On Tuesday (5/14, day 8), we left Cottonwood, Arizona on our way to Las Vegas. We again found Interstates, 17, 40, and 11 to be pretty bad in Arizona. The only “sight-seeing” that we did was a quick peak at Lake Mead and Hoover Dam as we entered into Nevada. We rolled into Las Vegas in the late-afternoon and made our way to our campground, the Las Vegas RV Resort. It’s in town and is a pretty big, nice place, just not very “campground” like. It’s next to the KOA, which is much more tight, so we felt we made a pretty good choice. We had prepaid for three nights of full hook-up, but found that we could have a pull-through with much more space for just three dollars per night. The price was extremely reasonable for a full hook-up at just $35 per night, plus tax.

Unfortunately, as I was hooking up our trailer at the park, I found that one of my original trailer tires appears to have a separated belt or something. We’re just lucky that I found it here and not with a blow-out while out on the highway on Friday on our way towards Yellowstone N.P. I’ve set up an appointment at Discount Tire early on Friday morning to replace all of our trailer tires since they have nearly 12,000 miles on them. I’d intended to change them out at the end of this trip anyway, before our next trip in June/July.

The reason that this whole trip through the Guadalupe Mountains, Las Vegas, Yellowstone, and the Grand Tetons was planned to begin with was to get us to Las Vegas for me to bowl in the United States Bowling Congress Open Championships. This is the huge tournament that happens every year (March into July) and is run by the USBC, which is the sanctioning body for amateur bowlers. There have been as many as 17,000+ bowlers participate in the tournament in years past, although the numbers are a bit lower recently. This is the 28th consecutive year that I’ve bowled in this tournament. The tournament moves around the country each year and this year is being held in Las Vegas. For me, it’s more of a participation thing, rather than having any expectation of actually winning it. Although our team didn’t bowl particularly well, it looks like I’ll actually win a little bit of money in all of the events; Team, Doubles, Singles, and All-Events. All of our team members should win a little bit this year.

The weather has been pretty hot in Las Vegas, well up into the 90’s, until today (5/16). Today is about 20 degrees cooler, but the wind is really howling and shaking the trailer with gusts expected to near 50 mph. The wind is supposed to die down tonight. Hopefully, it will be nice tomorrow as we start towards West Yellowstone, MT and the next leg of our trip.

We left Lyman Lake State Park (AZ) and headed north on US-180 up to I-40, then west to Flagstaff on our way to our campground in Cottonwood, AZ, just south of Sedona, AZ. We did finally get some dry weather. I must say that the Interstate highways in Arizona are some of the worst I’ve ever travelled. They wanted to jar your teeth loose even more than the Interstate highways in Louisiana, which were my previous vote for the worst. Heading south on I-17 out of Flagstaff, the road had a severe drop of at least a couple thousand feet. We saw a couple of semis pulled over to the side of the road overheated brakes. Fortunately, the F-250 did its job and got us through without a hitch.

We exited off I-17 to go west towards Cottonwood and our destination of Dead Horse Ranch State Park. A short drive later, including paying a jaw-dropping $3.69 for diesel, we arrived at the park. In spite of the Interstate highway issues, Arizona has some really nice state park campgrounds. At least from my experience so far, I wouldn’t hesitate staying at others. At Dead Horse Ranch S.P., the spaces are fairly wide and level, asphalt, and have lots of trees and bushes separating them for privacy.

We took it easy for the evening so that we’d be rested up for Sedona on Monday. The next morning started out beautifully with no hint of rain. After breakfast, we took the short drive to Sedona. That whole area is BEAUTIFUL, no matter which way you turn. We stopped first at what we thought was the “official” visitor center for Sedona, but it turned out to be one of those time-share places. The Chamber of Commerce’s visitor center was on the opposite side of the building. But, the young lady was very nice and provided us with area maps and suggestions on best how to make the most of the day.

We started our day with a visit to the Chapel of the Holy Cross. It’s a beautiful, small Catholic chapel built right into the side of a mountain in 1956.

We then got adventurous and decided to take a short, 3.6 mile (r/t) hike up to Devil’s Bridge. The hike was reasonably flat for the first mile-and-a-quarter or so, but the last quarter mile was pretty straight up. The trek was worth it as the views were spectacular and we took a lot of pictures on the hike. Three young women helped us out by taking our picture while we stood out on the “bridge” and also took our picture using a small drone while we were out there. The hike back was pretty exciting, at least for Debbie since she’s deathly afraid of heights. It’s pretty funny that she wants to tackle some of these mountainous trail hikes when there seems to be so many edges with sheer drops involved, but we made it down without incident.

We then ate at a really cool restaurant on the west end of town. We sat out on the covered balcony which had a GREAT view of the surrounding rock formations. Then, off again for a drive that offered some pretty amazing views of the area. Following that, we headed up to the airport scenic overlook to finish the day watching the sunset. Since we got there a little early, we took another short hike, about a mile-and-a-half round trip along the Sedona Overlook trail that ended atop a huge rock with excellent views of the surrounding area. After making it back to the airport, we found that the place was just crawling with camera bugs trying to do exactly the same as us, watch and photo the sunset. After a pretty sunset, we headed back down to Cottonwood to call it a night. We’re making an early start tomorrow to get to Las Vegas for the USBC Open Championships bowling tournament that I will participate in on Wednesday and Thursday. Wish me luck, as I’m sure going to need it.

The morning came on clear for a change, but we were trying to pack up and get moving on to our next destination, so we didn’t really get a chance to enjoy Caballo Lake S.P. After some delays for reasons to do with credit cards, we got a late start.

We drove north towards Socorro, NM where we planned to turn west. Turned out that we didn’t have enough fuel to make it all the way to Socorro, so we stopped at the only station on the interstate only to find out that they were out of diesel. I used the spare fuel from my 5 gallon can to make sure we got to Socorro where we eventually found a station that we could get into. After fueling up, we headed west on US60. Of course, we ran into more rain and even some small hail along the way.

I guess that I had been lax in my New Mexico research because along the way we found that we were driving right through the middle of the Karl G. Janske Very Large Array (VLA) at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory. Well that was a surprise that we just couldn’t miss, so we pulled onto the road to the Visitor Center. The visitor center had a nice film, narrated by Jodie Foster. You may remember that she starred in the movie Contact that had the VLA as a major part of the story. For those of you that are unaware, the VLA is comprised of 28 radio telescope antennas, each 88 feet in diameter. They are situated like three spokes of a wagon wheel that can extend up to 13 miles from the center. When all linked together, they act as a single radio telescope nearly 27 miles in diameter. If you’re ever in the western New Mexico area, I highly suggest you drop into the visitor center and take the walking tour. Hopefully you’ll get better weather than we did.

After our visit, we continued on into Arizona, raining most of the way, of course, until we reached our destination for the night. Lyman Lake S.P., near St. Johns, AZ has really nice camping facilities. If not for the rain, we would have had a pretty good view of the lake from our site. Hopefully the rain will stop before we have to break camp in the morning and we head over to Dead Horse Ranch S.P. near Cottonwood, AZ. That will be our base camp as we take a couple of days to explore Sedona.

I apologize that I had issues with yesterday’s post and didn’t get to show some of the great pictures I took in Guadalupe Mountains National Park. I hope to work through some of the learning issues and correct that problem in the future. I’m sure that doing this all on my phone isn’t making it any easier.

We left a dreary, foggy, and drizzly Guadalupe Mountains N.P. this morning. It was also 37 degrees, which mixed with the wet made it pretty miserable hooking up. Luckily, we were dry camping so there was a lot less to do.

We made our way across US-180 to El Paso, then headed north towards Las Cruces, NM. The foul weather broke not very far west of the park which made for a nicer drive. We didn’t seem to have the wind that had been plaguing us up to now.

We took a slight detour just to the west of Las Cruces and visited the Dripping Springs Visitor Center at The Organ Mountains – Desert Peaks National Monument. It was quite a surprise and some very beautiful scenery. Unfortunately, rain was due to arrive at our next stop this afternoon and I didn’t want to be setting up in the rain, so we weren’t able to take a hike on any of the trails.

We arrived at our stop for the night at Caballo Lake State Park (NM) just as the clouds started rolling in. Our camping spot is right at the edge of the lake, with a range of mountains on the opposite side. I managed to get hooked up and take one quick picture out the back window just before a downpour started. No hiking around the lake or viewing the nearby mountains today. Hopefully the rain will break tonight so that we can have a nice drive tomorrow to our next stop in St. John’s, AZ.

Driving down to Guadalupe N.P. from Carlsbad was quite the experience. The wind was howling and of course it wasn’t blowing the same direction we were driving. I think we averaged about 7 mpg. Since there’s almost no fuel stops between Carlsbad and El Paso, it’s going to be tight.

We arrived in time to get a spot in the small G.M.N.P. “campground”, which isn’t much more than a parking lot, but it has some beautiful views.We were here early enough to take a 6.8 mile (800 foot elevation gain) hike through the McKittrick Canyon portion of the park. It was cold when we left our campground, so we hiked in jeans. Big mistake! It was warm there even though it was just a few miles down the highway. But, there were some really nice views along the trail. We hiked back to an area called the Grotto, basically an overhang cave, but it did have stalgtites and stalagmites.

After a cool breezy night, on the second day we set out early to tackle the climb to the highest point in Texas, Guadalupe Peak. Starting around 5,700 feet at the campground, the peak was 4.2 miles and just about 3,000 feet elevation away. We did make it, although there were some pretty hair-raising portions, especially as we neared the summit. Took us just over 3-1/2 hours to get to the top. The view was amazing when not covered in clouds. It was also pretty cold and windy up there.Little did we realize that coming down was much harder than climbing. Frequent stops to rest, plus the slow going on the slippery trail, and it took us nearly five hours to get back to camp. My knees and ankles are killing me! I highly recommend this to the more adventurous of you, but I have a couple of recommendations. Leave early, take lots of water and snacks, wear ankle supporting boots, and carry trekking poles. Oh, and be in better shape that we are!

Expecting some wind and rain storms here tonight. Seems like it’s blowing here all the time. Hope we weather the storm as we are planning to leave early in the morning to head to Caballo Lake State Park N.M., via El Paso, Las Cruces, N.M., and Organ Mountain National Monument.

Debbie decided that there really wasn’t any reason to hang around the house, so we decided to take off this morning to start our first trip this year out west. We had everything ready, …so why not? Our plan is to work our way over to Las Vegas to meet up with friends and bowl in the USBC Open Championship. Then, we are going to make a run up to Yellowstone and Grand Tetons National Parks before coming back home near the end of the month.

We pulled out this morning with the intention of making a one night stopover in Hobbs, NM. Debbie located a really nice city park with full hookups for only $14. But when we got there about 3:30, all of the dozen or so spaces were already occupied. With just about every RV park in this part of the county being filled with oil field workers, there weren’t many options. Since we were going to pass through Carlsbad tomorrow on our way farther west, Debbie got on the phone and found us a space at the KOA in Carlsbad. Obviously in this area it’s pretty flat and open, so it’s not an overly pretty campground. But, it’ll do for this evening.

Tomorrow we’re off to Guadalupe Mountains National Park for a couple of days.

As many of you probably know, in May of last year Debbie and I bought a Ford diesel F250 truck and a Grand Design Reflection 150 Series 295RL fifth wheel travel trailer. We took several trips between May and October, finishing our camping year with quite a rambling 55 day trip that included staying in, or visiting, 14 states and the District of Columbia.

We really wore out our family and friends with so many Facebook posts while traveling last year. While it did track our travels and share many of the things that we saw and experienced, it really was not the best format for documenting those trips. So, following a lead from one of our neighbors, I decided that I’d try to use the blog format to document our travels this year. I hope that those of you that find this blog enjoy following our travels as much as we do experiencing them.

From time to time, I’ll also let you know about some of our non-RV related travels. Already this year we’ve taken a cruise on Norwegian Cruise Line in March and a scuba trip to Sunscape Resort in Curacao in April. We’ve got the year off to a great start!