Lotts On The Road: 2016

Wednesday, October 19, 2016

Toes in the sand at White Sands National Monument

September 16, 2016

According to Google, the drive from Tucson, AZ to Carlsbad, NM (if you pass by White Sands NM) is approximately 7.5 hours. We have decided to call this driving time "Google time" and this particular journey actually took us about 30 hours in the Big Rolling Turd-le (did I mention we named our RV?). We stayed overnight in a Wal-mart parking lot in Las Cruces, New Mexico and had a very slow start the next day. I'm not sure why it took us so long to get on the road but I don't think we managed to leave until almost lunch time and we didn't even have the slides out or anything hooked up to the RV. I guess it was just a combination of David trying to work and me trying to help Lorelei with school.

We finally hit the road and headed towards White Sands National Monument which is less than an hour from where we were. My plan was to arrive there, eat lunch, explore the dunes and do a little dune sledding and continue on our way to Carlsbad. I was a bit flustered when we finally hit the road and it wasn't until we were cresting over the first mountain pass that I suddenly thought to look at the gas gauge and saw the needle sitting on E!! I checked the miles to empty screen and it said 66.

My thoughts: UGH! Are you kidding me? We are entering the middle of nowhere New Mexico and we need gas... and lunch! !&@*# @*& @#&!^#*&@
It had taken us about 25 minutes to make it up the stinking mountain so we were way behind the predicted 58 minutes of Google time to reach White Sands and there wasn't a gas station between us and White Sands. So... back down the mountain we went BACK into Las Cruces to get gas and lunch. David found the closest gas station but since we have to buy about 75 gallons of gas the closest won't do... it has to be the CHEAPEST.
As you can probably imagine, going to the gas station in a 37.5' RV isn't the same is going in a car. We use the satellite view of Google Maps to check out the layout of a gas station to decide if it will be easy to pull through and fill up. The cheapest gas station was still being built when the last satellite photos were being taken of it but since David determined it was at a Wal-mart and Wal-marts are RV friendly we decided it would be fine and continued the extra 6 miles out of the way to get to it. We arrived and discovered that it wasn't a Wal-mart... it was a Wal-mart Neighborhood Market and we now know that these are not very RV friendly. We had to unhitch the car and drive around the parking lot to figure out if it was safe to pull the RV through or if we were going to have to back out the way we had come in. Fortunately, there was some room along the side that we could squeeze into so we parked the RV and left in the car to go get lunch. If you are wondering why we didn't eat in the RV, it's because we were too low on gas to run the generator (it pulls gas from our gas tank) so we couldn't cook anything!!
We made it back to the RV after lunch and checked out the layout of the gas station and determined that we could successfully maneuver into one particular pump. After we filled up and finally got back on the road it was after 2:00. I'm not sure where the day went but it was quickly slipping away! We contemplated skipping White Sands at this point but since we had to drive right past it on our route we decided we could at least stop and take a quick look at it to check it out.

David waving across a dune

Once we arrived to White Sands (I think it was around 3:30 at this point) we determined we definitely needed to spend a little time exploring it. We dug our snow sled out of the "basement" and hit the sand slopes! White Sands was great and even the dogs were able to come along with us to play on the dunes. The only thing missing was the ocean!

Wow, just getting back to this post after almost 3 weeks. Instead of dragging it out with anymore words, I'm just going to let the pictures tell the rest of the story. Enjoy!

Boardwalk along the dunes

Izzi enjoyed running through the sand...

...and running

Lorelei getting ready to try out the snow sled on the sand

Lorelei sledding

David taking his turn on the sled

Izzi, still running!

Christy taking a face full of sand and a lesson on momentum

Izzi found a hole someone (or something) started so she took a turn digging

Izzi decided the hole was just right to rest in after she made a few alterations

Sydney enjoyed soaking up the sun and resting in the cool sand

Happy pups!

The sand sparkled like it had glitter sprinkled in it

There were some great shadows on the dunes while we were there

Oh, and in case you were wondering, we made it to Carlsbad just before midnight! Not too bad, eh?

Thanks for following us on our journey!

Thursday, September 15, 2016

Tucson

Wednesday was our last day in Tucson. I feel like we have made some noticeable progress towards getting more organized. We still have more to do but there are only a few small baskets of clutter now instead of massive piles everywhere. We also need to work on making it a habit to put things away so the piles don't start back up. That is going to be hard for all 3 of us but it is important that we stop leaving socks here, shoes there, and dishes everywhere!

If you click on this picture you can see
the coyote that was stalking us!

I took the dogs on a walk that ended up being much longer than I thought it would be but it was also much more exciting than I thought it would be. We were walking on a road that follows a river (more like a sand pit since there isn't much water in it right now) and I noticed what appeared to be a coyote scurrying up a side street. I watched it for a minute and then continued walking and I noticed a 2nd coyote across the street. It was watching us and as we walked it also walked, heading in the same direction we were going. When I stopped to watch it, it stopped to watch us. I think it was eyeing little Sydney and trying to decide if she would make an easy breakfast. Obviously it wasn't aware of her kill record. I bet Sydney would put up a pretty good fight for an

This is just a cropped picture of the original one
that I zoomed in on so you can see the coyote

old dog! It was definitely used to being around people because a biker whizzed right by it and it didn't even flinch and quite a few cars passed between us as well. Eventually, Izzi saw it and started jumping around and pulling like crazy to try to get to it so it scampered down the bank towards the river. The coyote was pretty scrawny so I'm sure Izzi's size was enough to scare it off.

After my long walk, I showered and we tried out a local buffet restaurant for lunch: Furr's. Pretty cheap for a buffet and the food wasn't that bad. We are supposed to be doing the low carb thing again but there is a giant frozen lasagna in our freezer that we need to eat first so if we eat it for dinner tonight hopefully we can cut the carbs out starting Thursday. That's the plan anyway. We'll see what excuse we come up with next.

I took Lorelei to the Children's Museum Tucson Wednesday afternoon. It was only $8 to get in which is quite a bit cheaper than the last 3 children's museums we've gone to but it was also by far the smallest one we've been to. Lorelei was convinced there had to be an upper level but after we examined it thoroughly multiple times and didn't see any stairs or elevators she gave up and agreed

Googly eyes in the tree that
made it look like a Tree Monster

I love this colorful dragon statue!

it was just small. I think she did enjoy it despite the size and even made a few friends while we were there. There was a fun exhibit that took a video of you jumping in front of a huge ruler and then replayed it in slow motion so you could see how high you jumped. Lorelei had a blast watching her jumps, doing it over and over again and we had to revisit it a second time before we left. I've attached a video of the Lorelei doing the jumping exhibit down below. Fingers crossed that it shows up!

Lorelei had a blast measuring her jumps and watching the replays

Magnetic fruit orchard

All aboard!

Another fun museum toy that I've never understood

Saguaro National Park (9/12/16)

Lorelei in the rain at the Saguaro National Park Visitor Center

Saguaro Cactus

We arrived in Tucson, AZ on Sunday evening. On Monday, Lorelei and I headed out by ourselves after school to check out Saguaro National Park and to add our 2nd stamp & sticker to our National Parks Passport book. We arrived to the visitor center just in time to catch the last showing of their movie. I wasn't too impressed with the movie since it was basically just a slide show with narration in the background, but after the movie, the screen goes up and the window behind it opens to give you a beautiful view of the scenery. We had a few minutes to poke around the visitor center before it closed and then we headed outside to take a few pictures just as a storm was starting.

I figured we could wait it out around the visitor center but the lightning was pretty intense so we headed to the car for safety. We set off to drive through the park and since I didn't do much more than glance at the map I didn't think it would take very long to make the loop. The road was a dirt road with quite a few rocks sticking out of it and random holes washed into it from the rain so it ended up taking us quite a bit longer to make the drive than I had anticipated. Lorelei was getting a little grumpy because she wanted to read Harry Potter but I wanted her to look around and enjoy the scenery as we were driving. It was so amazing; definitely unlike anything I've ever experienced so I thoroughly enjoyed it, despite Lorelei's grumpiness.

Desert Tortoise hanging out in the middle of the road

Lorelei checking out our road block

We had only been on the road for a few minutes before we encountered a road block! We got out to examine it and decided we would just have to wait for it to move along. I didn't think there was room to drive around it since it was a one way road and pretty narrow. Had I been in my Highlander, I would have just driven over it but the C-Max is so low to the ground that I wasn't sure we could do that without injuring it. The tortoise didn't want to move while we were close to it so we backed off and eventually, it continued its slow journey across the rest of the road and we were able to pass. I was hoping this distraction would perk Lorelei up and she would start to enjoy our visit a little more, but nope... after a few minutes she feel back into the depths of despair and continued to moan about needing to read Harry Potter.

Our journey through the park continued and we got some nice post storm photos. I took way too many and I've narrowed my selection down a bit. I hope you enjoy them!

She wanted to take it home for a pet... NOPE!

We had a bit of excitement on our way back home after we left the park. First, we saw what I am pretty sure was a fox (possibly a coyote but the tail was very fox like) and then a few minutes later, we saw what was definitely a coyote. I pulled over to watch the sunset, but Lorelei missed it because she was reading her book. Oh well, at least she can see the pictures.

After the storm

Then, when we were on a back road (with no cell coverage) the low tire pressure light came on in the car. I got out to look at the tires and got nervous because they all looked the same to me so I was worried I punctured all of them on the gravel road in the park. I had noticed I had a cell signal a few minutes back so I back tracked to call David to let him know what was going on. He told me I should keep going despite the low tire pressure warning and that there was an air compressor in the car if I needed to use it to refill the tires if they got worse. I didn't feel very reassured but we continued our journey on the back road with no cell coverage and low tire pressure. Fortunately, we made it back safely so David didn't have to come rescue us with the RV! When I took the car in to the tire store the next morning, they checked them out and said they were fine, just needed a top off because of the temperature change (and I imagine coming from Denver probably contributed to that as well).