Month: November 2018

 Tripometer – 12,065 mi

Gas Gauge –  908.875 gal

Location – Distant Drums RV Resort, Camp Verde, AZ

Lodging – $28

Cans of OFF – 4

Mondays are for chores. After goofing off all weekend we spent Monday catching up on life. While Kelly worked Paul pounded away at the blog and tidied up the trailer. Over the past week we have been eating out a lot rather than cooking in. To get back on the home cooked bandwagon, we pulled together a large list for a Walmart down the road in Cottonwood, AZ.

The AT&T cell signal that Kelly depends on for work has been so inconsistent since we entered Arizona that we have decided to purchase a Verizon hot spot. As we have struggled to find camping locations with good signal, we hope that a second cellular option will allow us more freedom to camp where we like. Verizon has two options for hot spots, a full cellular plan or a pay-as-you-go device for considerably less money. We’re not pleased with the prospect of buying a pay-as-you-go hot spot, but with only 2 months of travel time left on this trip we can hardly justify purchasing a hotspot and signing up for a multi-month cell plan.

After a fairly extensive shopping trip at the Walmart, we had a quiet night at home in the trailer with a little bit of TV and a home cooked meal. It’s nice to not be running from place to place for a change.

  Tripometer –  12036 mi

Gas Gauge –  908.875 gal

Location – Distant Drums RV Resort, Camp Verde, AZ

Lodging – $28

Cans of OFF – 4

No need for an alarm clock at the Distant Drums RV Park. There’s a small reginal airport located just over the hill and in a little valley near our campsite. Up until this morning the wind must have been blowing in the other direction. This morning at 8am sharp, a string of small engine planes took off right over our heads, climbing to altitude quickly as the end of the runway is aimed directly at the hill the RV Park is on. It’s been one of the more interesting aspects of our trip – What will we be camped next to this time?

We had plans to hang around camp today and talk about the rest of the trip to try and get some firm dates for our stay in New Orleans later next month. Kelly, being the football fan that she is, checked the football schedule and realized that Today’s Ravens game is at 11am our time. Travelling in the west makes it almost impossible to watch an East Coast football game. If a local bar is showing a game it is likely a nearby team on regular TV airways. To see the Ravens play you have to have the NFL network. Being right next to a casino we figured we could find the Ravens game on one of their big screens at their sports bar. We quickly packed up what we needed for the day, set up Ranger in the trailer with the AC running and the radio playing softly and took the shuttle bus from the RV park to the Casino, less than a half mile away.

Cliff Castle Casino is no mini Las Vegas but they did have a sports bar with $2.50 Budweisers for the game. About 50 feet from the sports bar entrance was a Johnny Rockets burger stand. We had everything we needed for a nice Sunday afternoon. The game was close, very close! So much so that it all came down to a tie if the Raven’s beloved kicker, Justin Tucker, could make the extra point. Justin has the title of the most accurate kicker in NFL history making over 90% of his field goal attempts. We both cackled at the look on his face when he realized he had missed this critical field goal. “Laces out!”

Several years ago we took a Sunday whilst in Las Vegas to sit and watch a football game while playing a video poker game at the casino. Neither of us are gamblers and almost never seek out gambling, but the thoughts of our last experience playing video poker together encouraged us to find a machine in the casino. We decided we would gamble with $40. If nothing came of the $40 we would tuck our tails and run back to the campsite. On our 38th attempt ($38) we struck “big,” winning $160 on 4 aces. Once we took pictures of the screen we immediately hit ‘Cash Out’ and ran to the cashier. There was no way that our luck was going to get any better than that. Here’s to free beer and food while watching the Sunday game!

Returning to camp we enjoyed the sunset overlooking the Camp Verde valley for the third night in a row. What a fantastic little RV Park we’ve found.

 Tripometer –  12,036 mi

Gas Gauge –  908.875 gal

Location – Distant Drums RV Resort, Camp Verde, AZ

Lodging – $28

Cans of OFF – 4

Our intention in coming to the Sedona, AZ area was to wind down from our crazy few weeks with Stratis and Dave. After finding the Distant Drums RV Park we’re both thinking we may have found our place to sit back and relax for a week and let Kelly get caught up on work after taking a week plus off. The scenery in this area is fantastic. Even in the heart of downtown Sedona, the mountains and mesas peeking out from behind traffic and shopping malls give the entire town a smaller and more comfortable feel. It’s no wonder that everything in this town is overpriced and chock full of tourists.

We drove into Sedona this morning to see what Sedona has to offer. We parked behind the community arts center at one end of town and proceeded to hike the entire shopping district. Kelly enjoyed the preponderance of jewelry and native craft stores. The selection of stores in town ranged from high end art stores with pieces targeted at the tremendously wealthy to junk shops filled with overpriced T-shirts for the not-so-wealthy. Ranger enjoyed all of the attention from passing shoppers. Towards the end of the day we shopped our way South out of Sedona, stopping at art stores and a tremendous variety of junk shops with everything from frontier antiques to 12 foot tall Tyrannosaurus Rex statues made from steel. (Ranger decided he didn’t like the looks of the T-Rex and growled at it as we pulled in. After Ranger fiercely alerted us to the prehistoric prowler’s presence, he got up and sat on the other side of the truck – the “safe from a T-Rex” side of the vehicle apparently. Kelly decided that she needed to go pet the statue and stand for a picture. Ranger quietly glared as Kelly brazenly walked up and greeted the T Rex.)

The temperatures today are sufficiently high that we’re hesitant to leave Ranger in the car long enough to enjoy ourselves at the Octoberfest celebration this evening. In lieu of that we went to a local bistro in town for a nice meal. We were both repulsed at the restaurant’s description of their ‘traditional’ crab cake. Similar to our experience with the Arizona Cheesesteak offered to us in Page, AZ a few days ago, we were horrified by the Southwest’s take on the Maryland classic. Who puts gruyere cheese in a crab cake, Arizonans?

Special Note: We mentioned that the Distant Drums RV Park has groomed pads with a nice small pea gravel covering most of the camp site. It didn’t take us long to come to the decision that the risk of scorpions was sufficiently low here that we could let Ranger frolic outside the camper in the evenings. He’s ecstatic.

Tripometer –  11982 mi

Gas Gauge –  908.875 gal

Location – Distant Drums RV Resort, Camp Verde, AZ

Lodging – $28

Cans of OFF – 4

After a call to Rancho Sedona this morning we realized that we were likely not going to secure a site within the city of Sedona for the weekend. Not wanting to be stuck in a hotel for the whole weekend, we quickly phoned the casino RV Park and made reservations until Sunday. Kelly worked until around noon (late checkout) and we packed up and moved everything to the Distant Drums RV Park about 10 minutes up the highway. Wow, were we wrong about this place.

We’ve seen a lot of RV Parks on our trip. Good to bad, most parks leave something to be desired. The Distant Drums RV Park was fantastic. We checked in with the wonderfully friendly staff at the front desk and were led to our campsite by an employee in a golf cart. The site pad had been raked and the concrete pad swept before our arrival. The view of the surrounding valley from our site was better than most views we’ve experienced and our site was a little removed from most of the sites in the RV park, making for some well needed seclusion. We could not have been happier. Over the next few hours we discovered that not only were we about 40 feet from the individual shower / bathroom combinations (a huge luxury on the road) but also the coin laundry and dog park! Most amazingly, this RV park was charging only $28 per night, simply an unheard of rate for a site with electric and water. We’re probably going to spend more than a few nights here and we’re both kicking ourselves for spending two nights in a hotel 10 minutes away.

After Kelly finished working with a fantastic cellular connection, we drove into Sedona to get the lay of the land. Our first stop in town was a small store called the Clear Creek Trading Company. We had plans to investigate a good part of town tonight but this one store occupied us for well over an hour. Neither of us have ever seen such a tremendous collection of neat things. The store sells a large variety of Indian goods; leather, furs, skulls, music, instruments, beads, blankets, jewelry, books, knives, and even Jackalopes. We simply got lost in this store. Paul’s favorite bin in the beading section was labeled ‘Assorted Vertebrae’. This is not your average bead shop! If this is an example of the things we’re going to be seeing during the rest of our stay in Sedona, we’re going to have a great time here.

Returning to camp we spent the remainder of the evening unpacking the trailer for an extended stay and enjoying cable TV for the first time since we left home. Little things like a news channel playing softly in the background are enough to make us feel like we are home in a way that we haven’t felt in a long time.

Tripometer – 11912 mi

Gas Gauge –  908.875 gal

Location – Days Inn, Camp Verde, AZ

Lodging – $100

Cans of OFF – 4

Paul contacted the Rancho Sedona RV Park a half an hour before the hotel checkout time this morning. Sadly, there have been no cancellations for the weekend and therefore we have no destination for tonight. We need a plan.

Kelly got in a great day of work yesterday, owing in large part to a quiet hotel room with a solid internet connection. The hotel room is easy and it isn’t hard to appreciate the shower 10 feet away with scads of fresh clean towels that we don’t have to take care of. We decided fairly quickly that it would be nice to let Kelly continue her furious pace and catch up on some longer term projects at work that she’s been procrastinating. Given our frantic pace for the past few weeks, Paul wanted to get caught up on some personal finance, photo, blog, and trip planning work as well. We truly settled into the hotel room during the afternoon, barely saying anything to one another as we sunk into padded chairs, real mattresses and cable TV. Ranger slept.

We didn’t bother to disconnect the truck from the trailer for the past two days, opting for restaurants within walking distance of the hotel (not the wisest or tastiest decision on our part). We had every intention of walking the 0.5mi to a local brewery down a little side street from our hotel tonight. As soon as we had turned the corner out of the hotel parking lot and walked all but about 100 feet, we decided that walking home after a few beers on this street would likely not turn out well. Every home on the street was abandoned and more than a few of them has soft glows coming from candles or small lamps being used by the homeless people on the inside. We ended up going to the WORST Mexican restaurant that we’ve been to since Washington State right next to the hotel. Honestly, this taco joint was embarrassing for Arizona.

We will try again for the Rancho Sedona RV Park in the morning.

Tripometer – 11912 mi

Gas Gauge –  908.875 gal

Location – Days Inn, Camp Verde, AZ

Lodging – $100

Cans of OFF – 4

Looking forward to warming ourselves even further, we headed South today into Sedona, AZ. We were told by several people that the Sedona area was beautiful with a ton of things to do. Our plan is to stay at one of a variety of campgrounds located in and around Sedona.

The trip to Sedona from Page was largely on smaller back roads rather than the interstate. The roads were horrible. We have a sway reduction device on our hitch that helps reduce the amount of movement between the truck and trailer but this road was testing Kelly’s patience as she drove. The road had repeating series’ of dips that caused the trailer rig to flex up and down at the connection point between the truck and trailer. This can be especially dangerous at speed because this movement can cause the front wheels to loose traction with the road and send the rig out of control. Needless to say, today’s trip took considerably longer than the Google estimate of 2.5 hours.

The drive to Sedona today took us through the mountains around Flagstaff. Leaving 60 degree temperatures in Page and not expecting significant deviation from the norm, both of us dressed in shorts for the day. At 2:30 in the afternoon when stopping for gas near Flagstaff we noted the temperature was a balmy 41 degrees and all of the surrounding mountain tops had a dusting of snow. Driving through the mountains was predictably slow with the trailer.

When passing through the canyon just North of Sedona we were expecting to look down on the town itself. What we found instead was a beautiful drive down a canyon forested with tall pines and bordered by tremendous red canyon walls the entire way. We were especially thrilled when instead of coming slowly into town we turned a corner in the canyon around a large outcropping of rock and were thrust into the heart of Sedona without any warning. Restaurants and shopping plazas as far as the eye can see when 100 feet ago there was nothing but natural beauty.

The first few campgrounds we were targeting for the evening were North of Sedona in the canyon. Even though the cellular coverage map that we’ve been using indicated that these campgrounds would have cell signal, they did not. We passed up all three of the campgrounds that we had researched with no luck. Our backup plan was Rancho Sedona RV Park within the city limits of Sedona. Sadly, by the time we arrived they had no space available through the weekend. Frustrated, we sat in the parking lot of the RV Park and made reservations at a Days Inn in Camp Verde for the evening, about 20 miles south of Sedona. All of the hotels in Sedona proper were tremendously expensive and most did not accept pets. At least the hotel offers in-room showers and a wi-fi connection!

Sedona is beautiful! The city is surrounded on all sides by tremendous red canyons and mesas in such variety that makes your head spin. Each mesa and rock formation has a name and all have trails leading up to and around them. We’re really looking forward to further exploring the area.

On the way to the hotel we checked out the cellular connection at a little RV park located directly off of the interstate at Cliff Castle Casino. The signal was strong with good data speeds but the trailer park sites looked awfully close together and the RV park was still 30 minutes from Sedona. We had left our business card with the folks at Rancho Sedona in the hopes that a site would open there tomorrow, allowing us to stay in the city of Sedona within walking distance of most of the things we’d like to see and do. Our plan is to check in with them tomorrow.

Tripometer –11,713 mi

Gas Gauge –  890.799 gal

Location –Page Lake Powell Campground, Page, AZ

Lodging – $30

Cans of OFF – 4

100 days on the road!

Waking this morning to temperatures in the 40s, we quickly noticed that both of Ranger’s bones that were left outside last night are now missing! We did hear coyotes on the hill behind the RV park last night but didn’t think anything of it (we hear them almost nightly). We’re guessing that one of those guys came into our RV park last night and liberated Ranger’s chew things for their own enjoyment. We’re going to have to find some replacements soon. We’re not sure how Ranger is going to manage his life without his rawhide chew toy and his marrow bone (or how we are going to manage our lives without him being somewhat distracted by them).

We went for breakfast this morning at a local diner. The sign above was posted out front as a lunch special. Neither of us can ever remember feeling so far from Philadelphia and so far from a proper cheese steak sub. That sandwich is a disgrace to someone who lives near Philly. We joked it was a “stake” through our hearts, given the spelling faux paux. Shame!

While Kelly worked today, Paul took Ranger on a hike up the canyon above the RV park. He captured the picture above at the top of the hill to the East. We have noticed that every RV park tends to look like an oasis compared to the land around it with only a few planted trees here and there.

Having spent the last few days working on the trailer and reading his book rather than working on photos and the blog, Paul spent much of Kelly’s work day sorting pictures from all 4 phones from the past couple of weeks. He’s been walking around muttering to himself about how far behind he is on the blog. I guess stress is relative, when one doesn’t have a significant source of stress in daily life the mind comes up with things to be stressed about. Today: Paul has a pressing first-world problem with the blog.

We revisited the BBQ restaurant from earlier this week again tonight, making sure to have leftovers for a couple of sandwiches over the next week or so. So Good!

Special Note: There’s a certain smell to an RV park. Whenever you have 50 to 100 open sewer lines dispersed evenly around a parking lot there can be a lingering odor. This RV park has more than a few uncapped sewage lines and the wafting odor is enough to knock you out if the wind catches it just right. Not pleasant.

Tripometer – 11,698 mi

Gas Gauge –  890.799 gal

Location –Page Lake Powell Campground, Page, AZ

Lodging – $30

Cans of OFF – 4

The early portion of Paul’s day today was spent spit polishing the trailer and packing up for the move to Page Lake Powell Campground down the road. Ranger is suitably depressed for most of the day as two of his humans wandered away yesterday and haven’t yet returned.

Kelly dropped Dave off at the airport early this morning and started the 4+ hour trip back from Las Vegas. The wind was blowing through the canyons at over 30 miles per hour – good thing she didn’t have the trailer or she would have had to stay put in Vegas. We both think that Vegas is the quintessential, “I wouldn’t want to live there” place. After about 24-48 hours we are both done with the constant hustle, noise, and lifestyle in general.

On the way back Kelly had to stop for another bag of Ranger’s dog food. Ranger is picky, so picky in fact we’ve gone through bags and bags of brands and flavors he wouldn’t eat. As of this moment, there are 3 types of kibble we know he’ll eat – not one of which comes from a chain/grocery store or costs less than a steak dinner for 2 with drinks! Finding stores that carry his epicurean delights has not been easy. The nearest one to Lake Powell is over 100 miles away!

Both of us have an AT&T cellular plan. We have struggled for much of this trip with matching nice camp locations with acceptable cellular signal so Kelly can work during the week. Looking at AT&T cellular coverage maps for Arizona there is a significant lack of AT&T coverage in the northern part of the state. We drove by this RV park two days ago to confirm the high strength signal. Arriving at Page Lake Powell Campground this evening we were discouraged by the data transfer speeds we were experiencing over this tremendously strong cellular signal. Sitting in the RV park this evening, both of our phones are registering 4 bars of LTE but the signal is despicably slow. We learned from one of our neighbors at the RV park that this area of Arizona (much of the state) was, at one point in time several years ago, the only area of the country with its own cellular company with their own proprietary cellular towers. This little cell company was bought out by Verizon and the towers are now leased to AT&T through some kind of agreement. It is readily obvious to us that we are not getting full throughput on these cell towers with the Cadillac of AT&T cell phone plans. This seems criminal. The cell signal is enough for Kelly to do most of her work but it takes longer to transfer data than normal. We’re booked into this RV park for two nights. We’ll have to make due with this signal until then. We are also going to look into a Verizon cellular hot spot so that we can access two different cell networks making this game of ‘find the signal’ a bit easier.

Always looking for new dining experiences, for dinner this evening we had fried chicken at an independent fast food joint in town called the Birdhouse. We were richly rewarded for our experimentation. Both of us are fans of good fried chicken and are no strangers to our hometown favorite Royal Farms chicken. This chicken was far better. With dinner we ordered a side of seasoned fries to go with our meal. Imagine our surprise when the seasoned fries so highly praised on their Google reviews were spiced with Old Bay. Maryland is slowly taking over the taste buds of the rest of the world!

Tripometer – 11,447 mi

Gas Gauge –  876.538 gal

Location –Wahweap RV & Campground, Page, AZ / Linq Casino, Las Vegas, NV

Lodging – $30

Cans of OFF – 4

Dave’s flight back to Baltimore leaves at OMG:30 in the morning tomorrow, necessitating an overnight stay in Las Vegas because no one, Dave included, wants to wake up 5 hours before OMG:30 and drive back into Las Vegas. Hauling the trailer back into Las Vegas at this point doesn’t make good sense from a gas or time standpoint and we can’t all go back into Las Vegas and leave the car because dogs aren’t welcome in most hotels. Someone has to stay with the dog in camp. Kelly volunteered to drive Dave into Las Vegas, spend the night and drive back to the trailer after dropping him at the airport in the morning, leaving Paul to a quiet day of chores and book reading in camp (for which he is thankful).

Paul’s Day

Aside from Laundry, a bit of reorganization in the trailer, and dog walking, ‘the day without a car’ was spent listening to his audio book looking out at the shores of Lake Powell. The goal of the chores was to reset the trailer to a freshly packed and clean state after being destroyed for a week by three inhabitants and one hell of a muddy campsite. Kelly is planning on getting back to the trailer no later than 4pm tomorrow which is the deadline before we get charged for an additional night. We have made reservations at a local RV park, some 15 minutes away, with much better cellular signal for Kelly’s first day back to work on Tuesday.

Kelly’s Day

Kelly and Dave left at about 11am and headed toward Vegas. The drive was rather uneventful until they got to the mountains overlooking the city and saw that it was almost completely obscured in dust due to the prevailing winds!

  

They checked into the Linq casino and secured reservations for the Linq’s High Roller, a new tourist attraction that Dave really wanted to experience before leaving Las Vegas. The High Roller is like an extremely large Ferris Wheel where each “car” is a pod that can hold 25-30 people. It takes about 30 minutes to complete an entire revolution, during which time you can enjoy a very open bar and amazing views of Las Vegas at night. After the ride, Kelly & Dave had a fantastic time walking the Promenade which was all decked out for Halloween. They topped off the evening with a late-night dinner at Guy Fieri’s Vegas Kitchen & Bar consisting of this ridiculous burger and trash can nachos.

 

Tripometer – 11,218 mi

Gas Gauge –  863.560 gal

Location –Wahweap RV & Campground, Page, AZ

Lodging – $30

Cans of OFF – 4

David’s only experience camping with us has been at camping destinations without tremendous natural attractions that we need to visit in the immediate vicinity. Kelly and Paul believe his expectations were in line with what we’ve done in the past, most of the days are relaxing and centered around camp or hiking in the park or very nearby. Needless to say this trip has not been like that at all. We’ve been running at top speed from attraction to attraction since his arrival in Las Vegas over a week ago. Today Dave requested a more relaxed day around camp to be able to say he did some relaxing while on vacation.

We started the morning at a local creperie in Page. (Why don’t we have these on the East Coast???) Not stuffing ourselves right out of the gate, we all left with a nice hot coffee in hand and a warm lump in our bellies. The first and only tourist attraction today was Horseshoe Bend which is a whopping 10 minutes from Page. According to the website for Horseshoe Bend the Bend has received an internet hug in the past few months(?) / years(?) and is now being visited more than ever before. Several travel blogs (maybe in Asia given the number of Asian tourists we saw) have featured Horseshoe Bend recently, driving this level of increased visitation. Looking at Google satellite imagery the parking lot has been expanded by a factor of two to three since the satellite images were taken (how long ago can that be?). There are a whole row of bus parking spaces in the parking lot now and an entire row of pit toilets to handle the ‘flow’ of visitors. When we arrived we found the place bustling. There were easily over two hundred visitors there the entire time we stayed at the Bend (not more than 30 minutes). Not being a National Park, Ranger got to participate in the hike down to the Bend.

Returning to camp we swam Ranger in the lake until he refused to bring his floating toy back to us to be thrown again. We topped off the evening with beers by the campfire and a nice hot meal on the barbie. Relaxation accomplished!

Special Note: There’s a nasty small burr plant that grows all over this area. Paul, with his usual nonchalance towards footwear, put his sandals on less than a minute after we arrived at the Wahweap campground because of these little plants. They are as low and as unnoticeable as grass under foot but each ~6” wide plant is covered in maybe a 100 or so ~1/4” burrs that stick to anything and everything. We think they have some kind of poisonous coating because they hurt way more than a simple thorn or sticker might. Ranger has really struggled over the past few days. If we lived permanently in an area with these plants we would have to find some shoes for the poor dog. On the upside we are sure that Ranger would be fine if he ever lost a limb. He seems to trot along just fine on three feet when the fourth has a burr.