Halfway There

October 20, 2023 – Day 22

Today we will reach Phoenix, AZ! Goodyear, AZ actually. It’s a small city to the west that’s a suburb of Phoenix. Our home for the next 12 days will be here. As with last year, we won’t be blogging our adventures here. We’re visiting family. We’ll just enjoy our time here. November 1 is the beginning of our adventures heading back to NH.

The good news is that it was particularly uneventful travel day. The road started out pretty much as expected, but the distant mountains were very hazy.

We had seen haze in the sky the previous night, it made for a great sunset. The haze was caused by several controlled burns to prevent future, larger, forest fires.

We found a few of the burns.

We were descending the Mogollon Rim. It drops from 7,000 feet to 2,000 feet over 18 miles. You could see the haze filling the valley.

Soon we were near the bottom, and closer to one of the mountains, so we could finally see it. Notice also that we’re seeing trees, not scrub brush! At one time we both considered moving to this area, specifically the Prescott, AZ area. The water and fire pressures made us scratch that from the list of places to retire to. (And yes, we choose Keene to retire to!)

We stopped at a rest area to let the tires cool some and each lunch. We had been seeing temperatures around 145 degrees. That’s still on the safe side but it is also prudent to pull over and the fact it was lunch time made it very convenient.

Of course the front tires actually got hotter when we were stopped! The heat from the engine and the heat from the sun caused them to rise a little bit. We knew the terrain ahead was rolling hills, almost flat compared to what we just left and figured the tires would cool off while driving since we wouldn’t be on the brakes as much.

Oh, speaking of brakes, one doesn’t ride the brakes, that’s invites disaster. You stab at them, slowing you down 5-10mph, the computer detects this and downshifts once. Do it again and it will downshift again. This means you don’t get great gas mileage going downhill like you think you might.

The road got really pretty.

And we started seeing suguaro cacti, so we knew we were getting close to our destination.

The trip was without any drama and we arrived at our RV park. Except now it was hot. Really, really hot. Honestly, even though the humidity is low it still felt hotter than 104.

In anticipation of this we had turned on the RV’s generator about 45 minutes ago and were running both roof ACs. It wasn’t enough to keep up with the outside heat plus the heat from the engine. The engine heat fills the living space. Despite the AC running on full tilt it was 88 degrees up front. Paul had been outside in the heat hooking everything up, and of course it took longer than usual, since he was fighting with the water hookup. He was beat when he got inside.

We both retreated to rear of the coach where it was much cooler and waited out the heat. It took hours for the front to cool.

Daily: 220

Total: 3,136

Moving Miles/Day: 314

Overall Miles/Day: 143