Last Blog of this Trip

 9-7-2021 - Tuesday

Today we arrived at Mazie's at 11:20, getting on the road at 8:35, so this is the end of our journey for now.  Mazie is looking good, seems to be dealing with everything ok.  We got started on our lists and had a couple of accomplishments, but tomorrow we will try to knock out some of the details she needs to take care of.  

It was 66 degrees this morning, predicted high today in Sierra Vista is 91, and for Mesa, it is 100.  We came home a little sooner than planned, so apparently we are not going to miss out on all the heat.  Today's travel took across I-10, which we have done many times on our way to visit our Florida family, so it's nothing to get excited about.  

Our marathon trip from South Dakota covered 1,392 miles (of which I drove about 60), approximately 25 driving hours, and we made it in 2 1/2 days.  We have been gone since May 10, so at this point 119 days (17 weeks plus one day).  This has been a really great trip for us, we took our time, stayed extra days when we chose, covered some beautiful country and saw fascinating things.  We got to visit a lot of family and friends, meet some new family, and renew old friendships.  The highlight for me, without question, was our airplane ride with Ken Snider over our old stomping grounds.  Thanks again, Ken, what an unexpected delight!

Before we left our campground this morning, I picked up a bag of pine cones.  It's amazing how much less they weigh than a bag of rocks.  I may have to change hobbies. But when we finally get home, I have things to do -- rocks and pinecones.  (Not to mention unloading the RV and Jeep, cleaning, all that other yucky stuff.)

When we were checking out gas stations last night, we found one right down the road from our campground and decided that’s where we would fuel this morning.  It turned out to be a great stop.  It’s a Valero station in Deming at exit 82, for Highway 180. It’s probably less than a mile off of I-10.  It had a fuel island for RVs, it had a restaurant inside, it had a dump station, it has sodas with big starfoam cups and there’s a propane station right across the street from here.  We will have to keep this in mind for future travel through here.

Joe moved the RV around to the back of the parking lot so we could have breakfast here. He parked right beside a truckload of copper —you wouldn’t think a load this small would weigh so much. I got a picture but the truck was pulling out just as I got out there. We actually saw several loads of copper heading east this morning.  We assume they’re coming out of Superior, Arizona.

As we neared the Arizona state line, I got ready with my camera.  Joe saw me poised to take my photo, and made some comment about me being ready.

I was.  And I was happy to see our beautiful state again.

We have been through lots of states this summer, seen lots of beautiful sights, but Arizona is as beautiful as any, and we are glad to be back.  

Keeping up the blog had its issues this trip.  Some of which got corrected, and I learned some new things.  In the northern states, our internet (and phone) signal was often sketchy, so that was a problem.  Loading my pictures took way more time than it should have, but Joe Myers suggested we change the pixels of the photos, and that helped that situation.  Spilling sugar on my keyboard apparently has destroyed my caps key for right hand, and that is still a problem.  My techies (Cathy and Paul) were unable to solve that one, so I am still wrestling with it.  Cathy got me fixed up to be able to write on the blog from my phone as we travel, Barbara introduced me to an external keyboard for my phone which makes it easier to type to my phone, and just yesterday I figured out how to actually dictate into my phone which types it directly to the blog.  Wish I had figured that one out sooner.  But I spent way too many hours blogging, so if I ever do this again, I hope I can reduce my time on it.  I hope my readers/followers have enjoyed following us across the country -- I would love to hear from you, either in the comments section of the blog or on facebook.

I will probably do a summary at some point after we get home, but for all intents and purposes, this is it.

The End.