When we left Capitol Reef National Park we planned one night on the road to get to our winter park in Mesa, AZ. We thought we could drive east thru Capitol Reef then head south and spend one night in a Walmart parking lot near Flagstaff then get to Mesa the next day. But while in the park we notice that Rt. 9 thru the park said no vehicles over 27 feet were allowed on the road. We are 56 feet when towing. OK we'll head west out of the area and go thru/by Las Vegas. No problem and really not much farther but no where near Flagstaff. We found a couple of possible campgrounds we could use if we needed one but they were not very far along the way and we wanted day 2 to be shorter. You can't go directly from Cap Reef to Mesa because there is this huge hole in the ground called the Grand Canyon and you must drive around said hole.
So mistake 1 was we drove past these campground opportunities and continued on since it was early in the day. When we got near Wickenburg, AZ we were hungry and decided to stop for dinner. We took a right hand turn off Rt. 93 only to find nowhere to park the RV and nowhere to eat and nowhere to turn around. That right turn was mistake 2. But now we are committed to a road that we are not sure where it goes and offers nowhere to turn around to get back on the road we want. So back roads it is while GPS guides us to I-10. This cost us about a hour and a half. No big deal but but now it is 4 in the afternoon and well beyond our usual driving time. The next place we can see on the map to eat is West Phoenix. That is only about an hour from Mesa. So we continued on I-10 and stopped at a truck stop for dinner. Truck stops always have plenty of room park and turn around. We had a nice dinner at Denny's...yes you read that right.. a nice dinner at Denny's. By now it is about 6:30 so rush hour thru Phoenix is over and we should have a smooth ride in. Which we did and got parked easily even though it was dark.
On top of our 2 mistakes we had one more issue. In hot weather we drive with the generator on and use it to power the house air conditioning. There is some debate in the RV world if this uses more or less gasoline than running the engine ac. But it does reduce the draw on the engine especially in hilly country. It was 104 outside based on the vehicles thermometer. Turns out with both ac units running full blast all afternoon the generator continued to run but stopped producing power. Luckily we were beyond most of the hill climbing and descending so felt OK using the engine ac. So we turned off the generator and turned on the engine ac. By the time we got to Mesa the generator had been off for several hours and the air temperature had cooled to a crisp 98. While we were disconnecting the Jeep from the RV we ran the generator and it was fine. So no worries there except to know it will overheat and stop producing power in high temps.
Just to review, mistake one was not leaving Capitol Reef early enough to just make a full out run for Mesa. Then the right turn near Wickenburg cost us time and added frustration. Plus the ac issue. It was a long day but we were both glad to get in and it proved to be a benefit to be in a day early.
