Short Stay In Phoenix, Mesa

Our little Happy Days RV park is grande but the heat is not.  Today it will go to 102 and tomorrow 104 so we are bailing and heading North.  Our first stop will be Sonona (160 miles) and into the mountains.  Temp should be down to the mid 80s daytime and 60s at night.  Much better.  From there we will head to the Grand Canyon.


Phoenix we will be coming back to.  Huge lists of things to do.  Very well organized freeway system, we drove to our RV site at 60mph in the slow lanes (8 wide at times) and never saw a stop light.  Vancouver could really take a lesson.


We had a lovely breakfast with Joy and her mom Bev and then we toured their luxury trailer park.  In this park you own your land and trailer, RV, Park Model, etc.  Cost is about 1600 per year plus hydro.  Prices range from 30K to 200K.  Why would anyone buy a time share.  Joy rents her's out for five months per year at $1700 per month.  Much nicer than Mesa, but it is friends and family that draw you close.

We needed to find a day activity for us that could include Kyle.  We had watched a PBS program on the Apache Trail (old hyw 88) some days ago and Joy confirmed that we would love this.  It was about 14 miles to Canyon Lake, Tortilla Flats and the National Rec Area.  (Lots of photos in the album)  The temp climbed from 93, past 99 and peaked at 101 on our truck gauge.  We drove to the flats to buy a park pass and then visited the lake for a long swim.  Our parking pass for the day cost $6.  Kyle was so happy.  It was too hot for him to walk on the asphalt, so we danced into the short bush and Kaye poked her umbrella for snakes as we made our way to the shore !  I swam too, the water was still cool (winter is just passing for them), if the local lakes in Canada ever get that warm we would call it a bath.


The road was a motorcyclists' dream.  Super tight, windy twisty, 15mph, corner after corner, sharp hills and downs, and single lane bridges.  There were many pull offs to let the traffic pass and take pictures.  When we were leaving the beach and taking pictures a caravan of muscle Mustangs wasted a lot of fuel blackening their exhaust heading up a hill just off a single bridge.  They did not fit into the landscape.


You could easily spend weeks exploring this area, so we will be back when the weather is more cooperative.  We have lots of years to come back.  


We said ; "Goodbye" to the old couple who run this RV Park.  They understood.  They told me all the Canadians had gone home before Easter, they will be back in Nov.  Maybe we will be too!  Off to the Grand Canyon.