2021 Cross-country trip to Columbus, GA

Monday 12/13/21, OPH to Winslow AZ

Happy Holidays everyone.  Believe it or not, my One Particular Blog is not dead.  It's just been dormant.  Like our Desert Tortoise Sam that brumates (Brumation is a period of dormancy in reptiles).  Mammals hibernate, reptiles brumate.  I am going to get started with the OPB (One Particular Blog) one way or another.  Eldon and I have had some heated discussions as to how I should go about doing the Blog since it has been since July of 2018 that I last wrote.  Suffice to say that I am just doing this “my way”.  At least it is getting the ball rolling and little by little I could interject a few tidbits of what has happened since 2018. 

 

The most consistent thing in our lives has been our wonderful walks in Irvine Park with Moreno and our friends.  

This photo is of us with the park’s Christmas decorations.  We hope life has been treating you well and that you have not suffered too much with the Covid.  We have been fully vaccinated and gotten the Booster shot too.  Our immediate circle of family and friends also have done this and I think it’s very important that everyone get vaccinated.  It’s a serious Pandemic and I mean not just here in the USA but worldwide.  Not until this is under control will we be able to do a lot more fun stuff and travel further.  We miss not seeing so many people because of this.  

 

But I again procrastinated on getting ready to go on our month long, cross-country trip to visit Erick (my nephew) in Columbus, GA. This is a special trip during this time of the year because my nephew and his wife, Judith, will be having their first Christmas with their 5 month old twin girls.  Amber and Emma.  He is in the Army and stationed in Fort Benning, Georgia, and has just been promoted to Sgt. First Class. 

 

Eldon, Moreno (our dog) and I were due to have left on Tuesday the 7th in order to attend a very special wedding Anniversary (30 yrs) in Denver, CO on the 11th.

Eldon's very special geology friend, Susan, invited us and as much as we were ready to go, the weather gods had different plans in the works.  Even if we did survive (17 degrees highs and 4 degrees lows) our trailer would have frozen solid crossing through the Colorado mountains.

We finished packing and hooking up the trailer on Sunday night then we hit the road on the 13th, taking the southern route through New Mexico instead of through frozen Colorado. We now had to move really fast to try to regain some of the lost week.  Sorry to all the northern route friends we will now not be seeing.

 

We hit the road at 7:00 (well 8 after the doughnut stop), and hit the Mojave Desert headwinds that were scheduled for home later that day.  There is nothing like a 30-40 mph headwind to kill your gas mileage.  From a non-trailer 18 to 7 mpg is like a big thing, especially with Mojave gas prices over $6/gallon.  One mile, one dollar.  Yikes. 

It is also the Route 66 that is so popular in the song “Take it Easy” by the Eagles.  So our first stop HAD to be Winslow, AZ.

Monday night (12/13) we got to our first camp stop in Meteor Crater RV Park in Winslow.  That night we were looking forward to our first dinner on the road.

I had prepared Moreno’s dinner and Eldon prepared ours.  Pumpkin soup and a pasta dish.  Both were made already at home and frozen.  Our trailer has a microwave but the power turns out to be “micro”.  It took multiple attempts to get it warm enough to eat.  Eldon did a quick taste of the soup and commented that it didn’t taste as good as he first thought.  Well, there was a good reason.  He had warmed up Moreno’s pumpkin mush NOT our soup!!!!  We were laughing so much about this and figured we were too tired to eat much more than the pasta and drink some wine! 

 

So there you have it.  I think it’s a little too long for a Blog but keep in mind that I had to try to report on more than just one day of travel.  I promise to be more brief in the future and let the photos speak for themselves with little captions instead.