Motorhome News from North America 1

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Motorhome News from North America 1
Arizona - The Grand Canyon State 10th - 24th January 2006

Planning and preparation for this trip had taken weeks of research, through the internet, many books and countless brochures. Then came the frustration of settling domestic bills, selling Smiley (our beloved UK Autotrail motorhome) and our remaining car. Letting our little house and moving furniture into store left us weary on the day of departure. And then, the sad good-byes to family and friends.

Our 747 finally left the Heathrow runway some 30minutes late, heading for Phoenix Arizona and with a smile and a high five the reality of our next adventure began. We were on our way at last, expecting to be away from home for a year or more, travelling some 40,000 miles clockwise right around the United States and coast-to-coast Canada, by motorhome.

From the air, the first sight of Phoenix is a long ridge of sombre mountains edging the desert plains, a sweeping mass of modern development filling the valley from west to east with industry and sun seekers side-by side. Phoenix and its close neighbouring towns form an endless sprawl of low-rise buildings and malls set on a grid of wide highways, relentlessly marching eastwards along the valley on the Apache Trail like the flow of mercury on a marble tabletop. This great desert plain sits under a gathering sea of smog between cardboard cut-out grey-brown mountains, illuminated signs instruct motorists to pool their cars and take the bus in regular pollution warnings over the highway - but the blue, blue winter skies, neatly trimmed shrubs, palm trees, spectacular cacti, tidy gardens, golf courses galore, clean streets and clean cars make this busy town a magnet for wintering visitors. This is retirement country with a vengeance and a wintering hole for the thousands of ‘snow birds’, from the north, here to escape the cold. It’s not rained here for 90days and it’s around 70-80f during the day. This is the city of large cars, ten-lane highways, realistic speed limits and traffic lights on every block. It’s more than an hours drive from one side of the city to the other. You don’t walk here. It’s a long way from anywhere to anywhere else.

So, why should we want to start our journey in Phoenix? There are three major reasons. Firstly, we need to buy a motorhome and in the west where rain is the exception rather than the rule, rust is pretty well unheard of and this is likely to be a plus when we come to sell it next year. Secondly, it might be winter, but for us English it seems like summer; the sun shines all day, the skies are blue and the days delightfully warm. And last, but not least, by starting here, our itinerary will deliver us in New England in the fall.

As a bonus, a good Canadian friend from Ontario has been inviting us to visit his winter home in Mesa, a suburb of Phoenix, for many years and we were privileged to join him at last for our first week in the United States. We are so grateful to Nick, for his good cooking, his warm hospitality and his local knowledge whilst we searched the local dealers for a new motorhome. From his ‘back yard’ of flowering bougainvillea and oleander there’s a wonderful view across the golf course to the sun-soaked mountains and, just to delight us, there were birds too; Northern mockingbird, grackles, red-winged blackbirds, ruby throated hummingbirds, a green heron and numerous house finches.

It took us just two days to find a new motorhome. Small ones are hard to find here in the US, and diesels are like hen’s teeth. I guess the price of ‘gas’ has something to do with it; but what the heck, there’s plenty more in Iraq. At a little under 25ft, ‘Winnie’, our new six wheeler 2003 Minnie Winnebago, sports a Ford V10 6.8 litre automatic and boasts six beds, a three ring hob with oven, microwave, double sink, a big fridge and freezer, a dinette for four, a four-seater sofa and mirrored wardrobe in the slide-out side giving an airy lounge area, a good-size bathroom with separate shower, TV and video, outside entertainment unit (stereo/CD player) and outside shower. Just for kicks it has a 110volt AC generator, air conditioning and LPG for heating and cooking. It’s nearly 10ft wide with the slide-out! The previous lady owner never used the oven or hob and the interior looks like new. I think we might just be happy in this one, don’t you?

Having searched the net before we left home for other mad Brits who had ventured to the USA, we knew Insurance might be hard to find. A few phone calls revealed some of the hurdles:
“Sorry, Sir. You must have an address in the States.”
“You must have a US drivers licence.”
“You must have a car policy. Everyone goes to the shops, don’t they?”
or, “Sorry, Sir. We don’t do motorhomes.”

Eventually we did get a few people to quote, some upwards of $2000 for the first year, but the insistence that we should have US drivers licence kept cropping up. An International licence would not have helped much it seems. Just two days in Phoenix and we had tracked down a suitable motorhome and arranged to collect it following a full pre-delivery inspection after the week-end. But this was looking more unlikely by the day; without insurance or a US Drivers licence we were going no further than the parking lot.

There was a long weekend before collection day (it was a public holiday for Martin Luther King Junior Day on Monday) and Nick took us to a couple of short but interesting local golf courses. Augusta in particular was very pretty, with Superstition Mountain as the backdrop. (That’s Augusta Ranch by the way!) With a new home to fill we also attacked the local stores for motorhoming essentials; WallMart, Frys, JC Penny, Mervyns, Target - and Sears of course, where the January Sales were all under way. Janice had the time of her life; bedding, towels, pots and pans, crockery and cutlery ringing the tills along the way. My turn came when we arrived at Home Depot, for tools and things to adapt and make living more comfortable and then keep us on the road. One other notable purchase was a new mobile phone (or cell phone as they’re known here). We soon discovered that outside of town they don’t work and our campsites have all been out of signal range. This country is so vast that coverage is restricted to major urban areas and highways.

The Tuesday mid-day deadline for collecting ‘Winnie’ was fast arriving and after several more frantic phone calls to insurance companies it was becoming more and more likely that we were going to be out of luck. Our motorhome dealer had promised to try for us, but we had heard nothing. Surely, they would be having the same trouble. At 11 o’clock, an hour before collection time, we gave them a call.
We needn’t have worried about the insurance of course. Right on our deadline Sun City RV came up with an annual policy for $777 - our lucky number - great cover and no strings attached!

Eager to try out our new purchase we said our goodbyes to Nick just seven days into our adventure, and headed out west from Mesa beyond Apache Junction and Gold Mountain to a campsite at Tonto National Park to learn the ropes with all the new toys on board. Childhood memories of Saturday Matinees at the Odeon Cinema came flooding back, hundreds of shouting kids (me included) cheering The Lone Ranger and his sidekick Tonto, as they chased Apaches across the plains! This is indeed Indian country, but the Lone Ranger is long gone and so too have the Indians. They are now Native Americans to be politically correct. Tonto Park provided us with our first chance to walk in the ‘wild’, beyond the city limits and into the desert; the rolling hills of dusty wilderness strewn with huge boulders like a sculpture park amongst scrub oak, yucca and prickly pear. There we took to our boots on stony tracks to seek out some of the local birds. The delight of the day was a vermilion flycatcher - the colour tells the story!

The desert here is not the vast sweeping sandhills of North Africa. Here the gritty grey sand fills the plains, rising in every direction to the mountains ever on the horizon. Here the cactus reigns supreme: giant saguaro standing like trees, barrel cactus with yellow fruit, hedgehog and pincushion, prickly pear, teddy bear cholla and agave, laid out in neat formation as though in a botanical garden patiently contemplating the prospect of rain.

After much deliberation that evening we finally managed to settle on our route around Arizona, first heading across the arid plains down to Tucson and its desert parks. Our campsite on the edge of Tucson was on a smart resort site of swish motorhomes set up for the season and princely mobile homes for retirement, each with its prestigious car and neatly tended garden. This is BIG retirement money and it seems a great way to winter, with dozens of clubs, a lovely pool and gym and daily activities on site to keep people amused. There are license plates here from Manitoba to Missouri and New York State to Alberta - and we’re told there are several Brits with second homes here too. We have been made most welcome in Arizona with friendly people everywhere.

This is the land where petrol is 37p per litre, eggs can be bought for as little as 69 cents a dozen (and white is the standard), where milk comes in gallons, where every store has its own discount card and what you save is more important than what you spend.

We’re here for the open spaces and the wildlife and it’s clear we’re in the right place. Janice’s research took us to Sabino Canyon National Forest just to the east of Tucson, where the forest is saguaro cactus up to 50ft tall and the oatmeal mountains stretch all around, baked in sunshine below deep blue skies. A ‘Golden Eagle Passport’ purchased here for $65, sounds like good value for our needs. It will take us into all the National Parks across the USA. For our $65 we’ve already seen mule deer, ground squirrel, Gambel’s quail, a Northern cardinal, several magnificent phanopela glistening black with a splendid crest, and our first road-runner; it came so close to check us out we could almost touch it - and it didn’tgo ‘beep,beep’, by the way! Nearly all the birds here are new to us, and some we just can’t identify. Unlike our European birds, most of those here would be meaningless to you if you don’t have the book, (Sibleys) so we’ll just list a few from time-to-time.

With many Parks around Tucson, we chose to move to the west of town the following day, to the lovely Gilbert Ray campsite in the Saguaro National Park. From there we were able to hike the three tough miles on a well-marked track over the foothills to the Sonora Desert Museum and an introduction to the flora and fauna of the area. This area must be extremely beautiful when the cacti are in flower, from spring through to autumn. Aching legs told us how unfit we’ve become sitting around at home, and beetroot faces after a day in the Arizona sun signalled the end of another English Paleface or two.

It looks like the Pittsburg Steelers versus the Seattle Seahawks for the Superbowl in a couple of weeks. Not that anyone outside the United States would really care that much, but we thought you should know.

Monday found us south from Tucson at the Catholic Mission San Xavier Church on the San Xavier Indian Reservation. The Apache were not saved by its coming back in the late 1700’s, but this white jewel in the arid plain is a stark reminder of the Spanish influence of the time. An hour’s drive further south across stunning white grassy plains brought us to Tombstone, and you all know about Tombstone, don’t you? Well, yes; it was once rich in minerals, silver and gold in particular, and it was home to 10,000 miners and cowboys, a dozen saloons and as many brothels back in the 1880’s. At 2pm on October 26th 1881, Wyatt Earp, his two brothers and Doc Holliday took on the Clantons in The Gunfight at OK Corral. Today, it has a population of just 1,600, surviving - or just about surviving on tourism. But we couldn’t pass it by without a look at the shops along the old town streets, with strutting cowboys and stagecoach rides, staged gunfights, gun shops, Stetson-hat shops, cowboy-boot shops, honky-tonk saloons, Indian craft shops and Theatres. The blue lights were flashing on top of the Sheriff’s car outside the Marshall’s office.

Turning north, the cacti all but disappeared. Instead, parched white grass and mesquite trees covered the plains towards Benson where we camped for the night at Kartchner Caverns State Park. And everywhere the mountains dominated the skyline.

We have travelled just 400miles this week, our first on the open road. This is a vast country and it could be sometime before we get home at this rate! Our next newsletter will be in about two weeks, but meanwhile, “You have a good day, now.”


David & Janice, The grey-haired-nomads

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Photos

Our new home on wheels
Collecting the Winnebago at the dealers, Sun City, Phoenix

Into the desert
Tonto National Park

Road Runner
Beep -Beep!

Saguaro National park
spot the Harris's Hawk

Saguaro cactus!
Now, that's big!

Tucson
We're headin' out of town - and fast!

Tucson
The Sheriff's in town

A small selection of boots
'Mmmmmm... that's tempting'

The Catholic Mission
San Xavier Church