December 4th.
We woke up early for the first time on the trip. We were glad that we finally accomplished this feat, however it was mostly because it was so dang cold and our flimsy blankets and little heater could not keep up with the all night freeze (remember, we're from Hawaii). That night had gotten down to the 30's. Even though we have a heater, it couldn't keep up with the cold air coming through the walls. We aren't fully equipped for these temperatures. This made us research the weather in Colorado and learned it would be in the 20's at night.
Hmmmmmm, and snow...
Hhmmmmmm, and mountain passes...
Hmmmmmmmm… and not knowing where we would end up camping…
Hmmmmmmmm.
So we made an emotionally difficult decision to keep to the south for the warmer weather and not take the trek into Colorado to see Sharon's family. With regrets and sadness we informed Sharon's family of the decision.
Now we will hug I-10 all the way into Florida. We are already planning our next trip, which will be to visit Sharon's family in Colorado as the primary reward and all the other parks and monuments we've bypassed due to cold and distance.
We had a travel day, departing from Joshua Tree towards Phoenix. We ended in Chandler just outside of Phoenix. Sharon did her virgin drive with a camper attached, and Doug managed to contain/maintain his whimpering throughout that terrifying period of the trip. (This is Doug --> All kidding aside, Sharon is a great driver and the only new stuff was making sure turns were wide enough for the trailer to follow - easily done. As a bonus, those few pedestrians that used to stand so close to the curb sure did learn a thing or two! ) Wayyyy cool. Such a light camper I couldn't even feel that I was pulling anything (including the pedestrians).
Stopped at Costco to get tires balanced and rotated and promptly found out that the front right tire was loose, Holy Crap……we were certainly looked out for. We called Sears which was only 375 yards away, according to GPS and they could take us in the next morning at 9am. So we camped at Costco. Here's a picture of Doug, homeless, no jeep, trailer stuck in some parking lot, all his possessions in a cart stolen from Target. If you look up "Despondent" in the dictionary you'll see this picture.
December 5th - Casa Grande.
The car was all fixed up by 1:30, seems we had a broken hub assembly and bad bearing. In the old days, this would simply have been a bad bearing - but we live in a parts swapping world and the lowest "assembly" available was the hub - which contained the inner and outer bearings. After the fix we were ready for another adventure, except someone parked in front of the camper at Costco and we couldn't hook the jeep up until the guy came back. Oh well, might have been traffic anyway…
Started our trip and only got about 30 miles outside of Chandler when we took a detour to see Casa Grande National Park.
Very cool!
Hohokam Natives inhabited here and there still isn't a whole lot of information about these people as far as where they came from. Unknown as to why Casa Grande, meaning Great House, was even built. Some say it was for their form of Government, others say its possible it was used as an observatory of sorts, tracking the sun and moon. Sharon likes this idea the most, Doug thinks it could be for some sort of religious worship. In either case, it was exhilarating.
It was a quick tour, as we got there just before dark. Starting to see a pattern here?
Another gorgeous sunset as seen with the ruins in the foreground, and a night of camping at the nearby Walmart. Nice and warm.
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