Picacho Peaks State Park - Picacho, AZ

 

May is not the peak season in the desert.  We are in a pretty large campground with two or three other RV’s.  It has been a very dry spring, so there is no water available.  We have our 35 gallon tank and two 5 gallon jerry cans, so are in good shape.  The nights are in the 50’s and the days in the 90’s.  We went for a walk in the morning while it was still fairly cool, back for lunch and a siesta until around 5:30 and then back outside for the sunset.  There is a trail to the top of the peak, built by the CCC in the 30’s.  It has cables attached to the rocks to pull yourself up.  Yeah...no!  We took a nice stroll to the look-out, much more our style.  It’s nice to see some of the cactus in bloom.

Yesterday was Mother’s Day, and we talked to both sons and to Deb’s mother.  As a celebration, Deb made chili and I made stovetop cornbread.  So good, we’re having a redo tonight!

Tomorrow we head for the beach in California where it is 60.

Huecho Tanks State Park - El Paso, TX

Ocotillo plant

 Huecho Tanks is not just your ordinary run of the mill state park.  You need to be here at least one hour before the gates close to get your mandatory indoctrination.  As we rushed to get here, Deb said, “This doesn’t make sense. The timing is all wrong!”  It turns out that this little tiny corner of Texas is on Mountain Time, so we got a one hour reprieve...phew!

We got our indoctrination orientation certificate, which we are suppose to carry at all times.  Three quarters of Huecho Tanks is only accessible on guided tours.  The tour started out easy enough, and then we got to the part where you have to scamper up a rock face, sneak along a narrow ledge before sliding down a ledge on your butt.  After that you can crawl into a cave, lie on your back and look up at some pictographs.  We were an awesome standout in our group of ten because our shoes did not slip on the rocks.  We taught all those youngin’s that retirees are a force to be reckoned with!

After lunch and our siesta (okay, we’re still a little wimpy), we explored the North Mountain (elev 4800 ft), the only place you can go without a park ranger.  The elevation is impressive until you realize that the camp ground is at 4,200 ft.

The wind blows constantly with some pretty health gusts so we sat in our little picnic pavilion, enjoyed scenery and talked about renting an apartment in the Southwest for a year so we see all the seasons.  By 8:00 we decided to eat dinner.

Motel 6 - Dallas, TX

 We finally escaped from Jackson.  To be fair, it was an absolutely gorgeous place to be trapped. They got the trees cleared from the roadway and pushed several of the power poles off the road. We still had to drive over the downed lines in several places.  We got out at 2:00 and made it Dallas by 10:00. We were on the road again by 6 AM. With any luck we should be pretty much caught up on our route this morning.

LeFleur Bluff State Park (Day 2)- Jackson, MS

 We are still here, still waiting for our freedom.  We have walked the “downed power pole” walk several time.  Yesterday, an RV decided to just leave.  We came out to watch.  After about 1/2 mile, he stopped, pulled off to the side of the road to wait. About three hours later, he was back in the campground...that’s about as much excitement as we have had since the storm hit, two days ago.

Yesterday was Cinco de Mayo.  We decided to celebrate as best we could.  We made tacos, spanish rice,  beans, and some taco seasoning for our beef burritos.

They promised that we would be out by noon. We’re keeping our fingers crossed.

LeFleur State Park - Jackson, MS

 We left the northeast corner of Alabama at 7:00 and drove non-stop (except for one relief break) to Jackson, MS. With impending severe weather projected for 2:30 to our campground, we pulled up to the gate by 1:15.  By 2:35, we were in the restroom watching the wind whip everything around.  The severe weather only lasted a few minutes, and we were safe. Of course, we are without power, along with half of Jackson.

Went for a short walk to survey the damage.  The park rangers were working on clearing the road, several large trees had fallen.  They had to wait for the power company to turn off the power to finish clearing.  Most of the power poles had snapped and there were lines all over the place.  They won’t have power back for weeks!

Hopefully, we will be able get out soon.

We have walked the road, Deb counted six power poles broken.  By evening, the number of electric customers without power has gone from 152,000 to 40,000, we were hoping for 39,999 or less!  We are staying positive, but we are ready to move on...maybe tomorrow.

DeSoto State Park - Fort Payne, AL

 Our trusty GPS told us that the fastest way to get from North Carolina to Alabama was to go back through Virginia.  That seemed just wrong! Not only that, but we had to wind our way over a few mountains to do it.  As we slowly left North Carolina, Virginia (again), Tennessee, and Georgia in our wake, passing a plethora of infrastructure projects, we left the interstates behind in Alabama for our final nine miles.  But, of course,  one final hurdle...a mountain slide has taken out the road to the park.  We found a back road with a sign “Absolutely No Trucks on this Road.”  It wasn’t as bad as it could have been, and in one optimistic moment Deb said, “We’ve been on worse!”

Our gnarly inverter popped on of it’s wires, but it was quickly fixed.  We had defrosted a chicken breast that turned out to be chicken legs, but it still made a pretty good Curried Chicken dinner.  For Alabama, this is quite a campground, with camp WiFi(sort of), full hook ups, and even cable.  We caught the last half hour of “Bohemian Rapsody,” one of Deb’s all time favorite films.

This is our first two night stop, but the rain has literally dampened our hiking hopes.  By mid-morning the rains were pretty much gone and we were able to do some fall watching.

We found out that the WiFi is in the bathrooms.  I’m not sure I need to understand the correlation! Anyway we moved our RV to a site closer to the restrooms and were able to get solid WiFi.

We are keenly aware of the fact that severe weather is moving our way and is going to be a factor in getting to Jackson, MS, our next stop.  Our plan is to leave early enough to avoid the brunt of it, but we are going to be cautious.

Pitcher plant

Stone Mountain SP - Roaring Gap, NC

 Our first day out.  We left 15 minutes ahead of time, but somehow the minutes kept slipping by.  Our GPS said that our expected arrival time was about 3:30, then 4:00, then 4:30, then after the start of happy hour. Well so much for conservative driving...pedal to the medal.  Even with two construction site (with no construction) we pulled into our hidy-hole at 4:58...phew.  

Just before we left, our inverter (the thing that converts the 12 volts DC to 120 volts AC) died.  After much scrambling and some vehicle modifications, it was installed 12 hours before departure.  The new inverter is 25 years newer than the old one.  One big change is a small little fan that comes on and goes off randomly, especially at night.  It sort of like a purring kitty, or an annoying fly, depending on your point of view.  Hopefully, I will get used to it.  

We arrived so late that we had no time to explore until the morning.  We took a short hike that was not very strenuous...well, actually labeled “wheelchair” access.  We saw Stone Mountain which was quite impressive.

Wild iris, about 5” tall