Vista Ties Ended

Our remaining tie to Vista, CA ended yesterday. Following breakfast at our hotel, we drove to the U-Haul location, picked up our truck and headed to the storage unit. We met the two "helpers" there and the job of loading up the truck started shortly after 8:30 AM local time. Here's a shot of the start of the effort:

Our unit was a 5 x 20 size which had the same amount of storage space as 10 x 10 space. It looks like a small space in the shot above but we just about filled the truck with the contents. There was no way that we could have completed the job ourselves in the time they took to completely empty the space and send us on our way. The guys that helped us were paid for 2 hours time, even though they completed the job in about 1.25 hours.

We checked out of the storage facility and were on the road back to AZ at 10 AM. Our return trip was on I-10 as opposed to I-8 on our trip out to CA. The distance is close to the same either way, but the different scenery made it a more interesting drive. We stopped twice along the way - once in Palm Springs and once in Ehrenberg AZ just across the state line where gas is a lot cheaper than CA. I will say that the truck got about as bad gas mileage as I get towing our fifth wheel. We averaged less than 10 mpg on the trip.

Our arrival at the storage facility in Surprise was around 5 PM with the one hour time change, so our return trip was about the same as the trip out, using different routes. It was around 6 hours, but with one fewer stop.

This morning we return to our storage unit to empty the truck into our new space, return the truck and move our goods from the old space into the new one. We both will be very happy to see this phase end...