Woke up. Sue made coffee in the room. Yech! Walked out around the corner to the little coffee shop whose wireless internet we’d been sponging off of last night. Ordered an espresso and a medium coffee. Sue still wasn’t impressed. The hotel breakfast in the lobby of the office wasn’t much better – no waffles for the first morning since we left home. After breakfast we took a walk up and down the Highway 66 main street. Took a couple of photos. Souvenir and curiosity shops were opening up for the day. Didn’t make too many sales to the Manitoba tourists. We were back on the road for our last day of driving soon enough. We left Williams and headed down towards Prescott Valley. Stopped for lunch at a McDonalds just before turning onto the I-17 south to Phoenix.

We arrived at our house in Gold Canyon shortly after 1pm. All just as we left it in April. Sue took off the sheets that had covered all the furniture. I carried all the patio furniture out to the patio. Hauled in our suitcase and Rubbermaid bin. Sue was cleaning and I had just put the bikes together when our neighbours honked as they pulled into their driveway. I wandered over to say hello. I was just chatting with Charlotte’s husband (forgot his name) when a dark Montana van pulls up to our house. Ed and Val. Both the neighbour and Ed told me about how Brian from ‘Not Just Stumps’ had only that morning trimmed the plants and cleaned up the yard. We arranged to go for supper to Ed and Val’s. It looked like our fridge wasn’t working. I tried playing with the controls on the front for a bit and thought maybe it just took longer to get started. In the meantime, after lighting the pilot light on the hot water tank and setting up the water softener, I plugged in the fridge in the garage and put our stuff in there.

We were so hot from all our cleaning and unpacking. We showered and headed over to the Peters’ new house. They live not very far from our place. They have a lovely house. We had a spaghetti supper on their patio and shared a good bottle of wine that had been given to Ed and Val by Tim Snider, who had brought it from Spain. Sue emailed Jill about the fridge; she emailed right back, suggesting a ‘reset’ by unplugging and plugging it in again a couple of minutes later. We’ll try that when we get home. All in all, a great first day in Phoenix.