Monthly Archives: May 2014

Shopping for Service

The weather was fickle yesterday. It was a mostly cloudy day, however the temperature reached the upper 70s. This is higher than we’ve experienced all week. We felt a stray rain drop or two before dinner, but there wasn’t enough to wet anything.

I’ve decided to have our transmission serviced before we leave Grand Junction. Our coach is equipped with an Allison 3000 MH 6-speed automatic transmission. It came from the factory filled with Allison – Castrol TranSynd® synthetic automatic transmission fluid (ATF). The service records are incomplete, but I see where the transmission was serviced at least once in the past. It appears that the fluid was changed to standard Dexron III ATF.

There’s nothing wrong with running Dexron III in this transmission. The issue is the longevity of this fluid. In this application, the Dexron III ATF breaks down and needs to be changed every 25,000 miles. The Allison – Castrol TranSynd® synthetic ATF is very robust. It can hold up for up to 300,000 miles, but should be monitored through fluid analysis annually.

The downside to the TranSynd® ATF is initial cost. The retail price runs from $40 to $55/gallon, depending on where you buy it. When I was at the Cummins dealer the other day, I asked about having the transmission service performed. They told me that changing the ATF and both filters would take about three hours and the cost would be $499 with Dexron III ATF or $599 with synthetic ATF. They didn’t use the Allison-approved TranSynd®. They used Valvoline SynGard®. This sounded high to me, so I held off and said I would get back to them for an appointment.

The higher initial cost of synthetic ATF is more than offset by its longevity. I was about to make the appointment when Donna mentioned the diesel truck service center across the street from the RV park. She thought I should talk to them and get another quote for the work.

I went to Diesel Services, Inc. (DSI) yesterday. I talked to the service manager, Dave. He told me they use genuine Allison high-capacity filters and genuine Allison – Castrol TranSynd® fluid. He said the cost for a transmission service on our coach would run about $300. I was surprised. On the RV forums (IRV2 and RVNet), most people say they pay $450 to $600 for this service.

I asked Dave how he could do the job for that price. He said, “It’s not rocket science.” They would pull the coach into the service pit, drain the fluid, change the filters and add new fluid – about an hour’s worth of work. It takes four to five gallons of ATF @ $42/gallon. Add $40 for the filters and an hour of shop time. I said, “Sign me up.”

We have an appointment for Tuesday morning, when we pull out of Junction West RV Park. We’ll see how it works out. I’ll probably have the ATF and filters changed again in a year. There will be some of the old Dexron III fluid left in the transmission torque convertor which will blend with the synthetic fluid. After that, I’ll only change the filters and top up. We’ll pull a sample when the filters are changed and have it analyzed for contamination. We should be set for the life of the transmission at that point.

While I was out, Donna went out for a bike ride and got in another 25 miles and came back with a smile on her face. The Montana State Senior Olympics is just one month out, so she’s trying to get in as much riding as she can. Her race is 40K (25 miles).

Last evening, I grilled Jamaican jerk boneless chicken thighs for dinner. Donna served it with mango salsa and steamed asparagus. This is one of my favorites.

Jamaican jerk chicken thighs with mango salsa

After dinner we took a stroll through the park. We met a woman, Linda. She pulled into the park earlier in the day with a 35′ travel trailer. She’s been on the road, alone, for about a year and a half. We talked with her for a while and learned that she’s 71 years old and enjoys hiking, mountain biking and mountain climbing! You meet the most interesting people in this lifestyle.

Today, the temperature is projected to reach the mid 80s. I don’t have an agenda for the day, so I’ll just see what comes next.

Colorado National Monument

I rode the scooter to the Cummins Rocky Mountain Service Center yesterday. It’s in Grand Junction, a few miles from our location. I picked up a fuel filter and air filter for our Onan 7.5 KW Quiet Diesel generator. The filters are due for replacement after 500 hours of run time. We have about 470 hours on the generator now. So, I picked up the parts while it was convenient and will do the maintenance work later.

The highlight of the day came when Donna and I rode the scooter through Grand Junction to the east entrance of the Colorado National Monument. We brought our America the Beautiful National Parks Pass. Without the pass, there is a day use fee to enter the monument. When we pulled up to the entrance kiosk, it was closed. There was a sign directing us to pay upon exiting the park. Seemed strange, but we rode in and immediately began climbing a steep, twisty road.

At one point, we entered a tunnel and felt the coolness deep inside the rock. After passing through the tunnel, we stopped at Cold Shivers Point. The elevation was about 6,200 feet – we’d climbed nearly 2,000 feet in seven miles. Cold Shivers Point overlooks Columbus Canyon. I took many photos, so today’s post is picture heavy. However, I couldn’t capture the enormity, the steepness and the depth of the canyons.

View from the road climbing from the east entrance

Looking towards the head of Columbus Canyon

Looking toward the head of Columbus Canyon

The walls of Columbus Canyon are sheer drops of several hundred if not more than 1,000 feet. I’ll admit that parts of the overlook were frightening. You can stand on the edge of the canyon wall, unrestrained and look down.

We continued riding westbound along Rim Rock Drive, stopping at view points along the way. This is a road you don’t want to make a mistake on. It snakes along the rim of the canyons with no guardrail between the road and rim. At times, the shoulder is only a couple of feet wide before the terrain drops vertically.

Donna at the Red Rock Canyon Overlook

Narrow Red Rock Canyon, looking north

Again, the photos do not capture the scale of the landscape. The floor of Red Rock Canyon covers a few miles before it drops away to the Colorado River to the north. The juniper and pinon pine trees on the bottom are mature and much larger than they appear.

Colorful rock on the south side of Rim Rock Drive

The largest canyon in the Colorado National Monument is Ute Canyon. We stopped at several view points overlooking this enormous canyon. We hiked down a couple of trails that had placards identifying the plants and some of the animals found in the park. The road topped out at 6,640 feet above sea level. We began a gradual descent along the rim of Ute Canyon. I’ve run out of adjectives to describe the view. Below are a few images of Ute Canyon.

Ute Canyon

View from Artists Point

Coke Oven Overlook

Monument Canyon view

Monument Canyon

There are a number of hiking trails throughout the park, many of which are described as “difficult.” It’s also a popular cycling route that requires lights on front and back to travel safely through the tunnels.

We stopped briefly at the visitor center, then made the rapid descent to the west park entrance. I pulled up to the kiosk, ready to show my park pass. It was empty. There was a sign posted that said “Temporarily Closed.” I guess entry into the Colorado National Monument was a freebie yesterday.

We rode on CO340 into Fruita. We stopped at Suds Brothers Brewery downtown and had a cold one with a plate of hummus and veggies with warm pita bread. The Red Monkey Butt amber ale was very good, full-bodied and well-balanced.

Last night I grilled teriyaki salmon on a cedar plank. Donna served it with pineapple salsa and sauteed spinach.

Teriyaki salmon with pineapple salsa

Today, Donna will catch up on some work and then get out for a bike ride. I’ll see if I can make arrangements to have the transmission in our coach serviced next week.

Fruita Loops

I was surprised when I realized today is Thursday. I lose track sometimes. I thought we arrived in Grand Junction on Monday and today would be Wednesday. I lost a day somewhere. We actually arrived here on Tuesday.

The temperature reached the upper 60s yesterday with light wind. Very agreeable weather, perfect for Donna to take a bike ride. She followed the back roads and ventured into the foothills north of here. The roads are really quiet. Cars passed her occasionally, but she said they gave her plenty of room.

We’re on the western slope at an elevation of about 4,600 feet above sea level. The mighty Rockies rise east of us and the peaks are covered in snow. The local terrain is fairly flat with some rolling hills. It’s semi-rural. Most of the houses around us have horses, cattle, Llamas or other livestock on the property. Donna shot a few pictures while she was out on her bicycle.

Cattle along the roadside

BLM land to the north

Colorful with snow covered peaks in the background

Colorful landscape with snow-covered peaks in the background

Donna followed 21 Road north, away from the town of Fruita. The roads are laid out on a grid. The north/south roads are numbered. The east/west roads are given alphabetical designations. This makes it easy to find your way around.

Eventually she climbed to a trail head at the end of the road. From there, it’s BLM land. There was sign with a map describing the permitted use of the public land in the Special Recreation Management Area.

BLM sign

Two girls riding horses approached. Donna took their picture. Horses are very popular around here.

Out for a ride

While Donna was putting in 25 miles on her bicycle, I went out to explore on the scooter. I rode east into Grand Junction. I found a shopping mall. I crossed over the Colorado River and followed highway 340. It’s a scenic road with a high butte to the south and the river bottom on the north. The Colorado National Monument is on the butte. We’ll take the scooter and tour through the monument today or tomorrow. I put in about 30 miles, but I didn’t get the exercise that Donna got!

For dinner last night, Donna prepared sweet and spicy garlic chicken.This was a new recipe. It was spicy and tasty!

Sweet and spicy garlic chicken served with smashed Klondike rose potatoes

The news out of San Diego is frightening. We saw some coverage on the news last night and also have been following it on Facebook. There are a number of wildfires burning in San Diego County. My thoughts go out to those who’ve suffered losses or are threatened by the fires.

The Long and Winding Road

I stayed up late Monday night watching the Stanley Cup Playoffs. We had the heat pumps running, but I thought it would get too cold overnight for them to be effective. Before I went to bed, I set the mode on the climate control to furnace. This changes the heating mechanism from the air conditioning/heat pumps to the propane furnace.

What I neglected to do was adjust the thermostat. The heat pumps run warm air through the air conditioning ducts in the ceiling. Due to the placement of the thermistors (sensors for the thermostat), the thermostat reads a temperature higher than the intended setting. This is because the ceiling ducts blow right at the sensors. This causes the heat pumps to shut off before we reach a comfortable setting in the coach. So when we have the heat pumps on, I set the thermostat higher than the intended comfort level. For example, if I want the coach to be at an average temperature of 68 degrees, I set the heat pump at 73 degrees.

Conversely, our propane furnace blows heated air through ducts near the floor. As the warm air rises, it cools. By the time it reaches the sensors at the ceiling, the temperature is below the intended setting. So the thermostat commands the furnace to to keep running and the average coach temperature is higher than intended.

I went to bed with the climate control set to furnace, but the temperature setting was at the setting for the heat pump. A few hours later, I woke to the sound of the furnace blasting and me lying in bed, warm with no covers. It was 75 degrees in the coach! I got up and reset the thermostat and couldn’t help but wonder how much propane I’d burned.

In the morning Donna cooked up a full breakfast of eggs, pancakes and bacon. We showered and set a target of a 10:30am departure. We had things squared away and the Cummins ISL diesel warming up at 10:35am.

We drove north through Moab and turned east at Highway 128. This road meanders through steep, narrow, rocky canyons along the Colorado River. From Moab, it angles northeast and terminates at I-70. We wanted to check out some of the boondocking sites along this way that we’d heard about. The roadway is narrow with a rock wall off to the right and no shoulder. I was cognizant of how far my right rear view mirror extended. I didn’t want to repeat yesterday’s episode of rubbing the housing.

Donna enjoyed the view and snapped several windshield photos along the way. I enjoyed bits and pieces, but this is a road that demands attention – regardless of of the vehicle you’re driving. I would estimate our average speed allowed us to cover the 40 miles or so in about an hour. The speed limit varies – it’s only 35mph in some tight stretches with poor road visibility and up to 55mph in flat, open areas. Here are some windshield views Donna snapped. The black angular line in the photos is the windshield wiper arm.

Rock wall at the edge of the right side of the road

An open stretch of road with a large mesa ahead

Blind crest with multi-colored rock walls

Road narrows

Another open section with incredible rock formations

We only found one area that could accommodate a rig our size. It’s called Goose Island Campground and it’s on BLM land just a few miles from Moab and also Arches National Park. It’s right on the river with a one-way loop that would make it easy to enter and exit.

We hit I-70 east and made our way into Colorado. Once again, I’m so impressed and grateful to have a Cummins ISL with a two-stage (Jacobs) brake. We had no issues at all with the sudden inclines and downgrades. I didn’t need to touch my brake pedal on highway 128 or I-70.

We found the Colorado Welcome Center at exit 19 and pulled off. The roundabout at the top of the off-ramp was poorly marked, but we made our way without incident. The welcome center has large RV lanes and a free dump station with fresh water! Nice!

We both needed comfort breaks and went inside. The facilities are very clean. The information center has all of the brochures you could ever ask for and more. We picked out a few with information about local cycling routes and then Donna inquired about lunch nearby. We were told we could leave our coach in the lot and walk to restaurants in the area. We went to a Mexican restaurant called El Tapatio.

As we were walking to the restaurant, I had to tell Donna about a guy I used to work for, Joe Sheridan. Joe was the manager of our group back in the mid-80s. Joe spent his entire life on the Atlantic Coast before moving to Michigan in the ’80s. Mexican names and food were a mystery to him.

We were setting up a national service meeting for Audi dealers and selected The Point at Tapatio in Phoenix as the site. Joe said to me, “What is it, Ta PAT-ee-oh… Ta Pay-show… how do you say this?” Growing up in southern California, it was easy for me to see it’s Ta-pa-TEE-oh. I went on to tell Donna that Joe was a great guy and one of the best bosses I’ve ever had.

The lunch was superb. Donna had the enchiladas suizas, a traditional Mexico City dish and I had chile verde enchiladas. I would give this meal a strong 4.5 on a scale of 5. They also had an extensive selection of top shelf tequilas. We didn’t sample, as we needed to get back on the road.

About six miles east on I-70, we exited and found the West Junction RV Park. I had booked online the night before. The online reservation system queried our vehicle type, length, whether we had a trailer and how long the trailer was. Once I completed the information, it told me that a suitable site was available and showed the rate. I booked and my credit card was billed.

When we pulled in, the check-in was seamless. They had all of my information on their computer. The gal at the desk called one of the camp hosts to escort us to our site and he led the way to our site. That’s when things began to unravel.

I had a map of the campground and saw where site 48 was located. As I followed the cart, I became concerned. The site had a very tight entry and exiting was iffy, if at all possible with a coach of our size towing a trailer. The guide seemed to have his doubts as well. He stopped and we talked. He said we could approach from a different direction if I followed him.

We rolled along through the RV park and made a turn around back near the office. This was a simple U-turn for the guide in a golf cart, but was impossible for my 278-inch wheelbase. I inched back and forth to get the trailer into a position to complete the turn. He finally came over and said, “Maybe I should see if we have another site.”

He came back a few minutes later and said he had another site. He told me to follow him out of the park to the street, so we could re-enter the park from the north. Again he whipped the golf cart into the park and made a 180-degree turn that was impossible for me to complete. I had to jockey back and forth carefully. I was concerned about jack-knifing the trailer. Once I completed the 180-degree turn, getting into the new site was easy and we didn’t have to drop the trailer. You would think that the person working at the RV park, assigned to escort you to your site, would have some notion of what it takes to turn a 40-foot motorhome and trailer.

We were told there would be an additional charge for the new site, because it had a cable TV hook-up. Donna went to office and talked to the owner. The owner wouldn’t budge. She insisted that we had to pay whether we used cable TV or not. As I was setting up, the owner came out. She apparently had a change of heart and said they wouldn’t add the additional charge. I thanked her and went about my business.

Once we were set up, Donna and I took the scooter out to reconnoiter the area. Donna is looking for routes to ride her bicycle. We rode west into the town of Fruita. We found some decent roads. Only a few have bike lanes, but the traffic here is very light.

Donna is planning to go out for a ride today. I’ll explore the area and see what it’s like to the east. Our location is roughly centered between Fruita to the west and Grand Junction to the east.

One of Those Days

I described the Internet woes we experienced over the weekend in my last post. With no chance to research, I didn’t want to book an RV park in Moab by looking at a campground guide. I thought we could drive up to Moab, have a look around, then decide where we wanted to stay. Neither of us had been here before.

View through the windshield Donna shot along the way

Things don’t always go as smoothly as envisioned. I’m usually optimistic about finding a suitable place to stay. But, it turned out that this was not a good week to show up unannounced in Moab. They have an off-road rally here, called Rally on the Rocks this week. Every place is booked up through Sunday.

We found a large pull-through site at Spanish Trails RV park for one night only. Once we were settled in, we fired up our laptops and started looking at options. I have to admit, I wasn’t in my best humor. Although today’s drive was only a little over 100 miles, it was a tiring drive up and down steep grades with a stiff wind. The cross winds are challenging in a big rig. You have to stay alert.

Before we found this site, we had pulled into the Moab Valley RV Resort to inquire. The entrance lane is restricted by steel posts, about four feet high at the end of the lane entering the park. After checking at the office and finding that we missed the last site large enough for our rig by 10 minutes, we needed to pull through and turn around. The posts at the end of the lane are spaced about 10 feet apart. This might sound like plenty of room, considering our rig is eight and a half feet wide. Eighteen inches of clearance equates to nine inches on each side. Steel poles four feet high cannot even be seen once I’ve started through.

I set my trajectory and made sure I pulled far enough through before starting to turn. If I turned too soon, the side of the coach on the inner part of the turn would scrape from cutting the corner or the side of the wall on the outside of the turn would scrape due to swing-out.

Once we were safely past the posts, I had to figure out how to get turned around in this tight RV park and exit the narrow lane leading out. How can they advertise this as a big-rig friendly park?

I looked at my options and thought the road encircling the park would be the best way around. When I came to the first 90 degree corner, I discovered it was really tight. I pulled forward and cut the wheel hard. No go. It was too narrow and I wouldn’t clear the fence on the perimeter. I backed up a few feet and cut it again. My right hand rear view mirror was barely clearing the chain link fence. My left rear wheel climbed the curb on the inside of the corner. I went very slowly, but climbing over the curb tilted the coach and my mirror struck the fence. I hate it when this stuff happens. I don’t think there was any other way through though. This park is very poorly laid out. You really should be able to drive a big rig around the perimeter of an RV park!

My demeanor wasn’t improving. We drove back through town to our present site. I was happy to find that the wifi here works and we have a solid Internet connection. After I went online to look at possible destinations that won’t take us too far away tomorrow, it was time to mix a cocktail.

I broke out my trusty martini shaker and glass. As I was putting ice into the shaker, I bumped my martini glass. I’ve had this set for more than 10 years. Crash! Martini glass is dust.

Sometimes it’s just one of those days. But I have to remind myself of all the great times, adventures and fun this lifestyle brings. Days like this are bound to come along every now and then. They are more than offset by some of the greatest days imaginable. It’s been 99% good, 1% of the time you have one of those days.

This can offset even the worst days

We’re heading to Colorado, to the Junction West RV Park. It’s located between Fruita and Grand Junction, Colorado. There’s supposed to be great biking and hiking in the area. We’ve booked a week there. Since it’s just off of I-70, I’m counting on good Internet connectivity.

We changed up our itinerary from there. We won’t go to Denver after all. The availability of suitable parks in the area we want is limited. Access to the airport would have been tough. We didn’t even have any good options for getting a rental car. So when we leave Grand Junction, we’ll go to Salt Lake City. We’ve booked at a park there that has light rail transport to the airport. Donna changed her ticket to Phoenix to fly out of Salt Lake City instead of Denver.

No Vacancy in Moab

It’s Monday afternoon. I started this post yesterday, but we lost our internet connection in Bluff, Utah. It can get frustrating. The RV Park internet was down and Verizon couldn’t hold a signal.

On Saturday, before we left Lone Rock Beach at the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, our new friends from the Netherlands, Rob and Bettea, stopped by. They were leaving, heading south to Flagstaff, then into the Grand Canyon National Park – the opposite route of our travels. Rob wanted to see what an American 40-foot motorhome was like inside. Donna gave them the tour. Then we took a look at their European (French) RV built on a Toyota HiLux chassis.

Rob is quite tall and he told me our motorhome is the only RV he’s ever been in where he could stand up straight. Their RV is small, but efficient. Inside, it’s much like the cabin of a small sailboat. The diesel engine in his Toyota gets about 25 miles per gallon.

We’ve run across quite a few European visitors over the past nine months. There seem to be two types. There are those who spend an extended amount of time here, say three to six months, and spend at least a few days at each stopping point to sightsee. The other type tries to see the entire country in three to five weeks. They check in to the RV park in the afternoon. They go sightseeing for an hour or two and are on the road again first thing in the morning.

We decided to leave Lone Rock Beach and hit the road around 10:30am. Friday was very windy and the forecast for Saturday was not only wind, but also rain arriving by evening. I didn’t want to be in the soft sand and dirt if it was going to rain. We drove back to Page and stopped at Walmart again. We stocked up on a few things, then headed out on highway 98. We climbed about two thousand feet on this highway to an elevation of nearly 6,000 feet before we descended down to US160.

It was scenic east of the town of Kayenta. We passed Church Rock and Baby Rocks which are interesting rock formations the wind has sculpted. The Navajo reservation (officially called the Navajo Nation) is the largest native American reservation in the country. It covers approximately 27,000 square miles (about the size of West Virginia) in three states – Arizona, New Mexico and Utah. The entire Hopi reservation is encompassed by the Navajo Nation.

We crossed about half of the width of the reservation before turning north on US191. US 191 is very rough in places. Although the speed limit was 65mph, I had to slow to about 45mph through some areas.

We pulled into Cottonwood RV Park in Bluff, Utah around 4pm, local time (we lost an hour coming from Arizona to Utah). We booked a site for two nights and quickly set up in a large pull-through site and didn’t have to drop the trailer.

The wifi worked fine when we first used it Saturday evening. After a while, it became very unstable and ultimately unusable. We shut down our laptops and watched the first two episodes of Lost before retiring for the night.

On Sunday morning, we were frustrated by the unstable wifi again. I couldn’t even get the Verizon Jetpack to work reliably. We had strong winds again and a few rain showers. Around noon, Donna and I strolled into town. We’re located on the west end of town. The east end of town is about a mile down the road.

As we walked through town, we found historic Fort Bluff. Much of this old site has been reconstructed. Entry is free. We found the old cabins, wagons and buildings to be interesting.

Donna in front of a meeting room at historic Fort Bluff

Donna entering a meeting room at historic Fort Bluff

They had many nicely restored covered wagons

One of many nicely restored covered wagons

From there, we walked to the east end of town where the Two Rock Trading Post and Two Rock Cafe are located. The photo shows where they got the name “Two Rock.” The rock formation is also known as the Navajo Twins.

Navajo Twins rock formation

We ate at the cafe. The food was good and the service was excellent. I had a Navajo pizza, which is a pizza made with a fry bread crust. Donna had the chili (and some of my pizza). I also ordered a Utah craft beer from a Salt Lake City brewery called Squatters. I had their pale ale called Full Suspension. The beer was only 4% ABV, but balanced nicely and was easy to enjoy.

Full Suspension Pale Ale

This morning, we were frustrated with the Internet connectivity again. Donna was able to establish a connection with the RV park wifi. I couldn’t get anything.

It was windy and cold out. We decided to head north. We pulled out around 10:45am and followed US191. The road is newly paved and very smooth between Bluff and Blanding. We stopped in Blanding and topped up our fuel tank with 50 gallons of diesel fuel.

We climbed to an elevation of more than 7,000 feet before descending into Moab. Our coach is currently sitting at an elevation of 4,550 feet at the Spanish Trail RV Park, just south of the town.

When we arrived in Moab, we drove all the way through town. We saw several RV parks on both ends of town. I pulled over in a wide shoulder on the north end of town. We had 4G service, so Donna fired up her laptop to look for an RV park. We didn’t have a reservation anywhere, and didn’t know what was available. We weren’t able to do much research with no Internet in Bluff.

It turns out that our timing is impeccably bad. There’s an off-road rally starting tomorrow in Moab, called the Rally on the Rocks. It runs through Sunday. All of the RV parks are booked for the rally. We found this park for the night, but nothing for the rest of the week.

We’ll come up with a plan and move on tomorrow.

Wahweap Bay

Donna went hiking yesterday morning up on the mesa overlooking Lone Rock Beach. Here are a few photos she took.

Sand dune and rock

Wahweap Bay

Sand dunes and Lone Rock

On her way back, she stopped and met our neighbors. Rob and Bettea are from the Netherlands. They are on a five and half month tour of the USA in their 4-wheel drive Toyota camper.

Rob and Betty

After lunch, we took the scooter down US89 to the Wahweap Bay Resort and Marina. This is more of the Glen Canyon Recreational Area. We were able to enter with our annual pass, otherwise we would have had to pay a daily use fee of $15.

They have an RV park there with full hook-ups. Full hook-up sites are expensive though – $48/night. We checked out the RV sites. Very nice, but our $10/night site is working for us.

They also have a marina dedicated for houseboat rentals. Cars can be parked for up to 14 days while you cruise the 180-mile length of Lake Powell in a houseboat. Sounds like a good time!

View from road to Wahweap

Another view from the road to Wahweap

Last night, while Donna was hoop dancing, I managed to get one last shot of Lone Rock. As the sun was setting, the rock was lit perfectly.

Sunset on Lone Rock

This morning, we’re packing up and moving on. We’ll head back to Page and stock up at Walmart. Then we’ll take BIA 98 over to US160 east. At US19, we’ll head north to Bluff, Utah.

Rough Road Ahead

I think we woke up a little groggy yesterday. We only had two margaritas each the night before, celebrating our 8th anniversary, but mixed drinks, especially tequila, don’t sit well with me.

We went about our usual chores to break camp, but we had a twist. Donna had to return the rental car and I would follow to meet her at the Hertz agency. We were pressing a bit since we needed to have the car back before 10am or face additional charges. Donna rolled out at 9:30am and I followed shortly after.

The first SNAFU came when the Hertz agency couldn’t generate an invoice. They had a computer glitch of some sort. I was double parked in the road with my four-way flashers on, waiting for Donna to come out. There wasn’t much traffic, so it wasn’t a big deal. We finally got out of there with the agent promising to e-mail the invoice.

From there, we rolled up US89 to the Conoco station I’d checked out before. It had easy access and trucker lanes with long pull-throughs. As we pulled in, Donna noticed that the trucker lanes were priced higher than the regular car lanes. This is due to the difference in highway taxes for trucks versus passenger cars.

The gas station had a lot of real estate, so I could turn around and line up at a passenger car lane that had diesel fuel. I was feeling pretty good about this as I extended the generator slide on the front cap to allow access to our fuel fillers.

I stepped out and ran my credit card through the reader and began to pump fuel. I looked up and felt a shock I can’t describe. I saw our living room slide cocked away from the body of our coach. The top of the slide out was four or five inches away from the wall it should be seated against while the bottom of the slide looked to be seated against the side of the coach.

Oh no! How could this be?

I went back into the coach and told Donna we had a problem. I apparently missed a big issue on my walk-around before leaving the park. I didn’t look up. I had been driving down the road with the living room slide unsecured.

After pumping $256 worth of diesel fuel into our tank, I pulled away from the pump and circled the station. Luckily, this station has a lot of pavement to accommodate big trucks. We pulled off to the side. I opened the trailer and retrieved our ladders.

After examining the outside of the slide and using our short ladder to look inside the coach, I found that the slide seal had rolled and was jamming the slide. I pulled, poked and prodded for the next 30 minutes. When I thought I had the seal in a position that would allow the slide to move in, I shot it with 3M dry silicon spray to ease its movement. This sounds simple, but the entire operation entailed an hour of effort.

I held my breath and pushed the slide retract button. It came in and seated. Whew! We have a problem to solve though. This isn’t a good thing and it won’t just heal itself.

From there, we rolled up US89. The road climbed past Sunset Crater, then we descended most of the way to Cameron and onwards north. Just past Cameron, there was a sign that said “Rough Road Next 24 Miles.” It didn’t seem too bad at first. The speed limit was 65 mph, I had the cruise control set at 62 mph, which seemed comfortable. There were passing lanes every few miles, socars that wanted to cruise faster could overtake me. Suddenly, without warning, the road became a series of whoop-de-doos, something made for a motorcycle supercross track. We were literally launched into the air, I felt the front suspension top out twice before I could slow down and regain control. It was ridiculous. What was the Arizona Department of Transportation thinking? They had a rough road sign 10 miles before this section and no warning when the going really got rough.

We were both thinking of a lunch and potty break as we approached Gap, AZ. US89 suffered a landslide on February 20, 2013 and the road is still closed 26 miles north of Gap. If you want to go to Page, you need to make a right turn at Gap onto BIA 20. This is poorly marked, but lucky for us, Donna caught the sign. But, we were unable to find a suitable stopping point at Gap. It’s just a cross roads with a gas station and trading post.

BIA 20 is a Navajo Nation roadway that takes you 40+ miles through Lechee to Page. The road has no shoulder or turn outs, it’s just a slog all the way to Page. When we finally found Page we stopped at WalMart. Donna was famished and my bladder was at its limit.

We walked a quarter of a mile down the highway in search of food. Donna had noticed a pizzeria sign on our way in. When we got there, it was either closed or out of business. But we saw another restaurant offering a Mandarin buffet. This could work. Both of us were hungry. We walked across the lot and were surprised to see the place busy at 2pm.

The food was decent, I’d give it a 3.5 on a scale of 5. We went for seconds. Our hunger satisfied, we walked back to our coach.

It was a short drive through Page to the Glen Canyon Bridge. We crossed the bridge and looked for the visitor center. We found the Carl Hayden Visitor Center. You must stop here if you are in the area. The parking lot can accommodate a big rig. The views are great and the center is nothing short of a museum.

Glen Canyon Bridge

Looking across the Glen Canyon Dam

Top of the Glen Canyon Dam

I couldn’t capture the scope of the entire dam, but this gives some sense of depth.

Lake Powell is the second largest man-made reservoir in the United States (only Lake Mead is larger). It generates power for the grid encompassing Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Colorado and Wyoming.

Donna next to a turbine that’s one-fifth scale of the actual turbines in the dam

Wahweap marina in the background, prickly pear flowering in the foreground

Wahweap Marina in the background with flowering prickly pear cactus in the foreground

We drove up the highway and pulled off at the Lone Rock Road. This is an entrance to the Glen Canyon National Recreational Area. Our National Parks pass got us in without paying the $15 per vehicle entrance fee. We paid $20 for an overnight camping pass for two nights ($10 per night).

The road is paved for a couple of miles in and there are two paved parking areas. One is in view from the entrance, the other is just before the pavement ends. The last parking area has a wide turnaround.

We stopped at the last paved parking area to walk and look the area over. A guy who obviously knew the area directed us to the best dirt road in. We trusted his advice and could see rigs in the area he directed us toward.

Here’s our latest spot on the planet.

This is why it’s called Lone Rock.

The beach at Lone Rock

Our latest hideaway

We’re currently set up with only the bedrooms slides out. The living room slide started to bind again and it needs attention. I don’t want to break anything, or have the slide stuck in an open position. Fortunately, our floorplan is livable even with the slide in. We have a little less space and Donna can’t access her spice cabinet, but other than that, it’s fine.

We strolled down along the beach. The sand is very fine, like powdered sugar. When we returned, we set our camp chairs in the shade of the coach and enjoyed the view with tortilla chips and homemade guacamole. Donna made unstuffed cabbage rolls for dinner on the induction cooktop.

We have a weak Verizon signal – most of time it’s only 1X. The Jetpack picks up 3G at times, allowing us to access the Internet.

No big plans for today. Tomorrow we’ll head back down to Page, then cross the Navajo reservation and follow US191 to Bluff, Utah.

Blowin’ in the Wind

When I woke up yesterday, there was a strong wind blowing. Occasional gusts would slam into the coach and rock our 30,000-lb. rig. When I took the trash out to the dumpster, I found that the temperature had dropped. The colder air coupled with strong wind cut through and chilled me quickly.

I spent most of the day indoors, reading a book and catching up on other blogs I follow. I ventured out to stroll around the park and get some fresh air a time or two, but it wasn’t comfortable outside. I set up my practice amp and played guitar inside. The wind became stronger as the day wore on. It was blowing at 30 – 35 mph with gusts that were reported to be 50 mph.

Our coach is in a somewhat protected spot. We have a building and a travel trailer on our left and several large RVs on our right. The wind was coming from the southwest and slammed the right front of the coach. The tire cover blew off a few times, I finally gave up on it and left it off.

Last night, around 7:30pm, I drove into town and shopped at Bashas. I stocked up on beer and also bought liquor. When we leave here tomorrow, we’ll go to Lake Powell. We’ll be on the Utah side. Utah is not the place to buy beer or liquor. Retail stores can only sell beer that is 3.2% alcohol by volume (ABV) or lower – 3.2% is watery. It lacks body and is not to my liking. Most beer is normally 4.2 to 5.2% ABV and IPA or other specialty beer is typically 6 – 7% ABV.

In Utah, regular beers and liquors are sold in state-run stores. With no competition, they fix the price and the price is high. So I planned ahead and stocked up. I have an app on my smart phone from the folks at Technomadia called State Lines. This app contains information on every state such as tax rates on purchases and fuel, liquor laws, speed limits and so on. It’s really helpful.

After shopping, I drove to the Flagstaff Pulliam Airport to pick up Donna. Her flight was scheduled to arrive at 8:40pm. I was pleased to find free parking at the airport. She arrived on time and we were home by 9pm.

This morning, the wind subsided. It’s cold though. We ran the propane furnace overnight and kept the coach at 60 degrees. Outside was near freezing. I’ll pack our outdoor gear this morning in preparation for an early departure tomorrow. I’ll also remove and store the tire covers.

I want to have everything put away before noon. This afternoon’s forecast calls for 20mph wind with a 30% chance of a thunderstorm. The humidity is predicted to rise over 40% this afternoon. We haven’t felt humidity in months.

Tonight we’ll go out to a local Mexican restaurant called Salsa Brava. We will have a late anniversary celebration. We weren’t able to celebrate on our actual anniversary date, May 5th, due to Donna’s travel to New York City. Lucky for me, Cinco de Mayo always falls on May 5th, so I never forget our anniversary.

Tomorrow, we’ll head north. I don’t know if we’ll have internet connectivity at Lake Powell. Our plan is to stay there for a couple of nights, then come back into Arizona. We’ll drive east across the Navajo Nation on US160, then head north on US191 back into Utah. Eventually we’ll make our way to Moab.

Get ‘er Done

I was up early yesterday. I would say it was “dark thirty,” but I was surprised to find daylight at 5:30am. I drove Donna to the Flagstaff Pulliam airport and dropped her off for her flight to New York City at 6:00am. On the way home, I drove through McDonald’s and bought two egg and sausage breakfast burritos. I rarely eat food from McDonald’s and this wasn’t the best decision I made all day.

Back at the coach, I had another cup of coffee and ate breakfast. I was feeling tired. I didn’t sleep well the night before. We had strong wind gusts in the night that continued throughout the morning. The wind rocked the coach in the night and woke me several times. Why is it that any time I have to get up early to an alarm clock, I sleep fitfully?

I wrote a short blog post, then kicked back on the sofa read the book, Code Talkers, for awhile. I was thinking I could nap. I didn’t sleep. After a while, I was feeling a little restless so I took a walk around the RV park.

Sunday, an old coach pulled into a site near us. It looked like an old Newell to me. While I was out walking, I saw a guy working in the engine compartment. I stopped at his site and said, “Good morning.” I introduced myself and asked what he was up to. His name was Louis. He’s from Alberta, Canada. He had just bought the coach and was having troubles. He said he’s only covered about 400 miles in the last week since buying the coach because he has electrical problems. He needed to get back to Canada.

The coach turned out to be a 1993 Barth, not a Newell. I hadn’t heard of Barth before, but I learned a few things about them. Back in the day, they were a high-end motorhome manufacturer. This Barth was built on a Gillig bus chassis. The outer skin was all aluminum. In 1993, it was a very exclusive coach. Louis bought it from the original owner.

He told me his batteries weren’t holding a charge. After he bought the coach, he replaced the batteries. I asked if I could help. He wanted all the help he could get. He wasn’t sure if the two chassis batteries and the bank of coach batteries were supposed to charge at the same time. I looked at the chassis batteries in the engine compartment and tried to find a transfer switch. I told Louis how most coaches are wired and how it usually works. He said he had wiring diagrams. Now we were getting somewhere.

I checked the chassis batteries and they were fine. I asked where the coach (house) batteries were. He showed me a compartment with batteries on two levels – six 12-volt batteries in total! They were massive, the biggest 12-volt batteries I’ve seen. He told me that three of them were new and they were the only ones wired into the system. I could see the new Lifeline AGM batteries he’d installed. These are very expensive batteries – around $600 each.

I checked the voltage at these batteries. I asked Louis if he had them wired in parallel. He said he was sure they were. I was sure they weren’t wired correctly. One battery on the lower deck showed completely dead, only registering 1.44 volts. The other two were fully charged. This doesn’t make sense if they are wired in parallel.

The batteries were very large. To follow the cabling, I had to use a flashlight and reach my full arm’s length into the compartment. By following the cables, I found the issue. The cables from the dead battery in the lower compartment went through the bulkhead into the house. Presumably, they went to a fuse panel, buss bar or post to power the various household 12-volt items. However, the battery wasn’t connected in parallel to the other two batteries.

The other two batteries were wired in parallel. However, they didn’t connect to the house. They were connected to the inverter which charges the batteries. So, what he had was a battery powering his house, but not receiving a charge. He had two more batteries, not powering anything, but being maintained at full charge. No wonder he was losing power to everything inside.

As I was explaining this to him, another neighbor, Jerry, came over. Jerry has a Travel Supreme coach across from our site. We made some small talk and then Jerry said he was looking for an electrician. He said the plug on the end of his 50amp power cord was broken. The ground lug pulled out of the molded plastic plug and he couldn’t run his air conditioners. His wife wasn’t happy with no A/C. He had a new replacement plug, but thought he needed an electrician to wire it up.

I loaned a few tools to Louis to rewire his battery bank and told Jerry, “You don’t need to pay an electrician. Let’s get ‘er done.” I thought I could wire up the new connector in 20 or 30 minutes. It never seems to work out that way. Once I was into the project, Jerry told me that the plug came with instructions showing what length to cut each wire. Rather than walk back to my trailer and retrieve a tape measure from my toolbox, I used the TLAR method (That Looks About Right).

The heavy-gauge wire in a 50amp cable is very stiff. In hindsight, measuring first and cutting once would have been the way to go. I made three attempts at wiring the plug before I could get all of the wire to fit properly. An hour and half later, a 30-minute job was done.

I enjoyed helping the guys out. That’s RV life. With Donna away, I had nothing better to do.

The wind remained gusty all day. Today, they are calling for higher winds. I’ll hunker down and wait for Donna to return tonight.

Flying The Koop

…from real estate to wheel estate and back again

Monthly Archives: May 2014

Shopping for Service

Colorado National Monument

Fruita Loops

The Long and Winding Road

One of Those Days

No Vacancy in Moab

Wahweap Bay

Rough Road Ahead

Blowin’ in the Wind

Get ‘er Done

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