We celebrated Monday, New Year’s Day, by eating black-eyed peas, cabbage, cornbread, and ham, an Arkansas tradition, at least in our family. However, most of our day was spent packing for winter in Arizona.

On Tuesday, we finished packing for the winter, and had follow-up dental appointments; Kay had a final fitting for a bridge, and I had a crown installed. With empty pockets, we were finally ready to escape to warmer temperatures.

We departed from the motorhome storage bay early Wednesday morning, hooked up the tow car in the church parking lot, and drove southwest and west to the Coffee Creek RV Resort in Santo, Texas.

Along the way, Kay saw a notice on Facebook that my dearest and longest friend, Wayne Bodenhamer, had transitioned from this life into the next. He and I had been friends for 28 years, and fly fished together more days than can be remembered. We had coffee together almost every morning for 10 years while Kay and I were living across the road from he and Loretta. He was one of the smartest persons I have ever known, and could do just about anything. I sure hope Heaven is ready. To say that I’ll will miss him is a gross understatement. 

We arrived at Coffee Creek after driving some 400 miles, set up quickly, and partially reorganized things in the motorhome. The drive was uneventful, and driving through Dallas-Fort Worth did not present any problems as traffic was light.

In no particular hurry, we departed Santo, Texas, Thursday morning at about 9 am and drove west some 300 miles to Monahans Sandhills State Park on the eastern edge of the Permian Basin. The motorhome was leveled and slide deployed, and we enjoyed peace and quiet; it was too cold and windy to go outside, there was no cell signal, and we were unable to play recorded TV shows.

Enjoying a relaxing morning before taking off was so nice on Thursday morning, we opted to follow the same routine Friday morning. We were up early after an early night the preceding evening, and departed the state park at about 8 am.

The day’s drive took us west on Interstate 20 through the oil and gas rich Permian Basin, then onto Interstate 10 into Mountain Standard Time, and then into New Mexico where we overnighted at Hacienda RV Resort in Las Cruces. And then disaster struck—not really. Kay showered and I was ready to shower but there was no hot water. Not only was there no hot water, there was no water coming out of the hot water side of any of the faucets at all. A quick internet search indicated that the water heater back flow preventer valve had failed. It was too much of a challenge for me to repair it (body contortions and all), so I used the shower at the RV resort. Hacienda RV Resort proved to be a really nice place to overnight, and the internet was adequate. We were able to catch up on some TV shows and YouTube videos.

We were off to the west Saturday morning for our final 350+ mile drive of the trip. We drove west through New Mexico and southeast Arizona to Tucson, then followed Interstate 10 north to our final destination in Casa Grande, Arizona. We arrived at our place of winter residence about 1 pm, check in, and partially set up for the next three months. Joleen prepared dinner for us and it was great, though Gary claimed some pseudo credit. Thank you, Jolene.