Stucco & Sticks - Arizona

A view down I-25...
The road from New Mexico into Arizona brought lots of familiar desert scenery.
Once again we had two beautiful driving days. Yesterday we moved south from Las Vegas, New Mexico and turned west at Albuquerque to head towards Arizona.
We stopped for the night at the Meteor Crater RV Park outside of Winslow to allow for an easy drive home this morning.
The Arizona sign welcomed us to our home state as the thermometer in the truck crept up. But it was still in double digits which is always good news in the summer.

We drove a short 120 miles to our stucco and sticks today, arriving early enough to beat the heat. We were on the road by 8:15 AM. Why? Because Arizona is on Mountain time and we were still operating on Central time. :-)

Here's some stats from our summer excursion:
nights on the road = 34 nights
miles traveled = 6483 miles
Average nightly cost = $25
gas cost = well, I didn't get that figured out yet, but in general we were seeing prices of about $2.55 per gallon

Caleb had a hard time last night realizing our vacation in the trailer was ending. So we all promised to camp once per month and geocache at least once per week. So stay tuned... our next adventure won't be very far away!

New Mexico- The Land of Enchantment

Tonight we are in New Mexico, the Land of Enchantment. It was a beautiful driving day with clouds scattered across the sky, raining in the distant mountains, yet sunny over the road. My picture finger has been asleep the last two days, so no pictures of that... sorry. When I realized I needed some pictures to show you, I ran outside to get a shot of our site at the Las Vegas, New Mexico KOA. As you can see, the sun was already going down! We've been driving towards our Arizona home since leaving Custer State Park on Tuesday morning. We drove the red roads from Custer, South Dakota down into Colorado. When we pulled into where I thought we would spend the night in Sterling, Colorado... it did not give us the good camper vibe, so we continued down the road. There was one year when I always made reservations, but now I don't. I usually have a plan A and a plan B, because we never know just exactly where we will get to. It has always worked out without reservations, so I don't worry about that anymore. We just need to be more careful if it's a weekend or a holiday. So anyways, we continued down the road to Brush!, Colorado. No, my finger didn't slip... all the city signs seem to have exclamation points. There is a free municipal campground next to a city park that has electric and water. Aside from the teenagers who hung out nearby with their thumping music for about an hour, this was a good overnight spot. The spaces are parallel along the side of the pavement with the electrical and water hook-ups. Can't complain for free! There is a playground at the adjoining park as well as their city pool. We were on the road early this morning... 8:30! Usually we are on the road by 9:30 or 10, so you can see we really downed our java quick this morning. I can also recommend this KOA. I know KOA's vary widely in quality and cost. This one is reasonable and has a nice Pinon Pine wooded feel.

Tomorrow we will drive the blue roads. Yep, back to the interstates. It will be a nice change from the red roads and we're almost home. We love to be on the road, but when we know our final "fun" stop is over and we're on the way home, we just try to get there. We drove about 380 miles today and will do the same tomorrow to venture into our home state of Arizona. We probably have one more night on the road ... maybe we'll be "standing on the corner in Winslow, Arizona".

Bison, Pronghorn, Deer and Donkeys- Oh my! (Custer)

We found the Buffalo! What an awesome sight seeing these huge animals ... up close! I made sure my window was up, not that that would help too much. We have enjoyed our stay here at Custer State Park. Chris celebrated his birthday yesterday with a bumbleberry pie from a wonderful local pie and ice cream shop. That was after he and Caleb went on a 6 mile bike ride through the park and on the Mickelson Trail.
We made sure that our hike today was far from any buffalo. We hiked part of the way up the Devil's Tower Trail.
While hiking we saw beautiful wildflowers and butterflies!
We climbed up the fire lookout tower this afternoon for a panoramic view of the area before proceeding through the wildlife loop.... where we saw Pronghorn- not Antelope. We also saw more burros, some young bucks and does, and a lone Bull Bison.
Tomorrow we have to say good-bye to Custer State Park and start making our way towards Arizona. This was our last multi-day stop for the trip with several travel days ahead of us. Every year since we've traveled with the 5th wheel, we've made a stop in the Black Hills. This is a majestic area full of beauty and great history! I'm sure we'll be back again! :-)