Chillin' with Patsy: Stretching our Wheels South and West, Alamo Lake State Park

Even though it was an early bedtime for me (at 9 pm I turned my bedside light out), I slept well. Bill informed me this morning, Thursday, Nov. 15^th, that Clemson needed out at 1:30 and I didn’t hear a thing. I slept soundly until 5 or so and got up at 6. It was a good night’s sleep. I knew it would be still dark so didn’t open the blinds until closer to 7 after Bill was up.

Empty sites now as we leave the park

He hopped in the shower and by 7:30 we were pretty much ready to trudge onward. We each had some toast for breakfast with our tea and coffee and I packed the small cooler with the sandwiches I’d made last night. With perhaps a 3 ½ - 4 hour drive ahead of us today, it is nice to have something to eat along the way. I put a couple of yogourt in as well as a couple of tangerines/clementine(whatever they call them here).

While Bill dumped the black and grey tanks,
I took advantage of the sun peeking through the trees
and was pleased with the result

I walked the garbage over to the bins and realized that it was very ‘crisp’ outside. I will hold off on my walk until we reach the sands of Alamo Lake. I love that place! We pulled out of the park after dumping at 8:40. Clear sunny skies welcomed us to the highway and beyond. It was a cold 31F but no frost on the vehicles to scrape. We crept up the steep hill and turned right onto Page Springs Road.

Bill will post it on his map on On Our Way but we caught 89A to 260 to I-17 to 169 to 69 to 89S. What a roller coaster ride that was! Bill thoroughly enjoyed this drive today and as a passenger, I did as well. It was a slow drive travelling between 25 and 35 mph and therefore took longer than we expected to make our way to Alamo Lake State Park. The views were so inspiring and I couldn’t get enough pictures.

Unfortunately, as we were ill prepared for this scenic drive (never having been on it before) that Bill forgot to bring along his dash cam. Darn! This would have been a great video! We only made one stop at Peeples Valley Mountainaire Mini Mart, for a piddle and fuel break. We received a hearty ‘Welcome” after fueling up by a couple of friendly locals.

From this picture, you can see how sharp the curves are so we kept watching
behind to make sure our buddies were coming.

By this time, we were about an hour away from our destination and it was noon hour so we had our sandwiches while driving. We were just 13 miles from Congress but before entering the town, turned onto hwy 71 and then 60 which took us to Wenden.

Pictures just don't do it justice
How many times do we say that?

This was our turn off onto Alamo Road and it was a long quiet 38-mile drive back to Alamo Lake State Park. Rob and Pat had never been here so we were anxious to see what they thought. We had all booked awesome back-in sites with a view over the lake.

We have friends who lived here for a while!

Along this traverse, we saw every kind of cacti/tree
Saguaro, barrel, beaver tail, prickly pear, staghorn and teddy bear cholla, the ocotillo
We saw the Joshua and Palo Verde trees

Set up shortly after 2 with electric and water, the temperature was a wonderful 73F. We sat at our respective campsites for a bit before I took a walk down to the boat ramps. I had my zoom lens just in case I spotted some wildlife, namely burros. The first thing I saw were my favourite thing, a family of quail. One by one, they ran across the road down into a gully. I didn’t see any burros but when Rob returned from a drive out to the main road, he showed us pictures of 6 he encountered. Cool!

Yay! QUAIL!

We are Happy!!

We joined them next door for Happy Hour and chatted about family, relationships, animals and plans for tomorrow. We are only here for a couple of nights so it will be a short visit and we have some things we want to show them before we leave. This has been a pleasant driving day and we really enjoyed it. I hope you can say the same.