Monthly Archives: April 2020

Triple Digit Heat

Today is our last full day at Viewpoint Golf and RV Resort in Mesa, Arizona. Last week, the weather guessers predicted hot weather ahead and they got it right. Thursday we hit 96 degrees, Friday reached 99 degrees and every day since then we have topped 100 degrees. Our rooftop air conditioners are running non-stop for about 12 hours a day. The nighttime temperature drops down to about 70 degrees. Soon enough, that will end and overnight lows of 85-90 degrees can happen. It’s time to move on.

We’ve continued our precautions against the novel coronavirus. We’ve pretty much avoided contact with others and have only gone out for groceries. Donna has taken several bicycle rides out through the neighborhoods, but doesn’t come into contact with anyone on her rides.

Donna confirmed our reservation in Springerville – I was a little concerned about it. Some RV parks aren’t allowing new visitors to enter. We’re good to go. I’ve been extra careful about wearing a face mask when I shop and washing my hands thoroughly. The last thing I want to do is carry the virus down the road. Springerville is a small town of about 2,000 people. It’s adjacent to Eager, another small town with a population of about 5,000 people. There has only been one confirmed case of COVID-19 in the area.

We’ve been watching more TV than usual. Over the last few weeks, we binge watched Narcos, then the first two seasons of Narcos Mexico and now we’re watching the Netflix series called Ozark.

That reminds me – I haven’t mentioned Ozark the cat in a while. When Ozark the cat moved in with us, I bought cat food at Petco. There was a particular brand I favored. The thing about pet food is the marketing is meant to appeal to the pet owner and I wonder how much difference it all makes to the pet. Having said that, I’ll admit to buying premium brand cat food just like I always did when I had dogs. I don’t want to get into a brand discussion, so I’ll leave it at that.

When we were in San Diego, we were told Petco was discontinuing this line of cat food. We found it at PetSmart and started buying it there. Then I found out it wasn’t just Petco not carrying this particular cat food. The manufacturer was phasing it out and replacing it with a re-branded label. The new cat food has a similar nutritional profile but some ingredients are changed and the shape of the food nuggets is different.

Dogs and cats don’t need to have a wide variety of food. In fact, they become accustomed to eating the same foods and often have a bit of a rough adjustment when new foods are introduced. We bought the new brand of cat food for Ozark last week while we still had some of the food she’s been eating for the last five years. Donna slowly introduced the new product by mixing it with her usual food. Ozark seemed a bit off the first day or two, but she’s doing fine now.

Ozark the cat

Yesterday, I had a phone call from my old friend, Jim Birditt. Jimbo and I go way back – we met in eighth or ninth grade, I’m not sure which it was. He told me he was drawn for an out-of-state Big Game Combination hunting license for Montana. I’m envious. We used to hunt in Montana every fall back in the ’90s. I wrote a post about it here. The funny thing was this – he was telling his wife, Cindy, about hunting and staying at Mumbro Park. Cindy Googled Mumbro Park and found my old post about the place.

I started prepping for our move this morning. After four months here in Mesa, the trailer needed to be re-organized. I straightened the trailer out and packed the Weber Q and Traeger. By late morning, it was already 92 degrees and the trailer was hot. Later, I’ll put Donna’s bike away and pack the folding table. The chairs can wait until tomorrow when I do the final packing. I’ll dump the holding tanks in the morning. I always like to have empty holding tanks and plenty of fresh water on board when we travel. You never know what might come up and it’s always good to be ready.

With that in mind, I had the propane tank filled on Tuesday. I paid a premium to have it filled by the Arizona Propane delivery truck. The tank was just about empty after having the regulator replaced. Once I disconnect from the power pedestal here, we’ll need the propane to run the refrigerator.

With our limited refrigerator and freezer space, I’m hoping the food supply chain stays intact. Talk of food shortages looming are a bit worrisome. We shop for groceries once or twice a week to keep fresh food on hand. We also eat well. Here are a couple of examples from the last week.

First is a pork tenderloin Donna marinated in her mojo marinade and I grilled it on the Weber Q. Donna made a new side for it – cauliflower Spanish rice. It was delicious.

Mojo marinated pork with cauliflower Spanish rice and corn topped with cotija cheese

On Monday, Donna grilled Caribbean jerk marinade shrimp topped with a fruit salsa over jasmine rice with corn and broccoli on the side.

Caribbean jerk shrimp with fruit salsa

Tomorrow morning I’ll finish loading up and hook up the trailer. Once I get the trailer out of our site and onto the street, I can load Midget-San and hit the road. We have a few options for the route to Springerville. I think we’ll head out past Saguaro Lake then go up the Beeline Highway to Payson. From there, we’ll head east through Show Low and on to Springerville. It’ll be warm there, but with an elevation of 7,000 feet above sea level, it’ll be at least 20 degrees cooler than Mesa. Tomorrow’s forecast for Springerville calls for clear skies and a high temperature of 83 degrees – better than the 105 degrees forecast for Mesa!

It’s too bad we have to leave without saying our goodbyes to friends and my daughter Jamie who just bought a house on the west side near Goodyear, but we’re taking the pandemic seriously.

*Just so you know, if you use this link to shop on Amazon and decide to purchase anything, 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!

What’s That Smell?

We made it through another week of social distancing and mostly keeping to ourselves. I mentioned in my last post how Donna has been picking fruit here at Viewpoint Golf and RV Resort. Just about all of the sites have a citrus tree – mostly orange but also lemon and grapefruit trees. So many people left the park earlier in the season than usual, the fruit would have gone to waste. Donna asked on the park’s Facebook group if anyone would like her to pick the fruit on their trees. About half a dozen people responded with site numbers and gave her permission to pick as much as she wanted.

Citrus fruit Donna picked Sunday in the park

She picks more than we can use, so we put some on a table in front of our site and invite people to help themselves. Donna also posted a notice on the Viewpoint Facebook group – the fruit disappears quickly.

More people pulled out in the last week. The park now has more open sites than I’ve ever seen here. The north side of the 5100 row is completely empty and only two or three RVs are on the north side of the 5200 row – our row.

North side of 5100 empty

At this time of year, sites on the south side with the rig facing north are more desirable so direct sun isn’t coming through the windshield.

I’ve been spending a lot of time sitting in the shade of the coach reading books. One day, while sitting outside, I noticed an odor of propane. This happened before when we were in Bishop, California. At that time, I thought the smell originated at the pressure relief valve on our propane tank. I did a search on the Internet and found that this can happen if the tank pressure rises. The pressure rise may be normal if it’s due to high ambient temperatures or atmospheric changes. We had both when we were in Bishop, so I didn’t worry about it.

I wondered about it here though, because our tank was less than half full. The temperature is higher than what we’ve experienced for a while, but I didn’t think it would cause enough thermal expansion in a half-full tank to vent gas. When I noticed it again a couple of days later, I checked the tank level and knew we had a problem. We were down to less than a quarter tank and we hadn’t used propane for anything since we arrived here over three months ago. We only use propane when we’re dry camping or driving to run the refrigerator or maybe the hot water heater. So there was a leak.

Working on propane systems really isn’t my thing. It requires some equipment for leak detection. Sure, you can try the soapy water approach by spraying fittings or suspected leak areas with soapy water and watching for bubbles to form wherever it’s leaking. But then you have to have a way to pressure check the system after repair. Actually you apply a vacuum to the empty system and use a manometer to see if it holds vacuum. I didn’t want to do this myself – I didn’t want to buy stuff for what is probably a one-time repair. Plus, I don’t like messing with propane – I had a bad experience with a propane fire that went quickly out of control in the past, but’s a story for another time.

So I ended up calling around for mobile propane service. A few operations were shut down due to the pandemic, but I was able to get an appointment with 4-Points Mobile RV Service. They sent a guy out on Tuesday and he was able to find a leak at the pressure regulator diaphragm.

Gas leak at the regulator diaphragm – discoloration is from the special fluid he used to detect the leak

They had to order a replacement part. On Wednesday, they told me they would be here at 11am on Thursday to finish the repair.

This morning, Donna went out for a bike ride. She called me around 10:45am and told me she had run over something and had a flat tire. She was at Two-Wheel Jones bike shop and thought she would need to have a new tire put on. She didn’t have enough cash with her or her credit card to pay for it if that’s what they had to do. She said she would let me know if she needed a credit card.

Right about then, the 4-Points Mobile RV Service truck pulled up. The guy got to work right away. I called Donna back and told her I would bring her credit card to her while the work was being done on the coach so I could be back before he finished. I wanted to see the system test and I also had to pay the bill. I drove to Two-Wheel Jones and gave Donna her card, then returned. I got back just before he ran the system test.

New pressure regulator installed

He connected the manometer to the gas line at the refrigerator. It held vacuum for three minutes and passed the system integrity test. We’re back in business as soon as I can get the tank refilled with propane.

I have one dinner plate photo to share this week. It’s a bone-in chicken thigh Donna marinated in a something called pretty chicken marinade. I smoked the thighs on the Traeger wood pellet-fired smoker grill. Donna served it with sweet potato mash and green beans with a pat of butter.

Pretty chicken

Our plan is to pull out of here one week from today. The temperature hit 90 degrees yesterday and is forecast to reach the mid-90s today. The coming week shows upper 90s and low 100s. It’s time to get out of Dodge. Barring any unforeseen event, we’ll be in Springerville next Thursday afternoon where the temperature will be in the 70s to low 80s.

*Just so you know, if you use this link to shop on Amazon and decide to purchase anything, 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!

Day and Night

Like most folks, we’ve been lying low here at Viewpoint Golf and RV Resort. Other than grocery – and beer – runs we haven’t left the park. Well, Donna’s been out for bicycle rides, but she doesn’t stop anywhere.

For entertainment, Donna and I have been watching a series called Narcos. My middle daughter, Jamie, gifted us access to her Netflix account, so we downloaded the series and saw the final episode last night. Donna has been taking her laptop to the deserted pool/office area where she can get free wifi to download Netflix. We’ll start on Narcos Mexico next.

Speaking of wifi, I had a rather strange message from Verizon on my phone. My plan includes 15GB of high speed mobile hot spot on my phone – it’s called an “Unlimited” plan, but it isn’t really as it throttles to low speed after 15GB. The message I received from Verizon said I would have an additional 15GB of high speed hotspot on my phone from March 25th to April 30th. But here’s where it gets weird – they also provided a link to their website page “Corona Virus FAQ.” This page says the free additional data will not be displayed in my account online. Okay, so I have more data but I can’t see how much I actually have. Furthermore, my data usage cycle runs from the 11th of each month to the following month ending on the 10th.

So how does the “extra” 15GB figure into my data cycle? I’m also confused about which devices get extra data. Reading the FAQ, it looks like we should have “extra” data on each of our lines – we have three – Donna’s phone, my phone and the Jetpack. The FAQ doesn’t seem clear to me if each line gets 15GB or is the 15GB shared over all three lines? Inquiring minds want to know.

I got a couple of things off of my “to do” list. Nothing too big – I replaced the 48″ flourescent bulbs in the galley, I cleaned and conditioned the leather Euro-recliner and ottoman, I did a deep clean of the Weber Q grill. My biggest project was re-stringing the day/night shade in the window at the head of our bed.

Pleated shade repair kit

The shade on this window is 30 inches wide and has four strings – the other window in the bedroom has two strings. The four-string repair wasn’t much harder than the two-string, but having done the two-string before, I had some experience to draw upon this time. It all went fairly smooth. I still had the tool that came with the first kit to draw the strings through the shades, it’s handy. The new kit didn’t come with the tool.

The day/night shades have two pleated shades – one is for privacy but allows light to filter through – the day shade – the other blocks light completely – the night shade. There’s a draw bar at the bottom of the shade. Pulling it down puts the day shade in place. There’s a second draw bar, pulling it down folds the day shade pleats at the bottom of the shade while drawing the night shade down. The draw bars are held in place by friction due to the way the strings are routed.

Inside the top bar, the strings are attached to springs. Tension from these springs create the friction where the strings go through bushings in the draw bars, allowing the shade to be held at various opening positions. You can have the shade all the way up, exposing the whole window or you can position the day or night shade anywhere from all the way up to all the way down and every place in between.

Day shade down, night shade partially down

We had a traditional Easter dinner last Sunday. Donna prepped a rack of lamb with a fennel crust and I cooked it on the Traeger wood pellet smoker/grill. She served it with Brussel sprouts and buttered egg noodles.

Easter dinner

We followed that with another Traeger dinner on Monday – lemon and herb marinated chicken thighs. Donna served it with grilled bok choy and jasmine rice.

Lemon and herb marinated chicken

On my last Costco run, I bought one and a half racks of babyback ribs, so I did my famous Memphis-style smoked ribs on Tuesday. It was more than Donna and I could eat, so we invited our friend here in the park, Joe, to stop by for take-out ribs and gave him the half rack.

Donna has been picking citrus here at the RV park. Many people left in a hurry and she got permission to pick and take grapefruit, oranges and lemons from various sites. We put some out for neighbors walking by to take on Sunday. They didn’t last long. She plans to pick some more for us and to share.

It’s beginning to heat up out here in the desert valley. Other than Saturday, when we had clouds and a few intermittent sprinkles, it’s been clear and in the mid to upper 70s. Most afternoons have had winds from the south-southwest gusting up to 20 mph. The winds are calmer today and we should see temperatures reaching the mid to upper 80s for the next week.

We plan to head for higher ground in two weeks – we will leave on April 30th. The temperature here is forecast to reach the 90s by then – the average high in June here in Mesa is 102 degrees. If all goes according to plan, well be in Springerville, Arizona for the month of May. Springerville is at an elevation of 7,000 feet above sea level and will be 20 to 30 degrees cooler than here.

*Just so you know, if you use this  link to shop on Amazon and decide to purchase anything, 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!

Face Mask Mission

With the radical changes our society – and the world – have experienced over the past few weeks, I have to wonder if we will ever reach a state of what we once considered normal. As data is acquired, projections of the pandemic severity are changing daily, mostly bringing more positive news. There’s still a lot of missing information and I’m sure things will continue to change.

We’re practicing social distancing, mostly keeping to ourselves. One friend here in the Viewpoint Golf and RV Resort, Ginny, is quite the seamstress. Ginny made facemasks for us. The first one she gave me was cloth with two cloth tie-straps. With the mask in hand, I drove to Home Depot, donned the mask and went inside.

I was looking for a home central air conditioning filter element. Ginny wanted to modify the face masks with a pouch to hold a section of paper filter made from a MERV12-rated air conditioning filter element. Home Depot doesn’t use the common MERV rating system for their filter elements – they have their own efficiency ratings. Their filters come with efficiency ratings of four, seven, nine and 10 – at least that’s what I found at the store I was at. The two highest levels, nine and 10, claim they will filter and trap virus carriers. I bought a large level 10 filter and gave it to Ginny.

Ginny also needed elastic to make straps – the cloth tie-straps are labor intensive to sew. Apparently elastic is in short supply right now. Donna heard about making stretchy straps from pantyhose so she donated a pair to Ginny. Ginny made us new masks with a pocket to hold a three-inch by four-inch section of paper filter material with stretchy straps to hold the mask over our ears made from the pantyhose. It’s brilliant.

Our face masks

Ginny, along with a few other seamstresses here in the RV park are on a mission to complete 200 face masks by the end of the week for use by administrative personnel at Banner Health here in Mesa. Cheers to them!

Donna was doing a bi-weekly happy hour Zoom call with various family members – they’ve decided to make it once a week from now on. They sit at their computers with an adult beverage and converse for an hour or so.

Socially responsible happy hour

Donna has also been getting out on her bicycle to keep in shape. Today she rode the Usery Pass loop. It’s a 25-mile loop from here that involves climbing up and over Usery Pass which includes a 9% grade over a 4-mile stretch. It’s a fairly demanding ride.

I’ve puttered around on a few projects here. Nothing too demanding, just minor things that need doing that I’ve been putting off. Donna gave herself a project. She wanted to change the clear glass shower surround. She had a plan to install an opaque covering on the glass. She ordered a cling film material that’s semi-opaque with a small square prismatic pattern on it. She did a great job installing it and is happy with the result. The photo doesn’t capture the rainbow of colors in the prismatic pattern.

Semi opaque covering

I made a batch of jerky last week and it’s the best so far. I think I have the jerky recipe down after four iterations. Donna continues to feed me well. We’ve only ordered take-out once in the last three weeks. Here are a couple of dinner plates. The first one I actually prepared and cooked on the Traeger smoker grill. It’s wild Alaskan salmon filet with a mayonnaise-dijon mustard based glaze that also has fresh squeezed lemon juice and dried tarragon.

Glazed salmon over Jasmine rice with grilled vegetables

I cooked this entree the last time we went out nearly three weeks ago to Mike and Jodi Hall’s house. That was the first time I tried this glaze and although it was good, it didn’t present all that well. I wasn’t familiar with Mike’s wood pellet smoker grill – it’s not the same as my Traeger – and the temperature got away from from me making the glaze turn grayish.

The next dish is one Donna made before, but it’s been a while and it’s a favorite – chicken Gabriella.

Chicken Gabriella with garlicky cauliflower mash and asparagus

The weather has been warm with highs reaching the low 80s. Tuesday evening we had clear skies and watched the International Space Station cross the sky from the northwest to the south of us.

The temperature was slightly cooler yesterday and a few raindrops fell after sundown. The next couple of days will be in the mid 70s and will only reach the upper 70s for the rest of the coming week. No complaints about that – it’ll get hot here soon enough.


*Just so you know, if you use this link to shop on Amazon and decide to purchase anything, 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!

Open Spaces

Now that all of the regular activities here at Viewpoint Golf and RV Resort are stopped, a lot of people have packed up and left. I guess for those that have regular sticks-and-bricks homes and family elsewhere, it made sense for them to head home while they can. Talk of restrictions on travel to and from some states have created a sense of urgency for some people. Of course, the Canadian visitors had their reasons for leaving as well.

  • Empty sites to the east of us
  • More empty sites to the west

Donna has been staying active, riding her bicycle and doing strength training three days a week with our friend and neighbor here in the park. Ginny comes over on Monday, Wednesday and Friday and they do their socially distanced training routine on the empty concrete pad east of our site. Ginny and her husband, Joe, were in my refined skills pickleball class last year. They’ve come a long way with their pickleball game. It’s too bad we’re not allowed on the courts here at this time. Like us, they’re planning to stay through the end of the month in their park model.

Lately my activity levels have really fallen off. We go out for a walk most evenings, but that isn’t much. We see a few people that are socializing in their sites with friends, some of them are still having fairly large gatherings. We’ve decided to avoid these situations and keep our distance.

This whole social distancing thing has been somewhat controversial, but I think we can’t ignore it. One of the statistics that really sticks out in my mind is the number of COVID-19 cases in New York. New York has approximately 20 million people and as of 3pm yesterday, they had over 92,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19. California has approximately 40 million people – double the population of New York – but they have only about 9,200 confirmed cases as of yesterday. That’s only 10% as many cases with double the population.

Why is that? That’s the question everyone would like the answer to. Here’s my thought on this social distance thing. Whereas New York has high population density in New York City, it also has heavily used mass transportation – subways, trains, buses and taxi cabs. Californians have large population centers as well, but they are much more likely to travel alone or in small groups in their personal vehicles. People in New York are more likely to spend time indoors – sharing space with others – while Californians are more likely to be outdoors and not in close contact with strangers. Maybe that explains why New York has so many cases compared to California – that’s my theory for now.

Since last weekend, the only time Donna and I have left the RV park was to go grocery shopping. I’ve done most of the shopping, but today we both went. I dropped Donna off at Sprouts where she likes to get fresh produce and some specialty foods while I went to Winco foods to buy a few staples and beer. It worked out good, I was able to buy some needed foods at the lower Winco prices while Donna found everything she wanted at Sprouts. With our limited refrigeration and food storage, I go out to shop a twice a week.

Speaking of limited space, Donna’s been doing some re-organizing. Our bathroom has a closet space that holds our Splendide 2100 washer/dryer and cleaning supplies. We also had a basket for clothes that needed to be washed on a shelf above the washer dryer. Donna wanted to use this space as additional pantry space. When you live in about 300 square feet, finding space for a clothes hamper can be a challenge. Donna came up with a solution. She found pop-up mesh hampers online from Bed, Bath and Beyond. She ordered two of them – one for whites and one for colored clothes. These hampers are very lightweight. She put them in the shower so they don’t take up any usable space. When we shower, we just pull them out and temporarily leave them on the bathroom floor. Then we dry the floor of the shower and put them back.

  • Colored clothes in the black hamper, whites in the white one

You would think with all this time spent at home and not going out for happy hour that we would be saving money. Well, I’m doing my best to keep the economy rolling. I find myself in front of the computer screen placing orders online. Donna, too. So we’ve had Amazon deliveries almost daily!

We didn’t dine out very often anyway – we’re used to home-cooked meals and only went out to dinner once a month or so. Here are a few meals from the last week. First is pan-seared mustard flank steak with roasted garlic cauliflower and corn.

Another dinner plate was creamy lemony orzo with shrimp and peas. Delicious.

Last night, I grilled a pork tenderloin that Donna prepped with her mojo marinade. She served it with fire roasted sweet potatoes and steamed asparagus.

I bought a 2.5-pound London broil steak today (top round) to make beef jerky. My last batch was the best so far – I’ve made small improvements with each batch. I’ll prep this steak later today and smoke it tomorrow.

We’ve had excellent weather for the past week with temperatures reaching the upper 70s and low 80s. We topped out at 85 on Wednesday. The week ahead should be more of the same.

*Just so you know, if you use this link to shop on Amazon and decide to purchase anything, 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!