Category: 2020

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.

To send Kristina a comment, email turning51bykristina@gmail.com

The next day we decided to hike along the bottom of the canyon. We took lots of water, sunscreen, and a small lunch. Because it was quite hot, we set off as early as I was willing to get going (which wasn’t all that early).

At the base of some of the cliffs water dripped and ferns grew right there in the desert wash! If you look at the bottom of the photo, you can see how small John looks. And that picture doesn’t include the top half of the cliff wall. It was huge.

We hadn’t gone very far when we came to this small slot canyon. John eyed it with interest. I knew he wanted to get down in there. It was only about 15 feet deep.

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Then John wanted to go up a side canyon, which turned out to be inaccessible from the canyon floor. However, a little further up the canyon we found a place to get up onto the bench that lead into the side canyon.

In the side canyon we found a water hole.

The sides were steep and I worried about John getting too close and sliding in. Just then he spotted a tiny frog. Of course he started trying to catch the frog.

Suddenly he slipped and started to slide toward the hole! He was fine, but I was like, “Aaaaah!!! What did I tell you?!?” Ugh. He’s just like a kid sometimes.

At the head of the canyon we found an incredible grotto; an enormous overhang and underneath was cool, shaded, wet and echoed with constant dripping.

We ate lunch in the grotto and started back to the van. When we stepped out of the oasis, the intense desert heat hit us hard. Definitely time to start back!

Here’s John looking for cell tower. We had no cell connection at all in this entire region. It was strange to go three days completely unable to contact the outside world. Amazing to remember that used to be common before cell phones.

Here’s where we climbed back down off the bench. It was easier than I thought it would be.

Desert rock surfing. I think the heat was getting to us. “Surf that wave, baby!”

When I took this next picture, I assumed the moth was dead.

But then a brief breeze overturned him, and he started struggling. We righted him and poured a bit of water out at his feet before continuing down the canyon. I assume he never made it, but who knows.

When we got back to the entrance of the small slot canyon, John decided to walk down it.

I stayed topside. I have no interest in slot canyons, caves and other tight spaces.

About halfway down the slot canyon, John paused considering the mud. He wasn’t in his hiking boots, and didn’t want to get his tennis shoes muddy. I walked ahead a few feet and peered down from up on the bench, trying to gauge the extent of the mud at the bottom.

Oh shit. That’s not just mud, there’s a big damn snake down there. “Back up, go back, get out!” John briefly considered scaling the wall, gave up and retraced his steps while I stood and stared down at the gigantic snake.

We stood safely above it, evaluating. Enormous rattlesnake or just a big, harmless bull snake?

We decided probably just a bull snake, but we weren’t going to mess with it.

We continued on in the heat. By then it was mid-day and around 100 degrees.

Almost back to the van…

By the time we got back, we knew it had been too long of a hike for me, even though there was no significant elevation gain. I am still recovering from the cancer treatment and don’t have the stamina that I used to have. I had a migraine for a couple of days afterwards, but still, I’m grateful I was able to go on such an adventure.

The next morning we packed up and headed back through the culvert and south toward Arizona.

To send Kristina a comment, email turning51bykristina@gmail.com

After giving up on our initial Utah destination due to impassibly deep sand, we headed further south toward some canyons we had visited before. The first time we were in this particular location, a year or two ago, we couldn’t take the road John had wanted to try because it was under water after a rare rainstorm. It’s been very dry, so our plan was to try again.

Do you see that little slot below the highway guardrail? John’s plan was to drive through that. In a 9′ tall camper van!

I was like, what? No way! That doesn’t even look like a road!

We crept down towards it anyway.

At this point I got out of the van to take pictures (and to avoid getting stuck in a van in a culvert).

Piece ‘o cake. That little slot was bigger than it looked like to me.

Turns out it was an official road.

With a good surface.

We drove a short distance away from the highway and into the hills and called it good enough.

We could still hear the highway in the distance, but it was not a busy road, not like the freeway of the previous night.

We got the van leveled out the old fashioned way, by driving up onto a pile of rocks.

It was a pretty spot.

To send Kristina a comment, email turning51bykristina@gmail.com

In Utah, the semi trucks are allowed to pull three trailers at once. I didn’t take any pictures of that, but I thought it was nuts. They were like little trains speeding along the freeway.

And it wasn’t just the truckers. When we stopped for gas, I saw this rig; a pickup pulling an enormously long RV, which was in turn, pulling a trailer with an ATV on it. The owners (a couple of big gnarly dudes) were giving me the hard stare as I stood by our van surveying their rig(s), so I had to take my pictures surreptitiously. I couldn’t get it all in one picture.

Here’s the front half (as seen through our van window):

Here’s the back half, with an ATV on a trailer attached to the extra-long RV trailer. And that sort of set-up wasn’t even all that uncommon!

For the first night, we had picked an area we had never been to before (always a risk). From google satellite view we knew there were orange and pink rock canyons, and dirt roads leading away from the highway into the canyons.

What we didn’t count on was the depth of the sand. Here’s John determining whether the van can proceed.

Yep, deep sand. We crossed the freeway and tried to go the other direction instead. More deep sand.

It was getting late, so we decided to stay the night there, even though the sand was too deep to get very far off the freeway.

It was a nice canyon.

John’s always happy at a canyon’s edge.

Here’s John trying to get enough cell reception to plan the next day’s trip. We didn’t want to continue to stay so close to the freeway.

Here’s the road we would have taken, had there not been so much loose sand. You can see the sky is still hazy from the smoke, but it was a lot better than in had been in California.

Smoky canyon sunset.

To send Kristina a comment, email turning51bykristina@gmail.com