Moving day. Our stay at the Twin Peaks Campground in the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument was at an end. We probably could have extended our stay as there have been a lot of empty campsites the last couple of nights. We're not sure if the demand is diminishing or perhaps people stayed away knowing that the remoteness might affect the ability to watch the Superbowl yesterday. However, we felt that we had seen just about all of the area that we could. Our hiking options are limited, trying to keep them short so that Brenda's foot continues to heal.
It was an easy move though. We have booked a site for a week at the Shadow Ridge RV Resort in Ajo, AZ. That's a short 40 minute drive up the road so it didn't take us long to arrive. There were a couple of spots on the highway that seemed rougher than it was the night we arrived. These spots were short - less than a mile each - so the trip was uneventful.
We arrived at the campground about 90 minutes before check-in time so we parked in a nearby parking lot and waited. Once we pulled up to the campground office check-in was easy, and we only had to wait about 10 minutes for the previous tenant to clear the site. The campground staff are super helpful and considerate. The site is fairly level, all gravel surface with a small concrete pad for a patio. Although the sites are quite close together, there are bushes planted between them that help the privacy. The bushes on the driver side of the motorhome are big enough that they are brushing up against the slide at the back. The only way to prevent this would be to move over a couple of feet, but that would put the rear tires on the passenger side of the motorhome on the concrete pad. We'll make it work, even if we have to tie the bushes back with a bungie.
At this site we were glad that we had purchased the Bulldog Power Monitor for our motorhome. When we plugged the Bulldog into the power pedestal, and turned on the breaker, the Bulldog shut down the power with an error. It showed that one side of the 50 Amp plug was at 240 volts instead of the required 120 volts. It may have done some damage to our motorhome. In the end it appears the surge occurred when we flipped on the breaker, because when we unplugged the Bulldog and then plugged it in when the breaker was on, everything was OK. Thankfully the Bulldog will continue to monitor that and protect our motorhome should something change.
Its nice to have full services - for the first time in almost a month. Since we left Mesquite we have been operating on battery/solar power and our water tanks. No need to be watchful of power or water use. You can have a regular full shower without worry, everything can be fully charged, and coffee and tea can be prepared with the electric kettle rather than on the stove.
We'll be here for a week. Unfortunately the park WiFi is very slow, and our Canadian (Shaw) and USA (Simple Mobile) cell phones don't work. Both of those seem to run off of AT&T towers, yet the Cricket HotSpot is also AT&T and still works great. The only cell phones that work here are Verizon. The Simple Mobile has to be renewed in a couple of days, so we bought a Verizon sim and (with much frustration) arranged to transfer the Simple Mobile phone number to Verizon - with a Verizon prepaid plan. Porting numbers is a little different here as it takes up to 72 hours to port the phone number to the new account, so they gave us a temporary phone number that should be over written when our other number comes across. We wanted to keep our Arizona phone number because we have updated our banking 2-factor authentication to support that USA phone number. We don't to go through the hassle of changing those security settings again. In hindsight we should have gone with a Verizon prepaid from the start. Verizon seems to work in a lot of the fringe areas, but the problem is they work primarily off the old CDMA technology rather then GSM. Fortunately Dave's OnePlus 8 dual sim phone supports both and the Verizon works.
Brenda's Shaw phone number occasionally picks up a text message, and will sometimes send a message - but up to 12 hours after it was sent. However, if we walk out of the campground onto the main street, the messaging is a little better, but phoning is out of the question. So far, Dave's Shaw number has hasn't worked at all. That's the need for having one phone on Verizon. We would never again buy a phone that does not support dual sims, and we'll be looking for Brenda's next phone to be dual sim and support both GSM and CDMA.