How You Dune? Part 6

Did you read Part 5 yet?  Has your heart rate calmed down after doing so?

In the last blog, we'd experienced an eventful day on Chris' 43rd birthday, and we'd made it to our Harvest Hosts location at Birds & Barrels Vineyard, in Willcox, AZ.

Sleepy faces greeting the dawn in Willcox, AZ!

We woke up on Monday morning around 6:30am, having slept well - we were the only campers on the B&B property on Sunday night, and their location is remote, so it was nice and quiet.  Sadly, we didn't get to experience waking up to turkey calls, like the last time we camped here; the turkeys were no longer on the property, and given that it was getting close to Thanksgiving, we didn't want to ask the reason why (we felt pretty confident we knew the answer already).

Ah, coffee and grapevines

If anyone sees these on the Ram Trucks website,

let them know they owe me royalties, cool?

As is our norm, we puttered around the rig for a bit, making coffee and chai, as well as yogurt parfaits for breakfast.  After a quick shower (we had a full tank of water, and I was ready to put it to the test after my lukewarm ablutions in Alamogordo a few days prior), we were packed and pulling out of the vineyard around 8:30am.  We made a quick stop at the TA Travel Center off the 10 in Willcox for gas and to dump our tanks; we also found ourselves having second breakfast, as we were unable to resist the siren call of the in-store Popeye's chicken and biscuits (is life really worth it if you don't eat junky gas station/fast food sometimes?).

We made one more stop on the way home, at the Pilot station in Eloy for another gas/bathroom break, and then it was back on the 10, heading west, for the final push into Midtown Phoenix.  Although we normally take the rig back to East Mesa (Arlene's storage area) the next day after arriving home, we fast-tracked it this time; Chris wanted Dave, Always RV's Service Manager, to take a look at the tire situation, so we sped through our normal cleaning procedures to drive it back before their business day ended.

While I stayed at Casa de Olsen and started the seemingly insurmountable heaps of laundry, Chris dropped the rig and on his way back, picked up the maniacs at doggie daycare, where they'd been lodging during our trip.  As always, we had tons of pictures of their adventures - to thank you for reading all of these blog entries, here's a doggie photo dump!

Zoe getting love while she sits on top of their playground slide/thing:

We call this her "right cross" -

she does this to us fairly often

What a smile!

Don't worry - August was well represented, too:

The little teeth!

Stretching out with those tappy toes

And a few more of this nutcase:

That is Augs behind Zoe,

on the right side of the shot

Yup, that's our dog.

Nice J.J. Abrams lens-flare action, there

As you can see by reading these blogs, this was a great trip!  We had the chance to spend a few days with long-time friends and we explored new, incredibly cool natural landscapes.  We saw a giant pistachio, and we ate awesome food and drank incredible wine.  While the tire thing was a bit more exciting than we would have wished for, we were able to check that off our "new RV owners" bucket list, too!  Here's to another amazing (and safe!) trip being in the books!

Later!

Amy