Pining for the Fjords

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 ...

Don't sleep on Part 4 ! Whew!  We made it to Willcox. In the last blog, we'd camped for two nights at Oliver Lee Memorial State Park in New Mexico, spending some time exploring White Sands National Park .  We'd waved goodbye to our buddies Jen and Bryan, and their puppers Bogey and Bronx (on their way home to north Tucson), and we'd alternatively emptied and filled Arlene's tanks for the next leg of our journey.  While we originally planned to head straight home on Sunday morning (doing the nine-ish hour drive in one day), we instead decided to take advantage of our Harvest Hosts membership and stay Sunday night at Birds and Barrels Vineyards in Willcox, Arizona; not only would this shorten our Sunday driving time, but it would also allow us to pick up our fall wine allocation - we're members of the B&B wine club, too! After completing our tank-related business at Oliver Lee, we were on the road toward Alamogordo around 10am, and we passed through Las Cru...

Don't miss Part 3 of this blog series!  It's pretty cool! In the last blog entry, we visited  White Sands National Park , which has to be one of the coolest places on earth.  After we finished up there, we hopped back out on the 70 and headed east toward Alamogordo.  Instead of taking a right on the 54 and immediately heading south to  Oliver Lee Memorial State Park , our camping location, however, we took a left and ventured about 15 miles north, to a spot that wasn't originally on our trip itinerary.  "WHAT?!?!" I hear you say, "you deviated from the itinerary?!?!!?"  Yes, dearest reader, we did, although it wasn't so much a deviation as an essential addition. Look at all those nuts! As I mentioned way back in Part 1 of this blog series, as we were winging our way eastward along the 10, we'd started seeing billboards advertising the world's largest pistachio at a roadside market/attraction known as Pistachioland .  It sounded like fun, an...