Beautiful weather and scenery at our go-to camping area to get away from the hot Phoenix summer heat. Pine Flat is about 15 miles south of Williams, Arizona. About half of the drive is on a decent dirt road, which traverses a few normally-dry creek beds that required me to stop and move some rocks out of the way because of the heavy monsoon rains they've had up there recently. We might have to get a 4x4 RV next time!

Click above to play video/slide show.
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Wonderful two-week trip from Arizona to Washington via Utah, Idaho and Oregon and back via Oregon and California.
Places we stayed:

• Kaibab Camper Village, Kaibab Camper Villagem Fredonia, AZ (just north of the Grand Canyon North Rim): https://www.kaibabcampervillage.com
• Pony Express RV Resort, Salt Lake City, UT: https://www.sunrvresorts.com/resorts/west/utah/pony-express-rv-resort/
• Ambassador RV Resort, Caldwell, ID: https://www.g7rvresorts.com/rv-park/ambassador/
• Icicle Creek RV Resort, Leavenworth, WA: https://icicleriverrv.com/
• Friends home near Friday Harbor, San Juan Island, WA: http://www.fridayharbor.org
• Lake Pleasant RV Park, Bothell, WA: http://www.lakepleasantrv.com/index.html
• Sea and Sand RV Park, Dopoe Bay, OR: https://seaandsandrvpark.com
• Seven Feathers RV Resort, Canyonville, OR: http://www.sevenfeathersrvresort.com
• Flag City RV Resort, Lodi, CA: https://www.flagcityrvresort.com
• Bakersfield RV Resort, Bakersfield, CA: https://www.bakrv.com

June 30th through July 6th, 2021 at the now-closed Chula Vista RV Resort.

Pam and I enjoyed a day-trip to Sedona today. We parked and ate lunch at the old Sedona Cultural Center grounds and practically had the entire park to ourselves. Overnight camping isn't allowed there, but the view was spectacular. Along the way, we saw this crazy, out of place looking house barely clinging to a cliff. The view is probably spectacular from there, but it just doesn't look very safe to me!

One reason we bought this Winnebago View RV equipped the way we did it, was to be able to dry camp (no water, electric, sewer). This was our first night out dry-camping, and it exceeded all our expectations. We didn't run out of water, we didn't overflow the gray or black water tanks, and we hardly noticed any discharge of the lithium batteries overnight, thanks to the 200 watts of solar on the roof.

We had a beautiful spot (#F25) in the Lynx Lake Campground, just outside of Prescott, Arizona. It was quite windy with gusts up to 30 mph, but the winds died down enough that could enjoy a nice campfire and roast s'mores. I like the fact that you can reserve spaces in advance in this campground, although, Friday and Saturday nights are already reserved far in advance, so we stayed on a Sunday night which allowed us to miss all the weekend traffic on I-17.

Looking forward to coming back to Lynx Lake Campground again.

We stayed three nights at the lush, green, Emerald Desert RV Resort in Palm Desert, California March 27-30, 2021 and spent a couple of days exploring the area. We didn't plan on driving as far up the Santa Rosa and San Jacinto Mountains, but once you start up the Pines to Palms Highway 72, there really isn't any room to turn around until you reach the viewpoint near the top of the road. It's an extremely curvy road, but well worth it for the view from the top. 

The drive through the main drag in Palm Springs was fun since we usually just drive past on I-10. Even with the Pandemic still going on, there were a lot of people strolling through the shops and restaurants so we just drove through. Maybe next time, we can enjoy some good food at the restaurants.

On Monday, we took the advice of the tour websites and did a day trip to the Joshua Tree National Park. We're glad we did, because it was really quite a site to see with the huge boulders and large Joshua trees. Because of the crowds, there wasn't much room to park our RV, so we weren't able to get out and hike the trails except for Skull Rock, which was fun to see.

The drive back to Phoenix was very rough because of the high winds all the way through California and Arizona. I was wishing that our high-profile RV was a low-profile Corvette, but we just took it slow and made it home OK.

I was able to get the perfect personalized license plate to go with our ThompsonsTreks.com blog!

Our first extended trip in our new 2021 Winnebago View RV to Lake Havasu. This video includes footage along the Colorado River between Parker and Lake Havasu, crossing the London Bridge, driving through Crazy Horse Campground, Islander Resort (where we stayed for two nights in beautiful space number 505), and the drive back home to Phoenix via I40 with a stop for lunch at the famous Mr. D's 50's diner in Kingman.

As we've done with each of our new RVs over the years, we made the short trip to Lake Pleasant for our inaugural first camping trip to make sure everything was working correctly before we head out on longer trips. Someone else must have cancelled at the last minute because space #D15 at the Maricopa County Parks Roadrunner campground was available. It was a beautiful campsite overlooking the lake with many people in their sailboats out enjoying the 65+ degree day on Saturday. 

I know, I know. I said we were done with RVing a year ago, but the RV-world has dragged us back in again. After toying around with the idea of buying a cabin in the woods in Show Low, Arizona, we ultimately decided that we really like the freedom to go anywhere that an RV gives us, so we placed an order in October, 2020, for the newer version of the Winnebago RV we had before and took delivery of it on January 22, 2021. This one is a 2021 Winnebago View 24D model. We upgraded to lithium batteries for longer dry-camping trips and choose the twin reclining theater seats over the standard booth because we found that the booth just didn't give us a comfortable place to sit. We'll have to put up with making reservations farther in advance because so many people are buying RVs so they can escape the Coronavirus in their own portable houses.

What a great way to spend a beautiful 75° Presidents Day afternoon than sailing on Lake Pleasant, AZ.

Pam and I had a fun drive up to Crown King today. At 5,770 feet high, it was a little cool, even some snow in the shadows, but what a beautiful drive it was! Love our Jeep for drives like this.

The weather was perfect to take my new Hobie Adventure Island sail-yak out for a sail. Daughter, Krista and I went out on Lake Pleasant and had a beautiful trip around Helm's Island in 75° picture-perfect weather.

Jason and I took a side trip up to the Grand Canyon on Saturday before we boarded the Polar Express in the evening. Temperature was in the 30s with some snow and ice, making walking around the edge of the canyon a little treacherous. We enjoyed a delicious lunch in the El Tovar restaurant with the best seafood chowder I've ever had! The lodge was beautifully decorated for Christmas. Winter is the time to go to the Canyon, compared to Summertime. No crowds at all!

What a wonderful trip with had with all our kids and grandkids to Williams and the Polar Express train. We rented a nice home in Williams through VRBO that had room for all 10 of us for a two nights and had a lot of fun on the two hour train ride singing Christmas songs, enjoying hot chocolate, cookies, silver bells, and meeting Santa. If you have kids, I highly recommend taking them on the Polar Express!

Since I sold our 2015 Jeep Cherokee Trailhawk, and we are no longer RVing, I've found that I missed having a second car, particularly, a Jeep. I loved that Jeep Cherokee that we towed around the country behind our RVs, so I started looking for a 2019 or 2020 model to purchase. I prefered to buy a used one, but I was having a hard time finding one with all the features that I wanted, like; Trailhawk model, sunroof, adaptive cruise control, Apple CarPlay, NAV with the larger display, 2.0-L I4 turbo engine, trailer-tow group, heated and vented front seats and more. After watching Cars.com and AutoTrader for a couple of months, one caught my eye because it was fully-equipped with absolutely everything that I was looking for. With only 4,800 miles, this one was perfect in every way. Turns out, it was a demo driven by a Chrysler Corporation executive in Detroit and was purchased by a local Jeep dealer here in Phoenix at an auction. I ended up saving over $10,000 by getting this 2019 Jeep Cherokee Trailhawk Elite vs getting a new one with the same equipment. I wasn't sure about the color when I first saw the pictures on their website, but after seeing it in real life, I love the color. It goes very nicely with our Arizona greenery!

We have had a lot of fun RV'ing over the past 6-7 years, but they are selling so many new RVs now, we found it almost impossible to get into the RV parks, state parks and national parks when we wanted to. There was so little flexibility, we were forced into planning trips 6-12 months in advance, even 2 years in advance to get that spot at Campland on the Bay in the picture above over the 4th of July! That's the main reason we got out of RV'ing.

I know it's hard to believe, but we've sold our Winnebago Navion and aren't buying another RV! After 7 years of RVing, we're giving it up. We got into RVing because of family that was spread from Arizona to California to Oregon and Washington but most of our family is here in Arizona now, so we're just not finding that the RV-life is the right fit for us any more so I sold it back to LaMesa RV yesterday.

We have no regrets of owning RVs over the past 7 years. We have a lot of great memories, all of them captured here on our blog, which I plan to continue with our future travels. Stay tuned for our next adventure!

I called the Canyon Lake Marina and RV Campground on Wednesday to see if they had any spaces available for the weekend and they said the person on the call before me just cancelled, so I figured that I lucked out. After going there on Saturday, I see why people were cancelling. The lake was filled with debris from the heavy rain storms they had the previous week. Instead of nice and clear, the water was brown and filled with branches making boating dangerous. On top of that, the state was closing the one and only road in and out of the area all day on Monday to repair the washed out roadway, so we had to leave on Sunday instead of Monday, as we had planned. The campground wouldn't even refund our $70 fee we had paid for Sunday night! At least we had a fun Saturday with Kyle, Crystal, Beckett and Jason coming over for awhile.

We made our annual RV trip to Seattle, leaving Phoenix on August 10th and returning on August 25th, 2019. This time, it was in our new 2019 Winnebago 24D motorhome.

• Day 1: Drove the 275 miles to the Lake Powell Wahweap RV Park from our home near Phoenix. We had a beautiful space overlooking the lake.
• Day 2: Drove 350 miles to a nice little RV park next to Utah Lake in Provo, Utah: Lakeside RV Campground. On the way, we took a beautiful side-trip through Bryce Canyon National Park.
• Day 3: It was a 330 mile drive through Utah and Idaho to the Ketchum, Idaho, where we spent the night at the Meadows RV Park, which was a small RV park just south of Sun Valley, Idaho.
• Day 4: Drove about 200 miles from Sun Valley, Idaho up through the mountainous Sawtooth Wilderness. We thoroughly enjoyed brunch at the quaint Redfish Lodge on Redfish Lake (Paul had a wonderful combination of fresh trout, eggs, potatoes and homemade sausage). Redfish Lake Lodge sits at an elevation of 6,550 feet above sea level. The water is crystal clear with a beautiful sandy beach. We continued on the Sawtooth Scenic Byway which hugged the Salmon and Payette Rivers for about 100 miles, ending up in Caldwell, Idaho, staying at one of our favorite overnight stops, The Ambassador RV Park.
• Day 5: We had planned on driving the 350 miles to the Trailer Inns RV Park in Yakima, Washington, but, after driving past the park, we decided that the numerous homeless people and warehouse district setting wasn't for us, so we drove the entire 500 miles toward Seattle, where my brother let us park the RV in his driveway in Issaquah until we could check into one of our favorite RV parks, The Lake Pleasant RV Park, in Bothell, WA.
• Days 6-10: Using The Lake Pleasant RV Park as our home-base, we rented a car to drive around Seattle in and spent most of our time visiting with relatives and friends.
• Day 11: We had nice weather for the 310 mile drive from Bothell, WA to Newport, OR, where we had reserved two nights at our absolute favorite RV park, the Pacific Shores Motorcoach RV Park. We love this park because it sits high above the Pacific Ocean and it's very well kept with beautiful manicured spaces and grounds. We had a premium space #189, which was one row back from the bluff, allowing us to see the ocean and the beautiful sunsets each night. Unfortunately, a Pacific storm blew through and it rained all day long on our one day we had planned on doing nothing but enjoying the view.
• Day 12: The weather cleared up for our leisurely 300 mile drive down Highway 101 through southern Oregon and northern California to the conveniently located Mad River Rapids RV Park. The best thing about going south on Highway 101 vs going north is that you're on the ocean-side of the highway, making it easier to pull into the many viewpoints. Of course, we had to stop and get some homemade fudge at the Fudge Factory in Banning, Oregon!
• Day 13: After almost two weeks on the road, we were itching to get back home, so we took a short side-trip through the scenic Redwoods Avenue of the Giants, then hightailed it over to I-5's Flag City RV Resort in Lodi, California. Traffic was absolutely terrible around the Bay Area on a Friday afternoon. I swear I will never drive around there again!
• Day 14: Drove one of my least-favorite drives; 375 miles down I-5 from Lodi to Los Angeles, then east on I-210 to one of our favorite RV parks; the Bonelli Bluffs RV Resort (formerly East Shore RV Park). This park sits high above the Puddingstone Reservoir with nice, wide campsites and beautiful views over the lake.
• Day 15: The final 350 miles were from the Bonelli Bluffs RV Resort to our home near Phoenix, Arizona. This is a drive we've done dozens of times over our 30+ years of living in Arizona, so we know it very well. Yes, it's a boring drive through the desert, but it's an easy drive of mostly 70 mph with the cruise control on for most of the 5-1/2 hour drive.

We're already planning our next outing. Possibly New Mexico to see the fall leaves turn.