Sixty-six days of togetherness

Corinne Boondocking, Family 4 Comments

It all started innocently enough. On February 9th, we received an email from our friends Dan and Amy that said:

“Would it cramp your style too much to have traveling buddies for a month prior to FMCA? Whether you go up to death valley or not, wandering aimlessly with you guys would be better than wandering aimlessly alone. Let us know what you think.“

We have known Dan and Amy for 35 years. They lived close to us in New York State and are also former Kodakers. Amy and I belong to the same sewing group. Jim helped Dan build a wood deck for their house. Yes, we have a history! Anyway, we have always gotten along with them, so we enthusiastically said “Yes!” The more the merrier. So, they joined us in Indio, California on February 19th.

Little did any of us know that we were about to spend sixty-six days in each other’s company while sheltering-in-place. Thank goodness we had each other during this time of social distancing. Having someone other than your spouse to talk to was a true blessing. You love your spouse, but there CAN be such a thing as too much togetherness!

Parked side by side south of Las Vegas.

Dan and Amy did an excellent job of summarizing our days together. Rather than me writing an identical blog post, I encourage you to visit their blog post at https://danandamyk.com/2020/04/25/getting-through-it-together/. I’ll just add some random thoughts in this blog post.

As stated in their blog, we were all very happy that we visited Death Valley when we did. That was the highlight of the past couple of months.

Dinner in Death Valley. One of MANY dinners together.

Once we arrived in Winslow, Arizona / Homolovi State Park (the first time) in mid-March, things really started shutting down. We all realized our exploring days were over. It was time to find safe places to stay and entertain ourselves.

Some of the ways we stayed busy….

There was a shared love of bourbon in our group. Between Jim’s supply from Black Button (distiller in Rochester who is now making hand sanitizer!) and Dan and Amy’s supply from a recent visit the the bourbon region of Kentucky, there was no lack of variety.
We made numerous loaves of bread. NUMEROUS. I wish we had kept track. If you figure three loaves a week, we made over 20 loaves of bread. Get the recipe here for this incredibly simple, easy, bread recipe. I cut the recipe down to 1/4 which made a loaf perfect for a dinner for four people.
Our technique for making pizza on the grill was finally perfected! This was our last pizza dinner during our second stay at Homolovi State Park.
An off hand comment about wanting a donut (and not having any) led to Amy enthusiastically making cinnamon roles in my clam-shell oven. They were excellent!
All sort of repairs and improvements were done to both rigs. Amy ended up starting an Amazon wish list of “tools Jim has that we now want.”

It was a memorable sixty-six days and not at all what any of us expected. We were very glad to have had each other’s company during this time. VERY GLAD.

After so many days together, it was time to leave Arizona. The temperatures were heating up. So Dan and Amy have headed north to Utah. We are wandering eastward and homeward.

This was our last sight of Dan and Amy, at the Homolovi State Park dump station.

Finally, a few statistics for the shelter-in-place portion of this current trip…..

Days together: 66
Days dry camping (no hookups): 34
Unique destinations: 10 (two of them twice)
Miles traveled: 1557

This is all the places we visited, starting in Indio, California (Letter A in the lower left). We were in Winslow, Arizona (Letter C in upper right) when thing started locking down. That’s when we headed to the Arizona desert for 18 days of boondocking and warmth (Letter I). As it started getting hot, we ended up back at Winslow.

Safe travels Dan and Amy! Thanks for the memories.

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4 thoughts on “Sixty-six days of togetherness”

  1. Dan K

    Awesome post! I love the map. Wish I’d thought of that. Thanks for linking our blog a couple times. Spring of 2020 will not just be about covid-19, but will be the time we spent with you guys. Thanks!

  2. dominiquefeather

    Sounds like you survived your “isolation” pretty well. Nice cozy dinner between your “homes.” You’ll probably need more bourbon when you get home 🙂

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