"We call the wind Miria"

We pulled out of Tucumcari around 8:30 this morning. Our next stop was to be Flagstaff, Arizona, somewhat over 500 miles. That is an unusually long day of driving time in an RV at 62-65 miles per hour. When we first crossed into New Mexico yesterday afternoon the wind picked up. Today it was terrible. The high wind was coming from the south so it was hitting us broadside. Don & Vicki were in the lead and seemed to be handling the wind better than we were. Their coach weighs around 46,000 pounds plus a 5,000 pound car they tow. Our coach weighs around 27,000 pounds and the towed car is around 3,500. We got buffeted around pretty bad.

When the wind is blowing from the side in these high profile vehicles it makes it hard work keeping it on the road but keep it on the road we did. Out of habit I tend to drive mostly with my left hand/arm. This gave my healing left arm a good workout, exercise that is needed. We fought the wind all the way across New Mexico and then, to make matters worse, at Gallup we hit a snow storm. At first we just thought it was blades of grass blowing in the wind but as it got heavier and "wetter" we realized we were getting heavy snow. This lasted about twenty minutes and then we drove right out of it. All of a sudden the sun was shinning again and but for the wind all was well with the weather.

We continued west and as we entered into Arizona the wind died down some and the driving became easier. We arrived in Flagstaff around 6:00 pm and checked into the Black Bart's RV Park. This is an older park that was designed for travel trailers and definitely not large motor homes towing cars behind them. The sites we were assigned were not going to give us a chance to get the coaches level so we took it upon ourselves to find some better ones. The park office was closing as we checked in so it really didn't matter where we parked for just the one night.

Black Bart's has a unique feature for a RV Park. They have their own restaurant with a fine menu. In addition they hire their wait staff from the music department at the local university. In addition to waiting tables they take turns on stage singing and entertaining the patrons. After a good meal we made it back to our respective coaches and turned in for an early nights sleep. The picture to the right is the view we had from our site at Black Bart's RV Park.