The Trip

Ok, time to get my big girl pants on and actually write about our trip! I will have to say writing that last blog really helped me quite a bit….not sure that it was fun to read and maybe some day I will just go back and delete that post!

Minnesota to Nebraska

After our night stay at Lake Shetek State Park, we headed towards Nebraska, still not 100% sure if we would go through the Denver area, or head more south. Nebraska is not the most exciting state to drive through but it was doable. We stayed at a KOA in Grand Island Nebraska where we stayed one other time on our MN to AZ trip. It is kind of nice because they make their own pizza there and deliver it to your camper if you order it, which is what we did. Made for an easy dinner choice! 🙂

As you can see by this pictures, and what we saw a lot of while we traveled west, the haziness of the sky and the hazy sunsets!! This was mostly from the fires that were out west at this time. Even driving during the day was often hazy. So sad to hear about all the fires!!

Nebraska to Colorado

Our next overnight stay was in Colorado at one of their state parks – North Sterling State Park. First, back to the beginning of this trip — I had a full trip planned out with optional campgrounds at each stop and planning to take about 12 days to get back to AZ. Well, our plans changed in that we decided we wanted to get back as soon as we could. This meant making on the spur camping decision depending on the number of miles we decided to drive during the day. Usually the night before we would look at options (4, 5 or 6 hours of driving) and I would have that list with me in the truck to start calling once we decided when we wanted to stop. As we got closer to the weekend, this became more nerve wrecking as campgrounds that I had as options were now filling up!! This is not the way I prefer to travel, so my anxiety levels were quite elevated until I had a confirmation in hand for that night’s stay.

I thought it would be nice to stay at a CO State Park, but as I started to search on the state park website, I was finding many were already full, until I came to North Sterling State Park, which also happened to be Colorado’s newest state park. They had electricity at the site, but we would have to get potable water and dump when we were leaving, which was fine. You could tell it was pretty new, but even it was starting to get full as the evening went on. It was on a reservoir so it was nice to see water.

Again the hazy sunsets! The sand burrs were horrible here!! Tried to keep Max out of the areas where I suspected the burrs, but always came back to the camper and pulled off at least 5 burrs. And they HURT to pull off!!

Colorado to New Mexico

It was great to start to see the mountains along our drive again…even the mountains were blanketed in that haze.

As we were driving, I started to try to find campgrounds that would be along our route. This time it was really challenging trying to find something. I use an app – Campground Reviews – to usually help try to find a place. It was starting to get to the point that we could not make it as far as Las Vegas, NM or even Santa Fe, NM, so I was almost getting desperate.

Then I saw a review, with high ratings, for the NRA Whittington Center not far off the freeway that we were on. I said to David, what do you think about staying at an NRA campgrounds where there are shooting ranges and live firing may be going on. He was fine with it so I called and she said come right on over there were plenty of sites available. We had a good pull through site that over looked one of the long firing ranges. It was quiet that night, but the next morning some competitions were underway. It was a strange place, for a campground, but was definitely interesting. When we checked in the lady told us to be aware because a bear had been spotted recently. Oh great!! What is it with me and bears! Well I figured with every camper around us probably armed, we would be protected if a bear wandered in! 🙂

New Mexico to Arizona

We knew we would not want to push doing the rest of the drive in one day and getting in late at our house, so we decided to find a place to camp about 2-3 hours from the house. So I found a KOA – Holbrook/Petrified Forrest in AZ that would fit that criteria perfectly!! We decided to treat ourselves and upgrade to a patio site!! Unfortunately, there was an accident on the freeway, which backed us up for about an hour so we could not have a little camp fire when we got there as we had hoped, but we still both enjoyed our morning coffee sitting out there. We actually discussed staying there another day, but knew we were so close we might as well just head out.

When we travel again, we thought we would try to reserve one of these sites again. We have seen a couple options like this in other KOA’s, but this KOA definitely had the best ones, and a lot of them!! Kind of fun that there is a fence between each of these patio sites too — KOA’s are often close together sites.

Arizona

The next day we headed to our house and got there just after noon. Just like when we left, where the temps were in the 100’s, when we got there the temps were well into the 90’s — makes for HOT unloading!

Kaydence and Jaxen

I know I always post cute pictures of Jaxen as part of the P.S., but wanted to post this one from last weekend. This is Jaxen and Kaydence — Kaydence is his cousin (Jermar’s sister, Tell’s daughter) – he loves to take peoples hands as he would always take mine as we would go downstairs to play.

Jackie and Jermar told me that Kaydence had an excellent soccer game that afternoon — showed some great skills, and was having a lot of fun. Their team played another game later that day, and an opposing player tripped Kaydence and she ended up breaking her arm in 2 places!! Sounds like her soccer season is over!

Well I think that is it for now! Stay safe and stay healthy!

TIFN