Heading home (California epic van trip, Post 14)

As I mentioned a few posts ago, we’re now back in Albuquerque. But I still have one final story to tell you about our epic van trip.

After our Utah camping trip, the next step was to swing through Tucson to close on our new house. We were able to sign the paperwork online ahead of time. But we wanted to be there for the final walk-thru, and to collect the keys after it records.

On the way down to Tucson we decided to camp for the night just north of Flagstaff, rather than trying to do the whole trip in one day. It sounded like a good idea at the time. And it would have been except the freeway was closed the next morning, delaying us considerably. The traffic was backed up for miles and miles, and even when the freeway cleared, we remained in a thick band of condensed traffic the whole rest of the way to Tucson. The trip was hot, slow, and miserable.

Turns out we should have driven straight through the previous day, but there’s no way to predict these things. The camping north of Flagstaff was fine. Not particularly interesting, but quite accessible. We’d go there again if needing a place to stay on our way down to Tucson.

Since we planned to go straight back to Albuquerque as soon as we finished taking possession of the new house in Tucson, we rented an airbnb for the night or two between doing the final walk-thru and being given the keys. We rented another stand-alone guest house. Because of covid risk, we like these little detached properties that don’t share an air supply with a main house or building.

It’s nice when we can get an actual southwestern style, purpose-built casita, because they tend to be larger than the converted detached garages that are more common further north. But since it was only for a day or two, we just got a little place that was indeed once a garage, near to where our new house is located. It was cute and clean inside, although very small with zero closet space.

As a bonus, the airbnb had a pool. We were happy to note they had a little bit of bougainvillea growing. John and I have both always loved bougainvillea and are looking forward to planting it near our pool too.

Our new pool looks washed-out and bleak compared to theirs. Not sure if it’s the quality or color of the interior surface (ours is apparently fairly low end), or if it’s the lack of shade, or what. I don’t know anything about pools, and I don’t know what (if anything) would make ours look better. Although I’m sure the yard will be a lot nicer once we get the dead grass removed and some things planted. I also plan to repaint the exterior walls back there. It’s an odd assortment of colors.

Overall I feel fairly optimistic about our ability to fairly inexpensively improve the backyard. We’ve generally done well with landscaping in the past. Where we struggle is interior remodeling – so we’re planning to put that off for awhile, and not do much to the interior right away.

Our pool doesn’t have a waterfall either, but that’s ok. John and I figure if we end up liking Tucson, and if I’m still alive and kicking by the time he’s ready to retire, we can sell both the Albuquerque house and the Tucson house and buy a nicer house in a few years if we want to.

After getting our keys we took one last look around, got it all locked up, and headed back to Albuquerque. We’ve hired a pool service to care for the pool for now at least, since we won’t always be there.

Satisfied with the condition of everything at the new house, we locked up and started back to Albuquerque. We had gotten as far as Hatch, New Mexico, when John first noticed an odd sound to the engine. We pulled into a city park, he took a look under the hood and didn’t see anything, so we continued onward. About an hour later, on an empty stretch of freeway just south of Socorro, and only about 2 hours from home, something went clunk and the engine suddenly sounded like a fleet of motorcycles. Something was very wrong! We pulled over to the side of the freeway.

I was all for calling AAA. We pay extra for high-end AAA service that includes long distance towing and towing of RVs and trailers. No better time to use it than when stuck on the side of the freeway, right? We even had cell reception!

But first John wanted to do diagnostics. He checked under the hood, and then crawled under the van.

This is what he found when he crawled under the van. Doesn’t take an expert to tell that isn’t right! How in the world did that even happen?

Now we can call AAA, right? But John didn’t want to wait who-knows-how-long for a tow. He proposed wiring it together if he could find a piece of wire along the side of the road. I gave him a look and went to find my phone. But before I could even retrieve my phone from the van and call for help, he had found a very nice piece of heavy-duty fence wire.

The found wire somehow cinched the issue, although I still thought AAA was a very viable option. He crawled back under the van to wire it together while I stood along the side of the road and exchanged eye-roll text messages with our dog sitter about the joys of being married to an engineer.

The wire job kept the van running, but we did have some exhaust seeping into the cab, and it still sounded like a fleet of motorcycles. By the end of the trip I had another migraine and we were very glad to be home.

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