Living Our Dream: Moved to Payson, AZ

We decided to leave early from Monument Valley, got kinda tired of all the comings and goings of the campers coming into the KOA. Was a weird experience, never knew who was going to be sitting beside you, some were good RVers with good manners and others you had to yell at them at 11pm at night to be quiet. And, since we did the loop drive into Monument Valley, not much else to do. A tremendous thunderstorm came through about 5am yesterday morning, hoping it would quickly end. By 8am we had sun and no clouds. We had drugged up Buddy by 7am so by the time we got on the road at 9, he was pretty out of it.

Donkeys were in campground every night

Sky night before we left. Rut-roh

8am on morning we left, thank goodness for clearing skies

Tanked up the RV at Gouldings Trading Post which is the famous trading post that the owners invited the producer/director John Ford to make movies in the valley in the 1930s and 1940s, with John Wayne staring in them, and then the rest is history. Gouldings could be seen from our campground, about 5 miles in the distance, up against a huge red mesa. Quite a complex, grocery store, museum, gift store, lodge/hotel, park models to rent, campground, gas station and car wash, restaurant.

Last look at Monument Valley before heading south to Kayenta

Made the turn west out of Kayenta and climbed west towards Tuba City

Rain runoff - was very wet everywhere

The white cliffs way in the distance - near Page?

Headed south on Route 163 to Kayenta where we picked up Route 160 west towards Tuba City where we would pick up Route 89 heading south towards Flagstaff. Planned mileage was 224 miles, 5 hours, get into campground around 2pm.

Close to Tuba City, the soil is so red

Oh no, now what?

Past some pretty country, all within Navajo Nation. Saw lots of standing water which we attributed it to Hurricane Rosa. Got into Tuba City, dropped to the junction of Route 89 and Route 160 and our plans did a big change. Route 89 was closed south, so we were detoured up north on 89 to a small town of Gap. Stopped at a gas station, I ran in to see what the detour was about - seems there was a sinkhole that opened up, road closed for days. Great. We turned around and headed back to Tuba City.

And back to Tuba City to pick up detour

You could see the dried mud on roads from washouts

2 1/2 hour detour, 176 miles later, ugh

In Tuba City took the detour east towards the Hopi Reservation and a town called Second Mesa where we then took Route 87 (Arizona Avenue) and followed that to Interstate 40. Crossed I40 in Winslow and continued to follow 87 down to Strawberry where we picked up Route 260 (our original route) and then followed that into Payson. Long, long day. We put 369 miles on the RV and did not get into the campground until 5pm. Will stay here for a week, beginning to get ready to close down the RV when we get back - sometime middle of October.