Go West old man!: Ben Avery Shooting Facility, Phoenix

It was not such a bad night in the rest area. Actually quite peaceful. Hardly any engine idling even though it was mostly full of truckers. I’d heard that most western rest areas allowed overnight parking but had never tried it. When we arrived and found it full of trucks and barely had room to squeeze into a space behind a truck we realized it must be OK here.

We could not put the slides out so had to suffice with rather cramped quarters. Much like a few submarines I’ve toured. That’s because there is not room for much besides the normal width of the trailer in those spaces.

It was a nice chilly 36 this morning too. As we traveled it did warm up, to 60 something. And the WIND! Geez. Must have been a steady 30 mph almost all day. Depending on the direction of travel it was a headwind or crossing from the left. Never quite steady. We saw a lot of truckers blown around too. Talk about a tiring drive. AND the dust storms. Actually by AZ standards the dust storms were not bad. It did make a haze on the scenery, I didn’t see Mt Graham until we were well into AZ, and I know it’s visible from NM. That’s where Carlene and I spent most of March ‘20 hiking while in COVID hiding. Nice to see it again!

Then we got up around Tucson and the wind was mild. The came the heavy rain. We heard from a friend who was already at the EOT range that it rained a lot in Phoenix today. The radar had a lot of dark green and yellow spots. But lo and behold, it moved SE and we drove through it to find partly cloudy sky when we arrived.

But we arrived! And we’ll be here until March 7. Got the camper set up, as a basic start that is. Lot more to do to be ready for a shoot on Saturday. Then for some grocery shopping since we had eaten just about everything we had. Nice Albertsons store just a couple miles away.

This camper was in the rest area too