Finally, An RV Road Trip

 We have not used our RV in about 1-1/2 years. We had work and then our truck was stolen and getting the RV fitted to the new truck and all of the things that go with that have been time consuming. Not to mention taking time to travel to Europe and then Amsterdam.

Finally, we were able to get the RV into the shop to get it raised to fit into the new hitch. We gave the shop the date of Thurs, October 21^st as we really wanted to leave on Sunday and go to New Mexico.

We had decided that we needed chili pods, ristras, chili powder, more fabric for new cushions in the RV, and new sage. Plus, we needed to eat New Mexican food! What I make is good but we wanted the food from our favorite restaurants.

As I was looking at the map of New Mexico I noticed that some of the Utah parks that we’d wanted to visit are kind-of on the way home. I’d wanted to do this Utah National Park circle tour, but leaving out some parks that we have visited in the last couple of years. https://utah.com/itinerary/grand-circle-tour

We first had to clean the RV after sitting for a year in the ash from the fires, dust from living in the San Joaquin Valley and just sitting. The poor RV was a dust bomb.

Just before leaving, Dale had to make one last run to check the tires. As he drove a message came on the truck message center that the right light was out on the RV.  He ran to the parts store and bought a new bulb and put it in.

So, on Sunday we drove away, so happy to be going somewhere with the RV. Going, that is until we realized we’d left the spare tire to the RV at home. We thought about continuing but then thought better of it, with all of the stretches of highway with no cell phone service and no service of any kind. So, we went back home, picked up the spare and were off again.

Truck and RV are finally ready to roll

We also started getting messages that the brake light was out on the right side. We stopped and checked the light; the turn light didn’t go and the brake light didn’t work but the light worked. Go figure. We thought we’d just go and Dale would try to fix it once we were settled into a campground.

We stopped for the night at a rest stop and then went on our way on Monday morning, all set to eat at our favorite haunt in Santa Fe. As we started to drive a message came on our display that the trailer was disconnected. This was scary because it meant that there were no lights or brakes on the trailer.

We stopped at another rest stop. We had it in the back of our minds that we’d turn around and go home if we couldn’t get it reattached.

As it turned out the plug in the bed of the truck was malfunctioning. Our old truck had this same problem, and like our old truck there is a 2^nd plug in the bumper and that one works. So that problem was solved.

It was Dale’s turn to drive as we trade about every 2 hours. I looked up to see when Maria’s closed in the evening. No way, it was closed on Monday and Tuesday. We did like another place, but not as well, but it was local.

We made it to the RV park but unfortunately just after dark. There are no lights in this park so it is quite dark. It took a little doing to back into our space but with the 2 of us working together, we made it.

Our plan was to eat both dinner and breakfast at Maria’s. Of course, that was not an option. This was fine as a storm was moving in by about 10 am today with high winds and rain. The rain we can deal with, but high winds with a RV isn’t great. We decided, instead, to high tail it out of Santa Fe and get on into Taos before the storm.

The Santa Fe Cathedral

Dinner; Chicken Adobo and stuffed Poblano's

We made it to Taos just as the storm was really coming in so we are battened down with favorite restaurants here.

The drive to Taos