Arizona 2024: Day 19: Eloy, AZ: I’m not a map

While visions of Sonoran hotdogs danced in his head. You can heard the highway and train tracks here at Picacho. But, it’s more like white noise. For this morning’s walk I had a mission to walk up to the entry gate and get our “pass” for our new campsite. I had figured it was about 1.5 km one way but it turns out it was 2.5km but with only 62m of elevation gain. Got a bit of trail running in while I was at it. I might be getting a little sunburnt from my walks.

Morning was pretty chill. Mrs Milddogs made some sausages and eggs while I was out. I had a sample upon my return. We spied on the people vacating our new site (yup, another moving day) and they failed to depart by noon. I walked over and let the camp hosts know that we would switch within 5 minutes of the new site being vacated. 1220 and away we go to site C17.

Took us just few minutes to get set up again and boom, with a few strategically placed boards we are perfectly level. Must say, it feels a bit weird as we are almost always off by some margin.

Did some reading and sitting in the shade in the mid afternoon. Found a good use for my new ladder / spare tire carrier. Hey, why are we hiding behind the van? Don’t we have an awning? Yes we do. But. The awing is unsupported (this is desirable feature apparently) and thus, it can easily damage itself in wind gusts. Sure, it has a motion detector, but before it retracts itself, too late. These awnings are as close to useless as you can get. And that does not include the tendency for them to deploy as you drive down the road (there is a recall for this that does not actually fix the problem, so I fixed it properly myself).

Later afternoon we did some planning of the rest of the route. By planning, I mean looking at options. Maybe we want to be able to take in the eclipse somewhere? Maybe we MUST get back for another Sonoran hotdog. Maybe we should optimize our Buc-ee’s stops. So many options. Hint, everything within a lot of miles of the eclipse is booked.

Mrs Milddogs whipped up some tostadas and quesadillas for dinner.

Let’s go on a post dinner walk. We did a nice little walk and got back to the van just in time to take some more sunset photos. You love these.

What, another walk? Sure thing, let’s go. We headed down the gravel road and stopped at this sign. I’ll explore more tomorrow when there is more light.

I forgot to mention the showers. Post publication time last night I went up and used the showers. First thing; they are beautiful. Of the 3 there was one with a broken door lock (but had good water pressure). The second one I chose had a leaky shower head so the shower pressure was limited. The third one, which I will use next time, was perfect. Door lock works and plenty of water pressure. I shall defer my rating until tomorrow.