Arrived at the Grants, New Mexico KOA at around 2 PM, after a drive made longer by road work on I-40. There were many slowdowns due to roadwork pretty much all the way across the country, but only a few that involved stop-and-go traffic and long delays. The cats continued to complain. One advantage of the road construction slowdowns was that Mister settled down when the truck was moving slowly and stopped yelling.
We arrived at the Holbrook KOA around 2 PM after a somewhat stressful drive from Seligman, AZ. I’d gotten the trailer hitched back up to the truck without too much trouble, just a lot of jiggling back and forth to get the trailer ball lined up under the hitch, and we hit the road. But my cat, Mister, would not shut up! He hated being in cages and the drive was stressing him out. I stopped at a truck stop to let him out and have some snacks, and he calmed down in the trailer but continued to complain once we got back in the truck. But other than that the drive was easy enough, with lots of pretty scenery.
Getting into my campsite proved to be a challenge — it was right near the camp store with a hard left turn to get into it from the entrance road. I cut the corner too tight and nearly clipped the water spigot on my first attempt. After some jiggling back and forth to get clear, I pulled all the way through and drove around the campground to come back at it from the crossroad, which was a much easier angle and I got myself parked and set up.
I was generally trying to travel 150 – 200 miles a day, which was usually around three hours on the road. Which wasn’t a lot, but since I was traveling every day, each day also included one or two hours of set up and break down and it was too exhausting and too hot to do much else. So I just kept going down the road.
The Holbrook KOA was near the Petrified Forest/Painted Desert National Park, and a short drive to the Grand Canyon, and serves as a good base camp for exploring the surrounding sights. But I didn’t take advantage of any of that, and found the campground itself to be a bit noisy and cramped. Probably would have been more comfortable in one of the outer spaces instead of right next to the camp store on the main entrance. But I was only there one night and it served its purpose.
Sunday morning, I got up early and got ready to hit the road again. Stopped at the office to check out and buy some snacks, got some recommendations for where to buy leveling blocks, and headed out.
Stopped for gas at a Love’s along the highway — my first and only time getting gas with the trailer attached. It was a bit nerve-wracking getting my rig into the pump, even though they had section of roomy RV pumps. But I took it slowly and got it in with no trouble. This was going to be the difficult part of traveling if I didn’t unhook the trailer at the camp site — I’d have to make all my gas stops with the trailer.
Then I stopped at the Walmart in Kingman, Arizona for leveling blocks. Parked the truck and trailer in two facing spots out at the edge of the parking lot and then ran into my next issue: what to do with the cats while I was in Walmart. It was still around 100 F, way to hot to leave them in the truck or the trailer. But I’d bought a pet stroller at one point when I thought I might just stay in hotels along the way instead of buying an RV, and I had it with me in the truck bed. So I pulled it out, put the cats in it, and brought them into Walmart with me. Fortunately, they were too unnerved by the whole experience to complain, and we got in and out fairly quickly with the leveling blocks. A few people noticed that there were cats in my stroller, and thought it was funny. It ended up being the only time I used the stroller, but I was really glad to have it at the time.
