Hello once again,
Back in the USA....and it's cold and rainy and windy. The line at the border wasn't terrible and they were super nice when they searched our camper with a dog. We had to remove the cat first and keep her hidden. Our pleasure! She wasn't happy but she would have not enjoyed the dog in her house even less. They took our meat but didn't charge us for having too much alcohol.
Because we had a bit of a problem finding the place that we needed to stop and turn in our tourist cards and vehicle permit before leaving Mexico, it was getting fairly late in the afternoon to find a camping place. Plus we needed to go to WalMart anyway so we made their parking lot our home for the evening. We bought a bunch of things we hadn't seen for a while and even found a place close by to change our pesos back into dollars. Got an oil change in the morning at the Walmart and it was like we'd never been gone.
Our first stop wasn't far away, about 60 miles, at Del Rio. We were in one of our half price RV Parks and it was pretty nice. Had a laundry facility and that was a necessity by then. Weather still yucky. It poured rain all night and we had a river running under us by morning. What we were doing here? I seem to recall that a few days before it was hot and wonderful?
We had an incident that night that is hard to explain and unpleasant to recall. Aja, who we thought was up in the truck, actually had escaped and she spent the entire night out in the rain and cold with no ID. I realized she was gone about 5am and screaming "Mike" ran to the door and called her. Boy did she show up fast! Thank goodness she is smart and knows where she lives. I didn't have to worry long. Oh, but when I think of what might have been I still get sick to my stomach. Good kitty good kitty. She went right to her food bowl and didn't hold a grudge.
Next day we changed our route plan half way through the drive and when the bad and cool weather turned into dense fog I thought we were in for it. We'd chosen a more scenic route and it appeared that we wouldn't see a thing. But miracle of miracles we broke out into a fairly sunny day and camped that night at a dude ranch/RV park in warm sunny weather.
We were headed for Carlsbad Caverns but first stopped for a couple nights at the Guadalupe Mountains National Park. We'd visited both before and enjoyed so couldn't pass them by. Especially the Caverns. What an amazing place....the photos do not tell you anything of the vastness of this place.
Now we were in New Mexico and had run an ad for our camper mainly, though the truck was listed as an option. We had some inquiries and one couple we made plans to meet in a few days at Socorro. We found a Forest Service Campground in the mountains, which are our favorite places to camp, and did a bunch of cleaning and organizing in order to show the camper in a good light. It was a bit gross after several months in Mexico. We had campfires and Aja got to sharpen her claws on real trees....all good.
Next we went down the mountain to Alamagorda and went to the Space History Museum located there. Very interesting and we also viewed a flick about future space travel and a stargazers tutorial by an interesting fellow that really enjoyed his job....very fun.
We'd seen a place about half way to our meeting with Jim and Mona, the people who were going to look at the camper, called Valley of Fires that had a campground so made that our destination. We liked it a lot. There was a huge lava flow just below our campsite and a huge amount of sky above. We had a great night fire that evening after the wind calmed down.
The place we found ourselves in Socorro wasn't the best but it worked....Jim and Mona found us and we sold our camper! Cool, right? Things get complicated later but at the time it was a great deal with a great plan. They wanted us to deliver the camper to them in Washington which is where we were going. Yay. We can still go to the Grand Canyon. We had almost three weeks before our second meeting to deliver the camper to their truck, which by then would be equipped to accept said camper.
So we continued onward, secure in the knowledge that we only had to sell the truck once we arrived at Krysten's on May 10th. And we knew the truck would be easy to sell. We had reservations at the Grand Canyon on the 1st and 2nd of May so we'd have to boogie (for us) to get to Seattle but no big deal.
We had about a week to kill before our reservation at the National Park and the weather was very nice and warm.....at least when we started. The next day it had cooled off a bunch and we were finding that, even this far south, the National Forest Campgrounds were not yet open. We spent one night in New Mexico and a bunch in Arizonia mostly at State Parks. They were nice but not what we'd envisioned which was woods and sun. Instead we got open areas with crowds and lots of wind and cool weather. Dang. We stayed at Lyman Lake for two nights, then Fool Hollow Lake for a couple more. We backtracked a bit and spent a day driving through Petrified Forest National Park which was super interesting and beautiful in it's own stark way. Stayed in one more state park, Homolovi, which was interesting and had old Indian ruins. On to Flagstaff for the night and now it was finally time to see the Grand Canyon.
We had visited the North Rim a few years ago and had reservations to go to the South Rim but the government shut down and so did the National Parks. Funny thing was that they were maybe going to shut down the government again and we got a bit nervous about our plans but it worked out. We'd seen every other attraction in the western half of the states so it really was about time to see this most popular and famous South Rim of the Grand Canyon National Park.
Our time there and up until we fly home to Kauai will be my next project. I plan to get it done in a few days....just before we fly home on the 30th, one week from today.
So stay tuned....lots of drama in the next email!!!
Bye for now,
Gayle and Mike
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