Back to Arizona

While parked in front of Brett’s place, two weeks ago, we experienced the pranks of high school students during Elk River’s Homecoming week.  The senior class and the junior class were competing with each other to see which could spread toilet paper on the trees at the most homes of the other class.  Sophia is a Junior this year, and the Seniors came to visit on Tuesday night.  In addition to TP-ing a tree in their front lawn, they also spread a lot of mustard on our pickup and the motorhome.  Wednesday morning the hose came out and the mustard got washed off.  We had a concern that it may have left a shadow on the protective 3M film on the nose of the motorhome.  Since we planned to stop at the Winnebago factory anyway, we added that concern to our list.

We spent one night without hookups (called “boondocking”) at the factory and were taken care of quickly the next morning (at no cost)!  Thursday night was spent in southern Iowa, and Friday night in southern Missouri, before getting to the Nomads’ Annual Meeting at Agricenter International just east of Memphis TN on Saturday.  We had a great time there, meeting old friends and making new ones.  Early in the week, before the business meetings and seminars began, we had a field trip to the Lorraine Motel, which was the place where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated, and which is now the location of the National Civil Rights Museum.  We spent about 3 hours here, but it could have been even longer since there is so much to see and read.

After most of the week full of meetings and seminars, we took Friday off to do laundry and prepare for our trip west.  It had rained a lot while we were in the Memphis area, and we were parked on grass.  Friday was a good day for the ground to dry up and we pulled out on Saturday with no problems.  We had planned for 5 driving days of about 300 miles each to get to Paula and Tom’s place in Arizona.  Saturday evening we pulled into a small campground near the Oklahoma/Arkansas border and were surprised to see another Nomad couple setting up their 5^th wheel.  They had arrived just a few minutes before us.  We had dinners on our own, but went out together for dessert at Braum’s Ice Cream.

While we were headed west, Hurricane Rosa was aiming toward Baja California, and later dropping lots of rain on Phoenix.  Last night we stopped just outside of Flagstaff Arizona as the last of the rain moved out of Phoenix.  Today was a much easier drive to Paula and Tom’s place than yesterday would have been.

So now we are once more in their driveway and will be here for a few months, while fall finishes and winter comes to the north.  Us “snowbirds” should be warm and dry here in Arizona through the end of the year, and then some.