Yakima, Washington to Sun City, Arizona 2017

We decided to leave Yakima early in the fall to get ahead of the cold weather for our trail south this year.  We finally settled on a departure date of September 21st.  We have a loosey goosey way of travel planning truth be told.  Since we normally don't make reservations for an overnight stay we know it isn't critical to depart or arrive on a specific date or time.  This makes it nice for avoiding bad weather or reacting to other conditions that may make us want to go earlier or stay later.  The 21st turned out to be a fine day and we were off!  Another thing we always do as part of our trip planning is forecast the weather in each way point destination along our intended trail and make similar checks on DOT 511 sites in each states for any road condition notices or warnings.  During these checks we determined that we would likely be spending at least two nights in sub-freezing temperatures; that would be at the first two stops in Island City, Oregon and Rome, Oregon.  The other intel we gathered was a road closure near Parma, Idaho, where we would transition from I-84 to Rt-95.  Sure enough the road closure was accurate and we ended up following cell phone maps over country roads that eventually evolved to glorified farm field dirt roads just before we rejoined our intended trail on Rt-95.  For a while there we thought we may end up on a two-track dirt road, but it didn't quite come to that!  That was in southern Idaho near the Oregon border, just before waypoint C on the map below.

This was our planned trip route and ended up also being our actual route, of course there were a couple of last minute way point lay-over changes along the way!  We made this move in 11 days.  Five of the days we spent in Pahrump, NV just looking around and recuperating from the previous days on the road.  We thought Pahrump may be a place to set up a home base one day; right now we are thinking it may be a bit too far south and hot in the summer.

We had some real nice scenery in northeastern Oregon.  Below is a shot out the driver's window of the North Fork Umatilla Wilderness, which is a part of the Umatilla National Forest.  Blue Mountain State Park is in this area and Mt. Emily at 6,110 ft above sea level.

This was a good long uphill grade for us to pull on I-84 just east of Pendleton, Oregon.  We were happy to see the mountains in our rear-view mirror after that climb.  Our 2013 F-450 boasts 400 HP @ 2,800 RPM; interestingly enough, our new 2018 Ram 5500 will have only 325 HP.  How could this be for a more heavy duty truck you ask?  The answer is emissions control.  The Ram 5500 is considered a fully commercial vehicle, and the emissions regulations are more strict for commercial vehicles.  In order to meet these tougher requirements the truck makers use the same 6.7L diesel engine, but just de-tune it a bit on the commercial rigs, and voila - lower emissions and lower HP and torque too!  The good news is that will be plenty of HP for us to pull our load, and now we will have a powerful turbo exhaust brake to help slow us down on the downhill side.  Because every time we go up...  we always must come back down on the other side eventually.

We wonder which came first... the Casino or the church?  Did they pray for good luck and then go to the casino?  or did they go to the casino and then go pray for forgiveness?  Only in Nevada are these major organizations on the same corner.... Winnemucca, Nevada.

We were going to stay at the casino in Winnemucca, but the Walmart down the street appeared to be a better choice all around.  This was the first night above freezing since we left Yakima, WA.  We went in and did some shopping as always.  We came back and cooked our dinner and used their free WiFi before we laid down for the night.

The next night we stayed at Miller's Rest Stop just west of Tonopah, Nevada.  This is the first rest stop where we have stayed overnight.  This place had an RV overnight parking area separate from the remainder of the rest area.  There was also two potable water hydrants there for our use. Very nice overnight stop.  I believe we were in there with about 4 or 5 other RVs.  There was a motorcycle guy who slept on a picnic table in the RV area with us.  That looked cold to me!

We made it to Pahrump, Nevada (just west of Las Vegas) the next day and stayed at the Escapees park "Pair-a-Dice" for 5 or 6 days.  It was a nice rest and we were invited by my employer Arcata to visit our CEO and Operations Officer for lunch.  If that wasn't thrilling enough for us, the CEO offered to order us a new Ram 5500 through an agreement that they have direct with Dodge manufacturing, which would get us a volume discount that is below dealer's cost!  There will be more to come on that story!

We left Pahrump and stayed one night in Congress, AZ at the North Ranch Escapees park.  The next morning, October 1st, we rolled easily into Paradise RV Resort in Sun City, Arizona.  There we will stay until after Christmas.  Merry Christmas to All and to All a Goodnight!