Our Adventures RV'ing

Our Adventures RV'ing

Wednesday, February 22, 2017

Final leg: New Mexico, Arizona and back to Utah


A little behind on my posting. I forgot to finish and post our final leg of our 2016 Fall Adventure.

Oct. 4th - Nov. 1st, 2016

Before we left Albuquerque, Mike noticed a screw in one of our tires. Not getting home for another 4 weeks this wasn't something we wanted to ignore. Mike found a tire shop just outside of Albuquerque that had the tire he wanted and could do the job and get us on our way that same day. We were already discussing whether we really wanted to go to Carlsbad Caverns. We talked with a couple at the Balloon Fiesta that suggested a visit to Ruidoso, NM. We both were pretty done with the warm temps and the thought of going to a higher elevation where it would be cooler was enticing. The extra stop for the tire repair decided our fate since Ruidoso was closer than Carlsbad. I called some places around the area of Ruidoso and found Eagle Creek RV Resort in Alto, NM.

We enjoyed it here so much we decided to extend the stay to 3 nights and skip Carlsbad.
We loved that the park was quiet and in a secluded, wooded area. At nearly 7,000 feet the temperature was perfect. We saw deer everyday walking through the RV sites.


There was a nice short hike up the mountain behind the RV park where and old ski resort used to be.





Of course we found a mountain biking trail.




After Ruidoso we made a 2 night stop in Deming, NM and then headed to Tucson, AZ for a week.

In Tucson we stayed at the Rincon West RV Park http://www.rinconcountry.com/west-park/home/, a park that caters to the winter season visitor; it is a mix of park models and RV sites. It was convenient being close to downtown and to some of the mountain bike trails we have always wanted to ride. Tucson also has an extensive public bike system. We could pick up the paved trail from our RV park and bike all the way to the downtown area without crossing any major streets. We stuck to our mountain biking trails but those that are into road biking would have a great time.

There were 2 areas we biked Sweetwater trail system and Star Pass in the Tucson Mountain Preserve area. Sweetwater was well marked and very well taken care of and had a lot of diverse terrain.

Starr pass was more difficult because there weren't a lot of signs but we bumbled our way through without too much backtracking.

I went to college (University of Arizona) here so it was nice to revisit the old campus after 30 years.

I thought the weather would be cooling off when we got here but the temperature stayed above normal and after a hot week we pushed forward to Phoenix to visit with our families for 2 weeks. Since it was so warm we decided to put the RV in storage and stay with Mike's family. Our route to Salt Lake included a very disappointing overnight stop in Las Vegas at the Hitchin' Post RV Park http://www.hprvp.com . We wouldn't stay here again it was noisy and had very tight spots. Our next night was at a very nice KOA in Fillmore http://koa.com/campgrounds/fillmore/. Being a seasonal KOA it is open 3/1-11/15 but definitely one of the nicest KOA's. Being so late in the season it was practically empty. We will definitely keep this on our list of overnight stops when we are traveling this route. 
Back in Utah the RV goes into long term storage for the winter and the ski season is just around the corner.

It was great trip and we only saw a small part of Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona. We still have many areas of these states to explore on future trips.
We traveled a total of 2365.7 miles and were on the road for 9 weeks.

Highlights and our favorite stops:
Carbondale, Colorado
Breckenridge Colorado
Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta- bucket list item

No comments:

Post a Comment