after a bite to eat, we hopped in the car and David drove us to State Road 4 to visit the Pueblo of Jemez. To quote from online -- “The Pueblo of Jemez is an independent sovereign nation with an independent government and tribal court system. Since time immemorial the Jemez people have maintained their traditional way of life, a life supported by strong values, deep cultural respect, and the unique Towa language. The Pueblo of Jemez is a federally recognized tribe located 50 miles northwest of Albuquerque, New Mexico. Jemez is one of the remaining 19 Pueblos of New Mexico, encompassing over 89,000 acres of land and home to over 3,400 tribal members. The people of Jemez cherish their ancestral customs and integrate their culture with modern society.”
Our 30-mile drive on State Road 4, a scenic two-lane byway, took us through the Jemez Pueblo Reservation, colorful rocky cliffs, a pine forest, a village, and to the Valles Caldera Preserve. A caldera is a “…large depression formed when a volcano erupts and collapses.” This 13.7-mile wide Valles Caldera, which presently looks like an expansive grassy meadow – and is home to a large herd of elk -- is actually a “supervolcano,” one of three supervolcanoes in the USA. From that beautiful preserve we turned around and returned to Rio Rancho.
David & Ev, driving through the Pueblo of Jemez.
David & Ev at the Valles Caldera.
Ev & me.
Ev & David at home...and my truck camper "next door."
Me, working on Blog #1, with the Sandia Mountain
in the background.
Bon voyage and a lot of luck. Lovely pictures...much love, take care,
ReplyDeleteLove the beautiful photos and the scenery! It's such vicarious fun following your camping adventure! How far east are you coming? Is your beloved cat no longer with you?
ReplyDeleteAnd now you're off to the next chapter of this adventure! Wonderful to see you and your (how many miles?) camper. How cool to stand in the middle of the volcano with you. Maybe we'll see you again for the balloon festival. 😊
ReplyDeleteWish you "BON VOYAGE" and good luck on your journey, lovely country. Take care.
ReplyDeleteGreat Job MAP - Enjoy your trip, travel safely and hopefully Evelyn and I will see you soon.
ReplyDeleteLove - David