If you missed the announcement, we got a travel trailer and are enjoying the traveling life. Our first trip we decided to head West to see our niece get baptized. Keep in mind, we are in the midst of the Covid Pandemic and we decided to travel. (Best decision ever, by the way.) Illinois numbers were on the decline, things were opening back up, and we entered Phase 3 of recovery in Illinois the day we left. We didn’t exactly know what to expect on the road but we had our own home, food, water, and a way to go to the bathroom, so we went for it. We were headed for the Phoenix area so from where we lived it was going to be at least 25 hours of driving.
The goal for the first night was to make it to El Reno, OK. We had found a free site with hook-ups on the Free Campsites site. We spent our first night at Lucky Star Casino. We quickly learned that Simon does not want to go to sleep right away when we pull into a campsite since he’s been sleeping in the van all day. We tried to do this trip as inexpensively as possible. Instead of spending money on lunch, we pulled into a rest area and went into the trailer where I made lunches for everyone. It was so nice to have that option. Especially, as we found out later, when you can’t drive thru anywhere and there’s a pandemic so you also can’t park and walk into a restaurant! We made it to our first stop with no problems, the kids settled in quickly (except for Simon), and we got some good rest.
We woke up the next morning, got everything cleaned up and climbed back into the van for day 2 of driving. As we were pulling out of Lucky Star we had a fun sight to see….Prairie Dogs!
Excuse the quality of the picture. It was very hard to get a picture of them on my phone and I jumped out so quickly I didn’t think to grab my DSLR camera. It was so fun to stand there and listen to them warn each other that there was an intruder. They chirp like squirrels.
One guest I didn’t mention was our 90 pound Goldendoodle, Sniffy, that came with on the trip. He found some interesting ways to make himself comfortable on the trip. Most of the time while in the van he was in the back with all the kids. (Best seat in the house when you’re a junk scavenger!) He was so happy to be with his people all the time. We were trying hard to find another free spot for night two, but we were so tired and all the free spots were an hour out of our way so we decided mid day to just call and make a reservation at a KOA. We stayed at the Holbrook, Petrified Forest KOA. We only stayed the one night and pulled out first thing in the morning, so not long enough to make a review of the site. I’ll be sharing day 3 of travel and our stay in Arizona next. Over our first two days of travel, we drove through: Illinois, Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, and into Arizona. Of all of those states, New Mexico and Illinois were the only states asking that you wear a mask in their establishments. All others just had social distancing reminders on their doors.
