Moved to Benson

The drive from Las Cruces, New Mexico to here, Benson, Arizona was quite uneventful.  Pretty much a straight line shot westward along interstate 10.  Had to climb up and over the Continental Divide and then started our decent into the San Pedro Valley here in Benson.  We are about 120 miles from our winter home but wanted to stop here for a few days to decompress and do some shopping and major cleaning before getting back to our winter home in Picacho.

Amazing thing is we are camping higher than the Continental Divide - sitting at 4800 plus feet in elevation.  Was a bit chilly last night but thankfully we only have a couple more nights of chilly weather and we will be back in Picacho.  The days are nice - high 60's - but cannot complain considering how bad things are elsewhere with the wind chills and heavy snow.

Our driving trip here was 243 miles which now when adding up all our mileage from this trip - is the longest miles driven on any trip since 2009.  And we visited more states than ever - 14, and camped in the most places - 24.

We are using our couple of days here at the Escapee SKP Saguaro park to do some last minute shopping for RV parts, visit to a quilt shop I like, and to get a feel of life here in this particular park.  We have stayed at a number of Escapee parks, each one is very different than the others.  This one is very quiet, a big park, but the difference between this Escapee park and others is you are permitted to have a casita (small house) on your lot which you can use for everything except sleeping in.  Cannot be bigger than 288 square feet.  You have to sleep in your RV at night.  Period.  Some people have put a lot of money into their casitas, where some only have a shed.  Some casitas have a living room, full bath, small kitchen, hide-a-bed but still - you cannot sleep overnight in it.  Another difference with this park is I believe the majority of RVs here are 5th wheels.  Some have 2 RVs where one stays here full-time and they travel with the second one.  Some folks live here full-time also.

Tomorrow is our really big pack up day - since Friday when we get back to Picacho we will be unloading everything out of here.  We also want to take the opportunity to clean the holding tanks out, wipe down all the walls, package up all the food stuff and arrange the clothes so it won't be painful when we pull up to our winter home to just unload from one to the other.  We also will make out our repair list so when we take the RV into the dealer next week for it's warranty work, we have all the things to fix/change out listed according to area.  Sad to have our trip end but what a great summer it was!