When we left the New Mexico mountains we were headed for Scottsdale, AZ to visit Rick's son Matt and our daughter-in-law, Trish. It was a steep descent from Cloudcroft, but the Liberty's tow/haul function kept us off the runaway truck ramps.
We use a GPS that is made for RVers. We program it with our height, weight, and length and it is supposed to keep us on appropriate roads. We also can tell it to avoid u-turns and ferries (it tried to put us on a ferry on our way to Galveston.) It's a wonderful tool, but it's not infallible. There is a tendency for the navigator (me) to become complacent and rely on it too much. So I was very nervous when we rounded a switchback and saw this tunnel.
It turns out that we had plenty of room to spare, but I'm always nervous about low clearance. Early in our RVing career we had a bad experience with a low clearance on the American side of Niagara Falls, but that's a story for another day.
Once we got to the bottom of the mountain and headed west, the landscape became less and less green and more and more brown, red, and desert-like. It also began to be hotter and hotter. We passed through the White Sands National Monument. We considered stopping for a look, but it was hot, and we missed the entrance because the navigator had her head in a AAA guide book instead of looking out for the visitor's center! But even from a distance we could see the huge snow white sand dunes that are created when rain and melting snow dissolve gypsum from the surrounding mountains. According to the AAA guidebook that I had my head in, the runoff turns into a seasonal lake. "Desert heat evaporates (the lake), causing gypsum crystals to form. Dry winds expose the crystals, eroding them into sand-sized particles that are blown into the dune field." The area is also home to the White Sands Missle Range which is where the first man-made atomic explosion was made in 1945.
As an Easterner, I am always shocked when I find myself in a roadblock where I'm questioned about my citizenship while traveling in the southwest. These checkpoints are not at the border. They are on various roads that are wholly within the US. We were quite annoyed at the long line we had to wait in in New Mexico.
After spending a night on the road, we finally landed at our RV park in Scottsdale. Did I say RV park? This place was really more of a trailer park! I usually do a pretty good job of finding a good place to park the RV, but sometimes I don't. I use a combination of the Good Sam campground listings and reviews on rvparkreviews.com. I rely heavily on the reviews since they are more likely to tell you the things that you really want to know, like "does the wifi work", is there a Verizon signal", or "is there a train nearby." But this time the reviews failed me. Twice.
After leaving our idyllic campground in New Mexico's Sacramento Mountains, we had to find a place to overnight on our way to Scottsdale, and I found a well-reviewed campground in Benson, AZ. The Cochise Terrace RV Resort mostly caters to "snowbirds" but has a few spots for those who are just passing through. None of the reviewers mentioned that the transient spots were an actual parking lot with hookups. And that blacktop held the heat for quite a while after the sun was finally down. But the real problem was that they required dogs to be taken to a wash behind the campground for them to do their business. Oh and watch out for the rattlesnakes while you're out there and don't go after dark. And don't let your dog pee on any of the landscaping. How you're supposed to stop a dog who's been inside overnight from peeing is beyond me. The beautiful views, hot tub, and $19.50 rate (with our Passport America discount) made up for Cochise Terrace's other shortcomings.
My big screw-up was with our parking place in Scottsdale. There should have been a red flag when I found that there was no listing in the Good Sam book. And I should have questioned why the most recent review was from 2013 and why every review was written by folks who stayed for a few months. But, in any event, we spent 3 nights in a trailer park in downtown Scottsdale with no shade and 105+ temperatures each day.
Matt took this shot of me with SiSi and his sweet new puppy, Quinn. SiSi wasn't amused with her puppy antics. She just didn't get why SiSi didn't want to play
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