People have asked me what I will do to keep from being bored in retirement. So far, boredom hasn’t been an issue. There are always people to meet, places to go or things to do. Having things to do isn’t always fun stuff though. The past few days, I’ve been working in the basement compartments. This is hard on the back and shoulders.

Yesterday, I washed our cargo trailer and the scooter. With the scooter clean and shiny, I rode it to WalMart where I bought an oil drain pan. My old oil drain pan was stolen when Those Dirty, Rotten Thieves took our trailer. I also picked up a gallon of Shell Rotella 15w-40 diesel motor oil for the motorhome. When the dipstick on the Cummins ISL engine in the motorhome shows the oil level at the add mark, you don’t add a quart like you would in a car. You add a gallon. The oil capacity of the Cummins ISL is more than six gallons!

I stopped at a motorcycle shop and bought two quarts of Amsoil MCF 10w-40 oil for the scooter. I also bought 75 – 90 weight synthetic GL-5 gear oil for the gear box on the scooter. Last week I ordered oil filters from the scooter from Amazon.com, they arrived on Monday. Changing the oil, oil filter and gear oil on the scooter kept me busy for a while. The Kymco scooter manual calls for oil change intervals of 3,000 miles. Although this seems short to me, I’ll follow the recommended interval.

Meanwhile, the interior of the coach is taking shape as Donna gets things organized. She’s been equally busy – riding her bike and running daily in preparation for a duathlon, practicing piano, and working. She finished editing her 13th book yesterday and is feeling good about that. Also this week, she contributed, upon request from editors, some organizing tips for articles that will appear in Real Simple magazine and at Glo.com.

Today, I’ll reorganize the cargo trailer. We’ve moved a few more things to the trailer. I’ll need to have everything in its place by the end of the day so I can load the scooter. I’ll also break out the extension ladder and get on the roof of the coach. I need to lube the Wineguard folding TV antenna – the gear on it is a little stiff. I also want to measure our high point, which is the satellite dome. Once I know our overall height, I can program that information into our Rand McNally RVND 7720 GPS.* I also need to update our weight in the GPS. I don’t know our exact axle weights right now, I’ll program the maximum gross vehicle weight of 31,000 lbs. This coach is capable of towing an additional 10,000 lbs. for a gross combined weight of 41,000lbs. The Rand McNally GPS takes height, weight and length into consideration when mapping our routes.

This is all in preparation of pulling out tomorrow. We’ll head west on I-10 about 140 miles to the town of Quartzsite. I don’t know our exact stopping point. At the intersection of I-10 and US95, we’ll probably take US95 south and look for a piece of desert to stake out.

The little town of Quartzsite becomes a hot bed of activity in January and February. There are gem and mineral shows, swap meets and of course, the big RV show. Vendors come from all over to cater to the thousands of RVs in Quartzsite at this time of year. According to Wikipedia, more than 1.5 million visitors come to Quartzsite annually, most of them visit in January and February. That’s a lot of visitors for a town with a population of around 4,000 people.

I lifted this information from the official Town of Quartzsite web page, they claim a higher number of visitors:

Quartzsite, Arizona, barely 18 miles east of the Colorado river, on I-10, may be the RV boondocking capital of the world. Quartzsite has become a mecca to visitors and exhibitors for rocks, gems, mineral specimens and fossils during the town’s famous two-month-long gem show and swap meet every January and February. From its humble beginnings the now-massive Quartzsite show has grown to RV-epic proportions with vendors offering everything under the Quartzsite sun.

I’ve heard many estimates of the number of visitors and RVs around Quartzsite. I doubt if anyone really has an accurate count. Hopefully we can find a suitable place to boondock on the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) public land around Quartzsite. We don’t know how long we’ll stay there. We aren’t sure of where we’ll go afterwards other than to say we’ll be back in the Phoenix area. We’ll find our way on the fly.

I’ll close today’s post with a picture of a coach that pulled in a couple of sites down from us the other day. It’s a 1998 Featherlite Vantare built on a 45′ Prevost chassis, powered by a hot-rodded 60 Series Detroit Diesel putting out more than 600 horsepower. I spoke to the owner. He is the original owner and has traveled all over the country (including a trip to Alaska) with his wife in the coach. They are from North Dakota where he ran a trucking business. I love these coaches, but with a price well over a million dollars (new) and several hundred thousand dollars used, I doubt if I will ever own one.

1998 Featherlite Vantare

*Just so you know, if you decide to purchase one of these through the Amazon link in this post, I’ll earn a small commission. It’ll go into the beer fund. Thanks!