On the Road Again

December was a blur of activity.  I arrived home just 3 weeks before Christmas and had yet to start any Christmas shopping yet (hard to think about that when spending all of November in 80-degree Florida!).  Then my mom was in the hospital a few days (payback for over-doing it a bit on her vacation), and then it seemed like every one came down with colds for Christmas.  Meanwhile, it had been a really cold, dreary December and not a good indicator of the winter weather to come.

When I learned I’d need to do a short business trip in January out to a client in Los Angeles, that seemed like just enough to warrant a month-long RV roadtrip rather than a quick business air travel trip! 

Chicago would also be getting a 24-hour reprieve from cold weather on New Year’s Eve (up to 50 degrees!), so we raced to the RV storage yard to dig the View out from under it’s heap of snow and hit the road that very evening.  I toasted in the New Year with a tiny single-serving bottle of champagne at the Wal-Mart parking lot in Litchfield, IL.  No others in the lot that night celebrating with me (ha!).

It was great to be on this road again, the Route 66 route I had taken back in 2007 with the T@B.  I didn’t have time to stop at many of the Route 66 sights, but did make a few brief stops, like this abandoned gas station in the west Texas panhandle:

and one of my favorite Route 66 towns, Tucumcari, NM:

The Flying J Truck Stop in Albuquerque not only provides a free overnight place to sleep

but a spectacular vista of the city, and on this morning, an amazing pre-dawn display:


It was still pretty cold each night (down into the teens), but the days were sunny and warmer, except for our brief drive through Flagstaff.  It’s higher elevation had snow, which was quite a surprise to Millie when went out for a pit stop!

After 4 days of driving, we arrived to our spot to spend the week: Campbell Cove RV Park in Lake Havasu City, Arizona.