Spring Vacation Boondocking Adventure, 2013

[ClydesdaleKevin]

About to hop in the shower, then we are off to see the crater and museum!  Then its back to camp for a quiet night with my Patti...then onward tomorrow to the Painted Desert and Petrified Forest!

Kev

[ClydesdaleKevin]

So the Meteor Crater and museum were amazing, and we relaxed the rest of the day...but we aren't leaving ANYwhere for a day or two!  The wind is blowing so hard they closed I-40!!!

The rig is rocking and shaking violently, and we think we are getting a bit seasick...lol!  I had to lower the TV antenna since it was in danger of being ripped right off...I just hope the solar panels stay put!

I'm going to feed the pups breakfast, than go pay for another couple of nights at the office...if I don't go sailing away like a kite!

Kev

[DaveVA78Chieftain]

Yep stay put.  You do not want to find out the hard way that this wind is kicking up tornadoes in Oklahoma.

Dave

[HandyDan]

Wait a minute, the might seafaring submariner is getting sea-sick?

[ClydesdaleKevin]

LMAO Dave!  I just conjectured to my wife today that I bet this is where the winds build up speed before racing off to form tornados in Oklahoma!  GMTA!

And LOL Dan!  Patti was getting sea sick.  I think my slight nausea was brought on by a wee bit too much whiskey last night combined with eating a lot of Serrano peppers sliced up on extra sharp cheddar cheese while we were re-watching season 2 of The Walking Dead...it passed pretty quickly once my coffee kicked in this morning.  And in a submarine, if the sea states get too bad and are rockin' the boat too much, you just go deep and get under it!...More sub sailors get seasick in port than ever get sick out to sea...and boy did we love messing with the tender tummies!

The wind has finally subsided to something reasonable, although its still pretty breezy out there.  The rig isn't rolling anymore, and the solar panels did indeed stay put!  I'll inspect the mounts in the morning to make sure all is secure before we hit the road.

I made the decision to only pay for one more night here this morning...weather reports said the unusually high winds would be over by this evening, and that tomorrow would just be "breezy."  Since out next stop in Holbrook, AZ at the OK Campground is only 39 miles away, as long as its only as windy as when we drove here, I'm okay with that.  If its as windy as today, no way!  We'll stay another night!  But its pretty boring here...the ONLY thing to see is the meteor crater and museum, and that only took a few hours.  If you don't have elderly dogs that need to go out every 4 hours, this wouldn't be a bad campground at all to use as a base of operations to see the Petrified Forest and Painted Desert as well, but we do, so onward we go tomorrow!

We lost power today as well...right after I paid for tonight at the office.  It didn't come back on until about an hour ago, so we ran off the inverter and batteries, and I put the solar panels back into play.  The converter has been functioning perfectly today, so I'm glad I didn't mess anything up with the genny the other day!  I'm also in the habit now of shutting the solar down when hooked to shore power...no need to put them into play when the converter is charging the batteries.  And of course, when running on batteries I unplug the converter before turning on the inverter.

Hopefully tomorrow we'll be on our slow way to Holbrook, AZ and the Petrified Forest and part of the Painted Desert!  Patti wants to stop at the Walmart on the way and pick up a new comforter...ours is getting pretty ratty...so that won't take long...and then we are on to the next part of our adventure!

After Holbrook?  Not sure yet!  We can't really arrive in Muskogee before the 27th, and will have to pay a fee for a couple of days if we get there any earlier than the 29th.  I'll be looking at the maps of BLM lands and National Forests along I-40 through New Mexico as soon as I conclude this post...which is now concluded.

More in the morning!

Kev

[rustyescott1]

what ren fair are you going to in ok. what are the dates of it  rusty

[JDxeper]

We are about 150 miles east of Muskogee, and the wind has been really high, for the last two days , right on a frontal boundary.  Hot, 84, then cold, 50's then hot again.  Lots of changes and very windy.

[ClydesdaleKevin]

The Oklahoma Renaissance Faire, in Muskogee, OK...every weekend in May...sometimes spills into June to make it a full 5 weekends.

So yesterday, actually starting the night before, I became violently ill!  So I guess the queasiness I thought might have been brought on by the wind was some kind of bug that had only just started!  Violent vomiting out on the porch, many trips to the toilet...chills, aches and pains...I was in bed all day yesterday while Patti nursed me back to health with some good old chicken noodle soup (once I could keep anything down, which was yesterday afternoon by the time my stomach settled down enough to eat anything.)

Wow did that suck!  Obviously we stayed another night in the campground in Winslow, AZ, which is just as well since the wind is totally gone now.

It got so cold last night the freshwater hose froze!  Weird weather for this time of year...and apparently we were right about the winds gathering force here in the upper desert before slamming east into Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas!  All kinds of tornado warnings there yesterday.

Today is the day we take the 40 mile drive to Holbrook, AZ for a couple of days to see the Painted Desert and Petrified Forest.  We'll be staying at the OK Campground for a few days, which puts us by the North Gate of the National Park.  We'll be driving through the park in the Jeep and taking many pictures!

So for now I'm feeling much better, and thankfully Patti doesn't appear to have any of the symptoms I had.  I'm going to guess it was the frozen gas station burritos I had a few hours before I got violently ill. 

Now its time to feed the pups breakfast, hook up the Jeep, dump the greywater, and get on the road to Holbrook!

Kev

[DonD]

High 30s this morning even at 4000 ft.


Bon appetit Kev. Stick with home cooking!!

[ClydesdaleKevin]

Feeling right as rain now!  But wow, did that suck!  I rarely get sick, and when I do it hits me hard. 

Left the campground in Winslow pretty early this morning, and then drove slowly (45mph again...windy as heck, just not as bad as the other day!) along I-40 to exit 253 where the Walmart is, and Patti got her new comforter.

Then we arrived at the OK Campground in Holbrook in the early afternoon, and I unhooked the Jeep, hooked up the RV to the power, water, and sewer (just grey water, but figured I might as well hook it up!), and then was delighted to find out we have free cable.  We paid for 4 nights, since its only 24 bucks a night after our discounts. 

And lo and behold!  The free wifi in the campground is wicked fast!!!  With no time or data limit!  Since we are here for 4 days, I'll be uploading all our pictures to Photobucket and sharing them with you fine folks!  Won't affect my data limit with Verizon, and won't drive me crazy waiting for pics to load and losing hours when the connection times out...SWEET!!!

Not a bad deal for 24 bucks a night!

Nice looking campground too.  Flat and boring like everything here in the high desert, but well kept, and they have a pretty neat petrified wood exhibit...plus laundry facilities, showers, etc.

Tomorrow its off to the Petrified Forest and Painted desert in the Jeep...got the Jeep totally emptied out and ready so the dogs can go with us and have fun too.  Poor cat just has to wait until we get to Muskogee before he can run free.

I explored the whole town once we got here and all was set up...took all of 20 minutes.  Lots of fast food joints, TONS of mexican food restaurants, a couple of steak houses, tourist traps and antique stores, and very well fed Native Americans...lol!  Only one real grocery store, a Safeway, so I bought some fried chicken and other goodies for dinner tonight, got back to camp, and that is it for our day.  Time to relax!

Kev

[ClydesdaleKevin]

So yesterday it was Patti's turn not to feel well, although she didn't get nearly as sick as I did.  Another day relaxing and doing nothing.  Today, however, we are both feeling just fine!  Just waiting now for Patti to finish her hair and makeup, then its time to load up the pups and go see the sights!

Last night was fun...we watched several episodes of Sons of Guns on the Discovery channel.  Pretty neat!  Lots of shooty stuff and booms!  They made a flame thrower cannon that was REALLY cool....lol!

Kev

[ClydesdaleKevin]

WOW the Petrified National Forest and Painted Desert are beautiful and amazing!  We all had a great time, although its bigger than you would expect.  The tour in our Jeep, round trip, was over 70 miles!  The pups and Patti had a blast!



Did I mention how much I love our Jeep?



Here's a picture of Patti at the Meteor Crater from our trip the other day:



And I'll even throw in a picture of me from yesterday...the pups had a GREAT time!



So if you want to see a lot more pictures, just go to my Photobucket album and look at the pictures I loaded yesterday in the album Spring Vacation 2013.  http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/ClydesdaleKevin/library/Spring%20Vacation%202013

They aren't all in order yet or titled, but what an amazing vacation we are having so far!  Today we are probably going to check out the antique stores in town, then tomorrow its back on the highway, heading East!

Kev

[ClydesdaleKevin]

So Patti and I are relaxing watching television this morning, and flipping through the channels we landed on the Home Shopping Network demonstrating the new Dyson Animal canister vac, with all the attachments.  This thing was picking up dog hair...copious amounts of dog hair ground into the carpet...thick carpet...like it was nothing!  And wasn't even clogging up the brushes!  Wow!

I saw the look in Patti's eye, and knew she wanted it but wouldn't shell out a lot of cash for herself...so I bought it for her.  It will be delivered to the Muskogee, OK faire on the 30th.  Another selling point was that they let you spread it out over 5 monthly payments with no interest, and there were no shipping and handling fees...and it was about 200 bucks cheaper than Best Buy.  Yep...we'll see how it works!

So that's it for today...just chillin' with the pups and watching the telly...tomorrow I gotta pack everything up, and we'll be back on the road.  Next stop?  Who knows!

Kev

[Stripe]

Wow, those are some handsome sheps. You'd have loved a couple of my K9 partners I had during my tenure as a handler.  The crater as cool as I think it is to see??  Also, do you ship trebuchets?

Oh, nearly forgot, have you ever done the Ren Faire near Watertown, NY?

Fredric

[ClydesdaleKevin]

Thanks Fredric!  They are our babies!  The slimmer darker one is Barnabas.  He's almost 10.  Sheba is Daddy's girl...my little chuncky monkey.  She's almost 13 now.  Best dogs in the world!  The Crater is every bit as amazing as it looks in the picture and more, and the museum is pretty awesome.  And yep, we ship trebuchets...lol!  And the Renfaire that we do in NY is in Tuxedo Park, NY.  No idea where Watertown, NY is.

So today we have to ship out some catapult orders, then its off by around noon, heading East on I-40.  We are hoping to make it as far as the Flying J near Albuqurque NM by this evening.  We'll see!

Kev

[Stripe]

Groovy.  Lol, Chunky Monkey..  I may have to take a detour on my way to upstate NY.  Watertown is in upper upstate NY next to Lake Ontario.  I used to do security at that Faire.

Fredric

Oh, And what ever you do, do NOT take a wrong turn in Albuqurque, you'll end up in the south or north pole or a desert with a duck that will just test your patience...

[ClydesdaleKevin]

LOL Fredric!

So we are still here in Holbrook, AZ.  By the time I found all the catapults and parts in the storage compartments and made the mangonel ready to ship by making a sling for it, it was almost noon, checkout time.  So we paid for another night. 

We'll leave before noon tomorrow though, no problem.  No hurry, that's for sure!

Had a weird high desert phenomenon hit us today as well.  Nice calm and sunny...and suddenly this big wall of dust came up on the port side of the rig.  I mean, a solid dark wall coming at us like that scene from the movie Mummy, minus the creepy face.  WHAM it hit the rig, and rocked us hard!  Blew all the porch chairs and furniture over and even knocked over a big propane cylinder.  And then it was gone.  Weird!

Yep...time to head East!

Kev

[ClydesdaleKevin]

About to clean up the inside of the rig and get her battoned down for travel, load up the Jeep, and get back on the road.  The goal today is to get as far as the Flying J in Albuqurque. 

Kev

[DonD]

Micro burst. They can be very destructive.

[ClydesdaleKevin]

So we left the campground before Noon, and headed East.  The wind started out light, but by the time we hit New Mexico, it was VERY high winds!  40mph the whole way!  No biggie...it was mostly a tail wind, but the side gusts were to scary to go any faster. 

So we are driving along and driving along, we start to notice what looked like heaps of old asphault along both sides of I-40.  what in the world?  What a waste of resources!...Then there was just too much of it to be considered a dumping ground.  Patti looked it up on the tablet, and holy crap!  They are lava fields!  60 square miles of lava fields, and some of them not all that old...like 800 years old!  Yep!  We were near the El Malpais National Monument!  By the time we realized what they were, we were almost to Albuquerque, but next year we are going to stay a few days in Grant, NM and check it out!  There is even an ice cave that never melts...how cool is that?

The wind kept getting worse and worse, and we finally arrived at the Flying J and gassed up.  And noticed a sign that said No Overnight Parking.  what in the world?  I went in and talked to a manager, and he laughed and apologized for the signs...he said they don't apply to RVs and corporate hasn't given them new signs yet.  Whew!  I was done with driving in the wind today!

And we are still at almost a 5800 foot elevation, and wondering when we are going to start going down...lol!  I mean, Muskogee is at sea level!  Gotta start going down sometime, right?

Only 680 miles to go!  Gonna have to get late starts and make early stops to not arrive before Friday.  Geesh!

Rig is running great, at last check MPG was 7.9, which I won't complain about, and we are enjoying the trip.  Yes it was windy, but I'm tellin' ya, if you aren't in a hurry, 40mph is a perfect driving speed to check out the sights.

Kev

[Stripe]

There is even an ice cave that never melts...how cool is that?

Best Guess, I'd say at least under 32 degrees F... :)rotflmao

[ClydesdaleKevin]

LMAO Fredric!

Have to get an early start this morning.  High winds predicted after noon.  The goal is to get at least as far as Amarillo, TX today, about 289 miles.

Off we go!

Kev

[DaveVA78Chieftain]

300 Miles?  Piece of cake 

[moonlitcoyote]

Hey Kev, your not traveling a highway are you? I havent found a highway that allows you to travel at 40mph. The wind is one thing that really worries me when taking the interstate, minumum speed is 45 and sometimes it's too scary to want to go that fast, yeah I know it's not really that fast but in a high wind it feels like 90.


How do you find all these cool places to visit, is there some sort of website or book that tells you where all the sites are?

[ClydesdaleKevin]

Arizona and New Mexico, at least along the Interstates, don't have a minimum speed as long as you put your flashers on below 40...they understand the huge wind storms that come up.

And we find them on the internet...lol!

Kev