With the bulk of the truck conversion finished, we were ready to set out on a new adventure.  There was, however, an impending winter storm forecast for our scheduled departure date. We decided, in the interest of safety, to ride out the storm before leaving.

We were in an extended stay hotel. We had an unusual relationship with the woman at the front desk. When we checked in a few days prior, we had a strange experience that seemed to set the stage for our entire stay. We booked the reservation in Chris’s name and used my credit card to pay for it as we usually do. When we checked in, we used the same card for the incidentals hold, as we typically do. Immediately, the front desk clerk asked Chris if he had a card in his name. Before he was able to reach into his pocket for the card, she asked him twice more, “so you don’t have a credit card in your name?” in an accusatory tone.

As we finished the check-in process, we asked for the kitchen items that are available for use.  She told us that we should go to the store first, and then ask for the equipment. We thought that was odd, but since we were not planning to cook that night, we let it go. The next day, we again requested the items and were told we would have to wait for her to put it together. We asked her to call our room when it was ready, intending to return to get them.

Ten minutes later, we heard a knock on the door. The desk clerk was standing there, no mask, with a giant tub of more than items than we had requested, huffing and puffing from the supposed effort. The front desk was right next to the elevator, as was our room. The walk was a total of 20 feet, at most.

This pattern continued, with her scolding Chris for having a luggage cart on the second floor, as he was returning it to where we had found it, huffing and puffing when we needed change to do laundry but didn’t have enough cash to buy a full roll of quarters.

When I asked to extend our stay one more night because of the storm, the same desk clerk tapped a few keys on her computer and then told me that it wouldn’t “let her do it.” Frustrated, I returned to our room and was able to book the room myself on Hotels.com. We knew which car she drove as we had previously seen her in the parking lot.  We could see the car from our window, so we waited for her to leave and spoke to the overnight desk clerk to arrange to keep the same room. It was no problem.

Tuesday dawned, the storm was not as bad as promised, and we were underway. I started doubting our choice to stay the extra night, but we saw numerous cars abandoned after running off the road as we drove down the interstate. Fortunately, most of them looked like minor accidents, but there were also a few where cars had flipped, and we could see rescuers had used the jaws of life to get people out.

As we traveled, we suddenly found one side of the road to be impassable and covered with ice.  We slowed down to a crawl as we navigated to the one almost clear lane. Luckily, the bad road conditions did not last for long, and as we made it further south, we were able to resume a reasonable pace.

We were impressed by the landscape. Every time we thought we were leaving the mountains behind, more appeared on the horizon. Before we knew it, we were in New Mexico, which was equally gorgeous.  Eventually, the snow disappeared.

New Mexico currently requires any out of state visitors to quarantine for two weeks or the duration of their stay if it is shorter unless there for work. We planned to only stop for gas and an overnight on public lands to sleep.

We are entirely new to the free camping experience but managed to find a good prospect on a place to spend the night until we checked the weather forecast to learn that there was another winter storm warning for that area. We found an alternative spot near Albequerque, where the forecast was still for winter weather, but not the blizzard expected near Santa Fe.

We posted on Facebook that we had entered New Mexico. My brother contacted us to see if we might be able to help him out. He had an account with a campground in Las Cruces that had canceled their service. He needed to pick up his costly equipment, which meant a 56 hour round trip for him. Las Cruces was about three hours south of our planned route.

I told him I wasn’t sure if we could do it, but I would look at the possibility of doing it on our way back to Colorado. We had to return by November 10 to pick up the Xbox we had pre-ordered before leaving Virginia. After Chris and I talked about it, we decided to reroute the first part of our trip to help him out. When we realized the equipment was at a campground, we asked if he had a connection for a possible free spot for the night. The campground manager offered us a tent space, which we were fine with, but then the owner said we could not stay without paying.

My brother offered to use his hotel points for a room instead. It was cold, so we were happy to stay in a hotel. Las Cruces was farther than we had planned to drive for the day, but we didn’t mind getting in later since we wouldn’t have to set up a campsite in the dark.

In only an hour, we had the equipment packed into the truck. That was the easy part. With some help from Google, we located a box big enough to ship the equipment. We wrapped and packed everything into the box, happy that it all fit. We went to the post office to find that they will not ship packages over 75 pounds.

We next headed to a nearby UPS store.  As we inquired about how much the insurance would cost, the manager came over and asked if our packaging could withstand a three-foot drop. He opened it up, and we determined that it most definitely could not. He offered to repack the box for us. That made the cost of shipping go up quite a bit. I attempted to contact my brother to approve the extra charges, but he was at a job in Florida and out of range for phone service.

I attempted to reach him for the better part of 20 minutes when the manager offered to give us a nice discount. I felt comfortable approving the new amount, and we were once again ready to continue our adventure. I was nervous about shipping the sensitive equipment but happy to learn a week later that the package arrived safe and sound at my brother’s shop.

We continued our journey west into Arizona, enjoying the stunning desert scenery along the way.  We hit the first of four border patrol stops as we entered Arizona. I thought it was an odd place as we were about 40 miles from the border. We noticed officers with dogs as we approached the station. Chris had his id ready to go, but they just waved us through.

Well used railroad tracks ran parallel with the interstate, and we watched more than a few trains pass by. We passed over the Continental Divide. High school was a very long time ago. I had to look it up to remember what it was. I found the many dust storm warning signs intriguing. I enjoyed that there were also signs explaining what to do if you end up in one while driving.

Before we left Las Cruces, we had picked a spot to spend the night, making sure we would arrive before dark.
As we neared the mountains where we planned to spend the night, the sun dipped behind the hills, and it grew dark very quickly. I couldn’t understand how we had misjudged the timing until I discovered that Arizona does not use Daylight Savings Time, so we had moved into Pacific Time without realizing it.

As we approached the mountains, signs declaring “earth fissures possible” made me nervous. We followed a winding dirt road into the mountains as we continued to our destination. Unfortunately, we couldn’t get there, as the road was closed.  We thought about spending the night in an empty parking area, but when Chris started to unload the cooler and everything else on our bed, he decided that it just didn’t feel right.  We continued to Tuscon, where we used a reward night to stay in a hotel for the night.

Before going to the hotel, we stopped at Wal-Mart to buy a tow hitch cargo carrier and bag, which would allow us to store the cooler and other items outside the truck.  After a stressful day, we slept very well. We got up in the morning, assembled the cargo carrier in the hotel parking lot, and were once again on our way.