7 Miles to Empty

November 1, 2023 – Day 34

We said goodbye to family and Phoenix, stopping in Peoria which just north of town to meet up with our friend Jay for lunch. We had planned on a half day drive from that point.

Lunch was great, we bid goodbye to Jay and hit the road. And then we hit Phoenix traffic. We aren’t sure exactly how but lost half an hour with traffic.

Back to the title of the blog, 7 Miles to Empty. When we drove to Phoenix we knew we had a Pilot with RV lanes on the way out of town. After a few hairy experiences both with the trailer and the RV we learned that using “RV friendly” places was key. We had enough gas and miles of travel available to reach the RV friendly place. But now we had added the lunch excursion and the heavy traffic. It was getting dicey. We pulled into the Pilot gas station and the trip computer read 7 miles to go. There was still a huge safety margin with 7.5 gallons in the tank which is only about 50 miles. Not a big deal if you’re tooling around in places that it’s hundreds of miles between gas stations. And even then it’s not a sure thing. But now we know what “E” looks like and how many miles are left. Neither of us want to test it to empty.

Oh, and we got a new high score!

Then we drove by pretty scenery. There’s a lot of pretty scenery out here. Lots. So much so it gets kind of mundane.

There’s not much more to say about the day. Travel days are boring for the most part. We realized at some point that we stopped seeing Saguaro cacti! We’d changed ecosystems. The cacti were the Mesquite Trees (susan here: yep. the same mesquite you BBW with.)

We had left Peoria later than we had planned and once again found ourselves driving at sunset. This time we were heading east so it wasn’t in our eyes!

It was beautiful. And Paul wasn’t wearing glasses! He took his sunglasses off. That cataract surgery really made life easier for him.

Remember how dreadful the headlights were? One of the small changes/repairs we did in Phoenix was to put new LED bulbs in. They are much nicer. We can SEE things!

Daily: 215

Return Total: 215

Return Overall Miles/Day: 215

Return Driving Miles/Day: 215

Overall Total: 3,351

Total Driving Miles/Day: 305

Life Birds: Lincoln’s Sparrow, Common Gallinule (Both seen at the Tres Rios wetlands while we were visiting in Phoenix)

mpg: 7.0