John Travels

I am writing this from Alpine, Arizona. It’s a very small town up in the White Mountains. I will write about Alpine later, but I wanted to first write about the week I spent in Flagstaff. As I mentioned in my last post, I am looking for a “home base”. I plan on traveling for an extended period, at least the next year and a half. We’ll see if that plan holds up, but that’s where I am right now. I need a city to have as a base, however. I need a doctor, a place to get my prescriptions, receive mail, that sort of thing.

I had gone to Flag partially for that purpose, but also just to enjoy the city. It’s beautiful and the weather is great in the summer. It was unusually hot during my stay, but highs were still in the 80s. Not bad. After visiting, I don’t think Flagstaff is the place. It’s just too expensive. I read a community discussion board and it seems a lot of people there are under financial pressure. One commenter said it was, “poverty with a view”. I think Arizona in general is quite expensive, but Flagstaff has some factors - land availability, local ordinances - that make it even more so.

Although Alpine and the White Mountains in general are stunning, there aren’t a lot of services up here. Show Low/Pinetop are the big towns and I don’t think I can get the type of doctor I need there. Plus, Show Low and Pinetop are also pricey. Anything within a day’s drive of Phoenix is going to be expensive because of the number of people trying to escape the heat. So next week I am headed back to New Mexico. I am going to check out Ruidoso. Although it is much less expensive than Flag, it isn’t the home base I am looking for because it doesn’t have much medical care up there. For that, I am thinking about Las Cruces, but I am going to avoid going to LC for a while because it is still quite hot there.

I also want to check out Silver City. It looks like a charming town with a nice historic downtown area and interesting local restaurants. I also love the culture in southern New Mexico. So I will wander around there for a while and see how it feels.

This is my hike in Flag, which for me was the highlight of the trip.

It’s been an eventful few weeks. Very emotional. On a trip to Boone, NC I had a lot of thoughts and feelings get sorted out. I had used that trip as a dry run for full time RVing. It went great and the campsite I was at was very quiet and it settled my mind down enough that I was able to see some things in my life more clearly. Some of what I saw was hard to see. Some was good, though.

It was an important trip and I’m glad I went. I had fun even though my thoughts were often on emotionally heavy concerns. The image below is the view from Elk Knob. That hike was the highlight of the trip, but I loved the town of Boone as well. It’s one of my favorite places in the eastern US.

After the Boone trip, there was a family camping trip back up in Waynesville, North Carolina that went… I was about to write ‘poorly’, but that isn’t right. There were some raw and honest conversations and it feels like a chapter of my life is now closed. Maybe I will write more about that later, but it’s too fresh. 

That trip ended early and I went back to Florida to wrap a few things up. It was this past Thursday when I headed west. When I was leaving Florida the idea was to spend a week in Santa Fe. But as I got closer, I felt less pull towards Santa Fe and wanted to see Flagstaff. I got it into my head that Flagstaff was going to be my home base. I had been there before many times and even an extended stay some years ago. Flagstaff has good health care, good shopping and is beautiful. It’s one of my favorite places. It’s also expensive. I can afford it, but is that how I want to use my money? After getting settled into my campground, I felt like I should stick to my original plan and look around. My campsite is pictured below. It's a good campground, but right on Route 66, so a little noisy at times and anywhere near downtown in Flag will have train noise from time to time.

About 5 years ago I drove through a little town called Alpine, AZ. It’s very remote, but I have had it in my mind on and off since. I think next Sunday I will be heading out there for a week and then to another spot I have been thinking about, Ruidoso, NM.