We’ve spent the past week driving across the deserts of southern California, Arizona and New Mexico – appropriate as the Desert Bus for Hope fundraising campaign has been going on this past week.
We’ve been able to knock out a substantial number of miles off our cross country repositioning and we’ve kept incredibly busy.
Quartzsite, AZ
We took our final soak in the hot pools and gave hugs to Nina & Paul in Desert Hot Springs.
On the way out of town, we were able to grab our friend Helene for a quick lunch to catch up. It was wonderful, but way too short of a visit.
We needed to make our way to Quartzsite for the evening, as we had a rendezvous in the works with another RVing friend who was heading westward. In all our years on the road, we’ve never spent any time in Quartzsite, a popular winter destination for RVers and boondockers. So we were excited that our timing of crossing paths would put us converging there.
He selected The Scenic Road RV Park (our review) for us to stay at and we had a fun dinner at the Yacht Club, where we serendipitously met Ramia.
It was a super fun evening of making new friends, sharing in live music and seeing the project our friend is putting together. We’re really excited about what he’s up to.
Phoenix, AZ
Our next stop over would be Phoenix. Having not spent too much time in the area, we put a call out on our Facebook page for recommendations for places to stay. We got an overwhelming response that the Maricopa County Park system is amazing.
And then we received a specific recommendation for site 62 at McDowell Mountain Regional (our review). A quick look on their online reservation system, the site was open for 3 nights – so we snagged them. (Thanks for the tip Hans & Lisa.)
What we didn’t pay too much attention to is just how spread out Phoenix is.
Our primary reason for stopping in the area was to catch up with the folks at Elite Power, the supplier of our lithium ion batteries. As we were passing the Tempe exit, our iPads were telling us we still had about 30 miles left to go to reach McDowell. Wowzers.
On Wednesday we headed back into town, in the Mini, for a lunch meet-up with the Elite Power guys. They re-flashed the firmware on our EMS (energy management system), which was way out of date.
And then they took us to lunch where we picked their brains heavily on the current battery market. Chris is planning an extensive update to his lithium ion battery series soon, so he’ll share what we learned and the status of our 500AH bank (short version: over 2 years later, it’s still meeting our expectations).
After our long lunch, we had to book it back to McDowell as we had scheduled a 5pm meetup at our bus for our Facebook fans to stop by to enjoy the sunset. It was a rather last minute decision to host the happy hour, but oh so much fun!
We’ve come to really enjoy hosting gatherings, which helps us meet more people with our limited time visiting an area. And hopefully also helps others connect with each other.
We enjoyed a spectacular sunset together, lots of yummy snacks, margaritas and conversations. Thanks to those who made it out!
The next day we planned a day at home catching up after several days of non-stop social time. And before we knew it, a friend in the area realized we were in the area – and who can resist? We invited him over that evening, and had another fun social night!
But oh goodness, we’d now been at McDowell for 3 nights, and hadn’t even hit a hiking trail or done much photography. So we decided to add a 4th night, even though it did mean switching spots.
Here’s some of the photos we took around the campground:
Ahhh…. so gorgeous. We could have spent weeks at this park just soaking it all in. Because you see those mountains over there? If you look closely, there’s a cluster of cellular towers on them bathing this campground in glorious 4g!
To Las Cruces, NM
As much as we could have convinced ourselves to keep extending our stay at McDowell, we also knew how many miles we have ahead of us to get to Austin by next Sunday. So we hit the road westward.
Both Google maps and Apple maps suggested taking I-10 through Tucson, but we were curious about Highway 60 & 70 through Globe instead. The route stood to cut about 40 miles off the drive, and we always prefer backroads to interstates. At our meet-up, John confirmed it was the right way to go!
So glad we took the route, it not only saved us a lot of miles – it had hardly any traffic, and it was beautiful! Sure, it had some extended 6% grades along it, but Zephyr’s newly rebuilt engine is performing like a champ on grades – maintaining 35-40 mph, 2000+ rpms and barely breaking 185 degrees.
We had eyed a free city campground in Duncan, AZ to overnight in, but by the time we arrived it was full up. So on we went into Lordsburg, NM where we overnighted in a very nice welcome center (with thanks to our State Lines app confirming New Mexico allows up to 24-hours in their rest areas).
Upon pulling in, we connected with The Urban Nomads who are camp hosting in the area and arranged a lunchtime meetup the next day in Deming as we’d be passing through. It was wonderful to meet Sarah & Rob after many years of online communication – they were winners of our SerenDIPity Challenge last summer.
And then it was onwards into the Las Cruces area, where we’ll spend a couple days resting up.
What’s Next?
We are now just 637 miles from our next major destination in Austin, and we have until Sunday to get there. In thanks to many recommendations from our Facebook fans, we have some state parks picked out along the way to break the drive up nicely and will move at a pace the feels comfortable to us.
We look forward to getting to Austin and plopping down for 2 whole weeks and spending lots of quality time with family for Thanksgiving.
Anyone in the Austin area fancy a meet-up? We’re considering hosting a gathering, and even potentially a Q&A session for ‘future nomads’.
Our campspot probably won’t be ideal for hosting, so we’re also looking for a local who might be able to volunteer to host or recommendations for a location (park, coffee shop, etc.). Let us know if you’d like to attend and/or can help out! Thanks!
Love the cactus in Arizona and NM. Isn’t it cool how they only seem to pop up after you cross the Colorado River? We are still up in the Reno area with plans to head into So Cal this Saturday. Currently have a storm in the area with a rapidly dropping snow level… supposed to be in the teens beginning tomorrow night. Those warm pictures are making me envious.
Seems that cold snap caught us all! Brrrr.
Thanks for the heads up on McDowell Mountain Regional, we need to visit a friend in January on our way east to Florida, wondered about where we might stay for a couple of days. You two rock! Safe travels, wish I could have dropped by that Friday night in Sacramento, but it just wasn’t in the cards….grew up there and we have been visiting family, especially older parents, since July. –Dave (GoingRvWay.com)
Hope you enjoy McDowell, and many other awesome stops along the way, on your way east!
Loving the photography – wow! I NEED to get to this area of the country asap!
It is indeed a gorgeous area of the country, wish we had more time to explore it this time around.
There is an outfit that puts out two books that are very useful in planning a route over the mountains. They are called Mountain Directory West and MD East. Tell you the grades, elevations, distances, speeds, corners, etc. very handy. After you use them a time or two you can tell quickly if you want to go that way or not.
Books? What’s a book? 🙂 (Thanks, Ed!)
Met you guys at rally in clio mi, couple years ago, in fl for winter in old town fl, 100 mi south of tallassee on hi 19, hookups for 3 buses or more, love to talk about buses, have been playing with them for 30 yrs, welcome any time, love reading your blog.Blessings on your travels,[still love your firedance lol]
Harold robbie green
Thanks for the sweet offer Harold! We shall see how the winter plays out. Right now, we have reservations from Dec 20 – Feb 20 for Cedar Key.. beyond that, we have no clue 🙂
Glad you remember the fire dancing, what a fun evening that was.
I am so happy that you were able to stay at McDowell. It’s just a gem of a place. We’ve been several times and just love it. Happy trails!
It is definitely a gem, and I can see us stopping in again in the future. Maybe one time you’ll be our neighbor?
Ah, photos of McDowell . . . how those bring back such good, good memories. Very few places that we enjoyed more than that stunning location. Makes us smile to think of you guys calling it home. Your photos brought us immediately back to the winter (almost) we spent there: http://bit.ly/1fPOHBk
Hope you’re both fabulously well—it seems there’s no reason to believe you’re not!
Well.. home for 4 days 🙂 And a glorious 4 days it was. The location is definitely one of the more memorable ones.
We reached out to you a couple of weeks ago about a meet-up and it looked (at the time) that it would work out. But we’ve pushed up our departure date to Tuesday the 26th. So, for us, it looks like only Monday would work.
— jc&bev
Hey guys… I’ve tried writing you directly to coordinate, but have not heard back from you. Please drop us a note at contact@technomadia.com and lets see if we can squeeze in a meet-up.
I also thought it would be fun to have my wife get into our toad, start it up and use the toad’s engine to help push us up the mountain. That is probably so illegal and such a bad idea it’s not funny but it sounds good in my head.
We have had to do this a few times out of necessity with our 4104. Have to be sure to watch for toe bar damage. I put our Jeep Cherokee in low range and four wheel drive. Scary the first time or two, but now consider it a life saver for The Last Resort. There are also a great couple of essential Directories which we use and refer to a lot called: Mountain Directory for truckers, RV, and Motorhome Drivers…One is for the 11 Western States and the other is Mountain Directory East, which covers 11 Eastern States. We have a 4104. It is a great old bus and managed to take us to 44 states, plus New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, Cape Breton, Newfoundland, Labrador, across the Trans-Labrador Hwy and down the north side so the St. Lawrence Seaway to Quebec and on to New York and eventually down to Key West Florida. Wow…an amazing trip lasting 21 months. Virtually trouble free till back in Wyoming and then again just 30 miles from Seattle Wa. Stayed home foe the summer and are now back on the road again.
I love those back roads too. We took them when going from Grand Teton to Rawlins, WY. But then we saw a sign that said “warning steep grade ahead”. It was very very steep 😉 We actually had our torque converter unlock and ascended part of it in first gear at 15mph. Thankfully no damage or overheating was done. I like to use Google Maps to plan the route. I will save the map and then from the save maps screen in google maps I will download the KML version of the route. I will then load this up in the free TopoFusion demo which allows you to apply an elevation profile to the route. From there you can see just how severe the grades will be. This one absurd grade we hit was the ONE time I didn’t push the planned route into TopoFusion to check. Highly recommended for people whose rigs might be considered on the heavy side. We are around 23,000 pounds combined being pulled by a Ford 460. We’re heavy 😛
I can only imagine that was scary! Great tip on pre-checking elevation for route planning.
Chris usually flies over our intended route in Google Earth looking for steep climbs, tight corners as well as ample shoulder. After our breakdown, we’ve come to value that so much more – a safe place to pull over if needed.
We also love the Allstays Camp & RV app, which has steep grades and low clearance points marked and explained.
And then of course, we also check our app Coverage? to see what the cellular coverage is like.
Just how steep was that grade that you ran into?
I love the idea of an elevation profile – I wish mapping software and vehicle GPS units offered this as a standard feature. The process you go through is a lot of steps, but I can imagine many situations where it would be very worth it.
As Cherie mentioned, I do like to preview routes in Google Earth. But it can be easy to miss a short steep grade that way.
Great tip – thanks for sharing your technique!
– Chris
Awesome photos of one of our favorites–McDowell Mountain. And by the way, I received an invoice for my new iPad in my Yahoo inbox this morning–thanks guys!!
Glad you enjoyed the photos of a favorite place, I think it would be difficult to get a bad photo of that place however. So much beauty there.
And hooray that the iPad Mini ordering process smoothed out. We can’t wait to get ours.
Thanks for the beautiful photos of the desert! I so miss the sunsets, views, and magnificent cacti! Can’t wait to get back west but we are doing one last winter in FL. What is your FL time table? We will be in Cortez (Bradenton) for the months of Feb/Mar. I believe you will be near the Tampa Area!? We would love to meet up.
Desert sunsets definitely have their own unique beauty.
We’ll be leaving Austin on Dec 8, and start heading to Florida. The only firm plan we have is parking ourselves in Cedar Key (about 2.5 hrs north of Tampa) from Dec 20 – Feb 20.