Day 42 & 43: Williams, AZ to Springerville, AZ to… Right outside of Big Bend National Park

Posted on October 13, 2020 by Sarah

Day 42:

Today was flurry of activity, but not necessarily exciting activity. I ran to the grocery store, made lunch, fixed dinner, made sure the kids’ assignments were done before we left town around 1 pm. Getting from the Grand Canyon to Big Bend is quite a drive and since we can’t just take off and drive all day (although just wait!) since we have school and work to accomplish we drove to Springerville, AZ. We really liked the RV park we stayed at, but we were only there for less than 24 hours because then we headed to…

Day 43:

Deming, New Mexico. Y’all, I can’t even remember what the RV park in Deming looked like. This is what happens when you stay somewhere only a short while multiple days in a row. What I can remember about Deming is that my friend, Ashley, told me there was a Starbucks in a Chevron on I-10 and I was so pumped to go grab coffee there. It was not to be however, because that particular Chevron was 20 minutes in the opposite direction we were headed. I was overly emotional about not getting that cup of coffee. We left as early as we could, about 10:30, because we had a beast of a drive in front of us: 397 miles. That may not sound like a lot, and Google will tell you it takes 6 hours to make that drive, but when you are pulling an 11,000 lb trailer and getting 11 miles to the gallon, it will take you more like seven hours. As we were driving we kept seeing signs for Petrified Forest National Park and it turns out we were driving right by the southern entrance. We pulled in about 4:15 and the park closed at 5 so we flashed our National Park card, drove to the empty visitor center parking, and hopped out to spend about 20 minutes there. This was our 10th national park to visit! We drove out right at 5.

The drive wasn’t too bad and I’m sure our short break at the Petrified Forest helped, but by hour six we were all ready to be out of the car. We arrived at the Stillwell Store and RV Park and were able to set up while it was still light outside which is a huge deal. Plugging into electrical and really, hooking up your sewer line is something you don’t want to do in the dark if you can help it. This place is really in the middle of nowhere. We are 45 minutes from the closest town of Marathon and about 20 minutes from the entrance of Big Bend National park. The owner is a little grumpy, but we met another “road-schooling” family which is always fun. There are a lot of us out here!