Rowkin Rovings Blog

So, we have been sitting at home twiddling our thumbs for the last couple of days in anticipation of our trip down to Arizona for winter. Once again, we are going to Venture Out in Phoenix which we have renamed Disneyland for Retirees, until the end of March 2025. We are renting a park model from our friends we made last year, Gabby and Linda. Their unit is certainly an improvement from what we had last year and are spoilt with a dishwasher and an in-house laundry. It also has a small back yard for Toque and is very close to the pickleball courts. We will add some real estate photos once we get there.

We had winterised the apartment, done a huge spring/autumn clean, emptied fridge, visited all our friends and half packed the car with a day left over. After some short contemplation, we decided that instead of doing 15 hours driving in the first two days, we would set off a day early and turn it into three days of five hours driving instead. Wise move as the days are much shorter now and we don’t want to be driving in the dark. It is also easier on us and certainly on Toque.

So firstly, a quick synopsis of what the trip down to Phoenix entails.

As you can see, not the most direct route to Phoenix. A couple of reasons for this – a) we have four sets so friends we wish to catch up with – one set in Wyoming, one set in Minnesota, one set in Iowa and one set in Houston. b) haven’t done the Midwest states before.

It is about 6,300k and apart from Minnesota, it is all through Trump states – god help us!!

We set off at 11.00 am today towards the Canadian/US border.

We envisage adding about 15,000k onto the clock for the duration of the trip which should see us back in Canada the second week in April. We have doubled our liability insurance to $2million dollars which considering it is the US, is a bit of a must.

We zeroed out the trip meter and discovered that the trip meter also records the engine running hours which should be interesting.

The boot space was pretty maxed out as was the back seat space. As were are away for twice the time we were last year, we do need to take a lot more stuff with us.

We were a little lucky also, as we found someone who lives in the building who was prepared to pay us for our parking space whilst we are away. It is rather desirable to have your car in a heated parkade during those rather cold months of winter.

Toque is back to her normal back seat repose in preparation for the start of the trip. She certainly doesn’t seem to mind it and as she is sleeping nearly 20 hours a day now, it is certainly no hardship for her.

The Canadian/US border is three hours south of Calgary and this time we drove through the Coutts Border Crossing just south of Lethbridge. It was very quiet, but we got a little nervous as they pulled us over for secondary screening. They x-rayed the car and then did a back seat check on Toque. There has been an increase in rabies cases in the USA as a lot of dogs from eastern Europe were being brought in through Canada and their vaccination records falsified. Toque had her rabies shot on Friday which is given every four years. She of course, is just like us, vaxxed to the max. They have also added in some additional paperwork for any dogs entering the US which from or point of view was very minimal. If you have ever gone through the Australian animal quarantine process, you will understand that the US process was an absolute doddle. Why they x-rayed the car, we are not sure, and you certainly do not ask any questions.

We made it 60k over the border into the exciting metropolis of Shelby in Montana. It is rail town which doesn’t have a great deal going for it apart from its close location to the Glacier National Park which straddles the Canadian/US border. We have visited this beautiful National park from both sides and would highly recommend it.

As to the vista from the car windows – not a lot – this after all is prairie country and the start of winter so every thing is burnt brown looking, flat with sight undulations and batshit boring. Will it get any better – NOPE!!

Our total distance today was about 400k which we did very comfortably in four hours and got settled into our hotel by 3.00pm.

So, this is the running spreadsheet we have for this trip. You can tell that we have an engineer in the family!!!