Good morning road warriors! I’m back in Benson and so happy to have my home base to chill out. I had the best trip to Michigan and Susan and I travelled really well together. It was a blast and I enjoyed the entire 28 days on the road. I was happy to get home, though and to get back into some routines. First was to determine my expenses for this trip. Some statistics: I travelled 5,754 miles to and from Michigan. We made it to the most northern point, Whitefish Point, of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Here is a picture of my map BEFORE:
AFTER:
That’s pretty exciting! So the other statistic was that my expenses totaled: $3,366.60. Gas being the most expensive: $1,271.86. Nightly fees came next: $988.62. That is an average of $35 a night. Glad we had some “free” nights at Walmart. I was pleasantly surprised how easy those nights were. I was glad I was with Susan though. The last one was in Fond Du Lac, WI and it was too hot, so it was good we had electric for the remaining 5 days. My AC in Mama Bear is REALLY LOUD! It does cool down the rig, but the noise is pretty bad. I usually turn it on for an hour or so to chill the place and then just turn it off until it gets too hot again. I never had to sleep with the AC running – I wouldn’t have been able to sleep anyway and it’s always important that I’m not too tired to hit the road. Susan found this for me:
I’m testing this. It doesn’t work like I had hoped. It does blow cold air – if I put ICE in to it – but doesn’t spray out like it says it should. I’m still working on it. It needs to be put on a flat surface. I may keep both of them because one of them was for Susan and her AC is not as noisy as mine and she doesn’t need the quiet of this. I’m going to test it out on my screened in porch at lunch to see if it works any better. But so far, I’m not impressed. Time will tell.
I stayed at Las Vegas, NM KOA and enjoyed it. I even took advantage of the breakfast they provide for $7. I’m skipping breakfast these days and so this was a treat. The good news about this trip was that I lost 8 pounds. When I stepped on the scale when I got home I weighed 125. But I’m at 127 right now so I’m going to try to get back down to 125 which is what I really want to weigh. I do feel better. I’m going to buy TOVALA meals every other week now rather than every week and I’m going to split them into 2 meals rather than one unless it’s a salad.
Here is sunrise in Las Vegas:
So when I tried to leave Las Vegas, my GPS would not work. I had to use my phone, which was not as good as my GPS. It wouldn’t speak to me while traveling and the route it chose for me was a little scary. There were no towns and no gas stations. Luckily I had a full tank starting the day off and I knew I could make it to Las Cruces without filling up. I eventually got on to US 70 which took me by White Sands National Park. I thought about stopping there on my way to the KOA, but decided it was too hot and Metaxa would have needed to stay in Papa Bear with the AC on and the engine running. So I’ll go there sometime when it cools off in New Mexico – perhaps next November or December. It’s a short trip for me – just a couple of days staying in Las Cruces and then returning home. It’s an easy drive on I 10.
I started using the slide to display my stickers. Here is how it ended up after this trip:
I do have one or 2 more at the top – one for sure with the New Mexico flag and Las Vegas KOA. I have the complete other side of the slide to add stickers as I’m getting close to running out of space on this side. When I got home, I put all of the other patches I had collected since starting this RV Life. I’ll take a picture of that the next time I’m in Mama Bear.
Here is my view from my campsite at Las Vegas:
I have an appointment with La Mesa RV in Tucson for Mama in a couple of weeks. I want her to be road worthy and there are a few items that need fixing. I have a list. I made an appointment there a while back after having her for a month, but cancelled it because I was concerned about driving her to the dealer. Now after driving those 4,700 miles, I’m not afraid of that any longer. She may need to stay at the dealer to get everything done which is fine because I’m not going anywhere until September. In September I’m going to Williams, AZ with RVW and we’re going to take a train to the Grand Canyon. That should be a great weekend. I think it’s about 5 hours from here. I don’t think I’ll take Metaxa this time since it’s only 4 days – Barb would love to check in on her. Then I wouldn’t need to worry about her when I was on the trip to the Grand Canyon. I think that’s a good plan. Did I tell you what a good little traveler she was?:
I had a problem with Mama and the bed. My legs are a little short and turns out that the bed frame caused a skin tear on my shin. So I came up with this “hack”. I’m using the PVC insulation I had for the windshield wipers as a cushion to cover the wood. I was happy it was the “right color” and matched the decor of Mama:
So on Monday the 21st, AMAZON had their “prime” day. I was watching Creativity RV with Robin and she suggested a few items that were on sale this year. She did that last year and I followed her suggestions and never regretted any of the purchases. So this year I did this:
The little bug lanterns are super. I don’t need them here in Arizona but need them in other parts of the country. So I’m going to just store them in Mama for the future. The TUB O TOWELS is pretty cool too. It is great to have them while Boondocking so I don’t need to use as much water. She also suggested a “dash cam”. I bought that too, but I need a memory card for it before it works. I’ve been using my iPhone and holding it up while driving. This will eliminate that dangerous situation. Can’t wait for the memory card to get here so I can try it. I’ll take a picture of this nifty little package:
This not only takes video of the road ahead, it has an additional camera that will take an inside Papa Bear video. Can’t wait to try it out.
I also did a stupid thing on my trip. For some reason I thought I might need a printer on the trip. NOT TRUE! Anyway, I now have it working in the den:
When I brought it back into the house from Mama Bear, I had misplaced the cord for it. I looked everywhere and could not find it. I had to go to a 3rd party vendor to order the cord and it came the other day and now I have a great little printer to use. It’s so portable and I love it. The ink is expensive, but all ink is expensive and I can buy it on line or else go to the Staples in Sierra Vista to pick it up. Right now I have an entire set of ink waiting for the original ink to run out that came with the printer.
So that is about it for now. I’ll come back later today to do a little more blogging if something occurs to me. Oh, one more thing: Papa Bear rolled over 100K miles. Here is a video of it happening. It isn’t such a good video, but it might show it a little:
YAY!
I put all of my patches in Mama Bear:
