We took our time this morning, I cooked a good breakfast, we got the Hideout ready to travel (inside we make sure nothing will shift in transit, outside we ensure systems are a go - flush the tanks, stow the hoses, disconnect the power, hitch it up...). We are used to the 'getting ready to travel shuffle' - we moved a fair share since last June. The difference this time is that we are leaving the state and won't be back for 12 weeks!
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| Flushing tanks prior to leaving AZ this AM |
We drove 313 miles today and got 10 mpg. From Mesa we drove to Quartzite (145 miles). We stopped at a truck stop, bought gas and then pulled into a parking spot and made sandwiches in our kitchen. It was crazy awesome to eat our own food in our own house on the road.
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| Leaving Mesa, AZ |
From Quartzite it was roughly 170 miles to the Black Rock Campground in Joshua Tree NP. I didn't realize when I planned out this trip that really we should gas up every 150 miles. From the I10 we took the CA-177 North to CA-62 West. It was a beautiful drive, but we seemed to be going up in elevation quite a bit and the needle was dropping quickly. For many miles we had no cell or data and I freaked a bit about running out of gas in the desert. I freak out about things before I need to...I really need to get a handle on that. We reached Twentynine Palms, CA with a quarter of a tank (we probably could have driven at least 40 more miles on that).
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| The CA desert as seen from the I10 |
The last 25 miles of the trip took forever because there was an accident and a detour which slowed us down quite a bit. Average speed dropped from 55 to 35 mph and it seemed to take an hour to finish those last miles. However, this campground is totally worth it. We are in spot #47 it is a pull-through spot and it is a very good thing we made reservations because the campground is full. The spot is not very level. We determined we could use more leveling blocks; the Hideout is sloping a bit too much for my taste. There is a potable water station for filling tanks as well as a dump station. We filled the Hideout's white tank and have plenty of water to last us these couple of days. The biggest unknown is how long our battery will last...that is TBD. We could hook up the panels, but the fact they are not mounted poses a challenge for us. We have excellent cell and data service (our carrier is TMobile). The weather was chilly this evening - we put on our jackets to walk around the campground! The high tomorrow is 80 degrees, nights get down to 56 degrees. We are at an elevation of 4000'. Here is what we see when we open our front door... What else is there to say!? This is awesome.
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