In time honoured style, here in a brief list is our two week tour:
– 1,800 miles
– 311 dollars in gas
– 7 different campsites
– Average distance 180 miles (3 hours)
– Longest distance 592 miles (11.5 hours muppets)
– Slept in 2 locations over 7,000 ft above seal evel
– 1 cupboard door (fell off)
– 5 displaced screws
– 1 leaking shower
– 3 Steak BBQ
– 3 states (Nevada, Arizona and New Mexico)
– 27 Radio Telescopes at the VLA
– 1 Observatory
– £28 phone calls to the RV company over vehicle issues
– 34 Blogs
– Propane tank of $6.59
– 6 Mozzie bites on the Mrs
– 1 argument yet to be had when we hand back the key, screws, cupboard door, aircon unit and microwave
Everything else, priceless
Indeed yes Hello Hello A Queue I See, 5 miles north of Flagstaff with 101 miles left to cover to Kingman and here we is sat in a mega queue on the I-40 West. So we hit this at 1.50pm an didn’t get through it until 3.15pm
Ahhh you cannot beat a healthy American traditional breakfast. I thought I’d have a treat in our last full day here and order blueberry pancakes (three of) which come with a side of bacon (of course, what else goes with pancake?), lashings of blueberry sauce and a little garnish of squirty cream. Yummy.
So last night we stayed in Flagstaff centre, enjoyed a steak at Cuvee 98, then took a slow walk in the pitch black up to 1400 West Mars street (a whopping great hill over a mile in length) to the Lowell Observatory.
In the Spirit of Halloween Mrs Fogg will gut a pumpkin and has let me buy the least scariest mask of all the ones I wanted to buy (and no that ain’t my normal face). This will be the face that greets the handful of children that visit on Oct 31st along with a blood soaked T-shirt and blood soaked apron, meat cleaver and slippers. Whilst Mrs Fogg will be dressed as Mortitia (growl).
So here we are in Flagstaff in the fall, it really is quite a pleasant little city with a nice historic area, lots of eateries and fun things to see.
So we set off at 7.45am MST travelled 550 miles at an average of 50 to 60 mph dependent upon how aggressive or lucky we felt or how much more would drop off the wreck. Stopped for Brekky at Capitan and had a wander round VLA, eventually arriving at Flagstaff at 7.45pm PST. Making a grand total of 11.5 hours driving on some of the worst roads you have ever seen and they were the motorways.
What an unexpected bonus on the route to Flagstaff we went past the Very Large Array which is 27 (85ft Diameter) Satellite dishes, which was just amazing to see. These are used to capture radio signals from space including those form Voyager II.
And here is Mrs Fogg stood on the Rio Grande New Mexico at the junction of the US380 and I-25 North to Socorro.
Well today saw us head out at 7.30 in the am on a monumental drive from Roswell NM to Flagstaff AZ, via the scenic route, through the likes of Lincoln (something to do with a goat called Billy) and Capitan home of Smokey the Bear, a symbol of US fire safety after a young bear cub was rescued from a 17,000 acre forest fire in the 1950’s (see I can do history today).