Heading East

Demming, NM, Feb 5, 2006

We are heading East on Rt. 10 between Tucson, AZ and Demming, NM. During the past two weeks we reached California and enjoyed a week in Malibu at a beautiful RV park located on a cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean. We were able to park the RV with the front facing the ocean so we could see the Dolphins play. We visited with our son who lives in Beverly Hills and had great meals. We saw the Albert Brooks film, "Finding Comedy in the Muslim World". It had it good points and was funniest when it showed the Indian call centers handling US complaints.
After Malibu we traveled to Ojai, CA where I did a day and a half of consulting in return to room, board and free spa treatments. Helen was a secret shopper at the spa. We had a great meal and I played golf with my stepson. I celebrated my birthday while I was there.
We had to put the dog in a kennel while we were there because he tends to bark in a hotel room.
We picked up the dog and headed east. We stopped for two nights in Desert Hot Springs, CA (near Palm Springs) at a very modest RV campsite that had four natural hot springs. I can't tell you how relaxing it was to soak in hot water for an hour after driving through the Los Angles traffic.
We left Desert Hot Springs at 6am and headed East on I-10 in order to get to Phoenix,AZ in time for me to take an airplane to Albuquerque, NM. I had a training assignment there with a hotel and casino. On the way we stopped at Quartzite (one of our favorite towns) top buy a second salt lamp. This one for our son and daughter in law in New York, City. We had spent a night in Quartzite on the way west. It is a tent-town of perhaps 100,000 people in the winter. In the summer it probably has 1,000. The only permanent buildings are a church, a post office several gas stations and 2 or 3 restaurants. The rest are tents, temporary buildings and thousands upon thousands of trailers and RVs. The town started as a place for rock collectors to get together. Now it is also an RV Mecca. There are dozens of places to buy new and used RV parts and tools. There are several RV dealers there also. And there is dust everywhere.
On the way west we paid $5 for the privilege of parking in a hard dirt parking lot. That is all. Just dirt. We used our generator and our on-board water. Coming east we just stopped for a salt lamp. That is a lamp made out a lump of natural salt.

We made Phoenix on time on Feb 1 and after hooking up at the Desert's Edge RV Park, Helen drove me to the airport. I got the one-hour flight to Albuquerque, drove to the hotel and spent the night and taught the next day. Helen had the RV to herself. While I worked she went to the Herd museum, a museum dedicated to Native Americans.

I got back to Phoenix after teaching on Feb 2. I spent Friday running around Phoenix visiting clients and potential clients. I took the dog with me and he helped me make my visits. In the evening we had dinner at one of our consultant's home.

I was not feeling well on Saturday and staying around the RV and napped.
We are still bothered by ants. We finally gave up on over the counter poisons and called a professional exterminator. He came on Saturday and sprayed the RV. The idea is to speed the kind of poison that the workers will bring back to the queen. So far it has not worked and we intend to get another treatment in the next town.

So now we are on the road in a very vacant part of Arizona. Actually, it is only vacant of people. It is filled with desert life and mountains. In fact the mountains, particularly at twilight, are indeed purple just like the song says and they are majestic. The land rolls on forever. It is filled with low lying bushes and the dominant color is brown. It is start and it is beautiful. And it is dry. So dry that we have used a humidifier in the RV at night. Phoenix has not had any rain for 110 days and there is no rain in sight.

We have been on the road for five weeks now. We are adjusting to the life very well. It is very comfortable. The only problem is when we try to work on the two computers. It is a bother hooking up the printers and sometimes the wireless internet does not work as well as we would like. We saw a new, larger, diesel RV for sale in Tucson that had adequate office space. Maybe next year.

We are making our plans for our next RV trips: Alaska in the summer, Mexico in the winter and Nova Scotia in the fall. Not all in one year. Not year.