Arizona

Leaving California, we entered Arizona at Yuma, way down south on the border with Mexico. A local laughed, "It never rains in Yuma, it just sprinkles a little," but our first night there, two months worth of rain fell overnight. We were drenched by the downpour and buffeted with winds that rocked the RV. It was a tropical storm that came up from Mexico and continued northeast directly to Minnesota, where it provided the first big snowfall of the season.

Another night, in a state park, a burro wandered through our campground. A burro is also called a donkey or an ass, and has been a beast of burden for thousands of years. Burros living wild in the desert are descendents of pack animals used by prospectors and other early settlers.

North of Yuma, in Quartzsite, we paid to park on barren land where RVs formerly parked for free — the feds now require a permit to park there, on what is unimproved public land anyway. Snowbirds flock here by the thousands to enjoy the mild winter weather and the huge permanent flea markets, but we were too early for the high season and were just as happy to find the place comparatively empty.

Headed for Phoenix, but still many miles away, we noticed a huge white cloud rising into the sky. We drove toward it and found that it came from the Palo Verde nuclear power plant, the largest such facility in the country, supplying enough electricity for 4 million people. All the other nuclear power plants in the country are built on large rivers, lakes, or oceans, to supply them with their enormous need for cooling water. This plant, in the middle of a desert, is the only nuclear power plant in the country to cool its reactors by evaporating water. Each day it takes in 55 million gallons of water and turns it into steam, which is what we saw climbing into the sky. The facility is located only 40 miles from Phoenix, and only one mile from the nearest public school. One fervently hopes that no nuclear incident (remember Three Mile Island and Chernobyl!) ever takes place here.

One day, while pumping gas into Cruisemaster, a fellow wandered over and introduced himself. "I see by your license plate you're from Minnesota," he said. Turned out he was from Burnsville and had moved to Arizona a couple of years earlier. He was unhappy with the move, complaining about lack of employment, and, of course, the heat in the summer.

By the time we reached Tucson, cold weather had arrived — frost on the ground! We hurried on, leaving to another time to visit Bisbee and the surrounding area in Southern Arizona.

New Mexico

Because the weather continued cold in New Mexico, we decided to postpone visits to the Carlsbad Caverns, Roswell, and White Sands, and instead headed directly south into Texas.