We found some warmer weather!

We have made it to Arizona! We've stopped in Benson for a week or so - we had a coupon from the Escapade to stay for a week for $50+electric - so we decided to take advantage of that and get some time to clean the Jeep and the rig.

We left from Las Cruces this morning, heading on I-10 west. Our plan was to get to the rest area just beyond Deming, NM where Days End Directory had told us that there was parking for RVs separate from the trucks.

We found the rest area, and initially it was not clear how to get into the picnic area parking. I walked down the area and found that the entrance was beyond the car parking area. We headed in - a little unsure about whether we'd be able to get in and out without disconnecting, but it turned out to be great!

There were covered picnic tables - probably about a dozen in all. The driveway to them wasn't any too wide - I wouldn't have wanted to meet another rig, but it was easy to see the length of it and just wait until any other rig had passed. Each covered picnic table had a large parking area in front of it - the one across from us had two rigs in it at one point while we were there. We stayed for a couple of hours as we made breakfast and then joined the live stream of our church service from Valley Ranch (Irving), TX.

After the wind and dust from yesterday, today was a gloriously beautiful day! We were glad we had stopped in Las Cruces as there were a lot of places on I-10 as we crossed New Mexico and into Arizona that it warned about the potential of blowing dust and that visibility could go to zero. Since we had experienced a little of that yesterday, we were glad that we had not continued into this part of the journey while the winds were blowing so hard.

The scenery was beautiful today - the pictures don't capture how you can see for such a distance and the landscape is so pretty.

We are staying at the Escapees Saguaro Co-Op park in Benson, Arizona. This was the view towards the east when we were leaving the dumpsters this afternoon!

A cactus in bloom just outside the drive-through window at Wendy's in town. We drove back into Benson to get the Jeep washed and its cover too... tomorrow we'll work on the bus here at our site in the park.