LLV Day One: Camping at Camp Verde

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When we originally planned this vacation out, we quickly decided that trying to make it up to Park City in one day would be a little too stressful. My dad had a work meeting that he absolutely had to attend, so we wouldn’t be able to leave until 3pm. So once again, my parents being extravagantly generous, they reserved 3 hotel rooms at the Thunderbird Resort in Mt Carmel Junction, UT. (This is a teeny, tiny town about 30 minutes past the Arizona-Utah border.) It’s a somewhat decent place that charges you a small fortune during the summer, since it caters to the Zion National Park visitors. Terence and I offered to spend the night in the motor home with our kids, leaving the hotel rooms to my parents, Camie’s family, and Amy’s family. Nobody had a problem with that, and it left us with a nice, easy drive of about six hours on Wednesday and six hours on Thursday morning.

If only it could have been so easy.

We did leave on time, which was a small miracle in itself. My dad got out of his meeting on time, my mom, my sisters and I got the motor home packed ahead of time, and even Jason made it there to leave with the main group. So far, so good. We loaded the babies into the truck with Amy, Jason, and Terence, and the rest of us piled into the large motor home my parents had rented from El Monte RV.

My dad drives motor homes like he does any other car, so instead of putt-putting along, we barrelled down the freeway and beat the traffic out of Phoenix. Then the trip up the grade began, the slow haul into the mountains. As we were chugging our way up the I-17, the motor home engine started the choke and splutter. Finally, it cut out. Luckily my dad made it over to the side of the freeway before we ran out of momentum. After a few tries he got it started again, but it only lasted for less than a mile before the engine quit again.

In utter frustration my father made his first phone call to the El Monte Roadside Service. He had a useless couple of exchanges with a rep who clearly knew nothing about RV’s (or probably even about cars.) In the end, they recommended that we see if we could make it to the next town, where they would get some help for us. My dad managed to get the recalcitrant RV running again, and we limped along to the next sign of civilization.

Halfway to Flagstaff is a small pit stop of a town called Camp Verde. Unfortunately, when we made it there, the service station had already closed. El Monte told us to get the RV seen first thing in the morning. In the meantime they reserved a spot for us at a local RV park to spend the night.

This was very disheartening, but we made the best of it. We got three rooms at the Comfort Inn, and my mom called the Thunderbird to let them know we weren’t going to make it. The hotel charged her a $75 cancellation fee, but it could have been worse. Terence and I still planned to stay in the RV so my parents could sleep in a real bed. However, when we arrived at the RV park, the manager informed us it was only for those 55 and over. What was El Monte thinking?? My parents barely make that cut off, let alone the rest of us!

In the end, our family of six slept in a small hotel room with two beds. At least the motel had a pool. I let the kids swim until 9:30pm to wear them out as much as possible. It meant that it only took an hour of telling the kids things like “Don’t touch your sister!” and “Move over a little bit!” and, above all, “SHHHH!” before our room was finally quiet. We needed a good night’s sleep because now we had a ten hour drive to make on Thursday.

If only those pesky demons of road travel would let us be. . . .

(To Be Continued)