Day 29 – November 28, 2017 Huachuca City Arizona

We have been here nearly a week already. We haven’t accomplished much in the way of touristy things as of yet. Laundry, organization and rest have been on the menu.

Eowyn and Titus were sick as well and that slows everything down.

We have been able to catch up with George and Suzie (Our Awesome Adventure) whom we met at Elephant Butte. We have also met some other new friends Deb and Riley from Canada (A Long Lonesome Highway).

Today we just drove to Sierra Vista to get some food and find a playground for the kids. The one we ended up at had real nice grass, which we haven’t seen for a while.

When we finished supper we all headed over to see George and Suzie and to say goodbye as are hitting the road. Sure was nice to visit with them.

Have a great day!

If the women don’t find you handsome…

When we arrived here at Huachuca City, we discovered that our furnace wasn’t working…at 2am. Fortunately we have an electric heater and it really isn’t that cold here at night, but that’s not something we want to leave un-repaired.

I got some advice from some fellow RVers, and with a little help from google and YouTube I went to work.

It seems the most common problem with these things is the sail switch, which is conveniently located as far away from the access panel as possible and inside the cover for the squirrel cage. That means you have to remove the entire thing.

The opening is slightly larger than the unit, so with some fancy maneuvering it came out (all that time playing Tetris paid off). Fortunately I have access on three sides so removing the gas line wasn’t as bad as it could have been.

Once it was out I had to find the switch, and like I said it was inside the cover. I quickly ran over to RV City just down the road and discovered that they closed at 3pm (it was 3:30) so we had to wait until the next morning to finish. That meant no stove or hot water either.

The new switch was $10 and it became a simple matter of reversing my steps. Putting the thing back in wasn’t too terrible and yay! It worked!

So, saved a pile of money doing it myself, learned something new and we have heat.

Like Red Green always says, “if the women don’t find you handsome, they should at least find you handy.”

Day 22/23/24 – November 21/22/23 2017 Huachuca City Arizona

We left Arrey New Mexico and headed west yesterday. It was about a 4 hour drive, one of our longer stretches this trip. Parts of it reminded us of the Canadian prairies as it was so flat, just the mountains in the horizon ruined that illusion.

We arrived at about 3:30 in the afternoon and promptly met our neighbour as he was offering to help me back into our site. We had dinner, enjoyed the sunset behind the mountains and the spectacular starry sky after.

We are getting to know our surroundings, some different cactus here that we haven’t seen yet.

Lots to see and do in the area, looking forward to it!

Took a drive to Sierra Vista to get some groceries today and was blessed beyond words. The lady ahead of me at the til gave us a $75 gift card! I had no idea as I was busy with a crying 3 year old and needless to say I was speechless. I wish I could have said a better thank you, but she left in a hurry and like I said, I was distracted and didn’t know what was going on.

We made chicken on the BBQ with some mashed potatoes in the instant pot to celebrate our first American thanksgiving. What a great day.

Thanksgiving

For the second time in as many months we get to celebrate Thanksgiving. In light of that I wanted to take a few minutes to thank our families for all their love and support as we journey. It has been a pleasure to share our trip with our families through this blog and through email and texting. We know that they miss us and I am certain that most of them wish that they could travel with us.

This trip has been a super blessing and we are enjoying every minute of it. Being able to see all the diverse biomes and strange wild life has been exciting and educational for us and the kids. We also have loved meeting other rvers and developing relationships with them.

We are having a great time on the road and are looking forward to our return home to see our families, but not until the snow is gone! Until then, keep safe and God bless.

Day 20/21 – November 19/20, 2017 Arrey New Mexico

Another quiet couple of days here in New Mexico.  The weather is great, as it has been since we arrived.  We finally finished off that watermellon today with the help of five additional kids.  They have been over everyday to play with our kids and they are having a blast.

Tonight we made a stew in our Instant Pot and it turned out great (no left overs as usual).  We have been doing some reorganizing in the trailer and making this space better functional for us.  We found a huge chunk of space under the couch, which is part of the slide.  There was a flimsy piece of wood there just to make it look nice and once I removed it we ended up with at least 4 square feet of additional storage.  Makes a huge difference.

A beautiful sunset tonight, sat outside with the dog in the dark and listened to the crickets for a while. It’s so quiet here as the interstate is a ways away and the road into here is not that busy. Hope we can find more gems like this.

Day 18/19 – November 17/18 Arrey New Mexico

Quiet couple of days here at the RV park. Visiting with our neighbours, doing some laundry and cleaning up the camper. There was some terrific wind gusts on the 17th that came through, but the weather was warm. The wifi has been spotty the last couple of days so posting has been delayed.

It has been wonderful to relax here and enjoy ourselves. The kids are having a great time playing with their friends and we are starting to develop a routine.

One of the residents here dropped off a watermelon for us to enjoy. The sucker was huge! It was full of seeds which is not something you find at the grocery store.

Working on making our plans for the next couple of weeks. Not sure where we are going exactly.

Day 17 – November 16, 2017 White Sands National Monument New Mexico

Loved the ripples in the dunes

Today we finally made it to the White Sands and WOW! What an amazing sight to see. The weather was perfect (27 Celsius or more) and we couldn’t have asked for a better day.  The sky was an amazing blue, the sand a blazing white.

The drive from Arrey to the sands was scenic, especially the pass over the mountains east of Las Cruces. Coming over that pass and to see that huge valley spread out under us was breath taking.  This is where the U.S. military tests out missiles and rockets.  Close to here is where the first nuclear tests took place.

Panoramic from the top of the dune, the top of the bus is visible in the picnic area

Driving the Dunes Road, we felt like we were back home driving through snow drifts. We pulled over and the kids had a ball climbing the dunes and sliding back down.  It was deceptive as it was smoking hot out and yet we felt as though we were in the snow.  Even the parking lot looked like it was crusted over with ice and snow.

The mountains rising up in the background were spectacular

The sand is cool and soft and is really fine, the kind you would expect to find in an hour glass.

Handprints in the sand

Another panoramic

All smiles

The park is really nice, and cheap.  It cost us $10 ($5 per adult) and is good for 6 days!  There are lots of places for picnicing, hiking and more.  We want to go again.

They ask that you don’t take any sand in containers with you when you leave, but I think we had enough in shoes and pockets to fill one.  The floor of the bus is nearly white with sand.

This was a really great day.  We were all hot and tired when we got home (2 hour drive each way) but definately worth it!

Messed up the settings on the camera and got some cool shots by accident

Making sand angels

Day 16 – November 15, 2017 Arrey New Mexico

Our plan to go to the white sands got derailed today by the need to buy food. A trip to Truth or Consequences to the Walmart was required. So we will try again tomorrow.

Across the way is a gold prospector who was kind enough to let the kids come over and see some gold. (I forgot to take the camera.). It was a great learning experience for the kids.

There is another homeschooling family here in the RV park with six children. After we returned from Walmart they dropped by to meet us and the kids had a blast playing with their new friends.

We made a simple supper tonight with plans to be prepared for tomorrow’s expedition to the White Sands.

Day 15 – Laundry November 14, 2017 Arrey New Mexico

(wi-fi was down last night)

Laundry…need I say more.  The dreaded chore that never ends.  Last time we did laundry was when we were staying in Edgewood, just outside of Albuquerque.  We drove into Albuquerque to a laundromat and had enough laundry to take up nine machines.  The great thing about this laundromat was that they gave you a free dry with a wash, saved us some coin.  Were were in and out within 2 or 3 hours.

The facilities here are quite nice. I had the place to myself for a couple hours and ran through 8 loads, cost me $26 which seems pretty reasonable. The park at Edgewood was $3 a wash and $3 a dry and this place is half that.  The kids were playing monopoly while I was gone.

Upon my return to the camper we found another load or two of laundry tucked here and there (sigh), but that’s for another day.

We had a visit from a giant tumbleweed today. This thing was huge enough the kids were talking about turning it into a fort.

There is a pond here with a couple of ducks to visit, they have their own house boat.

The temperature had climbed to 24 degrees centigrade by lunch and we gave into turning on the ac. We decided to stick around home today and venture out tomorrow. We are planning to drive to the White Sands National Park and check that out.

 

Day 14 – Arrey, New Mexico November 13, 2017

This morning we waved goodbye to some more friends. Our visit with them was short but good and we were really glad to have met them.

We decided that we needed to move somewhere that has full hookups as we all need a shower and our grey tank couldn’t handle that without visiting the dump station a couple times. We found an RV park in Arrey that has full hookups for $15 a night! They also have laundry facilities that are reasonably priced (bonus).

We sadly packed up and left Elephant Butte, that park has set the bar pretty high and we loved every minute there. We stopped to give our rig a quick bath, (over 7,000kms of road grime) and headed south on I25.

So shiny, been wanting to do that since we got to Saskatchewan in September

We set up and started some pepper steak in the Instant Pot. All in all a pretty quiet day.  Early to bed tonight, laundry day tomorrow.