Baby It’s Cold Outside

March 17, 2020 – Day 30

On the trip to Phoenix we had a deadline, we just saw what miles we could make and we made those. Going home was going to be different. (Ominous Music Here) Going back without a deadline means we can go wherever we want and whenever we want, right? Right?

Old Man Winter is in no hurry to leave.

Although this season has been a milder winter for the eastern two-thirds of the United States, the final days before spring officially begins on Monday, March 20, will be marked by harsh cold from the Arctic that will make its presence felt as far south as southern Texas, AccuWeather meteorologists say.

And then they showed this map.

This has put a real crimp in our travel plans. We can’t go to:

• Grand Canyon
• Bryce Canyon (forecasts to 8 degrees!)
• Petrified Forest National Park
• Meteor Crater
• The Very Large Array
• Winslow AZ

Well, I’m a standing on a corner in Winslow, Arizona
And such a fine sight to see
It’s a girl, my Lord, in a flatbed Ford
Slowin’ down to take a look at me

We can’t even go to to the site where Travis Walton was abducted by a UFO!

Basically, all we can do is head south until it is warm.

Friday morning got off to great start. We were all up and an hour early to our breakfast at the Pinon Cafe in Payson AZ. The the necessary errands started.

First I had to get the trailer ready to go, the off to the free dump station. I’m glad I got there early, when I left there were 6 rigs jockeying for position. I got gas there also which was tight. Then to Safeway to stock up. Once there I remembered I wanted to buy a cactus last time I was in, so back in and bought one.

I showed my daughter the picture and she wanted to know what I named it. Spiny Norman, of course. But Susan liked Kevin, you see Kevin is the smart, aka “sharp” Minion, and in the interest of compromise I named him Norman.

Then I had to find some water at a nearby campground. At least they had cool touristy artifacts to look at while I filled up.

But here’s where the ominous music builds to a crescendo. We wanted to leave by 11, 11:30 at the latest and Payson is a destination for others on the weekends. All the errands took forever to do. I don’t recall exactly but we didn’t leave until 12:15 or 12:30 or so. This was bad since the winery we were staying at closed at 5 and the GPS was estimating 4:49, and we knew we needed to stop for gas and lunch.

We headed south through the Tonto National Forest but quickly turned south east which went along Lake Roosevelt, a man made lake. The scenery were stunning along the way.

We gradually left the elevations and went into the valley. (We then climbed up out again!)

Along the way Kevin joined us for a selfie. Yes, Kevin, I called him Kevin so I guess we really did compromise.

We passed on the north side of Mount Graham, we passed to its sound on the westbound trip.

We pulled into the winery at 5:15 to find a closed gate. Sigh. Wilcox AZ is wine country though and there was another harvest host around the corner with lots of campers parked in it. So we headed there and went inside.

We spoke with the server and they said that they could only hold 7 RVs. We got on the free Wifi and sure enough it was booked. By this time we had heard back from the original winery, the gate is closed but unlocked!

We had pizza and a Susan had an local beer, I didn’t like any of their beers and the wine was insanely expensive, $12 to $30 a glass, yes a glass, not per bottle.

The beer was bad and it matched the pizza. Oh, did I mention the service was slow. It was over 50 minutes from when we sat down until our food arrived. It was now getting dark.

At least we got a good sunset when we left.

The Idiot Box, aka our Garmin GPS, had us take a weird way to get to the original winery. A wrong weird way and now it was pitch black. There were side roads to cross over but we rejected all of them, one I even examined on foot. We could attempt them during the day but they felt like tractor roads. So we just turned around and used our memory to get there.

Tomorrow should be another short day to Las Cruses, right?

Daily: 288

Return Total: 403

Overall Total: 3,903

Miles/Day: 288

New Life Birds: 6 — Acorn Woodpecker, Western Bluebird, American Wigeon, Black Phoebe, Bushtit, Evening Grosbeak