Arriving in the States from Mexico |

 

A few days ago, I made my way to the Nogales border crossing from San Carlos, Mexico.  It was a typical trip, border crossing went OK and then I drove about another hour to my first stop in the States in over four months.  As I did on the way south, I stopped at the Desert Diamond Casino, just a few miles north of Green Valley, Arizona.  

 

This casino has been very helpful for RVers who are headed south for Mexico as well as the ones coming north in the Spring.  As you can see in the first photo above, there were quite a few RVs in the parking lot, and this was only a portion of them.  Tractor trailers also stop here for lunch, or for overnight.

 

They have multiple restaurants inside, and the little café has food that is quite good.  And, of course, there are always the slot machines or tables.  The grounds are well maintained and everyone is welcoming.

 

 

The foliage is typical Sonoran desert - I find the cactus above very interesting.  The spines are curved at the end, the popular name for this one is Fish Hook.

 

I know everyone appreciate the fact that we are allowed to stay for a few days to rest up, eat, and have a little fun after a long trip.  Thank you, Desert Diamond Casino, for being a great host.

Boondocking



Today I moved to a new neighborhood in which I expect to stay only a few days. I'm going to see how I do at boondocking for more than just an overnight stay at WalMart.   For those not familiar with boondocking, it's living in an RV without hookups - no electric, no water, nothing. It has been very nice here during the day, warm without being hot. Nights, however, are down into the high 40s, which is quite cool.

My traveling friend Robin also moved today, but went north to the Phoenix area. She is volunteering with a group of other RVers for the next three weeks to do some work on a woman's shelter up there.  This is typical of her - very caring and giving.  We had fun traveling together and I hope we meet up again. It was funny, when we would be discussing something and I'd tell her what I thought we should do, she would say that it was just what she was going to say. That happened many times between us, almost like mental telepathy. 

When we checked out this site last week, a Canadian couple told us the land is owned by the railroad and campers were allowed to stay two weeks. Arizona does not have the great deal on their state parks that New Mexico does, they seem to be the same price as a regular RV park. Since I'll be paying more for camping in Arizona, I figured I could offset some of the cost by boondocking once in a while. I do have a little Honda generator I can use to charge the battery, use the microwave or whatever else I need - except the air conditioner.

I got here before noon, unhooked my 5th wheel and had lunch. Then I went around collecting garbage and trash other campers had left. I now have 3 large bags of it in the back of my truck. I'm almost sure RVers didn't do that - if they did, I'm shocked.  RVers appreciate areas for boondocking and they appreciate nice clean campsites. I don't think they would trash it up and possibly lose privileges for themselves and others by having areas like this fenced off and closed to public use. For all campers, the message is clear - please clean up your campsite when leaving so that others can continue to benefit from the use of these camping areas.

By the time I was done with that little project and had my area nice and clean, I noticed that the sun had moved and was now beating down on the side of my RV where the refrigerator is. Since I was now running that on LP, I decided to find another campsite where the refrigerator would be in the shade in the afternoon. I found a nice little site and moved - it's much easier when you don't have water, electric and sewer hooked up. As a bonus, the new site I found was clean so I didn't have to collect more trash.

 

I spent a good part of the afternoon reading and relaxing in the shade. I was being lazy like that when a truck pulled up and a woman came around to talk to me. She said she saw me pull in here earlier in the afternoon and that she had a house with a fenced horse area that had electric and water.  If I wanted to, I could come stay at her house. I told her that it was very generous of her to make such an offer and explained that this was my first experiment in trying to live without hookups. She understood and told me she knew RV parks in this area were expensive and thought I was trying to avoid paying. She stayed for a while and we talked about RVing, her parents and others in her family have traveled like that. We had a nice visit and before she left, I thanked her again for offering her facilities to me.

When it got close to sunset, I climbed up the hill near the campsites to take sunset photos. When I finish with this experiment, I'll let you know how it went.