California Bound

~Monday, December 7, 2020~

Day 176 (Travel Day)

We did pretty good leaving only 30 minutes later than planned. The delay was the challenge in packing away safely, all of the Holiday trinkets so they’d arrive intact at our next location, which will be Tucson to Carlsbad. As we say goodbye to wondrous Arizona, we look forward to going back to California to visit the people we love so much. It seems like forever since we saw our family and friends. And it will be a nice place to reboot before heading east for the Holidays.

The drive was extensive today…..over 500 miles AND we turned over 20,000 miles on our 2020 Ford F-250 Diesel.

Crazy when you consider our route and the fact we haven’t even hit the south or east coast yet.

First stop…….driving back to Cottonwood to the dump station; nice that it was only 7 or so miles from our boondocking site in Joshua Tree park. While we were on a mission for a Chai Latte and a 1 pump Mocha, Google Maps was directing us to a casino Starbucks, into a tight spaced parking garage area. Not good when towing a 29 foot trailer. That’s always one of our fears is turning down dead end roads, or parking lots that leave your trailer very little wiggle room to get out. Luckily, before we got too far in the parking lot, we were able to back it up into another parking lot that had been cordoned off with sandwich boards. In order to have enough room to back up fully, I had to move the sandwich board out of the way, when all of the sudden a grouchy old man came out yelling “heh!” where Jeff yelled “heh” back. I think the guy felt bad that he was scolding us for nothing since we were simply trying to back up, not enter his HUGE RV parking lot. Gosh, what we do to get a cup of coffee. pulled into a casino parking lot by mistake, all for the sake of scoring on a Starbucks run. We decided to wait on the Starbucks while towing the trailer. Good idea ya think?

Moving on with our 1-½ hour drive to Riverside to meet with Steven at Richardson’s RV. He was with another customer leaving us at the mercy of his availability, so that delayed us by 1 hr. We reviewed the checklist with him of what repairs needed to be done as well as checked with the parts manager, Russ, on grommet covers that needed replacing on our stove top. It appears those have to be special ordered which is no biggee. It is a weird feeling to be driving off the lot without our “home”. But, the fixes needed to be done before the next phase of the trip and the fact that we have no idea when we’ll be back in California to take care of the trailer needs.

Now for that coffee. After 2 breakfast sandwiches and 2 caffeinated drinks, we had enough in the “tank” to handle the 500 mile drive back up to the Bay Area. I must say it was nice driving 70 mph without a 7,000 lb. trailer behind you (we usually keep to 60 when towing so we don’t overheat the trailer tires). After 7 or so hours, we finally made it to my mom’s, 2 hours later than planned. So good to finally give my mom a hug after all of these months. And she even made a delicious dinner and waited to eat with us...a delicious Pesto Pasta dinner and all the fixings. Delicious! We got caught up a little bit but were so exhausted after the loooooong day, so we’ll catch up tomorrow.