One Month of the Traveling Lounsburys and The Experience: 

• So great to visit with friends and family we haven’t seen for YEARS or even just a few weeks.
• Love the site seeing. SURPRISE: Arizona is much more amazing, beautiful and varied than I ever realized. We thought it was basically a big sand box with a lot of cacti. Using the National Parks is providing a great structure of places to focus on, but visiting the National Monuments is providing many unexpected surprises as far a history, geology and filling in many details of the surrounding area.
• RV Parks all have their own personality. Some are much friendlier than others…in fact the friendliest ones are the ones that have the most long-stay RV’ers. I think they are looking for new blood! Kind of like visiting churches.
• SUPRISE: It’s been much cooler than I expected. I know that I didn’t pay attention to the memo that states, “it’s cold in the desert at night”, but in general, it has been 5-10 degrees cooler than average and windy…wintering in the SW is mostly about getting away from the snow!
  • This could be one reason we haven’t seen ANY rattlesnakes…which is good!
  • Also, we haven’t had many crowded places other than Sedona on Spring Break week.
• Driving the “Big Rig (Liv)”
  • We have to pre-plan all our travels with Liv. She takes up a lot of room when we need to park, is picky about tight corners and is not all the cooperative about going backwards (hum, I guess most of us feel that way). I usually bring up Google Maps in “satellite mode” so that we can check out the parking lots for access before we even go into them.
  • Diesel is way more expensive than gas and can vary considerably from station to station, like up to $.30 – .80/gallon and many stations charge $.05 more to use credit card. The APP, Gas Buddy, is our best friend on the road.
  • The truck (Vigo) loves Liv and pulls her around with great ease, even in the wind–that is probably one of our greatest reliefs.
  • The backup camera electric taped (we are soooo channeling my dad in this RV experience) to rear view mirror is one of the best investments that we made for “upgrades”.
  • SURPRISE: We are spending wayyyyyy more time in Liv that we imagined–between it still getting dark early and the cool weather, we are so happy to have the amount of space that we have as we aren’t outside other than for our site seeing adventures.
  • We have yet to “boondock” or dry camp, that is coming up in Joshua Tree NP the beginning of April…that will be interesting as we already spend a lot of time obsessing over all the tanks that need filling and dumping and we are hooked up to resources!
• REALITY CHECK:
  • There is a lot of planning and re-planning that is currently going on with this trip. It is a lot of work, especially with inconsistent Wi-Fi connections.
  • Expectations need to be managed, mostly mine!
  • It feels like Tom and I are starting from ground zero as newlyweds with getting used to each other’s pet peeves (There are new ones!) 🙂
• BOTTOM LINE: Its all worth it, especially for the unexpected and serendipitous events that pop up over the course of each day.

Standard Mall Parkinglot Strategy

Arizona Sunset

Zane Gray RV Resort in Camp Verde

Free Range Goats in one Camp Ground

Rear Camera Eletric Taped to Rear View Mirror

Black Canyon RV Park just North of Phoenix

Block Party at Sunrise RV Resort in Apache Junction–we were invited!