Winter Road Trip 2026
Bend Oregon to Big Bend National Park Texas
And then back to good ole Bend again!
Part One: Bend OR to Quartzsite AZ
Day 1 - Redding California - 276 miles
With a family death and various other delays, we ended up leaving on Wednesday January 14th, about 3 weeks delayed from our original plans. So, what does that mean??? You got it, less days = add more to each day right? So that we did.... Our biggest concern was getting out of the high desert of Bend, through the northern mountains of California, and into Redding and the Central Valley so that we didn't have to worry about towing our trailer in any snow issues. Turns out the snow gods were shining on us as the trip was clear the whole way. Arriving in Redding we found the temps were actually in the low 80's and the sun was shining brightly, WOW what a way to start our trip!!! Our first night was at Gold Hills Golf Club, a Harvest Host stay that was fantastically quiet and peaceful!!! The perfect starting day, things are looking GREAT...
Day 2 - Merced, California - 278 miles
So after the stress of getting to Redding, and finally getting our first long term road trip under way, we start to relax and end up in Merced California, stay at the Elks Lodge RV Park there. Now we are not Elks members, but this place is open to the public for a reasonable $40 a night for full hookups. Ok, let's back up a step and explain what "Full Hookups" means..... NO.... they do not send ladies of the evening, or hula dancers to your camp site, it means you have electric, water and sewer at your site. In the RV world, that means everything you need except the before mentioned items and maybe a beer or two.... The added bonus to this place is FREE ripe citrus fruit just hanging on the tree ready for you to pick. And guess what? free folks!!! A concept that us northern folks never heard of before...... If you have never had ripe oranges and/or tangerines freshly picked off the tree, let us tell you that heaven waits for you somewhere in the citrus valley of California!!! Oh My God, FANTASTIC!!! Anyway, a GREAT place to park and relax after 5-6 hours on the road pulling a 7000+ pound oblong box behind you!!!
Day 3 - Barstow, California - 196 miles
So the start in the morning was delayed for a few hours because there was this thing called fog.... More like thick gray soup, and it goes on over the entire valley area. In other words, miles and miles and miles. Now dragging the oblong box that weighs 7000+ pounds on four free wheeling tires (ok, it does have breaks) does not stop on a dime like our little Mazda does! So, the thought of going 60mph (oh yea at this point I should tell you that California does not want box draggers to get anywhere in a reasonable amount of time, so the speed limit is only 55mph for us folks, but we were told 60mph works with the real world) in a gray soup bowl with others whizzing by you at double your speed while only being able to see your wiper blades and nothing beyond that is not a great idea. We waited until about noon to actually start making headway, and pulled into our open parking lot just before dark. So tonight was another Harvest Host stop. If your wondering what "Harvest Host" referrers to, it is an organization that you can join that works with private people, businesses, whatever to offer box draggers like us a place to stay for FREE. All that is asked in return is to promote and/or purchase/use of whatever they have to offer. In this case it was Peggy Sue's Diner on Route 66. So of course, we pull in at dark, and we casually walk over for a burger or something. What we got was AMAZING!!! Holy Moley, as soon as you walk through the doors you are transformed back into the 50's sock hop days complete with the original diner, milk shakes and waitresses in the traditional Happy Days attire. Good 50's diner food and enough memorabilia to occupy a few hours of looking! If you ever cruise through Barstow, it is just east of town on I-40. Make the stop, young or oldies like us, it is an amazing place!!!
Day 4-5 - Lake Havasu AZ - 226 miles
So day 4 is rather interesting, we have about 196 miles to get to Cattail Cove State Park on Lake Havasu, which is a pretty easy drive going the freeway. Do we take the freeway and get there faster, or try dragging the box on the original Route 66? Well as we were staying in the middle of a gravel parking lot with a few other RV's and a few semi trucks, it was rather easy to get up and going early (like we could have slept in?). So no coin flip, we just decide to follow the golden trail and live the dream. Well, it used to be a dream rather. Turns out this portion of the old route gives hardly any signs of it's former glory, and a large section to the east of Amboy is closed to through traffic. So we adjusted a little, side tripped back to the freeway, and did the section from Fenner north over to Hwy 95 at Arrowhead Junction and back down to I-40. Nothing this way either, other than huge dips for drainage across the road, known as "Washes" here abouts! Anyway once we crossed the Colorado River and entered Arizona, a few major things happened.... We are officially out of California for one, and reward number two was a HUGE DECREASE IN FUEL PRICES!!!!! YaHoo!!!! So as we were running pretty empty in preparation for this nice event, we stopped at the first fuel stop on State Hwy 95 heading south. Another GREAT thing is we are now off the freeway and no longer have the 55 mph speed limit. Back to 65 like we are used to driving with the trailer, uh,,, box... Pretty much drove right through Lake Havasu City south about 10 miles or so to Cattail Cove State Park. This is a GREAT park, nice campground, great hiking trails, and wonderful views. Better yet for us, SUNNY and WARM!!! Now were talking!!!! We spent 2 nights here, giving us our first free day since leaving home. (weather was great, the lake was cold as ice!)
Day 7-9 - Quartzsite AZ
Next trip won't be so pushed, as we really liked Cattail Cove, and would have stayed longer but a 3 week late start and a schedule to keep got us up and onto the first real reason we wanted to make this whole trip happen in the first place. Granted we were three days late to the party, and most had already left, but we finally made it to the Northwood And ORV rally and campout affair off Plomosa Road just north of the thriving over populated city of Quartzsite Arizona. Well for a week anyway, Quartzsite turns into a flipping ZOO during the annual RV Show and Rally. So to put it plainly, nothing but miles and miles of every type of RV you can think of, all boondocking out in the BLM desert areas around the normally quiet tiny little city. HOLY MOSEY BATMAN!!! We mean, thousands of everything from multi million dollar exotic motorhomes, to what looks like the homeless along I-5 in Seattle (without the trash). Where do you park? ANYWHERE YOU WANT!!! Anyway, this is the first real test for the solar system we have in our trailer (em, box on wheels) as we plan on 4 days with no hookups (referred to as Boondocking - the opposite of Full Hookups as discussed above, again no hookers or beer provided). We will cover the whole solar thing (which is a major part of Boondocking) in our separate section of the Van Contortion portion of our website. If you are interested in things like Amps, Watts, Batteries, Wormholes and such, head over it gets serious... Anyway, after dragging the box around the desert through the aforementioned thousands of campers, we find our groups and hustle up right in the middle of the bunch (member they said anywhere you want so what the heck, make ourselves known right off the bat). All kidding aside, the Northwood bunch are great people and we enjoyed both the Arctic Fox and the ORV groups and had a GREAT time! The RV show was more like a huge county fair with a bunch of RV product booths intertwined in the rest of the "try this" normal fair products. Glad we went to the experience, would we go out of our way to attend again? Well time will tell but probably not, we have spent more than our fair share of time at fairs with Celia's Gourmet Foods over the last 15 years....
Day 10-12 - Yuma AZ
Next stop was in Yuma AZ to visit our long time friends Chris and Leeanna. We have not seen them in years, so there was no way we were going to head through Arizona without a stop to visit! Chris was the one that helped me score my first bull elk with a bow (man I can tell some hunting camp stories involving Chris and family, but that is another entire website on it's own). He also persuaded us into building our current home 22 years ago, and has been part of our family and the Four Amigos for over 25 years! Our sons both hold Chris and Leeanna in their harts, as do Jill & I. Anyway, they spend the majority of their year at Cocopah Golf & RV Resort just west of Yuma. Well darn, full hookups for a few days after Boondocking for almost a week (considering Chris and my past relationship, the explanation of "full hookups" might be in jeopardy here) just a few steps away from their full time spot overlooking the big green grass area of the pet park! Holy cow, good times started as soon as we tried checking in at the main office, before even letting C&L know we had arrived! Turns out Chris had already let the park know which site we were going to stay at, but still the office wanted us to approve so away we went on a tour of Cocopah in a golf cart. Turns out Chris was very accurate in his choice, so we were off to get settled in our spot.
After settling in and the hugs and handshakes were finished we found ourselves enjoying a great dinner, lottery drawing and music bingo (Jill and Leeanna both won $45 bucks!) at Cocopah that first night. Of course lots of memories shared and a good time was had as well. The second day they were busy so we did a little side visit to West Wetlands Park for our daily morning walk/adventure. There we a couple things on our "Gotta See" list before we left for this trip, and one of them was to see a Roadrunner (the bird, the car I owned back in the 70's so no big deal, well unless it has a Hemi). Sure as heck Jill was the first to spot the little flipping bird (I can call them that now after weeks of trying to get a good money picture with no luck) and I got a couple pics but nothing good. Anyway, after that we did a farmers market thing, a few Geocaches, and back to Cocopah. Next morning breakfast with C&L, an off day to do laundry and such, then enjoyed a wonderful Thai dinner in town, followed by game night at their place with Ice Cream! Next morning was "Hit The Road" time so we said our goodby's, thank you's and on we went heading east once again!
