So here we were on Wednesday morning, 12^th November, a week early in Southern Arizona.   We’d planned to arrive on Wednesday 19^th November and spend a couple of nights chilling at Dad and Carols’ house here before John headed off to the UK for the Millie’s. But we were a week early and in panic mode. Terrified that the garage wouldn’t be able to cope with the size of Frankie and with no idea how long it would take to mend. We were gutted to have missed Mesa Verde and desperate to see the Grand Canyon, we didn’t want to end up ‘stuck’ in Tubac for another 10 days… John came up with a genius idea (well he is the Logistics man amongst us!).

There was a U Haul over the road so we hired a van and spent 2 hours gutting Frankie and loading Uma the U Haul van with all our stuff and hooking Little Frankie on the back of it!! We finally met the wonderful English Mark in the garage and the fab owner Bart and the charming receptionist Ally, all of who were to become our saviours over the next few days.  So we bade farewell to Frankie and left her at Motorwerks.

Mark the UK mechanic turns out to have worked for many years at Mercedes Benz in Milton Keynes and his confidence and knowledge of Frankie’s’ engine was like music to our ears – think John could have kissed him honestly!!

We headed out of town via the hydraulics company we had found who are going to go and mend Frankie’s leaky legs while she is here – please don’t think she is falling apart – she isn’t – we hope!!

We got to Tubac and Dad and Carol’s house mid afternoon on Wednesday. . Our excitement at reaching Abbotsford all those months ago was totally recreated here – except this time instead of arriving there after a week of sunshine and vineyards we were completely exhausted and drained and just so desperate for a bit of normality!!

The trailer didn’t actually fit in the garage as we’d hoped – so we let air out of the tyres and Will and I stood on it to lower it further and we still managed to remove a small layer of the paintwork around the garage door – don’t tell Dad!!

But we were here. In a house. Not just any house. My dad and Carols’ house. Home!! Complete with all its amazing, crazy, stunning artwork. Kids terrified and vowed they wouldn’t sleep at all. We unpacked all the boxes and made a few different piles…

So as the kids and I are already booked to be here in Tubac for 3 – 4 weeks and as we’d had to miss out the Grand Canyon we decided to…. Wait for it…. Hire an RV. Yes we were going to join the masses and hire a Cruise America RV for 5 nights so we could see the Grand Canyon

So we spent the day sorting our stuff into piles as follows

1. To go in hired RV to Grand Canyon for 5 days – incredible how big a pile this is. Includes pans, crockery, cutlery, bedding, etc. (damned if we were going to pay $100 to hire ‘kitchen kit’!!
2. Stuff to stay here in Tubac for use over the next 4 weeks
3. Stuff that needs to go back in to Frankie..

The wonderful garage in Tucson then completely made our day by offering to lend us a car for a couple of days. This meant that we wouldn’t have to bring the U Haul truck back at 9am on Friday morning and then have to hang around with our boxes of stuff to go into the hire RV until 2pm when we were due to collect said RV.

John & Charlie drove back into Tucson on Thursday to take the truck back and collect the car from the garage. Will and I had a nice afternoon wandering around Tubac’s huge collection of art galleries and shops.

So we spent 2 nights in Tubac. Catching up on some sleep and exhaling after our dramatic few days.  We are so very very lucky that this breakdown happened now when we were heading down to Tubac, also that our Roadside Assistance decided that they would tow us 400 miles to a garage of our choice. Then that John found Motorwerks garage in Tucson and the brilliant Mark and lastly that Dad and Carol keep a beautiful home in this part of the world that we were able to move into.  The stars aligned……