We had no formal plans for today other than to go shopping at the nearby Trader Joe’s. We were successful in that we got our shopping done but the rest of the afternoon we enjoyed making food items with phyllo dough and then eating almost every unhealthy bit. It was great.
The weather man two days ago was correct when he said there was a nasty storm headed for the Tucson area. When we left the park towards T Joe’s, there were gusty winds of about 20 miles per hour. They were stronger when made our return trip and by about 3:00 PM they were raging along at about 55 or more. As the wind speed increased, we were able to watch the approaching cloud bank of the storm marching in from the west. Right before the rainstorm hit, the wind started to diminish but not before knocking over my satellite antenna and our lightweight sewer pipe.
Once the rainstorm started, it was plain that it was open for business. Happily, our recent repairs to our trailer made it dry, warm and cozy for the nice woman and elderly geezer living therein. The outside temperature started to plummet soon after the rain began and ultimately dropped down to nearly freezing around midnight.

We hopped up this morning and departed from Yuma’s Adobe Sunset RV Park. I am at a loss to describe an “adobe sunset” as anything other than a brown mud brick late afternoon’s lighting. Hmmm. We continued our trip east on I-8 up the gradual climb from Yuma (elevation 300′) through Gila Bend and Casa Grande (elevation about 1700′) until turning southeast on I-10. The gradual climb continued until we pulled into the Wishing Well RV Park in Catalina, a small town north of Tucson (elevation 2500′).
I am old and chicken so I did not drive along the Arizona freeways at the posted speed limit of 75, but do almost religiously stay in the slow lane and averaged about 67 which seems to be almost supersonic compared to the maximum speed for trailers in California of 55 mph. With an empty schedule like ours, there just doesn’t seem to be any reason to push the truck harder merely to change our arrival time. We think we get to see more stuff that way, too.
We were setting up our fifth wheel trailer in the Wishing Well when Peggy noted that the loud thump from the roof we heard a week or two ago was not merely a sound. After removing a skylight insulating pillow from the skylight, it was evident the dome was fractured. The weather report speculated that a large storm is headed our way Saturday night. We broke out the roofing repair supplies and Peggy crawled up on the roof and fixed the skylight, at least from a waterproofing standpoint. We also had a wayward gasket over our living room slideout and we spent a part of the afternoon trying to secure it in the proper position. We will know if we were entirely successful when we fold up our trailer for travel in about a week.
The Wishing Well RV Park does not seem to have wi-fi but it does have full utility hookups. It is right next to Oracle Road which is a pretty busy north-south multi-lane highway. Traffic pretty much died down in the late evening but a Circle-K store and gas station on one side of the park does spit out some assholes with pickup trucks having very loud exhaust systems operating at nearly full throttle. They are very easy to hear within the park.

We have been lounging around near our hometown of San Diego for most of December. We were able to visit our son and his wonderful fiance several times. We both got nasty colds and spent a week or so doing nothing, We made big shopping excursions to Costco and Trader Joe’s where many dollars were expended. We jammed food into all the available storage, dumped the tanks, filled up the propane and got back on the road. It feels good.
We have a scheduled commitment in San Diego in April 2017 so our journey in early 2017 will be a short one compared with our last two outings (the East Coast in 2015 and the Great Basin in the first ten months of 2016). Peggy and I speculate at this time that eastern Texas or maybe Arkansas will be about as far as we can go east before turning back west to make our April return date without cramping our style.
However, today we only made it from San Diego to Yuma, AZ. From TT Pio Pico in San Diego to a park called Adobe Sunset east of Yuma was about 170 miles. Leaving San Diego we took I-8 which climbs over not less than four 4000′ passes before descending down the frightening In-Ko-Pah grade into the desert towns of Ocotillo and Plaster City. Soon we were driving through El Centro, CA, where the ground elevation is below sea level. Despite being at an elevation that should be underwater, there are massive agricultural fields here being watered with imported water carried through massive aqueducts from the Colorado River. We failed to spot any naturally occurring bodies of water in the areas visible from the freeway.
The Adobe Sunset RV Park was quite similar to the dozens of other RV parks in the Yuma area. Many full-timers, like us, come to the southern part of the country in winter to thumb our noses at nasty weather and it seems tens of thousands of them plant themselves in Yuma for cold months. Our space was a pull-thru and had full utility hookups. There was no wi-fi in the park except at the office. The park is right next to a fairly busy road. Trains run within earshot but the volume of the fairly distant horns were not obnoxious. The cost was quite reasonable – about $28. Fuel and RV services are abundant.