If you are looking in on our blog and want to know how to be notified when there is a new post by email – here are the steps:

Then fill in luckyontheloose.blog and hit Follow.

C

January 28^th – February 3rd 2018

One thing that I’ve really liked is how different our wheels-down experiences are on the road. Our last stop was in the heart of Tempe, a city experience. This week we stayed outside of a small town named Safford in an out of the way State Park. It was really clean and well maintained. The park has a spring fed hot tub (96 degress – no jets of course) and lots of trails.

The area is beautiful in the Eastern Oregon Desert sort of way. There wasn’t a lot of cactus here but there were lots of trees, even a few palm trees. The mountains in the distance were stunning. The park was pretty full over the weekend but during the week not so much. It was quiet and serene. The weather was warm during the day and not too cool at night.

JP and I fished from the fishing platform. It’s rumored that there are trout, crappie, catfish and bluegill in the lake, but the water is too cold. JP  took the pontoon boat out  and had a couple of bites on the bottom, but alas – no fish for dinner. We tried the little Dankworth Pond too – but still no luck. It seems we are always ahead of the season.

JP got to know all the neighbors and I used this stop to work on the blog. We hiked the trails around the park and mostly just kicked back and enjoyed the scenery. In the evening we were invited to share a campfire with Edgar and Joanna (Quebec) and another camper Boomer (Michigan). So it was campfire, whiskey, wine, and swapping road stories.

We used one day to explore and spent the whole day on the road. We passed through some little towns who had seen their hayday way back when. Then we drove on to Clifton an old town with a street full of buildings dating from 1901 to 1913, though some of the buildings were obviously older. I couldn’t find any movies that were filmed here but cant imagine why not (too remote?). Only a few of the buildings were being used and the rest were empty and or for sale. Just a street full of history with the echo of the life it once was. 

Then onto Morenci just up the road. Its the 3rd largest copper mine in the world and  the 1st largest in the USA. The town is certainly off the beaten path but the hills are cool and the town looks like its prospering. The mine has been employing families in the area for generations and is known for its environmental and safety practices.

Open pit mine, Morenci. Arizona, USA

Morenci concentrator building. Arizona, USA

We took the long drive home so we could see the country. It was vast, rugged and beautiful in its own desert mountain kinda of way.

We celebrated out 1 Year Anniversary on the road with a Mexican Dinner at Casa Manana. It was good food and TripAdvisor said it was #1 of 38 in Safford. I think we might have figured that out on our own though – the parking lot was packed and the place was hoppin’!

We shared a last campfire with our neighbors Boomer and Loraine and their pup Murrphy on our last night here, then hit it early. Next stop: Pantagonia Lake State Park!

 It’s our Lucky Adventure Anniversary! We’re heading into year # 2!

So, this post will be a little more personal and a whole lot longer. Go ahead  and wait for the post on our next location if it’s TMI for you.  Its Ok, really!

On February 2, 2017 we hit the road with Lucky in tow. We can’t believe it’s been a year! We’ve stayed in Washington, California, Idaho, Montana, Nevada and Arizona (we haven’t yet hit Utah). We’ve only cruised the western states because we need to be back in Oregon each May (appointments and Bass Fishing) and then again Sept. thru Nov. (salmon season at the coast). We may try another mode of travel to head east somewhere down the line – who knows?

Living in a little (20ft) trailer probably isn’t for everyone. Almost every place we stay, we are one of a few “little ones.” It’s worked fine for us though. There hasn’t been much that we needed that we didn’t have, so we don’t feel unprepared. Our life is just simpler and we’ve found we don’t really need all that much onboard to be comfy. Trailer Life in a Nutshell:

• Clothing has 4 categories  1. Clean 2. Mostly Clean 3. Kinda dirty 4. Dirty     (judgement is made by # of days until the next laundromat stop).   
• There is a huge difference between real T.P. and single ply sewer-safe T.P. 
• When you need more space for storage, you no longer need the trailer shower, the Park/Resort showers will do just fine.   
• The oven is a perfect pantry. If it was meant to be used as an oven, the trailer would have come with a built-in pantry.

The trip has been a learn-as-you-go experience but we’ve been able to roll with it! We wondered how we would do on the road and I’m happy to report – really flipping well! Its kinda hard not to get along when its just the two of us in a such a small space! Its surprising how things that in the past might have made us mad, or crazy or impatient have somehow just became teasing fodder and back-handed jokes. 

One of the very best parts of our travels is that we have had more time with the Ben and Amanda and that really has made our hearts happy! We’ve been able to spend more time visiting family and that’s been awesome too!

I’ve learned a few things about myself this year.

• Evidently things don’t have to be perfect and exact when you are doing them for yourself. If the checkbook doesn’t balance to the penny “close enough” is “good enough”.
• If I am wearing sunglasses or I’m somewhere no one has seen my face before, Oh Yeah! No makeup required.
• I can, if need be – be sociable with strangers. It may take a cocktail or some hair twirling but at JP’s request I am working on it. Thankfully he paves the way as our ambassador.
• I am MacGyver. I can figure out weird ways to use household items to solve little problems (like using a spatula in each drawer handle backed by a small tension curtain rod to keep the drawers from sliding out when we’re in motion (the same tension rod and a black pillow case make the perfect curtain to keep the sunlight out when we decide to sleep in). Who knew?
• The blog is supposed to be fun, not stressful, or crazy time consuming, not my best grammar or finest writing. Just me talking to whoever happens to pop in for an update. I love having our travel diary (it’ll be a valuable tool when JP and I don’t seem to share the exact same memory)!
• Oddly – I have found that I can be happy without having the answer to “Where do you see yourself in 5 years?” I’m good with having a general direction and some reservations on the horizon.

JP has learned a few things about himself too.

• He is pretty resourceful when he sets his mind to it. He can fix and maintain most everything we’ve needed on the road.
• He’s liking that we’re aging but not feeling all that much older. There are so many RV’ers out on the road with way more years on them than us and still kickin’ it pretty damn well!
• He has become much more tolerant of A**h**le drivers. Probably because we are seldom going the speed limit with Lucky in tow. We don’t have as many options and aren’t as agile when we’re pulling the trailer.
• He believes there is a phenomenon that equates to the truck driving faster and better if it is freshly washed and waxed.
• He has an obsession with firewood when campfires are available (or even when they’re not)! If there is firewood to be had – we need it. Let no other campsite leave wood behind. We’ve even had firewood onboard so long that we forgot we had it – then forgot where we had left it!
• JP also learned that there can be life without water nearby (though not his first choice). This road trip really hasn’t been about fishing or camping for that matter – more about the adventure itself and he’s still having a good time!

There have only been a few challenges on the road.

We miss our friends. Keeping in touch by text or email just isn’t the same and no one really uses the phone much anymore. Even though our trips back to Oregon in May and in the Fall put us out of sync on our travels I wouldn’t give them up! I miss my girlfriends something fierce and can’t wait to see them up close and personal again! 

Real life still goes on. When you go on vacation you just step away from life for awhile, then catch up when you get back. Living in Lucky we still have bills to pay, taxes to file, medical coverage to figure out and prescriptions to chase down at various Walgreens. Sometimes easier said than done since WIFI and cell aren’t always fast or easy.

There are so many people RV’ ing that the State Parks and RV Resorts fill up so we have to have a plan and reservations with lead time which makes travel less spontaneous than we’d like.

We can’t control the weather and the weather history is no longer accurate so being the sun seekers we are, we just aren’t ready to be in chilly, icy or rainy weather. 

We can hardly complain if these are the biggest challenges in our life! 

Side Note: I am not able to see who looks in on our blog. We only know if you were visiting if you post a comment, but WordPress does keep track of statistics and this is how this year broke down:

I’ve posted 136 posts on luckyontheloose.blog since we started.                                          There have been 432 Visitors (that’s you)                                                                                  3,702 Views (that’s individual posts that you’ve looked at).                                                luckyontheloose.blog has been visited by viewers in:                                                              United States 346, Germany 6, India 2, United Kingdom 1                                                    BTW I have no idea how the viewers from outside the US stumbled into the blog?

If you have been following along – thanks! It’s fun to share our Adventures in Lucky. We’re really grateful for this chance to do something we never expected. Thanks so much to our friends that have helped make this trip possible. Even on the road it takes a village back home!

We love the road, we love Lucky, we love this chapter in our life. Thanks for coming along for the ride! Wish you were here!