Yesterday, while I was writing my blog post in the morning, Donna got ready to head out. She scheduled a taxi pick-up at 9:30am. The taxi took her to the Hertz rental car agency a few miles from here. From there, she drove to downtown Flagstaff for a hair appointment.

Our Moen single handle faucet for the bathroom sink has been troublesome lately. The problem started when we were at the North Ranch RV park in Congress. We had to pull the handle to the off position very carefully or it would drip. Sometimes we had to move the handle to different positions before the dripping stopped. I hadn’t done anything about it because we hadn’t been near a hardware store. I was pretty sure if I started taking the faucet apart, I would need to have parts available.

While Donna was getting ready to go out, she couldn’t get the faucet to turn off. It wasn’t just dripping. The water was running out of the faucet. I played around with the handle, but couldn’t get it to stop. I went outside and shut off our water supply. It was time to do something about the faucet.

I’m not much of a plumber and I’ve never disassembled a Moen single handle faucet. It was like peeling an onion. You work your way through the layers. I started by removing the handle. Then I saw a snap ring that held a trim piece in place. After that, I removed a plastic housing. Then I was at the heart of the matter. I could see the shut-off valve. I turned on our water pump to supply water from the fresh water tank. By manually moving the valve, I turned the faucet on and off. There were hard water deposits and some rust on most of the parts. I couldn’t figure out how to remove the actual valve. I cleaned all of the parts and put it back together. No good. It still wouldn’t shut off.

Our Moen single handle bathroom faucet

I disassembled everything again. This time I knew I had to remove the valve. I used a mirror and could see what looked like a set screw holding it in place on the back side. I couldn’t get a screwdriver on it. I finally went online and found instructions for disassembling a Moen single handle faucet. What I thought was a set screw was actually the top of a “U” shaped clip. I pried the clip out and voila! I pulled the valve cartridge out.

Old cartridge

I compared the cartridge to parts I found online. It was a #1225 Moen cartridge. I searched for hardware stores online and found an Ace hardware near the downtown district. When Donna returned, I took the rental car and headed into town. As I drove down Route 66 past the big shopping mall at East Marketplace Drive, I saw a sign for Home Depot. I stopped there and found the part I needed.

New cartridge

I told Donna when I put it back together that I had a 50/50 chance of having the cartridge oriented correctly so the hot water would be on the left. Of course, it was wrong. I partially disassembled it again and spun the cartridge 180 degrees. Now it’s perfect!

While I was working on the faucet, Donna went hiking. There are a series of hiking/mountain biking trails on the west side of US89 near our location. On her hike, she found an unusual lizard blending into some rocks. It was a greater short horned lizard. It’s one of the few lizards that tolerate cold weather. It can be found at elevations as high as 11,000 feet!

Greater short horned lizard Donna encountered

When we arrived here at J & H RV Park on May 1st, it was their opening day. There were only two other rigs in the park. Yesterday, the park filled up. It’s still very quiet here. They delivered a picnic table to our site and had another dumpster delivered for trash disposal. Someone running the place certainly has a sense of humor. There are a few corny signs in the park.

Sign next to the trash dumpster

There’s a mural painted on the exterior wall of the office depicting points of interest.

Mural of points of interest

We drove into town around 4:30pm and went to the Beaver Street Brewery. This brew house and restaurant was recommended by our friend, Peter Swingle. I sampled a few of their brews – an IPA, an amber and a pale ale. They were all quite good. We also ordered two 10″ pizzas at the bar. We had the three sausage pizza and the pepperoni pizzazz. Their thin crust pizza was great.

We chatted with another couple at the bar. They were from Seattle and had been hiking and camping in Utah. They were a little older than us, but obviously fit and hardy. Their style of dry camping is to hike in with everything they needed on their backs to camp for a few days. They told us of a few interesting places we should check out in Utah.

We stopped at the Cost Plus World Market on the way home. I bought a few bottles of interesting beers and Donna found some snacks for us. We watched the season one final episode of The Americans last night.

Today, we plan to make the 90-mile drive to the Grand Canyon National Park. We’ll hike and have a look around. I’ve been there several times. I wrote about the time I hiked to the river at the bottom and camped overnight with my friend, Jim Birditt in this post.

Yesterday’s weather was near perfect – 70 degrees, clear skies and light wind. Today we’ll have more of the same with the thermometer hitting 75. A perfect day to go sightseeing.