In my last post, I mentioned a problem with our awning. The pin that the upper eye on the gas strut mounts to came off. I temporarily installed it and secured it with wire. I needed a new clip washer to complete the repair.
Tuesday was our last full day in Santa Fe. While Donna went out for a run in the morning, I took the Spyder to Home Depot to see if I could find what I needed. No luck finding an actual clip washer. After searching around, I came up with something I thought might be workable. The pin is 3/8″ diameter. I found internal toothed lock washers and selected a package to fit a 5/16″ bolt. I figured I might be able to force the under-sized washer over the pin and the teeth would grip it.
5/16″ internal toothed lock washer
I tried to force the washer over the end of the pin by fitting a 3/8″ socket over the washer and tapping it with a hammer. The stainless steel washer was too stiff, I couldn’t get it over the pin. I used pliers to bend the teeth slightly, opening up the inside diameter of the washer. A few more taps with the socket and it was on. Then I used a punch tool and tapped the teeth firmly against the pin.
Washer locked down
This locked the washer in place. I’m fairly confident it will hold the pin. It took longer than it sounds, but in the end it was job done!
I downloaded another novel by Kyle Mills from Amazon to my Kindle Reader. This is my third book from this author – he writes a great story but the Kindle editing and formatting leaves a bit to be desired. There are typos and missing punctuation at times.
On Wednesday morning, I had much to do. I secured everything in the trailer and loaded the Spyder. I checked our tire pressures and put away the tire covers. I filled the fresh water tank and dumped and flushed the holding tanks. I worked for nearly two hours before I was ready to light the fires in the Cummins ISL diesel engine. We pulled out of Los Suenos de Santa Fe RV Park right at 11am. I usually prefer to hit the road earlier than that, but we were only going to Albuquerque – about 60 miles away.
Our first stop was at the San Felipe Truck Plaza in San Felipe, New Mexico – about halfway to Albuquerque. We’ve only covered a little over 200 miles since I last filled up in Raton, but we have run the generator a lot since then and I will be running the generator in the next few weeks. I like to have the tank topped up when I know we’ll be using the generator. Diesel fuel at the truck plaza was $2.19/gallon. That’s the least expensive fuel price we’ve had since we hit the road.
Our destination was Jessica Rice’s parents’ home in the North Albuquerque Acres neighborhood near Sandia Heights. Our plan was to dry camp on their property for a week until we move to the Balloon Fiesta Park. I had looked at the property on Google Earth and it looked large enough, but I thought I would have to back into their driveway or else I wouldn’t be able to turn around and maneuver.
When we arrived, we saw Jessica’s dad Bruce in the driveway. I stopped in the street and got out to look things over. The street was narrower than I expected. When I stepped out of the coach, I noticed that the edge of the road dropped off immediately into a ditch. I also found the weeds along the ditch were full of goathead stickers and my bare feet in flip-flops collected several. Ouch!
After looking the situation over, we decided we needed to go to plan “B.” The narrow road with no shoulder coupled with posts on each side of the driveway entry would make it difficult if not impossible to get into the driveway. Even if I made it into the driveway, there was less room than we thought there would be. I think Bruce was surprised at the size of our rig. Bruce felt bad about us having to go somewhere else, but it wasn’t his fault.
It’s always good to have a contingency plan when we’re going to an unknown dry camping place. We were invited to join Bruce and his wife Casey along with Brad and Jessica and Jessica’s brother Bruce and his wife Julie for dinner at the elder Bruce’s house around 5pm. Donna had baked pear gingerbread before we left Santa Fe in the morning to contribute to dinner. We left the gingerbread with Bruce and headed over to the Sandia Resort & Casino.
This was our fall-back option. We knew we could park overnight at the casino which is only about five miles from Bruce and Casey’s house. After some tight maneuvering in the casino lot, we found ourselves in nearly the same spot we occupied last year.
Donna took her laptop into the air-conditioned lounge in the casino and used her phone as a hot spot to get some work done. It was 87 degrees in the coach! Around 4pm, we rode the Spyder and made a stop for a quick cold one at Albuquerque Brewery which was near Bruce’s house. This is a small brewery making good beer to style. We met the brewmaster who is also one of the owners. We had a nice chat and enjoyed a pint before we headed to dinner.
Casey cooked up a large pot of southern New Mexico-style green chile enchiladas. These are different than the usual rolled enchiladas. It’s more like a green chile chicken stew served over a fried tortilla and it was absolutely delicious. The eight of us enjoyed the meal and conversation and had a great time. Casey gave Donna some of the leftovers and also a couple of servings of adobada (sometimes spelled adovada) which is a red chile marinated meat – most often pork or chicken but could also be beef. I’m not sure what’s in this dish, but I’ll find out for sure today. If it’s half as good as the green chile enchiladas were, it’ll be a treat!
We were having such a good time, I didn’t want to interrupt the flow by taking photos, so no pictures from the dinner party. It started to sprinkle as we were leaving but we managed to outrun the storm. Back at the coach, I covered the Spyder before the lightning, thunder and rain hit.
This morning it’s clear and sunny. We’ll move to an RV park on the west side of town called Enchanted Trails RV Park. I’ve booked a week there, then we’ll move to the Balloon Fiesta Park as planned.
*Just so you know, if you follow one of my links to Amazon and decide to make a purchase, you pay the same price as usual and I’ll earn a few pennies for the referral. It’ll go into the beer fund. Thanks!