Category Archives: Arizona

Burning Fuel

Yesterday was a quiet day at our end of the campground. Phon D Sutton Recreation Area has three paved parking lots. We’re at the end of the last lot – the pavement ends a few hundred feet from our windshield. The second lot has been taken over by an RV singles group (people that are on the road alone or joined the group as singles). That lot is just about full. They have a group leader coordinating activities. We don’t see or hear them from our place though.

Donna went out for a run yesterday as she continues to train for the duathlon in March. I cleaned the windows on the coach. Later I rode to the grocery store. I’ll have to make another run to the store today as I didn’t have enough room for everything yesterday. It seems like I put 20 or 30 miles on the scooter every time I go somewhere. Nothing is close to our location. It’s a good thing the scooter got 67 miles per gallon at the last fill-up.

The other thing that’s burning fuel here is our generator. I’ve been running it for a couple of hours every morning and evening – about four hours total per day. In the morning, I run the heat pumps while the generator tops up the battery bank. During the day, the inverter provides power for laptops, microwave, Vitamix, etc. By evening I need to top up the batteries again.

One of our neighbors here gave us oranges the other day. She has a sister in the area who has orange trees on her property. She has more oranges than she knows what to do with. On Sunday, Dara and Rob gave us tangelos and oranges from their trees. So we have an abundance of fresh citrus fruit and it’s good!

Yesterday afternoon, I went for a hike up a horse trail that Donna told me about. Parts of the trail were very steep and the footing was treacherous in places. Reaching the top of the ridge was worth it though. Here in the desert, you have to watch your step. Things will poke, scratch or bite. I didn’t see anything too dangerous other than the usual prickly flora. I took a few photos of the view and interesting cacti. The photo of the trail doesn’t do it justice – it’s much steeper than it looks.

Horse trial up the ridge - it's much steeper than it looks

Horse trial up the ridge – much steeper than it looks

A thorny barrel cactus

A thorny barrel cactus

Looking east towards Pass Mountain

Looking east toward Pass Mountain

Giant Suguaro

Giant saguaro

A uniquely shaped suguaro

A uniquely shaped saguaro

Last night, Donna cooked shrimp in a cast iron skillet on our new induction cooktop. She pan-fried corned tortillas and made chipotle-tequila shrimp tostadas with lime cream. It was a tasty treat!

Chipotle shrimp tostadas

Chipotle-tequila shrimp tostadas

Donna was up early today. She went to Usery Park to meet up with friends. They are hiking the trail up to the Wind Cave on Pass Mountain. I’ll finish the grocery shopping. Later, our friends Mark and Emily Fagan will join us with their fifth-wheel trailer. We’ll have new neighbors! You can read their interesting story and view beautiful photography at their site.

 

 

 

 

 

Fluff N Clean

We stayed busy yesterday. After I posted to the blog, Donna went for a challenging bike ride. Every bike ride from here is challenging. It’s an incline leaving our site and then from the Bush Highway you climb Kong Hill up Power Road or you climb over Usery Pass where the summit is 2,115 feet. Yesterday, Donna chose to go up Kong and made a 26-mile loop.

I showered and gathered up our laundry. When we’re dry camped, we don’t use our washing machine. It  uses too much water. As I was getting ready to leave, I was pleasantly surprised to see Mark and Emily Fagan park their truck alongside our rig. Mark and Emily are full-timers that blog at http://roadslesstraveled.us/. We met them in San Diego after Donna connected with Emily online. We hope they join us here at the Phon D Sutton Recreation Area with their fifth wheel trailer. We had a short visit and I gave them the grand tour of our new home.

I split the laundry load between a backpack and a cloth tote bag that I hung between my knees on the scooter. I rode to the Laundromat at the corner of Power Road and Main Street, about 11 miles from here. What was I thinking? It’s Sunday and the Laundromat was busy! Sometimes I forget what day of the week it is. It was a good thing the the Fluff N Clean Laundromat has lots of machines.

View from Kong Hill - look for the river

View from Kong Hill – look for the river

By the time I came back from the Laundromat, Donna had completed her bike ride and showered. She told me we would have more visitors. Her friend, Dara and her husband Ron Schulenberg, paid us a visit. Donna and Dara used to bike together when we lived here. After we visited for a while, Donna, Dara and Ron went for a hike along the river. I didn’t join them because I had one more chore on my agenda. Our scooter has been a dusty mess since we were in Quartzsite. I couldn’t stand it any longer. I rode to a self-serve car wash and power-washed the scooter. They had a soft water rinse to avoid water spots and the scooter looks good again.

Ron and Dara by the Salt River

Ron and Dara by the Salt River

I don’t think I mentioned it before, but last Friday, on the way back from Apache Junction, we made a stop in our old neighborhood. We visited our old neighbor and friend, Lana Jansen. Lana is letting us use her address to receive our mail and some items we ordered while we were in Quartzsite. She had our new induction cooktop already.

Cast iron skillet on the induction cooktop

Cast iron skillet on the induction cooktop

Last night, Donna tried out the induction cooktop for the first time. She put some oil in her Lodge* cast iron skillet, placed it on the cooktop and set the heat to medium (five on a scale of 10). She was preparing crab cakes. A couple of minutes later, the pan began smoking as the oil was getting too hot! There will be a learning curve with induction cooking – but the crab cakes came out fine.

Crab cake with sweet potato and green beans

Crab cake with sweet potato and green beans

Today, I want to scratch a couple more items off of my “to do” list and hike up a trail Donna told me about.

 

*Just so you know, if you decide to purchase one of these through the Amazon link in this post, I’ll earn a small commission. It’ll go into the beer fund. Thanks!

 

Head Knocker

Donna had a great day yesterday. She had no particular plan – nothing that absolutely had to happen. She went out for what ended up as a 5-mile run. She ran on the horse trails up to and over a ridge and back down by the river. She had a lot of fun exploring the area. Then she took an afternoon nap. She said it was a perfect day.

I had a mission to complete. Our kitchen faucet needed to be replaced. I rode the scooter over Usery Pass. I remembered seeing faucets for sale at Gene’s RV in Apache Junction. I didn’t look too closely when we were there on Thursday. I didn’t know at the time that I would need a new one.

House on the top of a hill near Usery Pass

House on the top of a hill near Usery Pass

The selection of kitchen faucets at Gene’s RV wasn’t what I was looking for. I ended up going to Home Depot where I found a Delta Grant* kitchen faucet. It’s a single handle with a single pillar base. It has a removable head that switches from streaming water to spraying. I also bought a plumber’s basin wrench, thinking this may make the job go easier.

On the way back from Home Depot i stopped at a roadside park where Power Road becomes Bush Highway and snapped a picture of Red Mountain.

Red Mountain across the Salt River

Red Mountain across the Salt River

When I got home, I got busy with the replacement project. The old faucet was a Moen. Looking underneath the sink, I couldn’t understand how it was attached. The faucet has a 1-3/8 inch pipe coming through the countertop that serves as a mount. The pipe is also the conduit for the hot and cold copper supply tubes and the flexible sprayer tubes. All of these tubes are packed fairly tight in the pipe.

I searched online and found Moen faucet replacement instructions. It turns out that along with all the tubing in the pipe, there’s a threaded stud with a nut holding the pipe against a mounting plate. I would’ve taken a few pictures, but it was so tight in the cabinet under the sink, I didn’t try. I pulled the copper supply lines and bent them away from each other. I finally found the stud, which is hollow and serves double duty as the supply for the sprayer.

First I had to remove the sprayer hose. This wasn’t so easy. The basin wrench I bought was no help. After a bit of trial and error, banging my head against the counter and basin along with a few choice words, I found a way to get a 15mm open ended wrench on the sprayer nut. Once I removed the sprayer hose, I could see where the nut holding the stud against the mounting plate was. Of course, over time, the stud corroded and removing this nut was no fun at all. I have bumps and sore spots on my head today from hitting it repeatedly against the basin and cabinet shelf. Perseverance paid off and I finally had the Moen faucet out.

When I read various instructions on the Moen faucet online, they all agreed on one thing. Removing an old Moen faucet is the hardest part. This is true. Installing the new Delta faucet was straightforward. The mounting system they use is much more sensible. But I hit another snag. The Delta supply tubes are PEX with 3/8″ compression fittings. The PEX supply line fittings in our coach are 1/2″ pipe thread.

I got back on the scooter and made the 8-mile (each way) trip to Ace Hardware. After searching through various plumbing fittings, I found 1/2″ pipe to  3/8″ compression adapters. Woo-hoo. Home free now. The adapters worked perfectly and the installation was complete in no time. I would estimate the time spent removing the old faucet was over an hour. Installing the new one took 15 minutes (plus the time to go find the adapters).

New Delta faucet

New Delta faucet

Once that project was complete, Donna and I took a short walk along the river. I snapped a couple of photos. We came back to the coach and sat outside in our new director’s chairs. I enjoyed a cold beer. I was feeling a little beat up from working under the kitchen sink.

View to the north - look closely and you'll see the fountain in Fountain Hills

View to the north – look closely and you’ll see the fountain in Fountain Hills

Giant suguaro - this one is probably over 100 years old

Giant saguaro

The camp host stopped by and we chatted while we watched the sunset.

high, thin clouds make a spectacular sunset

High, thin clouds make a spectacular sunset

A trip to the laundromat is on my agenda today. We don’t use our washing machine while we’re dry camped.

 

*Just so you know, if you decide to purchase one of these through the Amazon link in this post, I’ll earn a small commission. It’ll go into the beer fund. Thanks!

 

 

 

Wild Horses

My last post was written while we were having the coach serviced. One thing I didn’t mention in that post was the wildlife we’ve seen here in the Tonto National Forest. On Thursday evening, I saw a wild horse walking along the Salt River.  On Friday morning, as we were driving out of the recreation area, Donna spotted five wild horses near the road. Our neighbors told us the horses occasionally come right through the parking lot at the Phon D Sutton Recreation Area.

Driving up Usery Pass, we saw a dead javelina on the side of the road. I’ve seen these animals in this area before. Although most people think these are wild pigs, they’re actually members of the peccary family. A peccary is a hoofed mammal originally from South America.

Last evening, just before dark, herons flew into a stand of trees by the river next to our site. This desert is full of wildlife!

Another type of wildlife showed up later last night. Four carloads of what I would guess are college age kids parked near us and walked down to the river. They didn’t disturb us. This morning their cars are still here so they must have brought sleeping bags or maybe even tents. I looked at the passes hung in their cars – they aren’t valid. They haven’t entered the date and time of arrival – they probably use the same six dollar pass over and over until they get caught.

On Thursday, I wrote about dropping the trailer and locking it up while we had the coach serviced. When we returned, we hitched up the trailer and moved to the eastern lot of the recreational area. This lot has a better view and Donna’s T-Mobile service is great here which was not the case just a few hundred yards away where we were parked before. On Friday morning, we dropped and locked the trailer again. This time we had to go back to the dealer and have the toilet seal replaced.

We also had the house batteries replaced. When we bought the coach, the deal was to include new batteries. They installed two new 12-volt chassis batteries before we took delivery. They told us that the four 6-volt house (coach) batteries tested good. This turned out to be wrong. The house batteries wouldn’t hold a charge. They were good to their word though – they replaced them at no charge to us. After their guy, Tim, installed the batteries, I looked them over. I told Tim we had a problem. We had one mismatched battery – one of the batteries in the bank of four was an 8-volt battery!

He pulled the mismatched battery and had a correct one delivered. We charged the battery bank while he removed and repaired the toilet.

There’s always something when you have a house that rolls down the road. Last night, while cleaning the coach, Donna saw water drip in the cabinet under the faucet. I got under there with a flashlight and tightened the fittings. A few minutes later, another drop fell. I looked again and discovered that it’s coming from the copper piping that’s part of the faucet. I think I’ll have to replace the whole thing. The only other option would be to silver solder the pipe, but I think that may be more work than it’s worth.

I rode the scooter over to Ace Hardware and looked at the faucets they had. I also picked up some 3M Command adhesive strips that Donna wanted for hanging some art. The Red, White and Brew restaurant/pub was by the hardware store, so I stopped in for a beer. I sat with my old friends, Mike Hall and John Huff. Mike offered us courtesy parking at his place anytime we want. He has a large workshop behind the house with a large RV gate. He also has a dump station, water and electricity! At some point, we’ll surely take him up on the offer.

Last night we invited our neighbors, Kevin and Barbara, for snacks and cocktails. They’re from Kansas, Kevin works with heavy equipment moving dirt. His work takes him through Kansas and Nebraska. They live in their fifth wheel trailer, going wherever his work takes him in the summer. They spend the winter months in Arizona, mostly dry camping.

Today, I’ll scooter over to Apache Junction and look at more faucets. I need to repair the leak today. Meanwhile, we leaving the water pump turned off unless we need water and we’re catching the drip in a cup.

Low Voltage

The weather here in Quartzsite has been ideal. Overnight, the temperature drops to the low 50s or high 40s. The daytime warms quickly and the thermometer hits the mid to upper 70s in the afternoon. A breeze out of the north picks up as the day warms, but I wouldn’t call it windy.

Yesterday, Donna continued working on formatting her Kindle book for publication. I spent the morning cleaning and treating the rubber slide-out seals. I used a three-step process. Each step employs a treated cloth wipe. The first two wipes are special cleaners and surface preparation. The third wipe contains Krytox, a fluorocarbon lubricant. This treatment keeps the seals pliable and allows the slides to move over the seals smoothly.

After lunch, Donna wanted to go into town and look around. We scootered over the I-10 overpass to Main Street. I stopped at an RV lot set up by Orange County RV (from California) which had six or seven high-end RVs for sale. We took off our shoes and entered a Liberty Coach built on a Prevost chassis. This million-dollar-plus coach was a treat. I took a couple of interior photos, but the pictures don’t do it justice. The wood work and trimmings are unbelievable. The walls were suede trimmed with tooled leather. The floor was Travertine tile.

Liberty Coach interior - tooled leather trim

Liberty Coach interior – tooled leather trim

Liberty Coach interior

Liberty Coach interior

We walked through a few more coaches, a Tiffin Zephyr, a Country Coach built on a Prevost chassis and a few others. A couple of the Prevost-based coaches were over the top – almost gaudy. Checking out the Tiffin Zephyr, Monaco Dynasty and Holiday Rambler Navigator, Donna remarked that she was happy with our Alpine Coach and felt that the quality was right up there with these coaches.

We rode through town, then crossed I-10 to the marketplace on the south side near the big tent. The marketplace was like a carnival midway at a fair. It was filled with vendors and food sellers (mostly fried foods). After sampling some jerky at a vendor table, we bought bought sea salt and black pepper jerky, cranberry-jalapeno jerky and black label ale jerky.

Quartzsite marketplace

Quartzsite marketplace

We returned to our site by 3pm. The Dish Network installer was supposed to come out between 3:30 and 4pm. He called a little past 4pm and I gave him directions. To my surprise, he drove straight to our coach in the middle of a desert filled with thousands of coaches.

He went to work quickly. He had the dome programmed and the receiver connected in no time. Then we hit a snag. The dish in the satellite dome wouldn’t find and lock on to the correct satellites. I suggested firing up the generator to make sure we didn’t have low voltage coming from the inverter. He didn’t think that was an issue and continued to work through diagnostic steps.

After 30 minutes or so, he said he thought I had a bad motherboard on the dome. Then he said, “Why don’t you fire up the generator, just to cover all of the bases.” I started the generator. A few minutes later the dome was locked onto satellites 110, 119 and 129, just like it should. These electronic devices are sensitive to voltage! I’d had the inverter running most of the day – that’s why I suggested starting the generator in the first place.

Last night we watched a few episodes of Modern Family in high definition. I’m liking this!

Today, we’ve decided it’s time to move on. Experiencing the big Quartzsite show in the desert was a worthwhile experience, but I’ve had my fill. This many people in the desert creates some stress. Most people have their sand toys and I’m tired of dealing with all the dust they kick up. We’ll kick the tires and light the fires this morning and head back to Mesa.

 

Bumper-to-Bumper

Yesterday was a work day for Donna. She stayed in the coach and worked on a Kindle book she’s publishing. After breakfast, I went back to the big tent to sign up for Dish Network. I didn’t expect the tent to be as crowded as it was over the weekend. I was wrong. It was more crowded than ever. It took me about 15 minutes to make my way to the RV Connection booth located about 3/4 of the way down the tent. If I had known how crowded it was, I would have walked around the tent and entered from the rear.

The woman I spoke to the day before, Chris, set me up with a Dish Network account. Someone will come to our motorhome out here in the desert this afternoon and hook up the satellite receiver.

I stopped at another vendor outside of the tent. We looked at camp chairs on Saturday and decided to buy large, heavy duty director’s chairs that have a small folding table on the side. I spent some time looking at them and thinking of how to get them home on the scooter. I went for it. I bought two chairs and carried them out to the scooter. A little ingenuity with bungee cords had them securely fastened on the back.

Folding chairs strapped to the scooter

Folding chairs strapped to the scooter

This free, dispersed camping around Quartzsite is getting expensive. I have to stop going to the big tent!

Later, I rode to town to buy drinking water. The traffic was crazy. Crossing the overpass to get into town was a bumper-to-bumper affair. Once I made it to the main drag in Quartzsite, I rode north to the grocery store. The southbound traffic was backed up for more than half a mile. I don’t know the reason for this, other than there are more vehicles in town than the intersections can support. After I picked up a case of drinking water, I took an alternate route back. It didn’t help, every way out of town was backed up.

Donna took a break from her work and went for a hike in the hills. She found a cave in the hill south of us. She climbed up a trail and had a great view of the desert. Too bad I can’t get the pictures she took on her cell phone to download to my laptop. There’s some setting that blocks me from accessing the photos. And she can’t send them to me because she only has Edge service rather than her normal 4G.

I explored a little on the scooter. I think when we leave, we’ll go west on Dome Rock Road a couple of miles to the I-10 on-ramp, then head east on I-10. That way we’ll avoid the madness in Quartzsite.

Today I’ll explore a little more while Donna works. I don’t know how much longer we’ll stay here. I’m starting to get the hitch itch.

 

Always Something to Learn

The big tent show in Quartzsite opened on Saturday. Donna and I rode over on the scooter. It’s about five miles east of our boondocking location. The traffic was heavy, but the scooter made it easy to get in and park near the entrance.

Our first order of business was to look at induction cooking. This was a topic we had no experience with. When we bought our coach, we were told it had a new induction cooktop. We knew that magnetic induction would only work with pans made from ferrous material. Non-magnetic materials such as aluminum alloy or stainless steel do not respond to induction – and that’s all we had. Before leaving the RV park in Mesa, Donna bought a Lodge 12″ cast-iron skillet* to try her hand at induction cooking. On Saturday morning, she struggled to cook bacon. The pan heated slowly and it took well over an hour to cook 12 strips of bacon! Something was clearly wrong here.

We spent a couple of hours sitting through a demo by Bob Welch of Healthcraft. Healthcraft manufactures cookware optimized for induction cooking. We watched as he boiled water in less than two minutes. He cooked a chicken breast in 13 minutes and made a waterless, greaseless side dish of cabbage, carrots and potatoes. The cookware isn’t cheap; in fact, it’s quite expensive. Healthcraft cookware is very high-quality, made in the USA (Kansas). Most of the production is sent to Japan, where induction cooking is popular. There are Chinese alternatives on the market for less money, but as usual, you get what you pay for.

Induction cooking is suited to RVs because it’s so efficient. It takes very little energy to create a hot pan because the energy is concentrated on the cookware, not radiated to the atmosphere. We couldn’t figure out why our cooktop didn’t work like Bob’s demo. After discussing this with him, he could only offer that either our pan was not pure cast iron or something was wrong with our cooktop. At the end of the day, he lent one of his expensive skillets to us to try out.

From there, we walked through about half of the show. We saw a few things we would return to purchase. We bought new sheets for our bed. When we returned home, we put the cooktop to the test. I put the Healthcraft pan on the cooktop and turned the dial to high. I added a cup of water. Ten minutes later, the water was hot but still not boiling. Something wasn’t right.

I removed the drawer below the cooktop and used a flashlight to find the model number on the bottom. Google led me to the Dometic site where I found the answer. This is not an induction cooktop! It looks like one, but it’s actually an electric radiant heat ceramic cooktop. It’s weak and heats very slowly. Dang, we’ve been hoodwinked! I want to believe that the dealer didn’t know any better and wasn’t trying to fool us. I’ll talk to them when we return to Mesa. The cooktop wasn’t something I could test when I was inspecting the coach because I didn’t have the proper cookware. I wasn’t too worried about it because it was new.

Yesterday, we went back to the big tent. We walked through the rest of the show. I learned something else and this time, it was good news. Our rig has a satellite dome on top. I wasn’t too keen on it, because I’m spoiled by HD programming and didn’t want to get a standard definition receiver. I talked to the guys at the Direct TV booth. They would give me a portable HD dish and receiver if I signed up for a 12-month subscription. This sounded pretty good, but I wanted to check around. The portable dish can be problematic – it has to aimed precisely to pick up the satellite signal.

At the Dish Network booth, the guy told me my satellite dome would receive HD transmission from the Dish Network satellite! This was news to me. I took away some literature and thought I should do more research before committing to anything. At another booth, there was an independent satellite TV installer. They were authorized to install both Direct TV and Dish Network. The woman there gave me the straight scoop.

She told me my dome satellite antenna would receive HD from Dish Network, but could only process one channel at a time. This means the front TV and bedroom TV would be on the same channel, unless I used over-the-air antenna reception for one of the TVs. She told me they would send a tech out to our site, install an HD Dish Network receiver and make sure we had a good signal. All I had to do was sign up for Dish Network through them. She gave me literature and I brought it home with me to do more research.

I looked up our Winegard Roadtrip Minimax dome online. I found out that she was correct. It will function exactly as she said. Today, I’m signing up. I missed the NFL conference playoffs yesterday since we can’t get any over-the-air reception here at Dome Rock. The satellite receiver will change that. Our Winegard dome automatically seeks the proper satellite and locks in.

We bought a new Thermo Shield mattress pad for our bed. We almost passed on it because it was bulky and would be hard to transport on the scooter. The owner of the company, Jay Jensen, told us he would deliver to our location at Dome Rock, no charge!

Our last stop was back at Bob’s booth. Donna ordered the Healthcraft cookware. Later, I ordered a two-burner induction cooktop which I will install in our coach. We’re having the items shipped to a friend’s house in Mesa and will pick them up next week.

While I was researching and ordering online, we had a surprise phone call. Our friends, Keith and Suzanne Gallaway from Phoenix, were in the area and wanted to stop by. They were on their way home from a weekend at Lake Havasu. Keith is the service manager at Lunde’s Peoria Volkswagen. They have a large trailer that is all decked out in VW graphics that they sell VW Driver Gear out of. Last weekend, there was a big VW meet at Lake Havasu called Buses by the Bridge. I think Keith told me there was somewhere around 370 old VW buses there. They attend several VW enthusiast shows each year and sell the VW Driver Gear clothing and accessories.

Keith and the VW Driver Gear Trailer

Keith and the VW Driver Gear Trailer

They are thinking about buying an RV and traveling the country. They run a business called Cruise Planner where they offer various cruise vacation packages. You can check out their web site at travelthing.com.

It was fun having an unexpected visit. Keith and Suzanne gifted me a cool VW bus T-shirt. While we were checking out the trailer, Jay Jensen drove up in his pick-up truck and delivered our mattress pad.

Last night, we grilled sweet Italian chicken sausage for dinner served with zucchini and tomatoes.

Sweet Italian chicken sausage with zucchini and tomatoes

Sweet Italian chicken sausage with zucchini and tomatoes

Today, I’ll go back to the big tent and sign up for Dish Network. I also want to pick up a couple of camp chairs we looked at. Fun in the sun here in Arizona.

High, thin clouds made a spectacular sunset last night

High, thin clouds made a spectacular sunset last night

By the way, the new header photo is courtesy of Suzanne Gallaway.

 

*Just so you know, if you decide to purchase one of these through the Amazon link in this post, I’ll earn a small commission. It’ll go into the beer fund. Thanks!

 

 

 

Running on Empty

I spent most of the day Thursday preparing to move to Quartzsite. Donna had a number of errands. She rode the scooter to take a piano lesson from the teacher she had when we lived in Mesa. Then she stopped at Bed, Bath and Beyond. She must have enjoyed shopping there since she spent more than an hour in the store. When she returned and dropped off the goods from Bed, Bath and Beyond, she rode over to Sprouts and bought groceries. She came back from Sprouts with the scooter loaded. The under-seat storage compartment was full, she had a full grocery sack on the hook between her knees and a full backpack – $125 worth of groceries.

Grocery getter

Grocery getter

Then she walked across the street to WalMart and bought more! From WalMart she stopped at the salon in the strip mall for a mani-pedi. – a treat to herself for getting her edited manuscript back to her publisher. I walked over to the nail shop to retrieve the groceries.

Friday we were up and at it by 8am. I finished packing  a few odds and ends, then dumped and flushed our holding tanks. I put the wheel on the trailer jack. This made hooking the trailer up to the coach really easy. We rolled out of the RV park at 9:30.

While we traveled west on I-10, I was looking at the price of diesel fuel at truck stops. Near Tonopah, I glanced at the fuel gauge. I couldn’t understand why it looked like we had more fuel than when we left. Suddenly I realized this fuel gauge reads opposite of our old coach. I thought the fuel level was nearly full. Not so – it was nearly empty!

We had just passed a truck stop with diesel fuel at $3.71/gallon. The next exit was a couple of miles down the road. I took the exit and backtracked to the truck stop. I put $300 worth of fuel in the tank (80 gallons) and got back on the road. I was panicking about the fuel level because fuel gauges aren’t the most accurate instrument. Having never filled this tank, I didn’t know if we would be out of fuel right when the needle hit “E” or not. Eighty gallons of  fuel in our 100-gallon tank put the gauge near the full mark, so we probably could have gone another 120 miles or so.

About 10 miles east of Quartzsite, we started seeing groups of RVs boondocking in the desert. Some of the groups had signs – they obviously had pre-arranged a meet-up in the desert. Others seemed to just gravitate near each other. This is common. Although people take their RVs to the desert to get away from it all, they seem to still want some sort of association with other RVers out there – maybe there’s a sense of safety in numbers or just a need for social interaction.

Before we knew it, we rolled right through Quartzsite. We saw the big tent on the south side of I-10, near US95. This is where the vendors will be concentrated over the next 10 days. We pulled off of I-10 at the Dome Rock exit, about five miles west of town. We drove slowly back towards Quartzsite on the frontage road on the south side of the freeway.

We saw clusters of RVs and checked the access roads. The roads are just trails in the dirt and rock of the desert. I didn’t want to pull into a road that I couldn’t get turned around on. Backing the trailer onto the frontage road would be a real pain.

We found a likely looking spot and pulled off the road. I temporarily parked and we got out to reconnoiter the area on foot. After hiking around for about 20 minutes, we had a plan. We rolled a few hundred yards south of the road and parked the coach on a fairly level ridge top. We’re situated with the coach facing east, bringing the morning sunrise through the windshield. Our door and awning face to the south. It’s a nice spot. We don’t have anyone within 100 yards of us, but that could change as RVs are still pulling in and looking for a good site.

Our little piece of desert

Our little piece of desert

View from our door step

View from our door step

Donna fixed a chicken wrap with avocado for an afternoon snack, then we rode the scooter to the big tent. Friday was still a set-up day for the vendors – the show starts Saturday. We walked in and looked around. It seemed like we were the only ones previewing the show. It wasn’t completely set up yet, but Donna bought a hand-operated food chopper (salsa maker) from one of the vendors. When we were leaving, a security guy asked if we had vendor badges. He told us we couldn’t be there without them. We thanked him and left.

The Texas Star - a really cool old Flxible bus converted to an RV

The Texas Star – a really cool old Flxible bus converted to an RV – is one of our neighbors.

Last evening, we had cocktails outside and watched the sunset. It was very peaceful. After dinner, we continued with another episode of Breaking Bad. We are so totally hooked on this series.

Cocktail hour

Cocktail hour

Today, we’ll head back to the big tent and maybe look around town as well. Other than that, we have no plans.

Sunset at Dome Rock

Sunset at Dome Rock

 

Not Bored

People have asked me what I will do to keep from being bored in retirement. So far, boredom hasn’t been an issue. There are always people to meet, places to go or things to do. Having things to do isn’t always fun stuff though. The past few days, I’ve been working in the basement compartments. This is hard on the back and shoulders.

Yesterday, I washed our cargo trailer and the scooter. With the scooter clean and shiny, I rode it to WalMart where I bought an oil drain pan. My old oil drain pan was stolen when Those Dirty, Rotten Thieves took our trailer. I also picked up a gallon of Shell Rotella 15w-40 diesel motor oil for the motorhome. When the dipstick on the Cummins ISL engine in the motorhome shows the oil level at the add mark, you don’t add a quart like you would in a car. You add a gallon. The oil capacity of the Cummins ISL is more than six gallons!

I stopped at a motorcycle shop and bought two quarts of Amsoil MCF 10w-40 oil for the scooter. I also bought 75 – 90 weight synthetic GL-5 gear oil for the gear box on the scooter. Last week I ordered oil filters from the scooter from Amazon.com, they arrived on Monday. Changing the oil, oil filter and gear oil on the scooter kept me busy for a while. The Kymco scooter manual calls for oil change intervals of 3,000 miles. Although this seems short to me, I’ll follow the recommended interval.

Meanwhile, the interior of the coach is taking shape as Donna gets things organized. She’s been equally busy – riding her bike and running daily in preparation for a duathlon, practicing piano, and working. She finished editing her 13th book yesterday and is feeling good about that. Also this week, she contributed, upon request from editors, some organizing tips for articles that will appear in Real Simple magazine and at Glo.com.

Today, I’ll reorganize the cargo trailer. We’ve moved a few more things to the trailer. I’ll need to have everything in its place by the end of the day so I can load the scooter. I’ll also break out the extension ladder and get on the roof of the coach. I need to lube the Wineguard folding TV antenna – the gear on it is a little stiff. I also want to measure our high point, which is the satellite dome. Once I know our overall height, I can program that information into our Rand McNally RVND 7720 GPS.* I also need to update our weight in the GPS. I don’t know our exact axle weights right now, I’ll program the maximum gross vehicle weight of 31,000 lbs. This coach is capable of towing an additional 10,000 lbs. for a gross combined weight of 41,000lbs. The Rand McNally GPS takes height, weight and length into consideration when mapping our routes.

This is all in preparation of pulling out tomorrow. We’ll head west on I-10 about 140 miles to the town of Quartzsite. I don’t know our exact stopping point. At the intersection of I-10 and US95, we’ll probably take US95 south and look for a piece of desert to stake out.

The little town of Quartzsite becomes a hot bed of activity in January and February. There are gem and mineral shows, swap meets and of course, the big RV show. Vendors come from all over to cater to the thousands of RVs in Quartzsite at this time of year. According to Wikipedia, more than 1.5 million visitors come to Quartzsite annually, most of them visit in January and February. That’s a lot of visitors for a town with a population of around 4,000 people.

I lifted this information from the official Town of Quartzsite web page, they claim a higher number of visitors:

Over 2 Million Visitors a Year!

Quartzsite, Arizona, barely 18 miles east of the Colorado river, on I-10, may be the RV boondocking capital of the world. Quartzsite has become a mecca to visitors and exhibitors for rocks, gems, mineral specimens and fossils during the town’s famous two-month-long gem show and swap meet every January and February. From its humble beginnings the now-massive Quartzsite show has grown to RV-epic proportions with vendors offering everything under the Quartzsite sun.

I’ve heard many estimates of the number of visitors and RVs around Quartzsite. I doubt if anyone really has an accurate count. Hopefully we can find a suitable place to boondock on the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) public land around Quartzsite. We don’t know how long we’ll stay there. We aren’t sure of where we’ll go afterwards other than to say we’ll be back in the Phoenix area. We’ll find our way on the fly.

I’ll close today’s post with a picture of a coach that pulled in a couple of sites down from us the other day. It’s a 1998 Featherlite Vantare built on a 45′ Prevost chassis, powered by a hot-rodded 60 Series Detroit Diesel putting out more than 600 horsepower. I spoke to the owner. He is the original owner and has traveled all over the country (including a trip to Alaska) with his wife in the coach. They are from North Dakota where he ran a trucking business. I love these coaches, but with a price well over a million dollars (new) and several hundred thousand dollars used, I doubt if I will ever own one.

1998 Featherlite Vantare

1998 Featherlite Vantare

 

*Just so you know, if you decide to purchase one of these through the Amazon link in this post, I’ll earn a small commission. It’ll go into the beer fund. Thanks!

Lost and Found

Yesterday, I continued packing things in the basement compartments. It takes a bit of trial and error to get it right. I’ll probably have to re-arrange again once we’re on the road. I mentioned in my last post that I realized I was missing a watch I had packed away. As I was arranging things in the basement, I opened each container so I was sure of what I placing where. I opened a long, shallow container and voila – there was my watch along with some other items I was also missing!

I rode the scooter over to Home Depot. I needed to buy another furniture blanket and some foam pipe insulation. When I walked into the store, the greeter girl asked if she could help me find anything. I told her I was looking for a furniture blanket. She said, “We don’t have those.” I asked her where the moving supplies, such as cardboard boxes were located. She said, “Aisle two, but I’ve never seen furniture blankets there.” I thanked her and walked to aisle two. Above the stack of cardboard, I found furniture blankets, just like at the Home Depot in San Diego.

I needed the furniture blanket to pack the two extra folding dining chairs. I didn’t want to ding the wood or wreck the upholstery. They were stored in our wardrobe, but we needed that space for Donna’s piano stand and chair and some other things. I also wanted foam pipe insulation to wrap the top foot or so of the extension ladder. I didn’t want to lay the metal ladder against the paint on the top cove of the motorhome when I use it to access the roof. I put the pipe insulation on the side rails of the ladder and held it in place with duct tape. This worked well.

While I was out, I stopped at Big Tex Trailer Sales on Main Street. I bought a wheel caster to use on the trailer. It fits on the foot of the front jack. It’s held in place with a pin, so it’s quick to install or remove. With it installed, I should be able to push the trailer by hand and place it where ever I want it. This will make “parking” the trailer a lot easier when we need we have a back-in rather than a pullthrough site.

Although the days are warm and sunny with temperatures in the low 70s, the nights are cool. Our coach is equipped with two – 15,000 BTU air conditioners which are also heat pumps. Heat pumps are a very efficient way to heat a space, as long as the outside air temperature isn’t too cold (they don’t work well below freezing temperature). We’ve been setting the heat pumps to 63 degrees at night. I think this is great! Our last coach didn’t have heat pumps. If we wanted heat, we had to plug in a space heater or turn on the propane gas furnace. The heat pumps on this coach don’t use propane, only a relatively small amount of electricity to transfer heat. If we were in an area where it’s really cold (below freezing), then I would have turn on the propane gas furnace.

Donna has been busy. She needs to get a manuscript in to her publisher today. I’ll change the motor oil and filter on the scooter and also change the gear oil. I’ll get a head start on organizing the trailer. I’m a little sore and tired from moving things around in the basement compartments yesterday.