December 22, 2024, to February 22, 2025
Throughout the year, we tend to move around every two weeks, on average. It's how we get to see so many places while still taking time to relax. In the winter, much of the United States is covered in snow and bad weather, so we've been hanging out in Arizona instead of wandering. This winter, we stayed in Green Valley just south of Tucson.
We had a site for a couple months, and though we were hoping to have our trailer with us it wasn't meant to be. We found a storage place not too far from our campground and juggled things around before settling in:
- Drove to the storage area and squeezed us in through a tight gate
- Took the car out of the trailer
- Disconnected the trailer
- Connected the trailer to the car
- Backed the trailer into its storage spot
- Disconnected the trailer
- Drove the motorhome and car to the campground
We made it work! We were there a few days before Christmas, and we were able to cook dinner at home for a huge feast.
Dad and Linda still lived in Tucson, but they moved to Oro Valley on the far north edge of the city. We were south of Tucson, so the drive through Tucson to get to them was far. We met in the middle for dinner on Linda's birthday and we were able to see Jill, too. It was a great start, though there was a Jared Jewelers nearby that fed our jewelry addiction a little too often during our stay.
Our campground was practically around the corner from the Titan Missile Museum, so we had to spend some time there. It was really cool. We went on the tour to go down into the missile complex, and Margot got to be one of the volunteers for a simulated missile launch. After the tour, we wandered around to learn more about the site. We'll likely do this tour again next year.
We spent a mellow evening at home for New Year's Eve and then met Toni at the dog park on New Year's Day. Sue was in a lot of pain lately and couldn't join us, so we'd see her later. It was great to see Lacey and her half-sister Mollie playing again.
Unfortunately, our stay in Arizona wasn't going to be all about relaxing and enjoying ourselves. Over the last year we'd built a list of things we needed to do to maintain the motorhome and car, and we had lots of appointments stacked up. We drove both into Tucson to Freedom RV where we bought the motorhome two years before.
While we were there, we learned they couldn't fix our tire pressure monitoring system (TPMS). Since we purchased our motorhome new, the tag axle tires have never had a TPMS reading, though the other tires had. Freedom RV said we'd need to go to Velocity Truck Center just a few miles away to get that taken care of, so we left for that shop at the end of the week. Velocity then told us we needed a 15,000-mile engine service, so we stayed for that, too ($!$!$!$!). That service worked out well, but Velocity managed to reset our whole TPMS system without a way to fix it, so we left with none of the tires reading their pressures or anything. We'd also need to get our trailer tires added back in, something that took a bit of effort to get done the first time. Things were not looking promising.
We thought we'd spend some time at a resort in Tucson rather than trying to live at RV shops. We checked out two days early because we decided we'd rather make it work at home. It did give us more time to play Swoop with dad and Linda, though, an check out other restaurants. Lacey is always so spoiled with attention.
Rather than spend a third week in a row at a shop (we have to stay there too as it's where our home is), we decided to take a week off and go back to our campground. It was good to reset before we started in again.
We visited our only national park in Arizona this time, a drive to Coronado National Memorial. Arizona has so many beautiful places, and the mountains in that area along the Mexico border is gorgeous. We chatted with a lovely park ranger and then headed up to the pass. On our way back down, we could see the border wall/fence stretching for miles across a beautiful valley, cutting it in two. We imagined how many families and animals something like that would affect.
Our motorhome has a Spartan engine, and Velocity in Tucson was struggling to make the Spartan TPMS system work. Spartan Support told us we'd have better luck at the Velocity in Phoenix, so we headed up there on a Sunday. They made it work! It ended up being a solution of having the right tool for the job. We'd still have to figure out the trailer tires, but it was a start.
We had to go back to Freedom RV to get some final work done, and then we were back in Green Valley for the last three weeks of our Arizona stay. We spent lots of time with Sue and Toni, and we went to lots of appointments. We also bought too much at Jared, but it is what it is (we sparkle!).
Our last touristy thing was a trip to the ASARCO copper mine that was also very close to our campground. It was very interesting, and we learned a ton about how they mine and process copper. It's a huge pit that you can't see unless you do the tour. We'd definitely recommend it.
The two months we were in Arizona went by so fast. Still, we were looking forward to starting our tour of the Midwest and Great Lakes in 2025 -- and our first stay out of the country in Canada. It was going to be a great year!
