World United States Arizona Phoenix

Westbound Again

Phoenix AZ Jun 19, 2012

Our day started early – yet unintentionally – at 5:30am when the body shop guy in Red Bay AL returned my call about scheduling the body work we need to get done. Since I didn’t tell him we were in CA, it is kind of my fault. Needless to say, I missed the call, but was pretty much awake till I got out of bed at 7:00. We packed up and after a fuel stop, got on the road eastboundish just before 10:00. The first hour east from San Diego on I-8 was basically a climb over the mountains, then once we hit the Imperial Valley west of El Centro CA, that’s when the road flattened out, we picked up a legitimate tailwind and the temperatures skyrocketed. It was a pretty nice drive through a lot of God-forsaken real estate. We got close enough to Mexico to see the infamous border fence, but we opted to not pay a visit to our neighbors to the south. We left California in our mirrors and crossed into Arizona at Yuma where we turned onto Hwy. 95 northbound through some more hellish territory up to Quartzsite where we stopped for about 20 minutes to grab some lunch, then hopped onto I-10 to Phoenix. We got to Phoenix at a horrible time – just about 5:00 – but the trip was painless going east. Westbound on I-10 was crawling but we zipped past downtown to the 202 Loop south to our current home at the Apache Palms RV Park in Tempe, just down the street from Arizona State University. The temperature when we got into Phoenix was a balmy 108°. Yes, it is a dry heat, but it is also a hot heat. And tomorrow and Thursday are forecast to be 111° and 113° respectively. Why on earth do people actually live here? And more importantly, why are we here? Well, basically we are here because 7½ hours on the road is just about enough. And they have a major league baseball team that is playing here tonight so we have to go check out the Diamondbacks and Chase Field. We have been to 4 major league parks in the last 9 days, and this will be our 6th park of this trip so it is now almost a requirement. We really liked Chase Field; it has a retractable roof and air conditioning, the food choices are extensive, the seats have a little more room than most, it has a swimming pool, the scoreboard is the best we’ve seen anywhere and did I mention the air conditioning? Of the “modern” parks, we think it is one of the best. We have no specific plans for tomorrow just yet, but I imagine it will involve sightseeing and sweating.

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