~Monday, March 28, 2022~
Day 652
I think I may have just jinxed our smooth mojo with booking sites. After just posting about how well our book calendar one-glance system works for our lodging (day 644 post), AND after all these months of RV’ing, it finally failed us (or I messed up…one of the two). Here’s how it unfolded. Jeff and I have been receiving quite a bit of mail/packages while staying here at Zane Grey RV Village and received a phone call from the front office saying that they wanted to make sure we stopped by to get our recently delivered package before leaving “tomorrow” . Tomorrow? I politely said, “I show that we check out on Wednesday ''. I told them that I would call back in just a few minutes to go back and look at our online email confirmation and again at the calendar. Yep….she had it right. It’s a Tuesday checkout, not Wednesday. It was nice of her to offer another site being that someone new was arriving at our site the next day. Initially Jeff wanted to decline the offer because he didn’t want to move for just one night. Moving for one night is sort of a pain, but not that big of a deal. But after hearing how nasty the weather forecast was for tomorrow, we reconsidered. Site #26 it was and we just learned a valuable lesson without making the mistake first. Lesson: ALWAYS CHECK OUR BOOKINGS UPON ARRIVAL TO MAKE SURE THE CAMPGROUND OR PARK JIVES WITH WHAT WE HAVE. It’s a good thing we ordered those packages or else she would have never been prompted to call us which would have left us to find out the hard way…..likely while enjoying a nice leisurely breakfast, sipping our morning coffee. We also had plans the next day to tour more of Sedona as well as a dinner reservation at Moscato’s which we absolutely wanted to keep.
On our way out for the day, we stopped by to pay for our next day’s lodging and pick up a new car tag. Wow, what a difference in the daily rate vs. the weekly rate. The weekly rate that we originally paid for was $35/night, but for our extra 1-night stay we had to pay the daily rate of $51 and that’s even with our Good Sam discount. We’d say it’s about 50/50 in parks or campgrounds that offer a weekly discounted rate, and we certainly appreciate the ones that do.
Before some fun stuff today, we had to take care of a few business matters, some of which required copies and scanning. The process of taking care of “matters” certainly takes longer when on the road. Trying to coordinate post office locations as well as printing, packing and shipping services can be challenging. But if we had to do it over again, we would have bought a small printer/scanner for the road. We were in the market for a mobile printer before the start of the trip, but honestly didn’t want to spend the money….ballpark is around $350-$400 for a good one. It sure would have saved us time though. Now about my Christmas list…..
And it was a fill-up day for Hank. What cost us $1.97/gallon for diesel at the beginning of the trip, now costs us about $4.80/gallon. $138.00 for a fill-up. Do you think these insane gas prices will affect RV’ing in general? It’s crazy all this is happening just as people want to get back out again after COVID. I would think in the coming months, especially with summer travel, that we’ll see fewer RV’s on the road. Fewer RV’s means more campground availability giving us a little more of an edge getting into places.
Finally, our fun time included touring the old town section of Cottonwood, AZ. While checking out the scene we found signs
for the Jail Trail River Walk to the Verde River. If you do the entire loop, it’s about 1.6 miles and connects Old Town Cottonwood with Riverfront Park. It appears based on all the gnarled vegetation on the banks of the river,
that it floods from time to time. The trail gets its name from the nearby river-rock building that was constructed in 1929 to serve as Cottonwood’s jail, now home to an art gallery.
After window shopping on Main Street we happened upon a beer/wine place called The State Bar. They have a dog-friendly/kid-friendly outdoor patio area and an all-Arizona beer and wine selection and on occasion, live music. We found a nice little spot on the outdoor patio, which quickly turned to “inside” with the change in weather; windy and cold. We knew we were in for a drastic change in weather, but didn’t think it would present itself this soon.
Nice to arrive back at the campground just before the deluge hit.