#3 Sunday Morning Musings and Mimosa 1/22/23

Two New States…

Arizona

Now that we are out of California and more than just a few miles away from home (approximately 850 miles traveled), we feel as if the adventure has really begun. We left Joshua Tree on Monday and we were headed to Catalina State Park in Tucson, Arizona…Or so we thought! We were about an hour into the drive and I received an email from the park canceling our reservation because the road in and out of the park was flooded! “What the heck?” (Well that’s not quite what I said…) But I digress, we immediately began to “Work the Problem” which has affectionately become one of our mottos. There is a great scene in the movie Apollo 13 that makes this reference, it is worth watching.

We remembered that when we bought the motor coach at La Mesa RV in Tucson, that we stayed right across the street at the Tucson LazyDays KOA. I called them and asked if they took in strays as our reservations at Catalina State Park had been canceled. They laughed and said we weren’t the only ones trying to find a new home for a few days. As it turned out, I’m really glad that we weren’t able to get into Catalina State Park, as I read an article in the local paper that there were many campers stranded in the park until Friday, January 20th when they could get the road cleared!

Hot Tip #1-Just know that plans can change and go with the flow. Don’t get yourself worked up about it. Who knows what new adventures might await. I was really proud of how we handled this sudden itinerary change.

We had a nice time in Tucson, again, in spite of the continued rain! We had a surprise visit from our good friends Craig and Valerie from our home town of Carlsbad, CA. They were there visiting family and saw from the blog that we were about 10 minutes away from them. We shared a lovely bottle of wine from Paso Robles and got to meet their new puppy Elsa!

Hot Tip #2-Carry plenty of wine on board for surprise visits!

Another pleasant surprise was the BBQ Restaurant at the campground who had a wonderful duo playing good ol’ country music. We enjoyed yummy smoked BBQ Brisket and the local craft beer.

New Mexico

We pulled into Deming, New Mexico on Wednesday and stayed at an adorable Harvest Host: D.H. Lescombes Winery. Damn it is cold in New Mexico this week-but the rain has stopped and for that we are grateful! The night temperature was 24 degrees and windy! Yep, that’s below freezing! Which would ordinarily not be a problem, but remember we are without the ability to plug into power, we are working solely off of battery power. (which technically would be the case at any Harvest Host, as it is considered “dry camping” and no electricity provided.) We are getting very creative with ways to conserve battery power. More on that later…We had a great wine tasting and purchased 3 bottles of Hatch Green Chili Wine-Hey, we are in the Hatch Green Chili Capital of the World.

Hot Tip #3: Take advantage of the local cuisine and local spirits! This is one of the things that we have most been looking forward to experiencing on this trip. In fact we have a whole section of the blog titled “Le Pneu Michelin Star”. (You’ll need to read the blog to find out how Peder came up with that title)

Traveled to White Sands National Park on Thursday and stayed in Alamogordo, New Mexico for 3 nights. OMG, White Sands National Park is like nothing you have ever seen before. 275 square miles of thin white gypsum sand creating great wave-like dunes. It’s in the middle of the desert and you just look at it and say how did it get here. It absolutely looks like hills covered in snow-in fact people sled down the hills, just like they would do on a snow covered hill. It really is breathtaking and the pictures do NOT do it justice. We drove through the park in Coach Addy and pulled over next to one of the dunes for lunch. Stunning-Now this is an adventure!

Hot Tip #4: Seize every opportunity afforded to you! We are staying at the Alamogordo White Sands KOA and they have live music on Friday night in their rec room, a local BlueGrass Band. Peder and I decided we would head over for Date Night at the KOA! Our expectations were low, but we figured what the heck. It’s BYOB (Bring your own Beverage), so we made ourselves a cocktail and headed over to the rec room. When we arrived, it quickly became apparent that we were by far the youngest people in the room, including the “band” whose average age was about 85 years old-no joke! It was standing room only, apparently The Jammers have quite a local following. It didn’t take us long to discover why-they are really good!! About 30 minutes into the performance Peder and I looked at each other and actually had tears in our eyes…

THIS is what we envisioned our trip to be like. Pulling into a town and experiencing the local culture and all the good that this country has to offer. This moment was magical-So Americana, So Beautiful, So Emotional! Oh and I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that one of the groupies was celebrating her 94th birthday. She lives alone up in the mountains and every Friday night one of the band members picks her up and brings her to wherever they are playing. They had birthday cake and punch for all to share. Apparently her favorite song is I wanna be a Cowboy (of course they change the words to I wanna be a Cowgirl) and she gets up and “throws a lasso” when they play her song. The crowd loves it!

The best Date Night I've ever had! I doubt that the video will evoke the same emotion as the live performance, but I have included a couple of clips for your viewing and listening pleasure. Their last song is always Amazing Grace…and it was amazing. Special place in my heart for this song, as it was my Nana’s favorite song to play on the piano.

And what would a trip to Alamogordo be without a stop at the New Mexico Museum of Space History AND my favorite tourist attraction PistachioLand, USA! The Space Museum was quite fascinating and educational. But McGinn’s Pistachio Tree Ranch (and winery) was the bomb! Free pistachio samples and free wine tasting along with a very informative golf cart tour of the ranch and production facilities. Treated ourselves to a Pistachio ice cream. Oh, and the BEST part, the ranch is “Home of the World’s Largest Pistachio”! Hmmm, I wonder what the secret ingredient will be for Baker Pedee's next baking video?

Hot Tip #5: Creative solutions for saving battery power: 1) One of the biggest energy draws is your refrigerator, the other being the heater. We aren’t big TV watchers, so we are ok limiting our TV. Most campgrounds (except for Harvest Hosts) have electrical hookups (remember our Transfer Switch is not working, so we can’t draw power from the 30 or 50 amp shore power pedestal…but we can draw power from the 110 on the pedestal with an extension cord. Soooo, we have a long extension cord that comes from the pedestal into the bedroom window and then into the kitchen and we can plug the refrigerator directly into that extension cord-Voilá-we are not using battery power for the refrigerator! This one trick has allowed us to be able to do just about everything we need to do on battery. And remember, when you drive, you recharge your batteries to full capacity and we are discovering that our solar panels (now that the rain has stopped) produce a lot of battery power each day. We are doing just fine and feel very proud of ourselves for “working this problem” and refining the solutions each day. Good News: We have an appointment with an RV Repair place in Boerne, Texas which is where our daughter Betina lives and we were planning on staying there for a couple of weeks. So hopefully, Coach Addy will be good as new by the next post!

Lesson Learned: Simplifying brings peace.

Bummer of the Week: We didn’t get to experience Catalina State Park and we were really looking forward to staying inside the park. The camp site looked beautiful and peaceful. Oh well, things could have been worse (see above).

Highlight(s) of the Week: The surprise visit by Craig and Valerie, one of our hopes is that we will have friends join us along the way and we can hook up with friends and family across the country! It’s always best when you can share your adventure with others. The Country duo in Tucson, Hatch Green Chili Wine, White Sands National Park and above all, the amazing BlueGrass band on Friday night! It’s hard to believe that so much happens in a week, and yet you also have time to take it slow, relax, read, write, take a walk and simply treasure each moment.

Cheers!

Julie

Next Stop-Texas!!