Arrival in Surprise, AZ

We were anxious to get on the road yesterday to finish the long trip from Campbellsville, KY to Surprise, AZ. The 164 mile trip from Tucson to Surprise was nostalgic and went smoothly with the exception of a slow down in Phoenix as a result of an accident in the eastbound lanes of I-10. We were glad we waited until 9 AM to leave Tucson as we missed the rush hour traffic in both towns.

We arrived on schedule shortly after noon yesterday and proceeded to set up our rig for the extended stay here. There was a problem with the water - we didn't have any - so I called the owner to find out if it had been shut off for any reason. He indicated that there should be no reason for it to be off, so he came over from his home in Sun City Grand to check it out. It turns out that there were 2 problems: the first one was that the valve was stuck which we released with a lot of force. The second problem was that there was an open pipe - from a previous renter who ran over and broke a sprinkler head - so we fixed that and we were then ok. Here is a shot of our site (taken this AM since we were so busy yesterday, we forgot):

The first thing we wanted to do when we finally got totally settled at 3 PM was to go to our storage unit to check it out. On the way, we drove by our old house in Sun City Grand and took this shot:

It looks great and the biggest change we noticed was that the new owners removed the huge Palo Verde tree we had next to the courtyard. Of course, we didn't see the rear to see what changes were made there.

We spent time talking with the manager at the storage facility about several different issues we wanted clarified. He is very accommodating as we are, perhaps, the longest customers they have had since they opened in 2008. We were one of the first to rent a space. He will provide a temporary space for us, as close to our existing space as possible, in which to place items we will be moving while we clean out the entire space. He also said we could back up a truck to load our goods at the back exit - which is normally forbidden - to load everything for the move, and that is very close to our space.

As soon as we raised the door to the space to say hello to our contents, it became apparent that we really had our work cut out for us. There will be some tough decisions to make on items - whether to keep them or get rid of them - and the space is totally full (10x15). In some ways it will be fun to see some of the things we've missed, and in other ways it will be sad to part with some items. We will have to have the whole sorting process completed by the time we leave for training on Sunday. That gives us 4 full days starting today. Here we go...