Roosevelt Luxury Camping Monday April 11, 2022

I wanted to stay on the trail despite heat and lack of water. But Terry was convinced, we might not survive at my slow pace. The northern part will happen later. I guess we’ll return in early May.

So we rented a car from the Tucson Airport despite having no transportation to the airport. Our hosts Carol and Carl have been generous with rides for all the hikers, but Tucson is 35 miles and another 30 to the airport.

Carol came in, she literally walks in, to tell us she was making two runs to the PO. I said no problem we’re not getting back on the trail here but rather picking up a rental car in Tucson. She said, good we’re taking a run into town today, and we’ll take you. That’s super nice and lucky.

A half hour later, she returned and told us her plans had changed and they weren’t making a run into town, but Carl would drive us now. We closed up out packs and were off. About ten miles out of town, Terry said, boy, the post office is a long way out. Carl slammed on the brakes and high-tailed it back.

We had spoken nothing about where we’d get the car. Nor had we mentioned we had one reserved at the airport, so when he stopped at the closest rental, we said thanks and gave him gas money. That rental had no cars until Tuesday. We called an Uber.

I asked Terry which car rental was listed on reservation. He said Budget. There it was, the longest slowest moving line. Terry waited against the wall next to the wife of the guy behind me. It took 40 minutes to inch forward, long enough to play 7 little words, Wordle, and Worldle. So what the heck. I was happy I didn’t have impatient Terry in my view. When my turn was next, I opened my phone to discover I had ordered the car from Hertz. I turned to the guy behind me and said, I’m in the wrong line. Can you tell my husband? He said, oh man. I ain’t getting involved with that. I headed over to the Hertz count, when I heard the guy say to the representative, what? The reservation can’t be for yesterday. He looked over to his wife whose was talking to Terry. The two culprits of these egregious mistakes pretending they don’t even know us.

Off we were in the rental car blistering down the highway, with plenty of water, heading off to car camp for the night. Oh no, we forgot to pick up the umbrellas we had shipped to the PO to survive the heat. Detour back to Oracle and hoping no one sees our ineptitude again. This was a stealth retrieval, a true face saving move. In and out like pros.

Resuming the blistering pace in our Corolla. We’re free from fret. And where are we going. Someone said Globe was good. No it wasn’t. Off to Lake Roosevelt. It looked great.

The park was empty. We pulled up to a site we liked. We got out and were accosted by a women surveying all the sites for possible microwave pollution. She said she didn’t get along with microwaves and hoped we had our phones in airplane mode. We we weren’t sure we could help her with that. She left when she saw us walking about camp with our phones held high to capture bird calls.