Day 1: Mesa to Holbrook, Arizona

We picked up the RV at Cruise America in Mesa, Arizona early this afternoon. They had a great introductory video that we watched last evening, and we got a tour of the vehicle when we picked it up. Even though it is our first time in one, we felt pretty comfortable and we were ready to go.

Christine drove our rental car to the nearby airport to return, and took the kids with her so I could get acclimated to driving a 25’ long, 8’ wide, 12’ tall vehicle. You have to go slower and leave lots of space in front of you since it weighs about 6 tons, and you have to pay a lot more attention around turns. While I’ve never driven an RV, I have driven a few U-Hauls and it's not too different. If you want to see what we are driving, it is the Cruise America “Standard” model.

As part of the deal we got to take the RV from Arizona to Virginia, we have to do the trip over ten days / nine nights - so we will need to cover some territory on the trip. However, for our first day, we wanted to have an easier one so we could get acclimated to the RV and not have to stress out. It is really good Christine wanted to plan that way! We couldn't pick it up until 1 PM, and by the time we returned our rental car and got everything loaded up, we didn't get on the road until after 3 PM. We were trying to decide on a campground, and there weren't a lot of options between the Phoenix area and the New Mexico line. A lot of the RV parks don’t open until April, which surprised us as we tend to think of Arizona as a winter vs summer destination. We settled on Holbrook, and had a beautiful drive through Tonto National Forest to get there.

The drive from Mesa to Holbrook was amazingly beautiful. While we only went 200 miles, it is amazing how much the landscape changed. We started in a cactus-studded desert, drove through pine-forested mountains that still had snow and ice, and finished about a mile above sea level with the sun setting over the plains. We even saw an elk! It was lovely to look at and we even got the kids to look up from their games for 5 seconds at a time to see some of it.

The trip today took longer than expected, as one of the things we learned today was the RV doesn’t go uphill very quickly. If it's flat, it's comfortable going 55-65mph. However, uphill is more like 45mph. That added 30 minutes to our three hour drive. Good to know for the rest of the trip planning.

Between the slow departure and the slower travel, we got to the campground just after 7 PM. We arrived late enough that they just had an envelope with our spot information, so social distancing accomplished! It was our first time ever hooking up an RV at a campsite, and thankfully the electrical and water hook up went smoothly (I’ll deal with the sewer emptying in the morning…) We had leftover pizza and BBQ from yesterday, and was able to quickly heat those up for dinner. We got the loft and main bed setup, and got the kids to bed barely behind schedule.

Now we are enjoying a glass of wine - and blogging - as we unwind from the day. Tomorrow we are hoping to cover 5+ hours into New Mexico. Can Christine work from the front seat? Can the kids argue for five hours straight? Stay tuned!