Cottonwood to Tucson

October 24, 1999

Let me start by saying that during the packing on Saturday, I was shocked by one of the biggest spiders I have ever seen. I had opened the truck to get out the bungees. Later when I went back after another one, I started to reach for the back door latch. I noticed movement kind of out of the corner of my eye so I stopped reaching and looked again. Right in the spot where you put your fingers to open the door was this giant spider. The body was brown and about 2 inches head to butt. The legs were another inch. It was not a tarantula (I don’t think) because there was no hair, but it certainly did startle me! Gary shot it with some bug spray, it fell to the ground and about 20 minutes later, it died. The hair on the back of my neck tingled for quite a while. Even now a week later, I still look carefully where I put my fingers. It kind of reminds me of the rattlesnake on our patio before we sold the house.

The trip from Cottonwood to Tucson is about 250 miles. I drove out of Cottonwood which means I got the exciting experience of hauling up the 9 mile 6% grade. The hill starts right at the Cottonwood on-ramp. I was pleasantly surprised. The truck stayed easily between 40 and 45 mph all the way. All I did was take it out of overdrive. Yes, of course it worked hard, but it passed a couple big trucks on the way. The rest of the ride to Phoenix is mostly a mildly curvy, hilly ride. Every now and then, the transmission shifted enough to warrant turning off the overdrive, but for most of the ride all I had to do was keep it on the road. When we had the Minnie Winnie, I never did drive it. I was afraid of the width. For some reason, I just knew that those mirrors were going to hit everything I went past. But with this truck and trailer, I was looking forward to taking my turn. Once you get used to the slow starts and stopping a little earlier than without a trailer, it really isn’t too bad. The hardest part of the trip was getting through the northern end of Phoenix. They are doing some lane additions there and the lanes are slightly narrowed during the construction, so even without the trailer it feels a little constricted. We intentionally planned on being through that area early in the morning so that we would miss the bulk of traffic and we were pretty successful. Once past Phoenix, I drove to the first rest area and Gary drove the rest of the way.

Parking the Beast

Since we have only parked the trailer once, we had no idea what to expect. It was not real pretty. The security guard guides you to your site and then attempts to guide you into the spot. I say attempts because the first guard really doesn’t know how to properly position a 5th wheel (by the way, thanks to our new email buddy John in Pennsylvania, we now know that we should be saying “fiver” instead of 5th wheel). The street you back in from is just wide enough for 2 cars, which is to say about as wide as the truck is long. You have to make a 90° angle between a light post and a palm tree. Not an easy task for backing rookies. The first guy jacked Gary around for about a half hour before he called one of the other guards who does know what he is doing. I was not much help because I have never guided any trailer in. Now, after watching all the wrong things, I have a pretty good idea what to do next time. I will try to pick up this skill quickly so that we don’t have to count of someone else’s expertise. I can say this to all trailer newbies: it ain’t as easy as they tell you it is going to be to back in a fiver. You think that because of the pin and the ability to make a 90° turn that it will go right in. Noooooooo. Think again. Your pivot point is not the kingpin. It is the trailer wheels. It makes a huge difference. You have to learn how to set the correct angle when you start backing, because as soon as you move 1 foot, you can’t make quick corrections to the angle. I think it is a definite technique to be learned.

We ran into a few problems right away. First, because of the rule about how far you are allowed to back into your site, we were about 4 feet short of the electric hookup. The water hose was good, but the sewer hose (we had a 20 footer) was not. So we trooped over to Camping World and ended up with a 25 foot extension cord, an extra 10 feet of sewer hose, and a connector kit. That solved both of those problems, but as soon as we got the sewer hose connected, we discovered that the site runs downhill from the back to the front. That means that the water in the hose would have to run uphill to get to the sewer, and then up and over the connection to the ground. So we trooped over to Camping World again to buy something called a Slunky. It is an expandable graded support for the hose. Well, Camping World only had a 10 foot Slunky, so we went back home and called around until we found a 20 footer. That works great! So the next day when it got real windy, the wind blew over the hose and Slunky. There isn’t enough weight to the hose when there is no water in it. And with the wind blowing real hard (which it seems to every other day here) even two people can’t work fast enough to drain the hose and keep it on top of the Slunky. Not even if you use the tiedowns they give you. Bummer! So we closed off all the holding tanks to wait for the wind to stop. (Which it did 24 hours later.) Once the wind stopped, we rushed out to drain all the tanks, only to find that after being dragged around on the gravel for 2 days, the hose had sprung several little leaks. That’s not good! (The thing is only made of a single layer of blue vinyl that isn’t all that tough to begin with.) So instead of trooping over to Camping World again, we walked up to the grocery store here at the park. There, they have a triple layer, extra heavy duty hose (does that sound like Tim Taylor? more power ooh ooh ooh) which feels darn near indestructible. We bought a 20 footer and connected it up right away. Man! Now the connection between the two hoses leaked. So now where did we go? Yup. Camping World to find a better connector. This time we actually signed up for their Presidents Club which gets us a 10% discount on whatever we buy there. I have a feeling it will pay for itself. So now, we have a 20 foot heavy duty connected to a 10 foot regular duty laying on top of the Slunky and tied to it about every 3 feet. We did some rearranging to position the whole contraption against the wheels and the back scissor jacks figuring that the new hose was heavy enough to hold down the Slunky in the wind if we braced it a little. Well, you know what they say about great plans. The 10 footer was still not heavy enough and the next big wind blew it over again. At that point, we started saying some very bad words and being very frustrated. I decided to try desperation. Since we had about 18 feet of extension cord that wasn’t doing anything productive besides laying on the ground, I coiled it up a little and laid it over the blue hose. It’s actually pretty heavy. We stood there in the wind watching to see what would happen. So far, so good. It lasted overnight, then for several more wind storms. When we bought that extra 25 feet, I thought it was stupid to buy that much, but it was the only length they had short of 50 feet. Now I’m very glad that we did because it seems to have solved another problem. Thank goodness! Sometimes desperation is the mother of invention.

Voyager RV Resort

This is a different kind of park for us. There are 3 pools, tennis courts, volleyball, mini golf, shuffleboard, bocce ball, a real weight room, ballroom, restaurant, hotel, limited grocery store, wood shop, post office, their own phone company, library, and dozens of activities all the time. There are 1500+ sites. (As soon as we finish up the roll of film in the camera, there will be November pictures.) Most of the long-term sites are occupied by park models. For those of you that don’t know what a park model is, think of a single wide mobile home that is about 12 feet wide and 30-35 feet long. They’re real cute, usually have a small living/dining room area, kitchen with real appliances, bathroom and one small bedroom. They get set up like a mobile home with skirting and aluminum awnings and patio/porches. The amazing thing is that a new one costs about $35,000. Long ago when we were looking for a house, we found that you could get about 3 times as much size for about the same amount if you went to a standard mobile home. Park models are kind of like a very small one bedroom apartment. Since they are smaller than a standard mobile home, I think the advantage is that they can fit more of them into a park.

This place is listed as a 55+ park, but they said that their only restriction is that you must be over 18. We aren’t 55 yet, but for the most part, nobody seems to pay any attention to that. Hmm-is that good or bad? Anyway, a little more than half of the residents are here right now. I think that most of the folks that aren’t here now come in between now and January. So far we have found everyone to be very friendly. All of our neighbors have come over and introduced themselves. One has lived here in Tucson for a lot of years and he has loaned us his book on Arizona ghost towns. Another says that we can put things in her freezer if we want. We clocked the walk around the park at 2 miles, so we walk the perimeter every morning and then in the evening walk another half mile to the big trash compactor. There are always others out walking too, and driving golf carts. Those golf carts are very popular here! Most of them look exactly the same as the rest, but we saw one the other day that was completely enclosed in canvas with plastic windows. That is the only kind to have if it rains! I signed up for the basketweaving class, and Gary is going to pay dues over at the wood shop. We have a couple wood projects that he can finish over there. I bought some goggles so I can start swimming laps and I think eventually we will volunteer in the computer room. I’m not sure that any of this qualifies as “fitting in” because I don’t think I want to be part of the retirement community mindset just yet. They absolutely do not promote that mindset here—if anything, they promote activity. But you know........ We have actually spent some time thinking about paying for a year and claiming a site. The rent paid on a yearly basis is just a little more than 5 months paid at the monthly rate. We are thinking that if we do that, we could set up a shed and bring our stuff out of storage and save that $65.00/month storage fee. Then we would also have a place we could come back to any time we want. Yes—I hear you! I said thinking about it. After all, we have only been here a week. We aren’t sure yet that we really like it.

November 10, 1999. Special Note: now that we have been here almost 3 weeks, we are pretty sure that this lifestyle is not for us. It isn’t bad—just not us. Now we have to decide where we want to go next.

Amerind Foundation

October 28, 1999

When I told someone that we had spent a lot of time looking at petroglyphs and pictographs, she suggested that we should visit the Amerind Foundation. It is in the vicinity of Cochise Stronghold, which we also wanted to visit, so we decided to stop there. The Foundation was started in 1937 by an archeologist named William Shirley Fulton. He liked Arizona after several archeological trips in the early 1900’s. On one of his visits he heard of a place called Texas Canyon which is about 35 miles southeast of Tucson. He purchased some land and began to excavate based on stories of prehistoric agricultural villages. Fulton believed that contemporary Indian cultures could help to interpret the past, which is why he created one of the finest private museum collections of archeological materials anywhere. What we found there was not just southwest Native American artifacts, but items from South America, the Plains Indians, northwest Indians and Mexican cultures. It was a huge private collection, for sure, but not really what we expected. There is also an art museum on the site. I really don’t much get into art museums, but we walked through it anyway. It was OK. If you want to take a picnic lunch, there is a small park with tables and lots of good rocks for climbing on (although we did see a dead rattler in the roadway going in so I might not let youngsters climb on the rocks.) The entrance fee was $3.00 per person, and their displays were interesting, but our rating is:

To read more about November, go here.