On the White Line

When the shirt tree blooms in Ajo, Arizona, that means you’ve got a week’s worth of clean clothes

After a few weeks of above normal temperatures, it’s been a little chilly lately (in the low 60s). I’m definitely NOT complaining. Today, we even had a few hours of steady rain.

Yesterday started with little hope of any structure. Baby Ida’s air filters and house battery required attention, and since we were passing through Tucson, the time was right for separate trips to the Dodge dealer and the Interstate Battery shop. Either stop had the potential to turn into an all-day ordeal.

This time, we got lucky. Tucson Dodge managed to get us in and out within two hours (but not without lightening our wallet by $150). The timing was perfect to grab lunch with our friend Bit and catch up on all the details from her recent trip to Ireland.

Then we were off to the tackle the battery issue. To our delight, it was under control within a half hour and without any out-of-pocket expense. That gave us time to stop in to visit our friends Dick and Mary Ann. After catching up with them, we had to push on… check-in for our next show was only two days away in Indio, California.

As we drove north from Tucson, Arizona treated us to a fantastic sunset, and at that point we were only 30 minutes from our friends Jim and Betty in Phoenix. A bit more visiting and a friendly driveway where we could spend the night. And their neighbor plied us fresh grapefruits and lemons from his trees.

Somehow, a day of uncertainty turned out to be a complete day of visiting… with some important chores thrown in for good measure.

Baby Ita powered through that nasty dust storm in Texas, and now we’re giving her some tender loving care in Tucson. Two new air intake filters to make sure she can breathe easy.

We have surrendered to extremely high winds in Texas. They were blowing steadily all the way from Weatherford, Misouri, to Amarillo, but once we drove beyond that, Baby Ida took an all out beating. We decided to stop early, but we weren’t able to avoid several enormous dust clouds. We’re used to whiteouts with snow, and these brownouts were as bad as any blizzard. Our air filters will definitely need to be checked.

In the last ten miles of the trip, we had quite a scare, the wind threw our RV slide out room from its closed position. The top portion of the slide flipped outward while the bottom part on the tracks stayed in place. We’re not sure yet if it did any damage.

As icing on the cake, we also lost our rear hubcaps in the ordeal… who knows where the wind took those

Not our favorite day of the trip. Looks like we’ll be spending the rest of the day hanging out in a parking lot waiting out the storm.

After the wind died down and the dust settled, huge flocks of Canada geese filled the sky over Hereford, Texas.

It’s fitting we saw these windmills while passing through Oklahoma… severe winds have been slamming us across the state… some reaching speeds of 40mph – not fun driving.

It made for a rather noisy night in the Walmart parking lot in Weatherford, OK. The drive to Armarillo, TX, promises more wind, so it’ll be another exhausting drive.

We made it to Oklahoma City and temperatures in the 40s. Time to fill the water tank and start feeling like we’re really living onboard Baby Ita.

Not only do we get to sleep with Baby Ita tonight, we also scored a spot with FREE electrical hookups. Man, I love when casinos are trying woo RVers!

We had a beautiful weekend for the From the Land Folk Art Festival in Green Lake, WI. Plus, we had our annual pumpkin carving rendezvous… sadly without our dear friend Roy (RIP).

Lots of great hiking this week… alternating days between Devil’s Lake State Park and Mirror Lake State Park in Wisconsin.