It has been a real whirlwind week with lots of activities for us. It started last Sunday when we met our friends Bob and Carolyn Ower for dinner at Main Street Brewery in town. We had good food – I highly recommend the Down Da’ Bayou plate. I had it with beer battered catfish smothered in Cajun blue crab sauce (shrimp can be substituted for catfish). It was excellent! We had a good time and lingered for nearly two hours telling stories.

One thing that definitely isn’t a whirlwind is the United States Postal Service (USPS). I have a couple of examples – I ordered a replacement accelerator pedal assembly with position sensor for our Nissan Frontier. I don’t normally like to replace a part based on a Diagnostic Trouble Code (DTC) in the control module – I prefer to test the components in the system containing the DTC to drill down to the faulty part. But, this is an intermittent issue and everything is working fine right now, so troubleshooting won’t work.

In our case we had an accelerator position fault. In my experience with Volkswagen, this could be anything from a pedal position sensor to a wiring harness or connector problem – rarely did I need to replace a pedal position sensor. Bob Ower runs a repair shop and has much more experience with Japanese cars than I do. He said he’s found this fault usually means a bad pedal assembly on Japanese cars. A search of Nissan forums seems to confirm this. So, I ordered a pedal assembly from Amazon and they shipped via USPS.

Well, USPS Priority mail doesn’t seem to have much priority these days. It took about a week to get the part. It didn’t look like they treated it too kindly during that time.

Luckily the part inside was intact. Removal of the old part was fairly easy – I just had to remove the wiring connector on top of the assembly and remove three mounting nuts with a 12mm socket. The hardest part was wiggling into position to reach it.

I noticed the pedal didn’t appear to have much wear. Once I had it out, I had some misgivings about replacing it. I found the production date code on the assembly – it was 49/19. This means the pedal was manufactured during the 49th week of 2019. It had been replaced some time after that.

The replacement pedal I received was produced in March of 2021, so there appears to be a lot of turnover of these parts. Hopefully I’ve solved the issue. With the new pedal installed, I had to go through a process for the Engine Control Module (ECM) to “learn” the pedal position parameters. I printed the pages with this procedure from the Nissan service manual – it involved turning the ignition to the “on” position for a few seconds, then “off” for 10 seconds with the pedal released. Then another series of key on and key off cycles with the pedal pressed through its full travel three times in five seconds. No big deal. A couple more procedures set the idle air control and idle speed and it was job done.

I have another beef with the USPS. I ordered our mail from our service in South Dakota on the second of June. I received tracking information that showed it arriving at the Sioux Falls, South Dakota USPS distribution facility on the third. Then no new notifications until yesterday, June 10th. It showed the package left the Sioux Falls USPS distribution facility on June 9th – six days after it arrived there. This is a USPS Priority mail envelope!

Donna and I played pickleball on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday morning. Our plan was to take Thursday and Friday off in preparation for another Shoot Out scheduled for Saturday (tomorrow). Besides, we had other things planned.

On Wednesday afternoon our friends Mike and Jodi Hall from Mesa and their granddaughter Swayzie checked in to the KOA Campground about a mile down the road from us. Donna prepared a potato salad and pounded chicken breasts which she seasoned with a dry rub and we went to their site at the KOA. Donna grilled the chicken there and we had dinner together at the picnic table in their site.

Thursday morning we met up with them and drove nine miles east to Mesa Verde National Park. Mike and I both have America the Beautiful Senior Lifetime Multi-agency passes that get us into National Parks and other places free of charge. We drove about 26 miles into the park to the Wetherill Mesa area where we parked and hiked to the Step House. This is a cliff dwelling in an alcove facing northeast on the steep side of the mesa. It’s well protected from the elements. The hiking loop was about a mile long in total and we dropped about 100 feet down the side of the mesa.

They think 30 or 40 people lived here in 500-600 AD and again around 1200 AD.

Last night we joined the Halls for dinner again. This time Mike grilled pork chops. We all eat well, even when we’re roughing it.

This morning we met up again and they followed us up to Dolores where we hiked up the trail from the Canyon of the Ancients Visitor Center to the Escalante Pueblo and the McPhee Reservoir overlook.

These ruins date back to 1100 AD.

By the time we made it back down to the parking lot, it was lunch time. We drove through the town of Dolores and found Montezuma Mexican restaurant. Donna had heard good reports about the food there and they turned out to be well-founded. We sat on the back patio deck right next to the Dolores River and enjoyed some really tasty dishes.

Tonight we’ll meet up with Halls again to go to the fairgrounds for the rodeo. Donna bought tickets for all five of us a couple of weeks ago and we have reserved seats.

The pickleball club is having a social at Montezuma’s in Dolores on Sunday afternoon, so we’ll go there again. The Halls are scheduled to head out to visit friends in Ignacio Sunday morning before they return to Mesa, Arizona.

The weather has been on the warm side with daily highs in the upper 80s and even 90 degrees. This weekend is supposed to be warmer – well into the 90s. We might see 100 degrees before we leave next Thursday. I need to start planning a route out of 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!