Our Out West Tour
February, 2021
When we made the decision to live Full Time in our RV, we still had a house in College Station, TX. We had been living in a rent house on the lake in Montgomery, Texas and we really enjoyed it. Neither Robert nor I had spent much time out West except for occasional visits to his family's home in Boise, Idaho and being stationed in Yuma, AZ and El Toro, CA, we hadn't yet experienced the desert or the mountains. After a couple ideas of what we could do, we decided to go West! I use RV Trip Wizard as my main planner for campsites and this proved invaluable to me. I can research the amenities the campground has, read reviews about it and get an idea of what it might cost a night. With direct links to the campgrounds websites, it is really a no brainer when it comes to planning.
A couple other tools I use for planning are Campendium, Reserve America, Recreation.gov, Harvest Hosts, AllStays, PassPort America, RV Parky and IOverlander. If you like to go off the grid, the Dyrt is a great app to use for planning as it gives you more information about camping on Bureau of Land Management land and other free places to camp. There is also a website called Free Campsites and I've just learned about this today! But as I said, I mostly rely on RV Trip Wizard and Harvest Hosts, plus the websites for state and national parks.
Our goal was to leave Texas and head to Arizona where Robert's sister, Becky and her husband, Steve would be spending the winter months in Casa Grande, AZ. We had reservations from February 22-March 31st, when we had hoped to keep moving north through Arizona to the Grand Canyon but we had some unexpected delays. That's the thing about living in an RV...you can always change your plans. If your family needs you, then work it out. Be there for them. This would be the case for us because in late February, that freak freeze hit most of Texas and damaged so many homes due to pipes bursting and flooding occurring in their houses. My parents were victims of this massive freeze, having considerable damage done to their breakfast rooms and downstairs carpets. Thankfully, my two sisters stepped in and helped out. We traveled back at the beginning of April to help out with anything they needed from us and getting our own home ready to go on the market. It was a busy time. But I digress!
On the way to Casa Grande, AZ where we would stay at the Palm Creek and Golf Resort (a 55+ RV and tiny home location), we took 21 days to get there and stayed in 9 different commercial or private RV parks. This time I couldn't get any state or national park reservations. Our average night stay was around $49 so we were still in our budgeted range. As we have learned more and more over the past year, we've decided we can do this for around $100,000 a year and live quite comfortably. Some years we may spend a little less as we get accustomed to how long our water will last and how long we can go without dumping our black and gray tanks and can we get by with using battery power and no a/c's. All these things are depending on weather, location and your own comfort level. I like a/c when it's incredibly hot but if we are under trees during the day, we can go a couple of days without a/c. If we know we don't have water at the next location, we can fill our water tank in advance, and typically we can always find a dump station at a truck stop for a small fee.
How many days to get there: 21 days
How many RV stops: 9
Average stay per night: $49
How many miles: 1334
Total cost in RV stays: $2429 but that includes our 30 days in Casa Grande, AZ
Average length of drive per day: We try not to drive more than 3.5 hours but that doesn't always happen. We drove about 5 hours on our longest day and about 45 minutes on our shortest day.
Leaving Texas
It would take us 5 different stops to get out of Texas and into New Mexico. One of the reasons why is because we had never been to the Big Bend National Park or to the Guadalupe Mountain National Park. Both of these places were bucket list places for us and we enjoyed every minute we stayed there. We stayed in Bandera, Ft. Stockton, Alpine, Marathon and Van Horn and we were able to enjoy something different about each of these places. They are so remote that the towns are pretty small. Even Alpine, while there is a college there is relatively small. We would hike in Big Bend, did our first Off Highway Vehicle trail, visit Fort Davis, check out where people can see the Marfa lights and have the best margarita ever.
Onto New Mexico
We arrived in Arenas Valley, NM and got settled in. We would stay here for 4 nights and it's really good we did. On the morning of the 14th, we woke up to snow and two frozen pipes under the sinks. Robert knew it was going to get bad so he had already unhooked our water hose from the city water and we kept the rig as warm as we could but we still had some frozen pipes. Unfortunately, it would be worse back in Texas. It was so cold that my parents and my sister went to a hotel in town, all this of course right after my dad who was 87 had had knee surgery! Can you even imagine?!
On the 16th, we headed to Tombstone, Arizona leaving the cold behind us as we moved further south and west. It would be later that day or the next that I would get the phone call from my sister that my parents' breakfast room ceiling had caved in and the downstairs had flooded ruining the carpet throughout the house. She took over right away with cleaning up the wet, messy sheet rock and stayed as long as she could until my middle sister got there and began helping with the restoration efforts. We contemplated me going home at the time but she and her husband had control of things so I waited until later when we could be of more help. One of the biggest factors involved in the freeze was there was no place for anyone to stay. Lots of rentals, VRBO's and hotels were dealing with broken pipe problems too. As time would progress on and pipes would unfreeze, people would determine that there was water damage in places they never suspected. Talk about a nightmare for them! And dealing with a statewide crisis and insurance companies was no piece of cake either.
As we were close to the Chiricahua National Monument, we took a day to drive over to it. What an incredible history behind this location. Tombstone was interesting and we enjoyed doing the touristy thing by watching the shootout at the OK Corral. After our visit in Tombstone was over, we headed to Tucson for the goal of seeing Old Tucson but it would not happen. Due to Covid restrictions and the past year, they had closed the area down. I'm not even sure if it is open as of now, in August as I write this post. But what we didn't think about was that Saguaro National Park was there and we were able to visit both sides of the park in a day. We hiked with Bruce on the East side and enjoyed a drive through the park on the West side. We stayed in Tucson for 3 nights at what was essentially a parking lot behind a gated fence. Not the fanciest of locations but we weren't in the rig that much so it didn't matter.
On February 22nd, we made our way to Casa Grande and the Palm Creek Golf and RV Resort. It was very nice! As you come in the entrance, you see the 18 hole 3-par golf course with a beautiful swimming pool close to the Registration Office. You have to have your picture taken and you wear a badge to the pools, the sporting areas and basically anywhere you want to go. Masks were necessary around the pickle ball courts but once you started playing you could take them off. I rode my bike a lot there and got all the way up to riding for 12 miles at a time. Robert played a ton of pickle ball with his sister and cousin while I watched!