Postcard from Arizona- 3

 Santa Fe, NM

We did a quick trip back to Santa Fe for the holiday and found a few inches of snow and our alley (it's 10' wide but the city insists upon calling it a street) paved with a 3" layer of ice... that ice will stay there till spring. 4-wheel drive got us up the alley OK and the street in front of the house was not bad at all. The yellow extension cord dangling from the front is for the block heater, so we didn't have to worry about the engine being hard to start.

The drive to Santa Fe was a little hairy at points. We saw heavy snow more than a couple times and I was wondering to myself 'so how much heavier does it have to get before I turn around?!' The snow wasn't sticking to the road, and each time I pondered the imponderable, the snow let up. So we made it to Santa Fe without a hitch.

We took a fair amount of teasing about being snow birds. Yeah, snow birds that don't have enough sense to stay away when there's snow on the ground! And on Christmas day the temps got up to a blazing 30 deg F for the high at our house after an overnight low of 6 F. Low temps like that usually mean the skies are clear and sure enough... all the clouds were on vacation for the week.

After a brief visit with friends we were on our way back to Benson, AZ. We bailed out of Santa Fe just ahead of the next bout of crap weather. We reminded ourselves that it is, after all, winter. Somehow it didn't help us feel any better!

All was well back at the trailer and we got some sleep before driving to Apache Junction on an errand. We had ordered replacement pillows which were supposed to arrive on 12/18 but didn't make it till 12/22. Don't you just love how on-line merchants claim they have things in stock but don't?

It was a quick get-it-done trip: get the package, stop at Sam's Club for a new computer for Bruce, then drive back to Benson. I guess there was a time when 1,100 miles in 2 days was easy, but I'm afraid I don't remember it!

We arrived back at Benson to find the park entrance flooded by a broken waterline. We still had a trickle of water at the Dog House, so we tanked up before they shut off the water to do repairs (the KOA in Benson has great tasting water!). We did some grocery shopping, then on Wednesday 12/30 we were on our way to Las Cruces, NM.