On Saturday morning, I woke up to a strange sound. I wasn’t sure if I was dreaming. Then I heard it again. A car was racing through the parking lot. I heard it turn around, then accelerate until the engine revved to the limiter. The driver let it bump against the rev limiter – wah-wah-wah, then finally selected second gear and sped away. I tried to go back to sleep, but it wasn’t going to happen

After I had my cup of coffee, I checked the state of charge of the 12-volt chassis batteries. I was still trying to understand why they weren’t fully charged. The batteries are in a compartment towards the rear of the coach, under the passenger side bedroom slide. After I took a voltage reading, I straightened up and hit my head on the edge of the slide-out. Ouch!

I read more about the Xantrex Echo Charger that should be charging my chassis battery. I learned that the charger built into the Xantrex Freedom 458 inverter/charger sends current to the Echo unit, which puts priority on the house batteries. Once they are adequately charged, the excess capacity is switched to the chassis batteries. However, the charge sent to the chassis batteries is limited to 15 amps. This helped me understand why my chassis batteries weren’t being fully charged. Running the generator for a couple of hours at a time didn’t allow enough excess current to be switched to the chassis batteries. I figured that the drive on Sunday to Usery Mountain Regional Park and the fact that we would have shore power there would fully charge the chassis batteries.

After lunch, I was standing outside talking to Mark Fagan. Mark told me about a car crash down the access road. It seems the driver of the car I heard in the morning lost control on a curve and fishtailed, then rolled over. The park host called 911 at 7:15am to report the accident. The driver walked away. The Sheriff’s office didn’t respond until 10am. They found a loaded shotgun and a crossbow in the car. The car belongs to a 29-year-old man from Colorado. Weird stuff.

Later,  a Honda S2000 pulled into the lot. It was Peter Swingle. The last time I saw Peter was in San Diego, around 1976 or 1977. I think he was eight or nine years old and I was 20 or so. Peter is the son of my old friends, John and Bonnie Swingle.

Peter and I sat outside and talked about old times, cars, motorcycles, racing and just about everything under the sun. Peter brought an assortment of fine beers along. We sampled a Dogfish Head Stout (I don’t recall the proper name of the brew). Later, we tried a bourbon barrel stout from Odell’s, a Colorado microbrewery. Both beers were excellent. About then, a park ranger came by. He told Peter that he needed a Tonto National Forest Recreation Pass to be parked in this lot. He said if Peter would go buy one, he wouldn’t ticket his car. Peter drove to Walgreen’s to buy a pass.

When he returned, we walked around the coach and I showed Peter the battery banks. I did it again. When I straightened up, I whacked my head against the lower edge of the slide-out. I showed Peter the service bay where you access the dipsticks, air filter and fuel filter. Peter is a gear head like me and likes to know about this stuff. Donna was with us, she went into the coach and came back out with a paper towel and hydrogen peroxide. I wondered what she was up to. She put peroxide on the paper towel and compressed it against the back of my head. She told me my head was bleeding. I didn’t realize it, but both times when I hit my head, I broke the skin on my scalp.

X marks the spot

I didn’t get around to packing the trailer. Saturday night, Donna and I watched two episodes of Breaking Bad, season four.

On Sunday morning, I packed the trailer. Mark and Emily stopped over to say “see ya later.” It’s not good bye – we’ll meet up again soon. I finished packing the trailer while Donna secured the interior. By 10:40am, it was time to pull the slides in and light the fires. We pulled out around 11am.

It was a short drive of five or six miles to Usery Mountain Regional Park. We reserved a site in the Buckhorn Family Campground there. The campground has paved roads with gravel sites. The sites have fresh water and 50-amp electric service, but no waste water hook-ups. There is a dump station, but it’s not big-rig friendly when you’re entering the park. I should be able to access it when we leave. I’ll take a couple of pictures and try to explain it better in another post.

Queued up to enter Usery Mountain Regional Park

We thought we had reserved site 56, but it turned out we were in  Site 11. Both sites are similar – pullthrough gravel sites on the side of the road. The sites slope here. I couldn’t level the coach without raising the rear wheels off of the ground, so we’ll live with a slight tilt. The parking brake acts on the rear wheels – raising them off of the ground would mean no parking brakes!

After setting everything up, Donna went for a bike ride. I took a shower at the park facility. I don’t think I’ll do that again. The water pressure was low and it took about five minutes for the water to warm up. It wasn’t hot water, just lukewarm.

Donna was out for about three hours. She rode 19 miles with a friend and another 16 on her own and was pretty whipped when she returned.

I put our TV antenna up and found more than 30 digital stations. The over-the-air HDTV reception here is excellent. I tuned in the pregame Superbowl show and settled in. The Seattle Seahawks stunned the Denver Broncos. It seemed like Denver never recovered from their mis-cue on the first play of the game, which resulted in a safety.

Today, I’ll explore around the park. I’ll have to go grocery shopping too. Other than that, no plans.

Iconic arrow on the south east side of Usery mountain pointing to Phoenix – we see this from our site