We Get the Knock
April 14-15, 2024 – Day 27 & 28
Homolovi State Park Campground, Winslow Arizona – White Tank Mountain Regional Park, Waddell Arizona
We got up early trying to escape the forecasted high winds. We had more than enough gas to get to Phoenix but when Paul checked the prices he found about a $0.60/gallon difference between Winslow and Phoenix. We were also going to need to fill the propane and suspected it would be equally as expensive in Phoenix. We topped up both tanks and headed off to Phoenix hoping to be parked before the winds picked up.
We headed west on I-40 toward Flagstaff where it meets up with I-17S into Phoenix. Neither of us was looking forwards to this. There is an 18 mile downhill run where you drop from 7,000 to about 2,000 feet. This isn’t fun. But we got to approach those great mountains we named yesterday. It is quite a treat driving towards them. Last year they were lush and green but there were several prescribed burns so the air was smoky.
Today the sky was crystal clear and the mountains were snow capped.
Long, steep downhill driving in the RV is tough. The RV wants to gain speed and at the same time you don’t want to ride the brakes. So we’d let it climb to 60-65mph and then brake fairly hard down to 50-55mph. The transmission is always in “tow-haul” mode so braking means the engine does the downshifts and revs (sometimes up to 4,000 or more rpm). It’s nerve-wracking and it’s noisy. The passenger monitors tire temperatures. At the top they were in the mid-60s, which was air temperature, but 18 miles later were were in the mid 90s. This is good, it meant we weren’t cooking our brakes.
Every mile there is a sign telling you how many miles you have left, and there are a few less steep sections where the signs tell you to let your brakes cool. We happily pulled into the rest area at the bottom of the steep part because it was lunchtime.
In the past we’ve referred to “dinner and a show.” This is when we watch someone pulling into their camping spot during a meal. It is fun watch others go through the same backing up and leveling machinations we all go through. Well, today we had a very different type of show.
We’re getting ready to pull out and Susan comments, “That’s a lot of sheriff cars.” It was a state trooper plus 3 AZ sheriffs no lights or sirens and zipping through the parking lot. A minute or two later Paul grabbed his binoculars and saw a LEO backing away quickly with his gun drawn! Susan went and got her binoculars and we were both at the front of the coach watching. Soon they all had guns out, standing behind their SUV doors. (susan here: how very “Hollywood” of them.)
At that point we decided to leave immediately. This show was too dangerous to hang around and watch.
Some DOT personnel were directing traffic away. Curiously, a couple of people insisted on forward instead of the direction away from the standoff.
You can see the police action in the distance.
Susan was driving away at a brisk pace and Paul was shooting, uhh, bad word, Paul was taking pictures.
The muddy black car was the one they were pointing at.
The exit ramp also had an unmarked SUV pointing the wrong way up the ramp, presumably to block or ram the black car if they fled.
It was an exciting morning, that’s for sure!
But wait, there’s more!
We had a completely uneventful drive to Maricopa County’s White Tank Mountain Regional Park which is just north west of Phoenix. This is only a bit more than 10 minutes further away than the commercial park we stayed in the past few visits. It is about 1/3 the price, you only get electric and water hookups, no sewer. Not exactly convenient but not a deal breaker either. But the best thing about this place? No sound of jets taking off or landing from Luke AFB! It’s blissfully quiet here. It is also gorgeous here. Look at the road in.
You drive through 4 miles of this to go from the ranger station to the campground. It is lovely. Look at the view out our windshield while parked. Instead of feeling like sardines the sites are quite far apart. We find that happens a lot in state and national parks.
Paul set up his antenna.
We headed into town to meetup with Paul’s daughter and son-in-law to be. They lent us their car since we’re dropping the Jeep off at the dealership in the morning. The park’s gates close at 8pm, but that’s ok. We have a gate code! (susan: sure, we have a code. BUT…)
We have a gate code. Only it the wrong one. One of the numbers is so poorly written Paul tries all the numbers, 0-9. No luck. Susan comments, “This is how the horror movies begin. Two people, alone in the desert at night.”
It’ i’s 4 miles from this gate to the RV. There are scary monsters out there, not just cute bunnies and lizards, but man-eating tigers, and anacondas, and even Sasquatch. (susan here: There are Puma, Javelinas and coyotes. And I don’t want to meet up in the dark with any of them.) We called the sheriff’s office and were on hold for about 3 minutes. They eventually answered but had trouble understanding our predicament. “Are you on Olive Street?” Paul responds, “We’re not from around here, we don’t know where Olive Street is. Our GPS got us here.” We solved the problem by telling the dispatcher that we were next to the library, which happens to be at the park’s gate. The dispatcher was just about to dispatch an officer, since that’s what dispatchers do, and that officer would let us in using the Fire Department’s code. (Paul is really proud of working dispatch into a single sentence that many times.) Buy then another camper pulled in behind us. Paul went to inquire what they had for a code. It was different than what we had! It turns out the code changes weekly on Tuesdays. We arrived on Sunday. They should have given us both codes. Susan punched the code in, the gate opened and onward we drive. There will be no horror movies depicting us walking 4 miles through the desert with attack bunnies waiting in ambush on a dark and lonely road.
Now about “The Knock”…
Paul was jolted out of bed around 6:20 the next morning. He heard a knock. He listened and heard it again. You see, temporarily we have 2 cars here now and only one tag. By this time Susan was awake. We can’t figure out why they’re knocking so early. Nobody at the door. Nobody out the windows. But it sure is lovely outside. Well…we’re up, right?
We both got quickly dressed, grabbed our binoculars and went outside to watch the birds. Merlin informs us that we should be able to see the Gilded Flicker. It’s pretty similar to some of the other birds. We heard it, we saw one of these similar species but we couldn’t be sure. (susan here: I went to get the link to the bird where we were able to see both of them in a side by side picture. Wow it’s easy to tell them apart once you know how! However, you can see why we’d be confused.)
Then we heard the knock again but it was somewhere else. Turns out that it’s one of the woodpeckers or flickers hammering on a metal roof that covers the camp hosts’ RVs! Later we caught one hammering on our power pedestal just below our bedroom window. That’s surely what woke Paul up.
That’s it for blogging for a week. No blogging during family time. We’re leaving on Sunday just to go up to Star Valley and visit our friend Jay, then we head down to Brawley California to learn about the kids work. We’ll resume blogging on the 21st or 22nd.
Daily: 218
Total: 3,246
Driving Miles/Day: 271
Overall Miles/Day: 101
mpg: 6.60