Bring on the Global Warming!

The good part about leaving the Bronco trailhead in the early morning was that there was neither dust nor mud on the road.  It was all frozen!  Even the windows of the trailer had frost on the insides.  There was ice frozen on the tops of the slides.  I went to the roof and managed to chip some of it off, but the rest I had to melt after retracting the slides and applying some heat inside!  I thought I was in Arizona, not Alberta!

On the way out past Tonto Hills, I noticed this forest of antennas in one yard.  I’m guessing it must be a very keen ham radio operator.

I wanted to get over to Roosevelt lake, where I know there is good camping and an RV dump as well.  To get there, you have to take the highway from Fountain Hills towards Payson, which is in the high country.  All the cars coming down the road towards us were caked in snow and ice, and some had a foot of snow on their roofs! In true south-country tradition, the high pass was clogged with stopped vehicles while the occupants and kids got out to admire this novelty – snow!

Fortunately, we did not have to go that far before the turnoff back down south towards Roosevelt Lake, where there was no snow on the ground.

The majority of the side roads that I had considered camping on were very muddy, and it appeared there had been a lot of fresh flood damage in the area.  So we opted to stay in the developed Cholla campground on the lakeshore.  And alas, even the RV dump was not open!  But we used the permit we had left over from last year (they have ‘scratch and win’ permits here), and set up camp.  The whole rec area is solar powered, as well as the showers, so I did not bother to see if the water was warm.  I stepped outside to look at the clear sky in the evening, and immediately heard snuffling and rustling in the bushes right beside my campsite.  I didn’t know what it might be, but got my big spotlight and found a wild pig rooting around under the bushes 10 feet from my door.  My flash is not that strong, but you can see it’s eyes in this photo.  Not sure what his attitude was like, so I did not dally.

Once again, it was well below freezing at night with the clear skies.  I guess it was too cold, but I did not hear a single firework go off at midnight.  I decided to keep moving as staying warm would be the primary occupation here.

So, at the crack of noon we were on the road again, southbound down along the lake.

I stopped in to look at a ‘horse only’ campsite along the lake, and some of it’s occupants.

Then it was back on the road through Globe, down highway 70 to Safford.  There was a convenient Safeway there, so picked up a couple of things that were running short.

There was a kitten waiting for me to get back.  She rides in the truck with me, but I let her into the trailer when stopped so she can stretch, eat, and use her bathroom.

Then it was over some high country, where the temps were below freezing even before the sun sank behind the smoky mountains to the west.  No use stopping here, so we kept the wheels rolling past dark into New Mexico, and down into Deming to spend the night with a collection of others in the RV’ers home away from home – Wally World (sorry Doug!).

They are predicting near record lows for the El Paso area tomorrow, so I guess we will just keep rolling as fast as possible and attempt to avoid freezing the rig while traveling.

I hope Texas is a lot warmer down south.