Bye Bye California!

We were supposed to stay in California until the end of February, but the job ended early.  Mom was more than ready to leave.  It is so expensive!  Our rent wasn't terrible like in San Francisco, but we had to pay electric here.  We didn't there.  Mom asked several times what the rate was, but she could never get the answer.  She found out that it changes each month.  How can that be?  It is also on a tiered plan.  The more you use, the higher the rate.  The rate starts out at $.10 a kilowatt which is cheap, but then it goes up to $.30 a kilowatt.  Want to guess which rate we were at most of the time?  They also charge an additional fee.  Mom found out that it is a fee that the park just adds to the bill.  That is a first for us. We paid $445 for five weeks of electricity. Their fee was $119.  The final week there, we switched over to using our propane because we found out a guy would come by to fill up our tank.  It would have been cheaper to use propane the whole time, but unless a truck comes to your site, it is difficult to get if filled. While we really liked Southern California, we were ready to get the heck out of the state.

We left on Saturday and drove to Picacho, AZ.

We stayed at a KOA. 

Frankie's Restaurant

 They had a real restaurant on site.  The folks ate there and really enjoyed their steak dinner.  They said it was better than some steak houses.

The steaks were grilled here.

I liked the dog park.

On Sunday, we had planned to stop in El Paso but the weather changed our minds.  High winds were predicted for Monday, so we drove two more hours and stayed in Van Horn, TX for two nights.  We drove longer on Sunday because we decided to stay parked on Monday.  That meant our drive on Tuesday would be much longer than planned.

This was the rest area where we ate lunch on Sunday.  It was windy there.

View from the rest area.

We were given a site with a nice view of the sunrise.

Our view.

Mom and I sat outside before the wind kicked up.

Yep, it got windy and dusty.

 We are not sure how high the gusts were, but they had been predicted to possibly be 60-80 mph and that is way too windy to drive a motor home.

 We bought our slides in because the wind was making our slide toppers fly up too much.  We were scared they would tear.  It got quite cozy inside. 

We were able to leave on Tuesday.  It was still windy.  We watch the sun come up as we drove down the highway.

Tuesday was a long day of driving, but we arrived safely at our destination near Dallas around 5 p.m. We are staying near the place that we have stayed two times in the past, so we know the area.  The folks are excited to be able to eat at their favorite restaurants again.

Joey,
The Greyhound Who Still Needs A Cowboy Hat