What A Day

We both woke at 2am, struggled to go back to sleep, tossing and turning, waking up every hour or half hour—at 4:30am Michael asked me if I would be mad if he got up—nope—I was wearing out the sheets anyway with my tossing and turning!  So, we tried to drive out quietly past Jim & Ellie and Gina & Rollie and were rolling down the road just before 5am!  While boondocking I use a percolator type coffee pot on the gas stove.  This morning I fired up the inverter as we were traveling and had the first cup of perked coffee in over 2 months, YUM!

What should have been an easy day turned out to be a struggle!  We reached our destination of Cochise Stronghold in the Dragoon Mountains just before noon.  Michael had researched and researched boondocking options in this area and thought the USFS area just outside the USFS campground at Cochise Stronghold would work—NOT!  (Jim, be very, very glad you didn’t come over here with us!)  Very narrow roads with ugly sticker bushes along the edges just waiting to put scratches in the paint—the one spot we did think we would fit was crowded with 3 other rigs and the road into these spots was atrocious.  OK—onward—the afternoon was still young.  On to the Chiricahua Mountains thinking we could boondock on USFS ground there, again, NOT!  Miles and miles of nasty dirt road, beautiful but just not feasible plus the phone and aircard did not work over there.  At this point the afternoon is not young any more and we are out of options, I called the Escapees park in Benson and they had room but we would have to boondock tonight as the office closed at 5pm—not a problem so we are in a dry camp spot for the night and will be moved to a spot with hookups tomorrow morning.  As RV parks go, this is really a nice one—the spots are good size, it is right in the middle of the desert and it is quiet without huge street lights—I think we can live with this for a while.  Emmi is having to get used to walking on a leash again!

I told Michael I was going to start a boondocking blog with precise directions for spots such as; “if you are wider than 4 feet you won’t fit!!!”  Jeez!!  And some comments about the roads getting to boondocking slots such as, “if you wear dentures you might want to take them out before the road shakes them out!!”  or “make sure you secure everything with duct tape, and I do mean everything!”

I had a new experience this morning.  Michael is an evening shower person, I take my shower in the morning.  Our early departure this morning did not deter me—as we were going down the road toward Salome and I10, I took my shower—it was a little difficult but I managed! 

Tomorrow we will get to see our friends Jim and Linda who own a home in Tombstone and hopefully a person we met several years ago while camped in a park in Kingsville, Texas.  Nancy was a single person new to full time RVing traveling alone and having a little bit of a hard time—Mike and I took her to dinner and we have stayed in touch.  Nancy work camps mostly as a tour guide in places like the King Ranch near Kingsville and in Teton National Park.  We exchanged e-mails last week and found out she has a new man in her life and they are camped here in the Escapees park at Benson. 

It has been a long, long day—time for bed!  Pictures tomorrow.