Pulling stuff out and moving on up

On Sunday afternoon, Carl engaged in what Jimmy thinks is one of our favorite activities, pulling everything out of the rig (well, at least everything out of one bay), going through it, and repacking it.

Carl is saying, "Don't let Jimmy see that we're pulling all the boxes out again!

Meanwhile, I pulled out all the bungee cords, sorted them according to size, and stored them in the two containers we have for storing them with labels indicating sizes in each container.

Monday morning, I had a followup test from a questionable mammogram the previous week -- since Sue died from breast cancer, we're a little more sensitive about this -- but a diagnostic mammogram along with an ultrasound gave us the all-clear. We're very thankful to God!

I headed back to Venture Out where Carl had gotten Gracie all ready for travel -- he was just completing the airing up of the suspension when I pulled up in the Jeep, so we went ahead and got on the road toward Cottonwood, Arizona -- a couple of hours north of the Phoenix area just off I-17.

When I was going for the followup mammogram, I saw a Portillo's that was just off the route we were taking around Phoenix, and it was at the edge of a large strip mall that seemed to have lots of parking...

... so we decided to stop and park Gracie along our route and get an early lunch.

At the pickup counter...

... there was a picture of the original Portillo's, in Villa Park, near where Carl grew up in Elmhurst, IL.

Carl got a "Big Beef" and I got a regular Italian beef sandwich, along with fries. Yum!

We made it around Phoenix and then up on I-17 -- north and up about 2400' in elevation -- until our stop at Sunset Point Rest Area:

 

Carl had gotten a phone call just as we were walking out to see the view -- that's him over at one of the view areas completing his phone call!

There was a sundial (with the right time for Mountain Standard Time... just after noon) and a commemorative plaque for highway construction workers who had lost their lives serving the people of Arizona.

We headed down a few hundred feet to Cottonwood and checked in at Verde Valley Thousand Trails. We had called ahead and reserved a 50A site so we would be at the top of the valley and able to get a better signal on our MiFi device.

View from our campsite -- there are two campsites across the road and then a beautiful view across the valley.

We walked over to an overlook area behind the campground office building -- this is looking over the campground below (the white things are RVs in campsites down below).

More of the campground below.

This is a very large park, very spread out. We're hoping to get some walking/hiking done, and also visiting some friends in the area.