Road Trippin', Arizona Edition
Mishaps and adventures against a desert backdrop...
Good mornin', all.
As I write this, I am staring out of my home office window at a delightful range of fall colors lining the street. It was approximately 45 degrees when I got up this morning, and the high today is going to be in the mid-70s.
I cannot tell you how happy those temps make me.
We left Arizona last Wednesday before 8:00 a.m., and it was already about 80 degrees and unusually humid. When we arrived at our first stop in Nevada that evening, I had to put on a sweater, and it made me do a little happy dance.
In case I haven't mentioned it before, I am not a fan of heat.
But despite being about two feet up Satan's colon for over a week, we had some great adventures, learned a few lessons, and enjoyed meeting new people and visiting with family.
It's All Part of the Adventure
We started our trip with a drive down to my parents' house in southern Idaho, where we dropped the dogs off for some grandma time. (Turns out one challenge of becoming empty nesters is losing our resident dog/housesitter.) We spent a couple of days with them, and while we were there, The Man changed a tire on the camper.
We set out from my parents' house and stopped to fuel up, and a young woman ran over to our pickup to let us know a tire had flown off our camper some distance back on the highway!
Needless to say, we had no idea. We're just really glad it didn't hit anyone or cause any accidents. We found a tire place a few miles away, and after a four-hour delay, we were on the road again. We got to our first stop in Nevada super late, but we made it with all four wheels still attached to the camper.
Our second long travel day was uneventful except that we arrived in the middle of the awful heat. We spent a couple of days in Yuma with my in-laws and then headed out to spend a few nights at the White Stallion Ranch near Tucson (more on that in a minute). On our way there, we stopped at a little roadside cafe for lunch, and right after we'd ordered, the server came over to tell us not to move, because THERE WAS A RATTLESNAKE CURLED UP BEHIND THE FRONT COUNTER.
Of course, humans being human, we all had to immediately go look at it. It was actually small and seemed to be basically asleep, but I was not going to hang around till it woke up. This particular picture is from my husband's phone, because I am a wuss and merely peeked at it and then immediately sat back down.
The server called someone to come help, and a burly young man showed up to take care of the problem. He had an expression that communicated zero effs to give about rattlesnakes, and he promptly trapped the little bugger in a to-go container and took it outside.
The rest of our trip was snake-free, but not without adventure. The Man made the mistake of touching some kind of weird berry that immediately shot his hand full of tiny prickers, and he and I spent about half an hour picking them out of his hand and reminding ourselves that EVERYTHING IN THE DESERT WANTS TO KILL US.
On our way back to my parents' house, we had to stop for minor camper repairs at one point and then saw a semi truck hit a deer right in front of us. The deer went into our lane, so we had to stop and evaluate the situation and then go around it. The truck kept going; I'm honestly not sure if he even knew he hit the deer. We called 9-1-1 to let them know there was a road hazard, but there wasn't much else we could do in the middle of a highway in the middle of Nowhere, Nevada.
I said at one point that this trip was a little bit like leveling up with our camper--like, we've done some small trips and had a few short adventures, but since we decided to do a longer one this time, it was like we went up to Level 3 in a video game. We still had a relatively simple trip, but we had a few more obstacles thrown at us, just to see how we'd deal with it and whether we could navigate to Level 4.
And as we both kept saying, "It's all part of the adventure."
Dude, It's Not City Slickers
The highlight of our trip, aside from spending time with both sets of parents, was our excursion to the White Stallion Ranch. Apparently, it's been kind of a bucket list thing for my in-laws to visit a dude ranch, so they booked four nights at this wonderful place near Tucson. We had so much fun. We tried out e-bikes, rode horses, and took an archery class. The food was terrific, and we really enjoyed the cowboy singer who performed a bunch of great old country hits from Johnny Cash, Kris Kristofferson, and George Strait, among others.
This particular property is pretty luxurious for a dude ranch. The rooms are as nice as any hotel room, and importantly, they were well-air conditioned. They all had a little patio outside with a gas fireplace, though we only used it for ambiance, because it was still well into the 80s even late at night. The property also had a pool, fitness room, game room, theater, and spa, though we never really used any of those.
Most of all, we were not expected to drive cattle across the southwest.
But it wasn't the amenities that really made a big impression on me--it was the atmosphere. For one thing, the staff is absolutely stellar. Everyone we interacted with--from front desk to wait staff to housekeeping to wranglers to gift shop personnel--was gracious, kind, open, friendly, and helpful. The owner's granddaughter also has the run of the place; she's six, and with a staff of wranglers to watch out for her, it's like she has about twenty big brothers and sisters who think of her as the "camp feral child."
There's a strong sense of family and community at this place. We met people from all over the world, many of whom had been there several times before and a few who were there for the first time ever. There was little distinction--everyone felt like family. We had a long chat with the lady in the gift shop about the hard part of being military parents and the joys of being grandparents. We enjoyed meeting two moms and their young teen girls who were there enjoying a mother-daughter getaway and discovered that we fall right back into scout parent mode when we're around young people. There was good-natured ribbing over different military branch membership and a bit of gentle smack talk about being British vs. Australian vs. New Zealander vs. American (no Canadians were harmed in the exchanges).
Overall, 9.9/10, would definitely recommend. We may go back someday or visit one of the other properties owned by this family.
Lessons Learned
We left Arizona last Wednesday and camped in Nevada that night, then drove to my parents' house on Thursday. Both of those days were really too long. I think our first lesson learned is that when we're hauling the camper, we need to build more drive time into our schedules. We can't go as fast, it's physically harder to drive with a camper, and there are just too many additional contingencies that can potentially derail our schedules. If we haul the camper on a longer trip like that again, we will plan shorter driving days.
There's also the heat in Arizona. Our camper's AC and refrigerator just could not keep up with that heat. We ended up throwing away a lot of stuff in the fridge after our trip to the dude ranch because when we got back, the fridge was holding a temp near 50. That's just too warm to keep things safe. The next time we go to Arizona, we might just fly, rent a car, and get a hotel room. And go in January.
Finally, I learned that it's time for me to get my ass in gear and make some progress on The Taurin Chronicles, because the sooner I can get that series finished, the sooner I can return to the dragon western series. I have a novel and a half written in that world, and I would really love to get back to it. The scenery of Nevada and Arizona definitely fired up my imagination again, and even though I don't like the heat, I have no problem inflicting it on my characters.
And with that, I'll leave you with one final image from our trip: the morning light against the ranch cactuses from our room's patio.
The desert may not be my favorite terrain, but I can't deny its beauty.
See you all next week.