And on The Eleventh Day

The Party of Two returned home to their Rimrock straw house at high noon Monday, November 1.

After visiting the Winslow Airport and revisiting Peter Wolf Toth's Arizona Native statue, we enjoyed an uneventful leisure cruise up across The Mogollon Rim into the Verde Valley beyond.

As expected, the travelers were greeted with a veritable jungle of weeds on their property.  After hacking out a parking spot, The Mosey Inn was nestled up close and cozy to the straw house.

Our little tiny home on two wheels is our newest rendition of The Phone Booth.  We set up an 18 foot tall mast and connected an antenna.  The cell signal booster turned a useless one bar into three decent bars of connectivity. That's huge for us.  Why?

Even though Century Link turned on our internet as scheduled yesterday, it is totally & completely worthless.  So worthless, in fact, we're probably going to cancel the service and simply use our phones out here in the travel trailer.

Maybe one of these days we can rig the antenna and cables so that the booster works inside the house.  In the meantime, who cares?  We have nice connectivity and a great little hang out spot here in our new Phone Booth.

Today and the next few days are going to be Weed Wars.  The tumbleweeds are the worst they've been in ten years.  The dispicable goatheads and the worst they've EVER been. We renewed our fire department burn permit yesterday and will begin torching the tumbleweeds about mid-morning.  If we burn them one-by-one "in place" far fewer seeds disperse.  It's tedious, time-consuming and exhausting work but it has to be done.

Luckily, NWS Flagstaff said this morning: "A very quiet weather pattern lies ahead for the next several days bringing a period of dry and mild fall weather."  Translated that means Dispatch will approve our burning when we call in our permit number this morning.

It was EZPZ opening up the house yesterday--took less than two hours.  Other than the weed jungle, the place looks just like it did when we left it in late April.

It sure was a fun trip south.  Total fuel cost was $366, about $120 more than if we had taken the shortest possible route.  But that $120 bought some wonderful value added stuff.  Staying off I-15 through Salt Lake and off of I-17 south of Flagstaff was priceless.

The shortest possible route between Idaho Falls and Rimrock is 800 miles.  On this 11 day soutbound journey we traveled 1,270 miles, well over 50% farther than the shortest possible route.  It sure was fun!