Yep – today is my birthday! 🥳 I keep singing the Beatles song:
“Will you still need me, will you still feed me, When I’m sixty-four”
This isn’t the first time I’ve had a song stuck in my head for a day. I forgot to tell you that when we were driving from Texas to New Mexico, and we went through El Paso? Yea – there’s a song by Marty Robbins who was a country singer back in the 50-60’s. My dad only listened to country, and he had an album of Marty Robbins called “Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs” that included the song El Paso that started with this:
Out in the West Texas town of El Paso, I fell in love with a Mexican girl…
I don’t know the rest of the song, but I know the tune and this part, so it kept going through my head over and over in a never ending chorus. 🎶
OK – so what happened today? Sunrise was at 7:00, so we were up and peeling out by 7:30. And we weren’t even the first to leave the winery. It was going to get super windy today, so we wanted an early start for our 285 mile drive. Our plan was to get to Florence by noon, because by 3:00 in the afternoon, the wind would be blowing a constant 25 with gusts to 40. 😳 The weather was calm for our first couple of hours, which I’m thankful for. There were a few long stretches of I-10 in New Mexico that are prone to huge dust storms. We went through two or three of these sections where there are warning signs about what to do if caught in a storm. I’m pretty sure this afternoon will not be nice here!
By 8:00 we were welcomed into Arizona, and we gained another hour on the clock. Arizona is actually still in the Mountain Time Zone like New Mexico, except Arizona does not participate in Daylight Savings Time. So when DST starts, Arizona stays put in standard time, and becomes the same as Pacific Daylight Time.
We stopped in a little town of San Simon to fuel up, with the probably the last fuel we’ll see under $4.00 for awhile. The wind was starting to come up by 10:00, and our ETA was noon. So we had a couple of breezy hours, but they weren’t terrible. We had to get through Tucson and onto the road north to Florence. That was a lot of stop & go, but it was the most direct with the shortest time and mileage, although maybe not the least amount of traffic. As we neared Florence, the desert became more and more colorful with wildflowers. It was really fluffy and pretty with so much green! Riding Kawi here will be much prettier this year than last. They’ve had a lot of rain this winter, so everything has bloomed beautifully.
We arrived right at noon and got settled in. We visited a bit with our old friends Rocky and Rick, then decided to do an early dinner in town at the River Bottom Grille for my birthday. It was SUPER windy out now, but we found a sheltered place to sit outside and the temperature was very comfortable. We had fun catching up and talking about stuff to do this week as well as this coming summer when we’ll both be living on our boats.
It was a fun afternoon, and it will be nice to be in one place for awhile and just play. There’s going to be some adventures!
I received lots of nice birthday wishes through text, facebook, and messenger – Thank you! Not a bad way to spend a birthday…. traveling with my sweetheart and hanging out with dear friends. 😍
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Tuesday, April 4 was spent catching up on chores. The resort here has a big laundry room with 10 washers and 10 dryers. Most were available when I went in, so I did four loads all at once. It was great to get everything done in just 1.5 hours! Kenny worked on our solar system. One of the batteries has been acting temperamental, so he unhooked it all while went to Queens Creek, which is north about 35 miles. We hit a Costco, a grocery store, Total Wine & More, O’Reilly’s, and a car wash so Henry could get cleaned up. When we got back Kenny hooked the solar system back up and it all seems to be working properly again. No idea what the issue was. 🤷♀️. Maybe it just needed a cold boot, like a computer, huh? So it wasn’t an interesting picture kind of day, but it was productive! We had tacos for dinner with R&R, and played a game of cards. We’ll get the twin Kawasaki’s out tomorrow for a tootle through the desert. There will be pictures tomorrow. 👍🏼