It’s been an unreasonably busy month. In our last post we were in North Carolina. Since then we spent a week in Myrtle Beach where Kristin took retreat with her friends, and a couple of mine came down to visit.

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I had a couple of days to myself before picking Kristin up, so I took the opportunity to catch up on my chorin’. The electric jack on the front of our camper (critical to both travel and camping) had all but given up operating. We had to use the 3-ton floor jack purchased after our first breakdown just to get the camper back on the truck.

Myrtle Beach has no shortage of RV stores and suppliers, so I was able to source a replacement jack and several other parts we needed. Replacing the jack was fairly straight forward. Three bolts, a locking pin, a ten gauge electrical connection, and the job was done. The old jack was literally screaming and wailing in defiance with each attempted use, and the new jack hums soothingly as it raises or lowers the camper with ease.

The following Sunday I woke up early to dump the tanks, packed up the camper, and went to pick up Kristin and start an absolute whirlwind week of travel. We made it all the way to Fulton Mississippi the first day, and then another couple hundred miles after work each day. We stayed in West Memphis Arkansas, Ozark Arkansas, Oklahoma City, Borger Texas, and on Friday night we made it back to the Ramblin’ Rose in Santa Rosa New Mexico.

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We woke up early on Saturday and hit the road. We drove all day and made it to our “final” destination outside Phoenix Arizona. Coming down highway 17 we finally saw a saguaro cactus, followed by a whole lot more of them. We got to our campsite later in the day, and Kristin managed to luck us into a spot with several shade trees, plenty of quiet, and very close to a dog park.

With a huge list of to-do’s in the Phoenix area, and a huge deadline at work day approaching, we decided to stay here for a while. We’ve been here for three weeks and we plan to stay a few more before hitting the road again. We’ll post some some more stories soon, including how we met Steve the donkey.