hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr3730.txt

Episode: 3730
Title: HPR3730: Into Arizona
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr3730/hpr3730.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-25 04:44:08

---

This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 3,730 for Friday the 18th of November 2022.
Today's show is entitled, Into Arizona, It is part of the series Travel.
It is hosted by Aoka, and is about 14 minutes long.
It carries a clean flag.
The summary is, Hitting Our First Major Stop in Arizona.
Hi, this is Aoka, welcoming you to Hacker Public Radio, and another exciting episode.
We're continuing our series about the RV trip that we took over the winter of 2021 to 2022.
We're going to pick it up today as we are going into Arizona.
On Friday, December 24th, Christmas Eve, that brought us to Enchanted Trails,
RV Park and Trading Post in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
We managed to get in about an hour before they closed the office, and we're placed in a nice spot.
Because we have been driving every day, we haven't bothered on hooking the truck from the RV.
So we have been very happy to have arranged pull-through sites with sufficient length.
We need about 50 feet for the truck and the RV when connected.
Now, we mostly reflected on this Christmas Eve that not having to do anything for Christmas was kind of nice.
In past years, Christmas has often been a time of just being really busy with stuff.
It's nice getting away sometimes.
So the next day, Saturday, December 25th, Christmas Day,
we arrived at Greer's Pine Shadows RV Park in Flagstaff, Arizona.
It being Christmas, the office was closed, but they left us the usual paperwork on the office door.
Flagstaff is at 7,500 feet in the mountains.
So we were back in winter at this point, and did not enjoy it very much.
I think one of the things we're going to do in the future is not go to Flagstaff in the winter.
On the other hand, if you're going to be in Arizona in the summer, and you want to get, you know, in Arizona, it can get to like 110 degrees Fahrenheit in the summer.
And if you want to get away from heat like that, Flagstaff might be a very nice place to visit then.
Now the Greer's Pine Shadows Park is pretty minimal. No Wi-Fi, no propane, and so on.
It is definitely a park that I don't think we will ever return to.
We couldn't wait to get out of there in the morning.
And the weather didn't help because it was snow and slush everywhere.
It just, you know, don't go to Flagstaff in the winter.
Even though it's in Arizona, it's not at all warm at this time of year.
So next day, Sunday, December 26th, we got to our first real stop, Golden Shores RV Park in Topak, Arizona.
We'll be staying here for a week.
And from now until the middle of March, we'll be staying at places for longer periods of time, up to one month at a park near Tucson.
This is the part of the trip we really looked forward to.
So far, it's just been grinding out travel day after day after day to get from Michigan out to Arizona.
Well, now we're here.
And Topak is about a half hour from Lake Havasu and close to Oatman, an abandoned mining town that is rather touristy.
We checked into the park, but we were now running low on propane.
We went to a hardware store just down the road that sold propane, but sadly a misjudged corner led us to knock down a palm tree and a utility box for the phone company.
The one silver lining is that if we had managed to get the new stairs installed, we would have wrecked them in the process.
The sheriff's deputy came and just said to give our insurance information to people.
We got our propane finally, went back to the RV park and started on our setup.
Our tanks were full and there was a nice sewer connection here, but we managed to spill raw sewage on the ground.
The park manager was very gracious and told us everyone does that at some point.
We got it as cleaned up as we could get some bleach on the spill and decided to end our day before any more damage could be done.
This is a work and all look at our trip and we were entirely new to towing an RV and all of the things involved in living out of an RV.
We've made quite a few mistakes so far.
I can tell you that the mistakes really stop at this point.
We start doing things right day after day, which is a blessed relief to the point that we've already been talking about what we're going to do in 2022-2023 winter season.
But, you know, those are the mistakes we made.
So on Monday, December 27th, we were a little more leisurely this morning about breakfast and doing some reading.
We needed to do laundry, but the laundry room here had machines, but no detergent for sale.
And we needed other supplies, so we found a Walmart and Lake Havasu City and mounted a shopping expedition.
Cheryl tried to call the local phone company about the box we damaged, but after going through the usual ridiculous automated response tree, it could fairly be said we found no one who seemed to care.
And we stopped in the local Home Depot because that is where we bought the cooler that died on us.
But we were told to take it up with the manufacturer and that probably nothing would come of it because it would be out of warranty.
By the time we left Home Depot, it was already 2 p.m. and Cheryl had not had lunch, so we went back to the RV, stored away our purchases and left it there.
We'll try the laundry tomorrow.
Now, Tuesday, December 28th, we got the laundry done in the morning and after lunch headed off to Oatman, Arizona about 18 miles away from the RV park.
Oatman is a former mining town, but then the mines ran out and it was largely abandoned.
The miners had burrows that they used for hauling things, including hauling ore out of the mine.
And when the mines closed down, the burrows were turned loose and are now feral.
You see burrow crossing signs on roads in Arizona, something I've never seen in Michigan.
Oatman itself is on Route 66, which is one of the famous historical roads in America.
So we took Route 66 to get there.
Oatman is now devoted to total Western Keach, with lots of handmade jewelry, tasteless t-shirts, and the usual touristy trash for sale.
The burrows wander the street and you can buy alfalfa pellets to feed them, which of course people love to do.
I think Oatman is one of those places that if you're in the area, you have to go see it, but once is certainly enough.
On the way back from there, we stopped at the hardware store where we had our RV accident, but the owner said that the palm we knocked over was dead anyway, so we did them the favor.
And it looks like whatever damage we did to the box, the telephone utility box caused no problems.
There were no outages, and apparently it had been hit before.
So it looks like we got off easy on this one, just some damage to our RV.
Now Wednesday, December 29th, we left the RV around 9am to go into Lake Havasu.
We started at the Visitor Center to get some information and walked across the London Bridge.
There have been a number of London bridges over the centuries.
This particular one was built in the early 1800s, but by the 1960s it was deemed incapable of supporting all the traffic in London, so they sold it.
To an Arizona businessman who had it carefully disassembled, all the pieces numbered and shipped to Lake Havasu.
It was rebuilt there on a peninsula, all on dry land, then they cut a channel to bring water through, turning the peninsula into an island.
We walked over the bridge, then took a hiking trail around the island for what we think was about six miles.
The London Bridge is of course a big tourist attraction in the area, but you know when you're here you have to go see it.
After our walk was finished we stopped at the store and came back to the RV, pretty tired out from what was a longer walk than we usually do.
We'll see if we have any energy tomorrow.
Well Thursday, December 30th, after breakfast we took a walk around the neighborhood where we're staying.
There were a lot of steep hills, so we were kind of done in by the time we got back to the RV and decided to take it easy for the day.
Friday, December 31st.
The day started out cloudy and overcast, but in the afternoon the sun made an appearance.
We managed to dump our tanks without any problems this time, then went for another walk.
When we got back we figured out how to get the TV and the DVD player working for a little entertainment.
We have a boxed set of DVDs from the rock and roll hall of fame and put one of them in.
Finally Saturday, January 1st, New Year's Day.
We went to Cattail Cove State Park and they had something they called the first day hike.
That sounded like fun. It was led by several rangers and several volunteers, one of whom we discovered is from Michigan, so we exchanged a few pleasantries about that.
The hike was fun, but also a bit of a strain since we were going up and down hills the entire time.
On little gravel paths with treacherous footing, I would say I'm glad I did it, but I don't want to do it again.
Part of the idea for this trip, the RV trip that we were on was to go places we've never been and do things we've never done, and this was one of them.
But, you know, we're, Cheryl and I are getting a little too old for really strenuous hikes.
Basically, we are currently located on the Colorado River, which forms the border with California.
And just south of Cattail Cove State Park is the Parker Dam, which we were told is the deepest dam in the world, because they had to go so far down to find bedrock to create a secure footing.
California built the dam and then a pumping station.
And that was what essentially created Southern California. California is basically a desert.
A lot of people don't know that, so it's the water from the Colorado that allows places like Los Angeles and San Diego to exist.
Now, in the course of creating the Parker Dam, they created Lake Havasu.
Now, California, because they built the dam, gets a guaranteed water allotment from Lake Havasu.
But the lake itself is actually split in half between Arizona and California.
So, if you're standing on the Arizona side and you look across the river, you're looking at California.
Now, we took photos, and you might be interested in maybe looking at some of them to see what the London Bridge looks like there, or Oatman with the burrows, or any of the things that we've talked about.
The way I've done this, I have a webpage and the link is in the show notes.
And the photos, if we took photos on any given day, there's a link on the webpage.
I have a pro account on Flickr, which does some very nice things for me.
And one of them is it gives me a place to put my photos and then link to them.
So, I've put these links on the webpage.
And so, if you want to see what any of this stuff looks like, feel free to check that out.
And with that, this is Hoka for Hacker Public Radio.
Signing off, and as always, encouraging you to support Free Software.
Bye-bye!
You have been listening to Hacker Public Radio at Hacker Public Radio.
Today's show was contributed by a HPR listener like yourself.
If you ever thought of recording a podcast, click on our contribute link to find out how easy it really is.
Hosting for HPR has been kindly provided by an onsthost.com,
www.internetarchive.com and www.oursings.net.
On the Sadois status, today's show is released under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.