2015 - Getting Ready to Travel and Day 1

Joe has spent weeks (3-4) polishing and buffing the motorhome to get it ready for our spring trip.  While I was busy loading the inside, he just kept polishing and buffing, going over the same thing time and again because he thought he had figured out the buffer.

He even drafted me into helping with the scrubbing!

 It does look much better, he was able to "de-oxidize" it, especially the purple, and he worked really hard on it.  Our planned departure date was Sunday, March 29, a couple days later than I had hoped, but that was as soon as he thought he could be ready (because he had spent the last 3-4 weeks polishing and buffing!).

His mother flew back to Indiana on Wednesday, March 25, along with her granddaughter Lori and her friend Ara, so I was really in the "get out of town" mode.  However, calamity befell -- on Friday Joe fell off the ladder with about one hour's work left of his polishing and buffing.  He scraped his right leg pretty good, and thought he probably bruised his left foot.  So I cleaned up the blood and he went back to his tried and true remedy -- soaking the foot in ice water.

He rested for about an hour, then got back up on the ladder and finished polishing and buffing!  So, no, we didn't go to the emergency room, we waited until the next day, Saturday, and when he got up, his left foot was badly swollen.  Then we went to Urgent Care

 where they xrayed it and informed him he had two broken bones in his foot -- the 5th metatarsal and the tip of his fibula.  The Urgent Care doctor told him to see his orthopedic surgeon asap (fortunately, he has an orthopedic surgeon).  But we couldn't get anything done until Monday, at which time they put him in a Jones compression splint and told him to come back Friday, when the swelling would hopefully be down, and then he could cast it.  So that's what we did.  No leaving town on Sunday, or Monday, etc.  Friday, they removed the splint, and re-xrayed it.  It was badly bruised, but the swelling had gone down, so they put him in a hard, non-weight bearing cast, told him to see a doctor in Indiana in 3 weeks, and we were good to go!

The one bright spot was that we stayed home late enough for our Easter Cactus to begin blooming, and it has such beautiful blooms that we hate to miss them.  And they bloomed right on time, 3 days before Easter.

So we got home from the doctor's office, finished our last minute loading, hooked up the car, and were ready to hit the road by 12:15 on Friday.  It was a pitiful sight to see Joe's knee-walker right beside the steps to the RV, but that's what he's back to using. 

BUT, the RV looks great!

So we headed out of town, grabbed sandwiches in Payson and continued driving - well, Joe continued driving.  It was a nice day, but windy.  We had considered all sorts of different routes to take to Indiana, but once we got delayed, and Joe became somewhat incapacitated, we decided on the most direct route, so we took Hwy. 87 to Payson, then Hwy. 260 to Show Low, where we picked up U.S. 60 and stayed with it to Socorro, NM.  We just stayed on the Walmart parking lot in Socorro because we didn't need any hook-ups (which I would have had to do), and we didn't get off the road until dark, 8:00 p.m. AZ time, 9:00 p.m. NM time.  I had called ahead to make sure that was ok, so we knew where we were heading.  We fueled in Socorro for $2.29/gallon.  I drove for an hour and 40 minutes (believe me, I was watching the clock) through Springerville, across the state line into New Mexico, while Joe rested his foot and got in a little nap.  There was snow on the north side of the mountains south of Springerville/Eager.  We drove 360 miles today (Joe drove most of them) but we ended Day 1 WITH NO DISASTERS.