Turnkey Camping

 We slowed down this morning and I worked a bit on figuring out our tire issue.  It ended up that we had a a small leak that was able to be patched.  We had some lunch and C, P, and I headed back to Phoenix to check out the Science Museum.  It was great!  The boys really enjoyed it - and I ended up getting a membership because they’re reciprocal with so many museums across the US.  I wish I would have done that in Oklahoma because we would have gotten in for free today!  But we have lots of destinations ahead of us, so hopefully we can see some museums down the road.   This heat really wears you out!  It was 112 and even now at 4:45 pm it’s 109.  I’m off to make a great big salad for dinner because I don’t want to heat up the trailer from cooking something!

  Today’s adventure landed us in Scottsdale, AZ.  We cheeked out OdySea Aquarium and Butterfly Wonderland.  This was a great choice for another 110 degree day!  The butterfly exhibit began with a great 3d movie explaining monarch migration to Mexico.  It was wonderful!  After that, you could go in the enclosure and see lots of varieties of butterflies!  We loved it.  They also had various reptiles and some sea life on display.   The Aquarium had sharks, penguins, sting rays, sharks and even an octopus!   It was a great way to spend the day.    

 Today we wised up and started our adventuring early.  We were at Goldtown Ghost Town right when they opened at 10.  We went on a narrow gauge train, on a mine tour and in the “mystery shack” - a cabin built at a 45 degree angle. We had a great day exploring the ghost town - lots of little shops.  The big kids panned for gold and C and I did gem mining.   It was a fun wild-west type experience!  We finished our time at a chicken chain, “Jollibee’s” that L had been wanting to try.  

Boy is it hot in Arizona!  It was 110 today. I wanted to take the kids to a ghost town and panning for gold, but we weren’t ready to leave until around noon and I worried that it would be just too hot there.  We decided to stick to air conditioning and head down to Phoenix and go to Legoland.  C loved it!  We stopped at a Korean Grocery Store and got the supplies to make Pad Thai for dinner.  Yum!

  Well, we have been on the road for about a week - and we’re made it all the way to Arizona!  We will camp here for the work week.   The road was really mountainous today and we felt like true road warriors - we ran 6 1/2 hours without a gas or bathroom stop!  That may be a new record for us.  We’re parked right at the base of the Superstition Mountains and the car temp was displaying 118 today.  It will be interesting to see how the camper handles the heat.  We have three air conditioners, so I’m guessing it will be fine - but we put reflective foam up between the windows and shades to help.  We had a fun dinner out and then swam in the pool.  The perfect ending to a travel day!

Two nights ago we had a great time taking the water taxi tour in OKC.  It was great!  The next morning, we took our time and had coffee with my parents.  It was a stormy morning and rolled out around 10 am.   Once we got into Texas, we stopped at a rest area to install our tire pressure monitoring system.  Almost immediately, we found out that one tire was about 20 lbs lighter than the others.  Under-inflation can cause a blow out, so this made us a bit nervous.  At our next gas stop. We used the air filler to try to re-inflate and it only took air out.  We pulled our big air tank out and tried that way but blew our onboard inverter.  Next we found a truck stop and they were gracious enough to let us use their air.  We couldn’t get the tire to take more than 133 lbs and as soon as we let it started dropping.  We turned around to go back to the truck stop to see if they could fix it - they sent us to a tire shop nearby.  We got ...

Did you know that there is an entire museum devoted to pigeons?  Practically across the street from the campground is the “American Pigeon Museum and Library”.  That was our first planned stop for the day until I plugged it into GPS and found they didn’t open until 1 pm.   We pivoted and checked out the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum.  The grounds were beautiful and Charlie loved the playground.  We had a quick lunch and headed back to the campground.  When we pulled in, Charlie was quick to remember the Pigeon Museum which had opened moments before.  I drove him over and we saw live pigeons and he made a pigeon tag bracelet and I found a great T-shirt.  It was an unexpected fun spot.