Eric Herman - Travelblogue: 2008 Spring/Summer Tour

Kent came out to the bus to say goodbye this morning before we headed out. I have to say an enormous thank you to him and Kris and their family for their generous and welcoming hospitality. We hadn't intended to stay there more than one night, but we didn't realize until we got to the Phoenix area that we really had far fewer options than we expected. We had a list of RV parks in the area and virtually every one we called was a 55+ park. Some of them were downright obnoxious about not wanting us or our kids there. There was one RV park that we stayed at, which would allow all ages and kids, but the owners there were kind of rude to us, too, so we didn't want to patronize them again after that. Another place that allowed us to stay had nice owners, but was quite a bit out of the way and didn't have working wifi (we have too much business stuff to keep up with when we're on the road to go too long without that). We couldn't stay over with Larissa and Sam (townhouse) or Perry and Angela (Home Owner's Association), so we were kind of stuck. The thing is, we can pretty much always stay at a Walmart or a highway rest area if we absolutely need to, but we've really only done that in Seattle or Portland and places like that where it never really gets that hot... Phoenix this time of year is just too hot to go without AC, especially with a 3 year-old who's been very sick and needed to stay cool. Kent really "gave me shelter from the heat and the dust" and I hope that he and his family will get some big-time extra blessings for that. The same goes for everyone else who has offered us assistance in some way or other during our travels over the past few years. I may say "thank you" several times, but I don't know if the real level of our appreciation is always evident enough... Please know that our prayers are with you and we try to return the favors or pay them forward the best we can. Kent is the CFO for a razor wire company, so if you're ever building a prison or trying to keep people out of your secret alien research facility, please let me know and I'll put you in touch with him for all of your razor wire needs.

Before heading out of town, we stopped to see Cecily, a lady who edits and writes for a long-running Arizona entertainment paper. She had come to my show the other day and wanted to do an interview. She is very nice and we really liked chatting with her. She has published a children's book called If I Made a Bug and gave Becca and Evee copies of that, which they enjoyed reading and coloring later. She also gave us some yummy cookies, which I enjoyed eating later.

The rest of the day we spent driving from Phoenix to Deming, New Mexico, where we had reserved an RV park for the night (thankfully, they have no age restrictions... that seems to be only a Phoenix area thing). It took us a lot longer to get there than we expected, as we were held up for well over an hour by an accident on the interstate. Apparently, it was a really bad accident, with a couple of semi trucks and several cars involved, and there were some fatalities. Knowing right away that it was some kind of accident from the police motorcycles screaming by made it easy to avoid impatience during the long wait... I was entirely grateful to be stuck for over an hour in traffic when I realized "there but for the grace of God we go" about the accident victims. It was scary to think how close we were in proximity, time-wise, to whatever happened, and if we had headed out a few minutes earlier, well...

Anyway, after that it was an uneventful drive. The only notable thing, sort of, was the roadside attraction called The Thing. I wouldn't dare spoil it for you and tell you what The Thing is, in case you're ever driving from Phoenix to New Mexico... But it only cost us a buck total for the whole family to go see it, and there was a museum of cool old stuff (old cars, Victrola, etc.) as part of the exhibit, so I'd say it was definitely worth that price, and by far a more fulfilling roadside experience than the World's Tallest Thermometer.

Evee is almost fully better today, so that's great, but this morning Roseann started feeling very sick and threw up a couple of times, and she has a fever now, too. Hopefully, she has the shorter duration strain of whatever it is that was going around back in Phoenix. She rested for much of the drive here and went to sleep early after we watched last night's American Idol. I stayed up to write yesterday's and today's blog posts (there's no Wifi here, so these two posts will be uploaded pretty late) and then went to bed myself after doing some work on the computer.

Some of the wreckage from the accident. Oh my...