Category Archives: Grilling

Galloping Goose

It was too windy on Tuesday to play pickleball. We’ve had warm, dry weather and gusty winds – a bad circumstance for fire danger. Two fires have been burning since lightning strikes ignited them last Saturday. On Sunday, I saw a small helicopter flying overhead. It was apparently being used to fight the fires. The smaller fire was northeast of Dolores and we could see and smell smoke from that fire when we played pickleball on Monday. This fire is called the Loading Pen Fire and appears to be contained.

The other fire is between Mancos and Durango and it’s called the East Canyon Fire. On Tuesday, I saw a large Chinook helicopter outfitted to carry water or fire suppressant flying directly over us at La Mesa RV Park in Cortez, Colorado. Presumably it was heading to the Cortez airport for refueling. I don’t understand why the powers that be used a small helicopter initially and only brought out the big unit when the fire grew to 1,100 acres and people had to evacuate. I understand it’s less costly to operate the smaller helicopter, but if it’s not able to contain the fire and then you have to bring out the big aircraft, what have you saved? The big Chinook flew over about an hour ago, so it’s still in service fighting the fire.

Donna and I did our weekly grocery run at Safeway on Tuesday. Safeway has the better meat selections – they have meat cutters onsite – while the City Market seems to have better produce. We bought a couple of very nice looking beef filet mignon steaks to grill. I also bought a lean top round cut for London broil to use for jerky. I’m still tweaking my jerky recipe and it’s really good! I prepped the jerky and had it marinating in the refrigerator Tuesday afternoon. While we were going through the produce section of the store, I saw a variety of fruit that cracked me up – they looked like the animations I’ve seen of the Wuhan coronavirus. It’s called kiwano, sometimes referred to as horned melon.

I mentioned in my last post about the rough night Ozark the cat had over the weekend. I’m happy to report she’s recovering with no sign of infection and not limping. I’m not sure if her nails will regenerate normally – time will tell.

Ozark the cat resting and recovering with Donna

We played pickleball Wednesday morning, hitting the courts at 8am and played for two hours. When we came home, I started smoking the jerky on the Traeger smoker/grill. I pulled the jerky from the smoker at 2pm. After cleaning up, we drove up to Dolores – a little over 10 miles northeast of here. We wanted to check out the train museum and the farmers’ market they have from 4pm to 7pm on Wednesdays.

The train museum turned out to be closed due to the pandemic. I shot a photo of the Galloping Goose in front of the museum. The Galloping Goose is one of seven railcars made by the Rio Grande Southern Railroad (RGS) in the 1930s. Six of them are still around. These railcars were originally designed to haul mail. The RGS was financially strapped at the time and it was too costly to run steam engines to haul mail. So they developed what they called “motors” from modified automobiles – Buick and Pierce Arrow.

The motor in Dolores is Galloping Goose number five. It was re-bodied with a Wayne bus body in 1945 and the power unit upgraded to a war surplus GMC engine. In 1950, RGS lost the mail contract – it was more efficient to use road carriers by then. RGS modified four of the motors by cutting windows in the compartment and installing seating and put them into service as tourist rides – this is when the Galloping Goose name was added to the railcars. Goose number five was restored in 1998 and runs occasionally on the Cumbres and Toltec Line (we saw a steam engine on that line in New Mexico – pics here) and on the Durango and Silverton tourist line.

We left the museum and walked along Central Avenue. Dolores is an old western town in a narrow gulch along the Dolores River. The town was established in 1900 and was serviced by the Rio Grande Southern Railroad. There are only three or four east-west roads in the town which is about one and a half miles long and only a quarter of mile wide (north-south).

Typical building on Central Ave, Dolores

The farmers’ market was next to the museum in Flanders Park behind City Hall. It was small but we enjoyed walking through and picking out a few items – mostly farm fresh produce and also some homemade salsa.

Fresh produce at Dolores farmers’ market

After we returned from the trip to Dolores, I grilled the filet mignon we bought at Safeway on the Weber Q. I had already cleaned the grill grates on the Weber with the pumice bricks I mentioned in my last post.

Donna made baked potatoes and steamed fresh broccoli from the farmers’ market. Farm fresh broccoli is head and shoulders above the broccoli we typically find at the supermarkets. She also sauteed mushrooms and onions to go with the filets.

Our plans are coming together for us to make our way up to the northwest when we leave here at the end of the month. We plan to visit my oldest daughter’s family in western Washington – by the way, yesterday was Alana’s birthday. I must be really getting old – my daughter turned 40 years old!

There’s no sign of rain in the long-range forecast. The temperatures should reach the mid-80s through the weekend, then we’ll see daily highs in the 90s next week.

*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!

Saturday Night’s Alright

We had quite a weekend here in Cortez, Colorado. On Saturday morning, Donna and I went into town for the Cortez Farmers’ Market. The market is open on Saturdays from 7:30am to 11am. It just opened last week. We didn’t make it there until 10am, but they still had a lot of items on offer and shoppers as well. Everyone was good about social distancing and masks were worn by just about everyone there.

Donna found a few items on her shopping list – and a few that weren’t on the list, including a bag of blue popcorn. When we left, we headed south on Oak Street, which became County Road 25. We were just driving and enjoying the scenery in Midget-San with the top down. It looked like Road 25 would take us to the mountains south of town.

Before we reached the mountains, the road turned to the east. It was a nice drive with houses well-spaced on ranch land. I saw a guy outside of his barn give us a quizzical look as we passed by. I assumed he didn’t see many old British sports cars out here. Half a mile later, I understood his look. A gate blocked the road with a sign saying “Landfill Closed.” This road dead-ended at the county landfill. No wonder he thought it was odd for us to be going this way in a small car.

Despite the long range weather forecast calling for sunny weather, a thunderstorm moved into the area after we returned to La Mesa RV Park. We had a few raindrops and gusty winds. A few RVs pulled into the park for an overnight stay.

Later, Donna and I watched a few episodes of “Shooter” on NetFlix. Before we went to bed, I opened the door and took a look outside to confirm the trailer was locked, then I locked up and went to bed. I fell asleep right away, but Donna said she heard a brief cat fight before she went to sleep.

When we got up Sunday morning, Donna asked if I’d seen Ozark the cat. I hadn’t. She said Ozark never came to bed with her – she usually sleeps next to Donna. Then she heard a cat meowing. It sounded like Ozark and the sound appeared to be coming from outside. Sure enough, Ozark spent the night outside – she was in the generator compartment at the front of the coach. This is only the third time she has left the coach on her own in the last five years. She must have darted out when I checked if the trailer was locked the night before. She was happy to come to Donna and get back inside. She went straight to her food bowl.

Later, we noticed her licking her paws and saw she had injuries. A couple of nails were pulled from her back paws. I irrigated them with hydrogen peroxide while Donna held her and she was okay with it. We’ll have to keep a close eye on her for any sign of infection. I guess Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting!

Our neighbor was getting ready to leave as Donna went out to look for Ozark. She told Donna that a bobcat had come into the park – they saw it come from the field behind us. We don’t know if Ozark tangled with the bobcat or she got into it with another cat that roams the park.

Donna went for a bike ride and followed the six-mile route out to the county landfill. She came back through town and learned that the Wild Edge Brewing Collective was opening for business at 3pm. They set up five tables on the sidewalk – well-spaced – and required masks when ordering or not at a table. We went there to enjoy the fresh air and a cold one or two in the late afternoon.

While Donna was on her bike ride, I cleaned the Traeger wood-pellet fired smoker-grill. I removed the ash from the fire pot and bottom of the pit. Then I used a grill brick to clean the grill grates. I bought a three-pack of grill bricks from Amazon. These bricks are made from pumice and measure about 2-3/4″ x 4″ and 1-3/4 deep. I found this to be a very handy size and easy to use.

Although the pumice bricks are porous and somewhat soft, they are a bit brittle. When I removed the plastic covering, I saw a crack in the brick. A chunk came off one corner. Gently scrubbing back and forth with the brick created grooves where it contacted the grill grates. This soon made the brick “wrap around” the grates to clean the sides. I was able to hold the brick at an angle and use the groove closest to the end to clean further down the sides and under the grate. It was really easy and effective – I’m sold on this method of cleaning the grill. I should mention that I did this with the grill cold. The Traeger has ceramic coated grates and the pumice didn’t leave a scratch.

Grooves in the grill brick – note broken piece from the corner

I should easily get half a dozen or more cleanings from one brick. I bought a pack of three. I’ll keep this one for the Traeger and dedicate one for the Weber Q and have one left over.

Since yesterday was National Bourbon Day, I poured a dram of Blanton’s Single Barrel Bourbon after dinner. Then opened a bottle of 1792 Bourbon while we watched another two episodes of “Shooter.” The series is a little disappointing – it gets less believable as each episode unfolds. It’s too bad – the books and the original movie were good.

If the weather guessers have it right, we should expect a windy day tomorrow and highs in the mid to upper 80s this week with no rain in the forecast.

Mesa Verde

The rain moved out of the area Saturday afternoon and once again, we had clear blue skies. The week began with cooler temperatures with daily highs around 70 degrees. There were strong winds on Monday and Tuesday with gusts up to 40mph. The wind settled down by Wednesday and the temperatures got warmer – we hit 80 on Wednesday.

On Thursday morning, Donna and I drove east on US160 about 8 miles to the entrance of Mesa Verde National Park. Mesa Verde National Park was established on 52,485 acres of land in 1906. Currently, the park is only partially open with no guided tours, museums or shops open. We took the driving tour of Chapin Mesa and made several stops at point of interest.

Our first stop was at the Montezuma Valley overlook.

Montezuma Valley overlook – view west-northwest to Cortez and beyond

The ridge to the north of the overlook is called The Knife Edge.

The Knife Edge – people on the trail in the lower left of the photo provide scale

Our next stop was the highest point in Mesa Verde National Park – Park Point Overlook – where a fire lookout tower was located.

On a clear day, the visibility from the lookout tower is said to be 100 miles!

Looking northeast from Park Point – that’s Knife Edge in the upper-center of the photo

The road surface in the park was smooth pavement and speed limits ranged from 25mph to 45mph. About 10 miles in, the road forked. We stayed left which kept us on Chapin Mesa. Going right takes you to Wetherill Mesa. There was very little traffic and we ended up seeing the same three or four cars at each stop along the way.

Our next stop was at Spruce Tree Terrace. We thought we would hike down the trail for a self-guided tour of the cliff dwellings there, but a short way down the trail, we found it to be closed.

The cliff dwellings were built by shaping sandstone into blocks and stacking them. These were made in the 12th century. The area was abandoned after a series of severe and prolonged droughts. Around 1285, the inhabitants moved south to New Mexico and Arizona.

These appear to be storage structures next to the Spruce Tree House on the right and left – center of the photo

From there, we drove the six-mile Cliff Palace Loop and stopped to view the Cliff Palace.

Again, the trail was closed so we couldn’t hike down to the ruins, we could only view them from a point above. Usually they have a ranger-guided hike that requires tickets to get down to the dwellings and climb four ladders for up-close viewing. We had covered about 20 miles at this point and spent over two hours in the park. And it was getting hot! It was time to head back.

Instead of going back to La Mesa RV Park, we went east on US160 to the little town of Mancos. We stopped for lunch there at Hamburger Haven. They were open for take-out and we both opted for the diced green chili and cheese burger. We found a picnic table in the shade in the park next to Hamburger Haven and dined al fresco. The burgers weren’t up to the standard set by Blake’s in Albuquerque, but it was a good choice nonetheless.

We played pickleball in town three days this week. Other than that, our activity has been limited to grocery shopping and grilling. Donna had a couple of writing assignments to complete and did a live webinar on Wednesday evening. I’ve been reading a lot and puffing on a daily cigar.

Donna grilled honey-sriracha chicken again on Saturday and served it with grilled zucchini spears and cauliflower mash this time.

On Sunday, Donna cooked up a favorite we haven’t had since we hit the road – lomo saltado which is a Peruvian dish made with flank steak. It’s delicious, but the picture wasn’t so great. I had mixed lighting and should have closed the window blind.

Donna fixed another old favorite – New Mexico style pork chili verde served over lightly fried corn tortillas and topped with a fried egg.

Last night, she tried another foil-wrapped grill recipe – salmon with another honey sriracha glaze. Foil wrapping fish has a disadvantage though – it’s easy to overcook the fish as it’s hard to judge when to take it off of the grill. But it was good.

Honey-sriracha salmon with grilled bok choy

So, we continue to eat well here in Cortez, Colorado.

The forecast calls for daily highs in the upper 80s for the week ahead. We’ll be using the air conditioners no doubt. I don’t expect to see any rain and hopefully, we won’t have any more of the gusty winds.

Virtual Birthday

Our month-long stay in Springerville, Arizona is coming to an end. There’s so much to see around here, we’ll surely return as we didn’t get a chance to do and see all that we would like. The biggest attraction is all of the hiking trails and abundance of wildlife. I mentioned seeing bighorn sheep when we drove up to Lyman Lake State Park and antelope when we went to Show Low. I forgot to mention seeing elk on our trip back from Show Low in the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest.

It was an unusual sighting as it was mid-day and a group of half-a-dozen or so cow elk were running through a large meadow. The thing is, elk don’t run for pleasure or exercise. If they’re running, it’s because they’re spooked and they’re running from something. I couldn’t see anything chasing and I don’t know what spooked them.

On one of her bicycle rides, Donna came across five bull elk feeding in an enclosed horse pasture and snapped a photo.

On Tuesday morning, we drove to Eagar for groceries. Before we went to the store, we made a side trip to the Springerville Municipal Airport. This is a small town-owned airport located on 500 acres about a mile outside of downtown. It’s at an elevation of 7,055 feet above sea level and has a fairly long main runway. The main runway is runway 03/21 and it’s 8,422 feet long. Airplanes need to reach higher speeds to achieve lift in the thin atmosphere found at high elevations. With the temperature in the 70s, the density altitude on Tuesday was over 10,000 feet above sea level.

There weren’t many aircraft at the airport. We saw the only helicopter I’ve seen all month parked there.

I looked up the tail number of the helicopter – it’s registered to a corporation in Red Bluff, California. I have no idea what it’s doing here.

The airport facilities are modern and clean. The airport opened in 2013.

The main terminal building has a lobby, restrooms, meeting rooms and also houses the FBO offering fuel and maintenance services. We went in and looked around. We found an open conference room upstairs with a great view of the airport. Unfortunately, not much was going on except for a couple of private planes fueling up.

Cessna 172 and Cessna 150 fueling at the FBO

Lobby chandelier made from shed elk antlers

They had a plaque commemorating the responders to the Wallow fire. The Wallow fire originated in the White Mountains near Alpine on May 29, 2011. Over 538,000 acres burned before it was put out on July 8, 2011.

Wednesday was Donna’s birthday. We planned to take the kayak out to Lyman Lake, but I wasn’t feeling well Wednesday morning. I think something I ate didn’t agree with me. I had a rumbling stomach and low-grade fever. Donna decided on a hike instead. I drove her to a trailhead in Eagar. She hiked the Murray Basin Trail heading on a easterly course. She sent me a text from the trail saying she thought she would hit the US191 trail access point around 1pm. I picked her up there and we drove to the Sipe White Mountain Wildlife Area.

The Sipe White Mountain Wildlife Area covers 1,362 acres and is administered by the Arizona Game and Fish Department. Wildlife found in the area include eagles, osprey, turkey, deer, elk, antelope, waterfowl, etc. We drove down the gravel access road but turned back after three miles because the road surface was rutted washboard and too rough for the MG Midget. It was also getting hot driving slowly in the sun.

Donna had a Zoom call with her sisters and other family members for her birthday. She asked for people to perform random acts of kindness in lieu of presents. I had a random act to report. On one of the Facebook groups, a soldier recently returned from deployment to Afghanistan asked for people to donate and send cigars to his friends still in Afghanistan. They enjoyed puffing a cigar whenever they could, but cigars are hard to come by there.

I needed to pare down the inventory in my humidor anyway. Over the past two years, my taste in cigars has evolved – this is not unusual. For the first year, I mostly puffed cigars with Connecticut shade-grown wrappers. These tend to be fairly mild and I enjoyed them. Nowadays, I rarely smoke a Connecticut shade-grown wrapper as I prefer a dark maduro or a Sumatra seed wrapper leaf on my cigars.

I donated cigars once before through a cigar shop to the Cigars for Warriors project. This time was different. I sent a package of 38 cigars directly to a soldier stationed in Forward Operating Base Dahlke in the Logar Province in eastern Afghanistan for him to share with his buddies.

As we expected, the number of RVs here in the Springerville RV Park thinned out after the Memorial Day weekend. Many left on Monday with the rest pulling out on Tuesday. We have an unobstructed view to the west now – and no wind break!

Last week, Donna grilled honey-sriracha chicken thighs and told me that was the only way she was going to grill chicken from then on. I said, “Right.” I knew she wouldn’t do that – she would have to try something new, it’s inevitable. She started this week with chicken piccata made from breast filets. To be fair, this isn’t a grill recipe.

Chicken piccata with Jasmine rice and grilled veggies

But, when she manned the grill on Thursday, what did she do? A new grill recipe with chicken thighs that had pesto inserted underneath the skin. It was very tasty.

Pesto-grilled chicken with grilled veggies and steamed green beans and cotija cheese crumbles

I started organizing the trailer Thursday. Today I did pre-flight checks on the coach – tire pressures, oil and coolant level. I also packed the Traeger and WeberQ and will secure Donna’s bike and load Midget-San. I won’t have much left to do before we pull out of here tomorrow morning. Our exit will be the easiest ever – our windshield view in front of the coach is the park exit to US60!

The daytime temperature peaked on Wednesday and Thursday at 80 degrees, but late Thursday afternoon, we could see thunderstorms to the north and west of us. An hour before sundown, it was raining in the mountains to the west while the sun rays shined through a hole in the cloud cover.

Rain in the mountains on the left, sunshine on the grasslands in the center

We had a few rain drops after sundown. Today it’s near 80 degrees and once again, there are thundershowers to the north and west of us. I’d like to get an early start tomorrow for our trip up to Cortez, Colorado. We plan to take US491 through the Navajo Nation. The Navajo Nation is on lockdown, but Ames, the park owner here, told me he has crossed it several times in the past few weeks. Once he was stopped at a check point, but when he told them he wasn’t going to stop until he reached Cortez, they let him through. That’s what I’m counting on, but I want an early start in case we have to find an alternate route.

Preserving the Old West

After our drive up to Lyman Lake State Park last week, Midget-San didn’t move for six days. I didn’t leave the RV park in that time. I know a lot of people are fed up with the stay-at-home orders and it looks like restrictions are finally easing up in most areas. I think full-time RVers had a somewhat easier experience coping with it. In our case, Donna and I are used to spending time together in a confined space – we live in about 300 square feet!

A lot of our activities are done together and when we arrive in a new area, we spend time exploring together. I’m not the most gregarious or social person around, so staying “home” and only going out when necessary hasn’t been especially hard.

Monday morning, we fired up Midget-San to do our weekly grocery shopping. Before we went to Safeway, we made a couple of sightseeing stops. The first stop was at the White Mountain Historical Park in Springerville. This park is maintained by the White Mountain Historical Society and has historic old buildings and equipment on display.

The buildings were originally located in various parts of Round Valley and were moved to the park for display. One of the older buildings was the Becker Grainery. This was a grain warehouse for the Becker Store in Springerville circa 1875.

One of the things you might notice in the photos of these old buildings is the log construction method. The logs are sawn and fitted together, but they’re not tight against one another. There is considerable space between the logs which had to be sealed – chinked they called it – with a mud and stone mixture. The chinking required periodic maintenance.

The other notable fact is the square footage of the dwellings. People lived in tight quarters back then.

Donna gives a sense of scale to the Clay Hunter Cabin.

Clay Hunter, a hunter and trapper, lived in this tiny cabin for 60 years.

The Diamond Rock Cabin was part of resort in the area in 1915.

During the Great Depression, the federal government formed the Work Project Administration (WPA) to carry out public works projects and put people back to work. We could probably use something like that now, but there’s a problem. Nowadays, government stimulates the economy with hand outs. When unemployment benefits exceed the pay for manual labor, nobody will want to take the job.

WPA outhouse – I think the date should read 1935

After walking through the White Mountain Historical Park, we climbed up the hill to the highest point within the city limits. At the top of the hill is the cemetery and a water tank for the city water supply. Although we only climbed a few hundred feet, the thin air at this 7,000 -foot elevation had me breathing hard.

From the top of the hill, we could see for miles.

Looking west-southwest over Eagar to the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest

View northwest over Springerville – note reservoir in left center, part of a sprawling ranch outside of town

One of the sights you can see from points around the valley is the Round Valley High School Ensphere. The Ensphere is a dome constructed of wood in 1991 at a cost of $11 million. It is where the high school football team plays their games – it can hold 5,500 spectators when configured for football and 9,000 people for basketball or volleyball. It’s the only domed high school football stadium in the country according to Wikipedia. Not bad for a school district with about 2,000 students in all grades.

We drove by the Ensphere for a closer look on the way to the store.

At the Safeway grocery store, we found most people were wearing masks. But many, including most of the store employees, didn’t have their masks over their noses! The mask doesn’t offer protection to others if you sneeze with your nose exposed!

Last night, Donna grilled Sriracha-honey glazed chicken thighs. She served the chicken with jasmine rice and sauteed bok choy with a splash of tamari. Yummy!

Over the last couple of years, Donna has been manning the grill more and more. But she still cooks indoors as well, using our two-burner induction cooktop. Recently she remembered the demo in Quartzsite where we bought the Healthcraft cookware designed for induction use. With only two burners, she sometimes has her hands full trying to time everything to serve at once. With the Healthcraft cookware, you can cook with more than two pots and/or pans at the same time by stacking them.

Stacked cookware on the induction cooktop

In the photo above, she’s steaming broccoli in the large pot on the bottom and keeping a chicken dish warm on top. She’ll have to experiment more with it to get the technique down.

The weather for the past week has been mostly pleasant with daily highs ranging from 70 to 75 degrees. The afternoons were mostly windy. Yesterday, the winds were gusting as predicted and this afternoon the forecast calls for a high of 77 degrees with 20 to 30 mph sustained winds and gusts of 55 mph! If the high wind warning holds true, I may have to pull the living room slide in to preserve the canvas slide topper.

What’s That Sound?

We escaped the blazing hot temperatures in Mesa, Arizona. On Thursday morning, we finished packing up with a goal of hitting the road by 10am. I secured Midget-San in the trailer at 9:59am and we were on our way. It was already 92 degrees on a day that was forecast reach 105 degrees. I had the generator running so we could keep the roof mounted air conditioner on while we drove.

Our route took us over Usery Pass to Bush Highway, then up the Beeline Highway to Payson. Payson is at an elevation of 5,000 feet above sea level. The Beeline has several long, steep grades followed by steep downgrades. The net result is a gain of almost 4,000 feet in elevation over the 75-mile drive. With the high ambient temperature, I kept a close eye on our engine coolant temperature. On the hardest grades, I manually shifted down to third gear to keep the engine revs up around 1,900-2,100 rpm. The higher revs keep the radiator fan turning fast and the coolant circulating quickly. I usually cruise at 1,500-1,550 rpm. It was slow going at around 40 mph, but the coolant temperature remained around 200 degrees.

From Payson, we traveled east on AZ260 90 miles to Show Low, gaining another 1,500 feet or so in elevation. From Show Low, we hit US60 for the final leg of about 50 miles to Springerville. We’re at Springerville RV Park about a mile east of town on US60 – 12 miles or so from the New Mexico border and about 80 miles south of I-40. We’re at an elevation of about 7,080 feet above sea level.

Springerville RV Park is a small, clean park without any frills or amenities – other than a good free wifi signal! The park is just over two years old and is owned by the the people that own a sister park in Cortez, Colorado. We have a long, level pull-through site, so I didn’t have to drop the trailer. The site isn’t paved, it’s covered in crushed volcanic rock and a bit dusty.

Our site in Springerville – Midget-San under cover

On Friday morning, Donna and I took a drive to have a look around the area. We went south on US191 and drove past Nelson Reservoir. We saw people fishing and kayaking there. We think we might want to take our Sea Eagle inflatable kayak up there at some point.

We drove over the Alpine Divide at 8,550 feet above sea level and dropped into the Alpine Valley and checked out the little town of Alpine. On our return trip, we made a slight detour and drove through the small town of Nutrioso. We came back through Eagar – Eagar connects to Springerville and is the larger town of the two. We found the Bashas and Safeway grocery stores there.

Later, Donna went for walk into town. Walking down South Gutierrez Street and she found an interesting sight. It was a number of sculptures in an otherwise empty lot, all made from old car parts. She learned later that the sculptures were made by John Welhelm – his ranch is right across the street. She took several photos of the art.

John Welhelm’s art work – note snow on Escudilla Mountain in the background – nearly 11,000 feet high

Great use of old license plates for color

It just goes to show you – you can find points of interest almost anywhere in this great country.

On Friday afternoon, a pair of motorhomes entered the park and set up in the two empty sites on the driver’s side of our coach. We hoped this would give us a wind break as the wind has been gusting from the southwest. It did.

When we set up here, our water pressure regulator blew out and was leaking from the diaphragm housing. I’ve been using a mini-Watts regulator made for RVs by Valterra. I haven’t used the household Watts regulator I built for our coach for a while because the hose adapter fitting was leaking where it’s swaged together. So I set up without a regulator on our fresh water supply. I found the water pressure here is quite high. I wrote about water pressure and regulators in this post.

Friday night I got up for a bathroom break at 4:30am. I unintentionally woke Donna up. Donna said, “What’s that sound?” I don’t have the best hearing – I have tinnitus from years of working in workshops, motorcycling racing, playing guitar and shooting guns. I said, “What sound?” She told me she could hear water running. She got up and checked our faucets, then told me it was coming from outside. I grabbed a flashlight and went out to investigate. I found our neighbor’s water supply was leaking at his regulator. I went back to bed – it could wait until later.

It turned out he had two leaks – one at the regulator and another one at the coach hose connection. I decided I needed to fix our Watts regulator pronto. Donna went out for a bike ride in the morning. After she returned, I drove into town to the Ace Hardware store. The store was fairly busy and all of the employees and almost all of the customers had face masks on – including me. I found the hose adapter I needed and repaired our regulator and installed it on our water supply bib.

Donna checked out Becker Lake on her bike ride and took a couple of pictures.

Kayakers who were fishing got off the lake due to high winds

I set up our Traeger wood pellet-fired smoker-grill and proceeded to spatchcock a 5 1/2-pound whole chicken Donna bought at Winco in Mesa. If you wonder what spatchcock means, see this post. I dry-rubbed it and had it on the Traeger while Donna was on her weekly Zoom call with members of her family. I cooked it breast side down for about 50 minutes. It was very windy out with wind gusts in excess of 30 mph. This affected the cooking time. Then I flipped it breast side up and set the Traeger to high – 450 degrees to crisp the skin. It cooked for another 18 minutes before the thigh meat registered 165 degrees.

Donna managed to prepare fresh green beans and rosemary-garlic roasted potatoes while on her call. It was a nutritious, delicious meal.

Chicken breast quarter, rosemary-garlic roasted potatoes and green beans with cotija cheese

The temperature here has been higher than usual for this time of year, but the upper 70s are quite bearable! The wind has been relentless and I’m hoping it’ll taper off soon. The forecast for the week ahead calls for near record heat with temperatures in the low to mid 80s. The historical average high temperature for this time of year is 71 degrees. The nights cool down to upper 40s to low 50s, making it comfortable to sleep.

We paid for a full month here. I’m sure we”l find more points of interest in the area.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Flying The Koop

…from real estate to wheel estate and back again

Category Archives: Grilling

Galloping Goose

Saturday Night’s Alright

Mesa Verde

Virtual Birthday

Preserving the Old West

What’s That Sound?

Triple Digit Heat

Day and Night

Face Mask Mission

Open Spaces

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