Arizona City–Unloading the Trailer and Furnishing the House

Here’s the RV set up on the vacant lot next to our house.  Ken has it set up so that we have full hookups.

When we were ready to finish unloading the utility trailer, Ken backed it into the garage so that we could take our time and not have it out in the open.  The garage was quite full!

Between other errands around the place, we got the trailer unloaded.  Here it is already to hookup and take on a furniture shopping trip.

Target had a good sale last week on chair pads for patio furniture so they took on a new look.

While visiting Glenn and Sheila the other day, she showed me a flyer for inexpensive furniture in Phoenix.  It was for a place that removes old furniture from hotels and motels then takes them to their warehouse to sell to the public.  We got an early start Friday morning and hooked the utility trailer up to the truck and headed to the furniture warehouse.  We weren’t sure what we were getting into and just felt like we were taking the trailer up there as a waste of our time.  I’m happy to say that we were wrong, and came back to the house with a trailer and truck loaded with enough furniture to stock the house.

We picked out a sofa sleeper and a couple of wall paintings behind it to the right.

Behind the sofa sleeper is a coffee table with a couple of end tables on top of it.

We found a recliner chair for Ken.

And a couple of table lamps which may end up in a bedroom or the living room.

We found some night stands for the master bedroom.

We picked out two queen size mattresses.

And two queen size box springs.

We also bought two bed frames.

On Saturday morning I decided to check out three garage/yard sales that were going on in town.  At the first one, I found James Michener’s Texas hardback in like new condition for $1.00 and bought that.  I didn’t find anything at the second sale that caught my interest and drove to the last one.  I hit the jackpot at that one!  All of the items on the counter to the left of the sink were $18.00!  There’s a coffee pot, toaster, and several bowls, salad plates, dinner plates, coffee cups, serving dishes and bowls.  I spent the rest of Saturday getting them cleaned up and put away.

On Saturday, we drove to Casa Grande and purchased bedding, curtains and lumber for Ken to build a workbench in the garage.  That afternoon, Ken installed the hardware for the curtains.  I spent the day Sunday doing laundry of the bedding and getting the bedrooms finished off while Ken built his workbench.  Glenn and Sheila stopped by and she gave me a bed skirt, etc. for one of the guest rooms….thanks, Sheila!

We’re ready to see what’s in store for us this next week.

Willcox, AZ to Arizona City, AZ

The temperatures in Willcox got down to about 24 overnight, so we didn’t get going very early.  We only had another 140 miles to go anyway.

We drove right on past Benson, AZ.

In this photo, we are approaching the east side of Tucson.

And we went on by the downtown Tucson area as we continued west.

With Picacho Peak in view through the front window, our destination is getting closer.

And after just a few more miles, our long load was parked in front of our house in Arizona City.

After lunch, we got everything unloaded from the pickup and headed to Casa Grande to run a few errands.

Balmorhea, TX to Willcox, AZ

We got started at our normal driving time heading west on I-10 in Texas.

West of Van Horn, TX we entered Mountain Time Zone which we will be on for the remainder of our winter travels.

Since we were such a long load, Ken decided to drive through El Paso rather than taking the route to the north which goes over a higher elevation.  With the aggressive drivers going through there, the mountain route would have been a little  more pleasant.

We entered New Mexico, then stopped at the Welcome Center for a lunch break.

We stopped in Vado, NM for a fuel stop which seemed to be the least expensive in our route.  This metal roadrunner sculpture sits atop a hill on the west side of Las Cruces.

We had planned on an overnight stop in Deming, but it was only about 2pm  and the weather was good, so we decided to continue on to Arizona.

Not too far into Arizona, we saw what was left of a 18-wheeler that had wrecked in the median.  That didn’t look good.

We drove on to the Willcox, Arizona Elks lodge where they had large pull through sites with 30amp electric for $15 a night.  That was perfect and they even had hamburgers with all kinds of toppings and french fries for dinner for $6 a person.  After a long day on the road, that worked out well.  We decided to get going whenever the next day for the remainder of our drive to Arizona City.

Spring Branch, TX to Balmorhea, TX

Last night we went with a few of our neighbors to the Dairy Queen in Blanco for burgers and ice cream.  Ken and I had just barely managed to finish up our packing at the 5pm departure time.  It was good to have that done.

This morning we did our usual routine then got things put away in the RV and got ready to hit the road.  Ken pulled the motorhome out onto the road and I pulled the truck and utility trailer behind it.  We took a measurement and we were a little over 75’ in length.

Our lot looks pretty empty now.

I didn’t take any photos during our drive today.  We stopped for lunch at a rest area east of Junction, then continued west with a couple of rest stops and a fuel stop in Fort Stockton, TX.  Diesel there was $3.78 a gallon.  We continued another 40+ miles to Balmorhea to Saddleback Mountain RV Park where it’s $10 a night for full hookups.  We have never seen so many RV’s here.  It was nearly full, and the most we’ve seen other times or 3-4.

We put in approximately 380 miles today and will have a shorter day tomorrow when we continue on to Deming, NM.

A Busy Week for Retired Folks

It’s been a busy week since my last blog update and although I’ve taken a few photos on my Droid, there’s nothing exceptional to post here.  By Friday, Pete and Jo had a couple of RV visitors to their lot and a neighboring lot so we all went out to dinner at Texas 46. 

On Saturday, Tom and Mary Anne drove up from their lot in Hondo for lunch at Smokey Joe’s BBQ also down on Hwy 46.  We couldn’t believe the amount of meat they put out on the counter for us to sample…we could have made a meal of that.  But we ordered meals and had enough to bring home for leftovers.

We invited our landlocked neighbors, Kenny and Carmen, over to have dinner with us on Sunday.  I put some beans in the slow cooker for the day and had some store bought potato and macaroni salads to add to the pork ribs I planned to cook later in the day.  Kenny came over early in the day to weld a lower receiver hitch to the truck to make the trailer more level for hauling to Arizona.  That ended up being an all day project with a couple of trips to Bulverde to Home Depot and Tractor Supply.  Once that job was completed, we enjoyed the evening with Kenny and Carmen visiting and eating.  Carmen made some wonderful brownies and left the remainder of them with us.

Monday was the day for a visit to Ken’s back doctor, Dr. K.  The appointment was at 1:30pm and they called in the morning to tell us they had some cancellations and asked us to come in at 11:00am.  We arrived for that appointment about an hour early, and left at about 1:15pm and headed immediately to Jason’s Deli to take care of the hunger pains.  We completed our other errands and arrived back at the RV around 4:00pm.

Today (Tuesday) was a long planned movie day with Pete and Jo.  Ken doesn’t like movies, but he drove us to the theater in New Braunfels and continued on to Buda to Cabela’s while we watched The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.  The movie was so good that 2 3/4 hours went by in no time.  We had a late lunch/early dinner at The Ord’s in the Creekside Mall area, shopped at Best Buy and J C Penney’s and returned to Valero Estates.

I’ve also been reading some good ebooks lately, so I’ll be posting a few reviews as I have time.

Home Depot Does Good For Us!!

We had a couple of things we had to get completed today.  We dropped off the remaining paperwork at our realtor’s office and then drove to Home Depot.  At Home Depot, Ken met with the customer service person he talked to yesterday and presented her with the bill for the tires we purchased yesterday for the utility trailer.  As he had already explained the problem with the bad tires yesterday, they accepted the bill and promptly gave us a credit on our Home Depot account.  They are definitely a first class company!

With those tasks accomplished, we drove to San Antonio and stopped in at Costco to place an order for an item we want to pick up there next week.  Jason’s Deli is next to Costco and convenient so that was our lunch stop today and it was good as usual.  We then continued south to Sam’s Club to pick up a few items there.  The Sam’s Club card is through our son’s business and comes in handy when we’re not in a Costco area.  Then it was back north to Walmart for some additional purchases.  From there, we continued north to Target where I found the perfect birthday gift for our nephew in Alaska.  I’ll get that ready to mail to him tomorrow.

Back at the RV, we got things unloaded and put away then walked over to John & Bev’s.  They had a manufactured home put on their lot last winter, but we saw that they had brought their 5th wheel back home today.  On their way to Spring Branch, they were in a rest area and got rearended by a truck and cattle hauler trailer.  That incident totaled their car which they haul behind the heavy duty truck and 5th wheel and also caused extensive damage to the back of the 5th wheel.  The outside work on it looks very nice and they have promised a open house once they get it fully set up.

Look Ma, No Tires

When we picked up our utility trailer at Home Depot, they had to put the second tire on it as that is a theft diversion.  After that was completed, we thought nothing of it and brought it home.  Ken worked on it several times and finally noticed that one of the tires was badly checked.  We a couple of trips to HD last week and finally decided to wait until after the first of the year to pursue things.  Ken went there this morning and they agreed to let us replace the tires and present them with a bill.

On Ken’s return to the lot, we had a quick lunch, and then the realtor we selected to sell our lot arrived to go over the contract and have us sign the paperwork.  Once that was completed, we loaded the trailer tires into the pickup and headed to New Braunfels to the tire store.

Here’s the trailer without tires.

At the tire store, Ken decided which tires we needed and we were told to be back in 45 minutes to pick them up.  During the waiting time, we took our broken basement freezer and a few other items to the recycler.  When we returned the new tires were ready to load into the truck and we headed home. 

Happy New Year 2012!!

Yesterday afternoon we went to Bud & Karma’s house for happy hour and we planned to go to a fireworks display that started at dark.  We had an enjoyable evening with everyone there, but it turned out that the display wouldn’t start until 8:30pm and last for about an hour.  As we aren’t usually on the road on New Years Eve, we decided that would be a little later than we wanted to be out and headed home at about 8:15 as everyone else headed toward the lake to watch the fireworks display.  We found out today that the display lasted about 15 minutes and were fantastic…so we’re sorry we didn’t hold out a bit longer to see them.

Ken continued his work on getting the utility trailer ready to load stuff for the trip back to Arizona City.

Here he’s getting the end piece ready to put in place.

The right side of this photo shows the section he’s enclosed to pack the heavier items over the axle.

And here it sits almost ready to go.  There are a couple of more boards that will be nailed into place over the entire trailer to protect things from weather as we head back west.

It was windy today, but I was able to get out and do some more trimming around the yard and getting it to looking a little bit better.