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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.

*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!

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.

Temperature Under Control

When we were in Springerville, we had to be careful about shopping online. The RV park didn’t receive mail deliveries from the USPS – they had to pick up mail at the post office. If we ordered from Amazon, we couldn’t be sure how it would be delivered and the RV park address was undeliverable if the package was handed off to USPS. I had a few deliveries there where I could specify UPS delivery and that was fine.

We had our mail forwarded from our service in South Dakota – we had them send it to General Delivery Springerville. This usually works fine, especially in small town post offices where things rarely get lost in the shuffle. Even though the package was sent Priority Mail, it took over a week to arrive in Springerville – it got there two days after we moved to Cortez, Colorado. Fortunately, Donna talked to the woman at the post office and arranged to have it forwarded to General Delivery, Cortez, Colorado. The post office in Springerville called Donna last Monday and said they received our package and would forward it.

It still hadn’t arrived in Cortez yesterday, so I found the tracking number and checked it out. The mail went from Springerville to Phoenix where the trail ended on June 3rd – it said “Processing Exception.” I made a phone call to the USPS service center this morning – I had to leave a message and they called me back about an hour later. It turned out our mail arrived in Cortez this morning. Yay!

Here at La Mesa RV Park in Cortez, we can get mail delivered to our site as well as UPS and FedEx deliveries. I had a few things I needed and placed some orders. UPS is working well – delivery times are as expected. The USPS is not so good – as I mentioned, Priority Mail can take over a week instead of the two to three days normally expected.

One of the things I ordered was a new controller for the Traeger wood-pellet fired smoker-grill. The smoker-grill is electronically controlled. Pellets are fed from the hopper through an auger into the fire box. When you start the grill, a heating element in the fire box ignites the pellets and a fan blows fresh air through the fire box to keep them burning.

There’s a temperature sensor inside the smoker grill that sends a signal to the controller. When the temperature is below the desired setting, the auger feeds pellets continuously until the temperature exceeds the desired setting. Then it goes into the “cook mode idle feed” program. This mode feeds pellets in a duty cycle – in other words, it starts then pauses the auger at a pre-determined feed rate. For example, if the auger feeds pellets for 15 seconds, then pauses for 45 seconds, that is a 25% duty cycle. Pellets are fed for 25% of the time elapsed.

The last two times I made smoked jerky on the Traeger, I couldn’t keep the temperature within a reasonable range. I had it set to 180 degrees and would normally expect to see the temperature swing from about 170 degrees to nearly 200 degrees as pellets burned. What I got instead was normal operation for 10 minutes or so, then a sudden increase to 250 degrees or more. Not good.

I ordered a new controller from a company called Ortech – I got their TR-100 digital controller. I read that Ortech is the original equipment manufacturer (OEM) for Traeger. But, the TR-100 controller is an upgrade from the OEM unit.

The cook mode idle feed duty cycle can be adjusted. This is true for the Traeger OEM part and the TR-100. The difference is, Traeger really doesn’t want the consumer to mess with the adjustment. This adjustment is called the “P” setting, which varies the duty cycle. On the OEM controller, there’s a small hole next to the digital read out that has a button inside that will change the “P” setting. But, Traeger covers this hole with a sticker that says “Call Service.” It’s easy enough to just remove the sticker, but there’s another problem. The OEM controller doesn’t display a number associated with the “P” setting, so you don’t know what you are setting.

Traeger OEM controller with digital read out

The Ortech TR-100 controller has a rotary dial next to the digital read out that has 16 positions for adjusting the “P” setting. When you first start the grill or adjust the knob, the digital read out will flash three times with the “P” setting displayed. It can be adjusted from P0 – 25% duty cycle all the way to P-15 which is a 8.3% duty cycle. Higher “P” numbers reduce the amount of feed and lower the cook mode idle pellet feed rate.

After I removed the OEM controller, I campared the two circuits. In the photo below, you can see the components and circuits are different.

OEM on the left, Ortech TR-100 on the right

The TR-100 also came with a new temperature sensor. I didn’t think there was anything wrong with the old one, but I replaced it anyway. The new sensor is shorter than the old one, so it’s different, but the instructions said replacement was optional.

The default factory setting of the Ortech is P2 – an 18.8% duty cycle. I test fired the Traeger set at 180 degrees. It overshot and went over 230 degrees. I adjusted the “P” setting and found that P7 held the temperature between 175 degrees and 190 degrees. Just right. This setting has a duty cycle of 11.5%. The nice thing is, if weather conditions cause temperature fluctuations, I can easily compensate by adjusting the “P” setting.

I had another simple project this week. When you drive an old British car, sometimes parts inexplicably fall off. This happened on Midget-San. The right front side marker lens disappeared.

I ordered a replacement lens from Northwest Import Parts in Portland, Oregon. They had the correct Lucas lens. But, they shipped it without the mounting screw. Not a big deal, right? The thing is, old British cars use fasteners that are threaded British Standard Wentworth (BSW). I was pretty sure the True Value Hardware in town wouldn’t have British Standard Wentworth screws on hand. I measured the screw from the left side marker lens and saw it was 5/32″ in diameter. This was good because a 5/32 BSW screw has 32 threads per inch and is nearly the same diameter as a standard #6 screw. I picked up a 6-32 screw at the hardware store and it worked fine!

The outdoor pickleball courts at Centennial Park in town opened for doubles play this week. They are restricting players to only play against three other couples, so a total of eight people interact on the court during a session. Donna and I played on Thursday and Friday. It was fun – I was a bit rusty after not being on the courts since mid-March but it didn’t take long to get back into the swing of it. Most of my lob attempts flew long, but I’m attributing that to the thin air at our 6,200 foot elevation.

Donna is scheduled to appear on a Facebook live webinar on the Escapees Facebook page on Wednesday, June 10th at 6pm Central time. The topic is “Unclutter Your RV.” You don’t have to be an Escapees member to join in.

This week, Donna experimented with meals grilled in foil packs. The first recipe was for lemon chicken and asparagus.

Foil-grilled lemon chicken and asparagus over buttered Jasmine rice

She also made a foil-wrapped entree with Cajun-seasoned Andouille sausage, potatoes, onions, mushrooms and green beans.

The temperatures have been warmer than usual this week, topping out around 90 degrees. Yesterday that changed. It was hot, but around 4pm a thunderstorm arrived bringing gusty winds, rain and cooler air. The winds brought down several tree limbs and Donna saw a guy sitting at a table in the RV park get hit in the arm by a chunk of wood that fell from a tree.

The rain continued off and on overnight and through this morning. The forecast calls for sunny skies by the afternoon, but the wind will continue to be gusty with sustained winds over 20mph. The cooler temperatures with highs ranging from low 60s to mid 70s are supposed to continue for several days.

It Could Have Been Worse

We were a little behind schedule Saturday morning – not that we have a real schedule to adhere to. But we wanted a reasonably early start to our travel day. We set 9am as a departure goal, but as I said, I got a little behind and we left Springerville RV Park at 9:20am. We wanted to get on the road as we had about five hours of driving time ahead, plus we would lose an hour when we entered Mountain Daylight Time at the New Mexico border.

We headed back west through town and hit the junction with US191 after a few miles. This took us north past Lyman Lake to the town of St. Johns. Continuing north past St. Johns, the road surface suddenly deteriorated. We hit a 10-mile stretch of whoop-de-dos that were spaced at an interval that had the suspension of the coach porpoising violently at times. I slowed to 50mph but it didn’t seem to matter. Maybe 35 would have been better – the posted speed limit was 65mph! And poor Ozark the cat – despite withholding food and giving her medication for car sickness, she got sick in her carrier.

We hit I-40 at Sanders, Arizona and headed east. I made a stop at the last Arizona exit – Greer Road. We went to Speedy’s Truck Stop to top up our tank. This is the first time I’ve bought fuel since December. Speedy’s is on Navajo Nation land and therefore the fuel is taxed at a different rate. Normally, the state of Arizona taxes diesel fuel at a rate of 51.4 cents per gallon. The Navajo Nation taxes diesel fuel at 25 cents per gallon with no state taxes paid. We paid $2.09/gallon and filled our tank – that’s the lowest price we’ve paid in the seven years we’ve been on the road.

At Gallup, we left I-40 at exit 20 and took US491 north through the Navajo Nation. New Mexico requires everyone to wear a face mask in public right now. Other than that, we didn’t encounter any restrictions or checkpoints. US491 was previously designated US666. It became known as the Devil’s Highway, so they changed the designation in 2003.

The terrain was interesting. There were sandstone cliffs near the Arizona-New Mexico border. As we traveled through the Navajo Nation, we found sage brush covered plains. Then, as we got closer to Shiprock, sandstone formations and spires rose out of the surrounding plains, seemingly without rhyme or reason.

The road surface was fairly good through the Navajo Nation. The Colorado border marked the end of Navajo land and the road surface improved dramatically.

With the time change, we arrived in Cortez at 3:30pm local time. The owners of La Mesa RV Park in Cortez are also the owners of Springerville RV Park – Ames and Cherie. Cherie sent Donna a text with a photo of the park sign and entrance. It wasn’t hard to find. She told us to take either site 34 – a long pull-through – or we could drop the trailer in site 24 at the back of the park, which is wide and a little quieter. The office wasn’t open when we pulled in.

I didn’t like the trees at site 24 so we opted for 34. The pull-through made it easy and I didn’t have to drop the trailer. It turned out the trees by the office – about 40 or 50 feet away from us are interfering with satellite reception. Darn! We’re at an elevation of about 6,200 feet above sea level here.

We were set up and settled in by 4:30pm. I found a horror story in the trailer though. Remember the violent porpoising north of St. Johns? Well, the trailer must have been really bouncing around. The bins stacked in the frame toward the front of trailer were thrown about. Donna’s bike rack was tossed out of place, but the bike was still upright and the rear wheels of the Midget were bounced out of the wheel chocks and moved about eight inches to the left! We were lucky though, nothing was damaged, it was just scary looking.

I straightened out the trailer, then took a break and puffed a cigar. There were thunderstorms in the area with wind gusts at times, so I sat inside the trailer and read a book as I puffed away. Very relaxing. Donna had her weekly virtual happy hour with her family.

On Sunday morning, Donna and I did a little exploring. We drove Midget-San through town and found pickleball courts at Centennial Park. The outdoor courts are open for singles play only, no doubles. From there, we drove north on Dolores Road – CO145 – to the Canyon of the Ancients Visitor Center and Museum. It was closed. We continued on to McPhee Reservoir. This reservoir is the largest lake in the San Juan National Forest and the fifth largest in Colorado. It’s surrounded by mostly public land and offers camping, boating, fishing and many hiking trails. Donna snapped a couple of photos as we toured the area in the Midget.

The reservoir sits at an elevation of 6,930 feet above sea level. We also took a drive through the town of Dolores and found a scenic road that rises through the forest above town to some trailheads. There’s also a riverwalk trail along the Dolores River on the south side of town.

Later, Donna rode her bicycle to City Market – a grocery store affiliated with Kroger – a couple of miles from the park. There’s also a Safeway store and a Walmart supercenter in town. Plenty of grocery shopping options. Sunday afternoon I met Cherie and paid for a one-month stay here. The monthly rate is $550 plus electricity at 15 cents/kWh – so it’s about $20/day. Springerville was only $400/month but electricity there is higher at 25 cents/kWh. Our total cost there was $501 – or about $17/day.

We had a couple of brief thundershowers yesterday and last night. It looks like we should remain dry today and tomorrow, but the temperatures will be warmer than usual with upper 80s to 90 degrees in the forecast for the next few days. I’m not complaining though.

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.

Show Low and the Deuce of Clubs

After three weeks of having the Springerville RV Park nearly to ourselves, things picked up over the holiday weekend. There were only eight to 15 sites occupied until last Thursday when the weekenders starting coming in. By Saturday the park was 70% full with only 15 or so sites open.

Of course, the Memorial Day holiday was the big draw. Donna and I usually attend some type of memorial service on this day, but we haven’t found anything in the area this year. I’ve noticed a number of people confuse the various military holidays. There are three that come to mind:

Armed Forces Day – this day occurs on the third Saturday in May and honors those men and women in uniform currently serving our country.

Veterans Day – this day falls on November 11th and honors those that served our country but have hung up their uniforms.

Memorial Day – this occurs on the last Monday in May and honors those that gave all in service of their country and can no longer put on a uniform.

It seemed like most of the people that came in to Springerville RV Park for the long weekend were ATV enthusiasts and were acquainted with each other. In Arizona, many ATVs can be licensed and driven on the street. The people here in the park would leave in the morning in groups of four to six vehicles and head east or west on US60 presumably to offroad trails. There are many designated trails in the area.

Big side-by-side and small single seat ATV

It looks like fun to me, but Donna has no interest in offroad adventures.

Last Wednesday, I ordered a pizza for takeout from Goobs Pizza in Eagar. I drove over to pick it up and saw a road closure on Main Street at Airport Road. Luckily, I could access the shopping center parking lot from Airport Road where the pizza place was. When I picked up the pizza, they told me the road closure was due to the high school graduation.

Since they couldn’t hold an indoor graduation ceremony, what they did was organize a graduation parade. The graduating seniors drove cars, trucks or rode on trailer floats through Eagar and Springerville. I was wondering why so many people seemed to be loitering on the sidewalks when I came through town. I was held up leaving the shopping center for 10 or 15 minutes – you gotta love small town America! Later that night, while we were watching Netflix, there was a short, but very nice fireworks display that we could see from our living room window, presumably to celebrate the graduates.

On Saturday, Donna and I took a long drive in Midget-San. We headed west on US60 back to Show Low. We wanted to check out the farmers’ market there. The terrain along this route can be described as temperate grassland. I was initially surprised when Donna spotted pronghorn antelope on the north side of the highway. Looking around, I shouldn’t have been surprised, it was definitely antelope habitat. We saw several more along the way.

With restrictions easing, it seems like many people are dismissing the Wuhan coronavirus. Everyone has to make their own decision on the level of risk they expose themselves to. I was disappointed to see how many people at the farmers’ market didn’t practice social distancing and how few wore masks – especially among the vendors. Wearing a mask serves two purposes, not the least is protecting others around you. If I were to cough or sneeze while wearing a mask, I’m not sending a cloud of potentially infectious droplets into the air. So, when we are in close proximity to others, Donna and I wear masks.

I always thought Show Low was a strange name for a town, but didn’t give it much thought. Where the farmers’ market is held, there was a statue and placard describing the origin of the name.

Next to the farmers’ market was the Show Low Trump store. They had a Trump rally with free hot dogs, live music and the 2020 Trump bus was scheduled to arrive around noon. They had quite a crowd and lots of people shopping in the store for shirts, hats, bumper stickers and whatnot.

We drove back to Springerville via AZ260. On the way out of town, on White Mountain Road, we stopped at Harbor Freight. I learned that the jack stands I use when working on the Midget are being recalled by Harbor Freight because they can fail and drop without warning! This would be disastrous if it happened while I was underneath the car – there’s not enough clearance. The jack stands involved are the six-ton and three-ton models with part numbers 61196, 61197 and 56371.

I read some information on the recall and the Chinese manufacturer claimed the failure is due to “worn tooling” creating parts out of tolerance. Sounds like a reasonable explanation – until I saw the jack stands being recalled were manufactured between 2013 and 2019. So, we are to believe “worn tooling” was used for six years! I’m done with Chinese products.

The drive back on AZ260 was pleasant and very scenic. We drove through pine forests through the White Mountains. It was intially on tribal lands, then through the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest on to the familiar route down from Greer. The elevation topped out at 8,550 feet above sea level. The entire loop to Show Low and back was about 100 miles.

The temperature over the past five days have been very comfortable with daily highs around 70-72 degrees. The afternoons are generally breezy – downright windy at times. The overnight lows have been in the lower 40s and even dipped into the 30s a couple of times. A warming trend is forecast for the rest of the week. We plan to pull out on Saturday and head up to Cortez, Colorado next.

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.

Size Matters

It’s been a quiet week here at Springerville RV Park. I mentioned the lack of highway traffic in my last post, but there’s another thing here in the White Mountains of eastern Arizona – the lack of air traffic. After spending three months in San Diego, followed by four months in Mesa, Arizona, air traffic became a normal daily occurrence.

In San Diego, helicopters often flew right over Mission Bay RV Resort – we had news ‘copters, Coast Guard, law enforcement and private aircraft overhead several times a day. In Mesa, we had the familiar flight training aircraft from Falcon Field – CAE Flight School had their blue and white trainers in the air several times a day as well as other general aviation out of Falcon Field. We also had military helicopters – Apaches, Cobras and Blackhawks taking test flights in the area, and we had the usual air ambulance, news and law enforcement flights daily.

Here, In the last two weeks I’ve seen one private aircraft – a ubiquitous Cessna 172 and one unidentified helicopter. That’s it. Quiet here!

After grocery shopping on Tuesday, we decided to take a drive in Midget-San. We drove in a northwesterly direction on US191 toward the town of St. Johns. We wanted to take a look at Lyman Lake State Park – it’s about a 20 mile drive from here. I should mention that on the drive there, we saw about half a dozen big horn sheep walking down a fence line on the side of the road.

Lyman Lake is another reservoir on the Little Colorado River. It’s the largest body of water in the area with a surface area of about 1,400 acres. It’s the only reservoir in the area that allows motorboats. The recreational area is administered by the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest. This is a little confusing for me as Lyman Lake State Park is just that – a state park – but the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest is a federal agency.

They have a campground. We took a drive through the campground and spied several sites that would accommodate our length. There was also a general store. Fishing is popular on the lake and we thought it looked like the kayak would be doable there. It’s big water, but there are a lot of inlets and coves to get out of the wind and explore. We might head back.

Speaking of the length of our rig, for many RVers – especially full-timers – size matters. Sure, there are full-timers who are doing just fine with smaller rigs, such as Becky at Interstellar Orchard. But most of us need some space for our accessories. I use our 20’x8.5′ cargo trailer as our rolling garage. It has all of my tools, the kayak, Donna’s bicycle and storage cabinets for a number of things.

I was thinking about that the other day when I saw a couple of rigs enter the RV park. There was a couple that came into the park in a 40-foot Tiffin Phaeton motorhome. What caught my eye was the trailer he pulled behind it. It was easily 30+ feet long. Our overall length is a hair under 65 feet – I think I measured it at 64′-9″. That keeps us just under the maximum combo length in some states. This guy’s rig has to be over 75 feet long.

After they set up, they pulled his and hers Can-Am Spyders out of the trailer. The funny thing was, we saw this same couple on their Spyders checking out Lyman Lake State Park. After we came back from the lake, we saw them roll through Springerville RV Park checking out the sites. Later, he took a Polaris RZR side-by-side four-wheeler ATV out of the trailer. This morning, out came a Harley-Davidson motorcycle for her and a Kawasaki sportbike for him. Lots of toys in that long trailer. I don’t think I would enjoy driving that rig though.

The other rig I wanted mention was a fifth-wheel trailer. Here’s the thing – the guy drove into the park with the fifth-wheel behind his Chevy crew cab pickup truck and a flat-bed trailer hooked up to the fifth-wheel. He was double towing. We’ve seen this several times before with cargo trailers or boats behind a fifth-wheel trailer. It seems a little scary to me, plus you can’t back up – reversing isn’t possible.

The owners of this park also own a sister park In Cortez, Colorado – about 250 miles away from here. The owners spend most of their time there. This week, one of the owners came down in a dually Dodge Ram with a large Lincoln welder in the back and a Cat front-loader on a flat bed trailer. He’s been working on the building that will eventually be the park office. Yesterday, a dump truck came in with three loads of gravel and they started working on improving two more sites.

They have enough land to double the size of the RV park and they have the infrastructure in place. The power pedestals are in as well as water and sewer for about 50 more sites. The question is, if they build it, will they come?

Room for expansion with utilities in place

This morning, Donna got out for another bicycle ride. She saw a couple of interesting sights. She saw mule deer sharing a pasture with a horse.

She saw a tiny home on a side road just half a mile from here.

It was a good morning for a bike ride. The wind was relatively calm and the temperature was around 68-70 degrees. That’s what we’ve been seeing for daily high temperatures this week. We’ve also come to realize the afternoon winds with sudden gusts are a daily occurrence.

While I was writing this post, we had a visitor. Leigh Wilcox and his wife Barbara were on their way home to their summer home Iowa from their winter home in Florence, AZ. When Donna rode in the annual RAGBRAI cycling event a few years, Leigh friended her on Facebook after noticing that we have mutual friends – Andy and Donna King. He knew we were in Springerville and spotted our rig as they were driving by today.

The week ahead calls for warmer temperature with highs reaching 80 degrees and Monday and Tuesday are supposed to be windy. Since we’ve had 30+mph gusts daily, I wonder what we can expect when they say Monday and Tuesday will be windy. The overnight lows have been in the low to mid 40s.

Quiet in Round Valley

It’s been pretty quiet out here at Springerville RV Park. We’ve had a few people check in, but it seems that most visitors are using this park for a one- or two-night stop as they travel. As I mentioned before, the park is located about one mile east of town, right on US60. It’s in Round Valley – that’s what this area is called, it’s a valley in the White Mountains.

It’s open country with only a few homes and commercial buildings visible from the park. It’s very quiet – one of the things that strikes me is the lack of traffic on the highway. US60 runs from the west side of Arizona, near Quartzsite to the outskirts of Amarillo, Texas. Out here, it’s not unusual for five or 10 minutes to elapse between cars coming down the highway. Of course, the Wuhan coronavirus has had an effect on traffic. Also, most east/west travel through Arizona and New Mexico is on I-40 or I-10 nowadays. We like the old routes through smaller towns.

Speaking of the pandemic, I have to say with the sketchy data available, you can make whatever case you wish to make either for or against restrictions. What I mean is, the way cases are confirmed and cause of death is determined varies widely from country to country, state to state and even, in some cases, from county to county. You can draw many conclusions, but if the data base is unreliable, so are the conclusions. It’s called lying with statistics. One of the best explanations I’ve read on how the virus spreads comes from an epidemiologist named Erin Bromage. He posted this article on his blog last week. I think it’s worth a read, then make up your own mind about how much social contact you are willing to make.

When we were in Mesa at Viewpoint Golf and RV Resort, we had a hummingbird feeder on the window right outside of Ozark the cat’s window-mounted bed. Between the hummingbirds coming and going and quail strutting through our site, Ozark had plenty of entertainment. Here, not so much. We hear birds, but the only birds I’ve actually seen in the area are ravens or high flying turkey vultures. Ozark is lacking stimulation and spends a lot of time napping.

Donna’s been out and about exploring on her bicycle. Last week, she rode her bike to the west side of town, locked it up at the Becker Lake Wildlife Area and took a hike along the Little Colorado River Trail. Right away, she encountered a mule deer doe.

Mule deer doe keeping an eye on Donna at the Little Colorado River Trail

The trail had a few signs for points of interest and scenic views of the river. Donna snapped a few pictures.

The next day, Donna rode her bike into town to mail a letter at the post office. She found a couple more points of interest right in town across from the post office.

There’s a statue called Madonna of the Trail – it’s one of 12 statues in the area dedicated to women pioneers.

She also found a well that dates back to 1885.

On Friday night, Donna prepared an old favorite for dinner – chicken enchilada skillet casserole.

On Saturday, Donna rode her bike out through Eagar on an 18-mile loop. She found more sights to see.

The stone foundation is all that’s left of the grist mill

I’m sure this was a real wild west town 150 years ago!

As you can see from the photos, we had excellent weather last week. The skies were clear. It was warm with the temperature reaching the low 80s. The afternoons are generally windy and we had several gusts in excess of 30 mph. The most striking thing is the relative humidity (RH) though. It’s been extremely dry with an RH of only eight or nine percent!

We could tell on Saturday eveningthat we were in for a change in the weather. The forecast called for rain moving in over the next couple of days. We had a few clouds before sunset.

We had rain with thundershowers and high winds off and on all day Sunday. About one third of an inch of rain was recorded. The RH improved with the humidity level reaching 35%. Today we have clouds, but only a couple of rain drops have fallen. The long range forecast calls for sunny days ahead with daily highs in the mid to upper 70s.

14 Years Later

Yesterday was Cinco de Mayo. For some reason that I can’t explain, Americans tend to make a big deal out of it and declare it a party day. Donna and I always have good reason to celebrate Cinco de Mayo – 14 years ago I married Donna on the fifth day of May. Our 14th anniversary means we’ve spent more than half of our marriage on the road!

We started off Cinco de Mayo with a great breakfast dish – fried egg tacos with chili jam. The chili jam is a sweet and spicy condiment Donna made that was very tasty. The fried egg is served over a warm tortilla coated with Greek yogurt.

In the early afternoon, I loaded our Sea Eagle 370 two-seat inflatable kayak in Midget-San. Yes, you can fit a two-seat kayak in a Midget if you pack carefully.

The only issue was the oars. Even broken down into two sections, they were too long to fit in the trunk – I mean boot.

Paddles behind the seats – without these we would be up the creek…

We drove out on AZ260 into the Apache National Forest up to the village of Greer. Greer is a little tourist village with mostly rental or vacation cabins. It’s a well-kept area where most of the buildings are log cabins with colorful metal roofs. The attraction to the area is fishing, hiking and Sunrise Park ski resort.

We went there to check out the Greer Lakes. Greer Lakes are a series of reservoirs, Bunch, Tunnel and River, fed by the Little Colorado River. The Little Colorado originates in this area and is a tributary of the Colorado River. It flows 340 miles from the White Mountains to the Grand Canyon near Desert View where it joins the Colorado River.

Going southbound into the village, we missed the turnoff for the reservoirs. There wasn’t good signage and we couldn’t see the water from that direction. After driving through the village, we realized we must have missed the turn and backtracked. Northbound on the highway, we saw one of the reservoirs and drove into the recreation area.

We found boat ramps at all three of the reservoirs, but decided not to unload the kayak since it was windy, and because the reservoirs were fairly small and the shoreline mostly uninteresting.

View from the boat ramp at Tunnel Reservoir

After looking around we headed back to Springerville RV Park. This RV park is fairly small with 50 sites, 14 of them are long pull-throughs. I don’t think there have been more than a dozen sites occupied in the time we’ve spent here. It seems like most people are only here for a night or two.

After we returned from Greer, I met one of our neighbors. He and his wife are from Texas and spend several months each year traveling in their Foretravel IH45 motorhome. Foretravel motorhomes are very high-end. I have to admit to a little coach envy looking at his 45-foot coach. He said he bought it three years ago to replace another Foretravel he had. After they bought it, they drove from Texas to Alaska and back. He put over 40,000 miles on it in three years in part-time traveling! It took us nearly six years of full-time traveling to hit 40,000 miles in our Alpine Coach.

If you closely at the photos, you can see the radiused corners of the sildes instead of the usual square corners. This is because the coach is equipped with pneumatic seals on the slides. Once the slides are put out, the seal inflates and provides an airtight fit. When you retract the slides, the seals deflate and the slides are pulled in. Nice!

We usually dine out on our anniversary, but no restaurants were open for dining in, only take out. We called in an order for takeout at Booga Red’s – a restaurant in Springerville. Donna had a two-chicken and cheese enchilada with verde sauce plate with whole beans and rice. I had a combination plate with one chicken enchilada with verde sauce and one shredded beef enchilada with red sauce, refried beans and rice. It was good and I wouldn’t hesitate to eat there again. They included a large bag of tortilla chips and salsa with the order.

This morning, I took the car cover off Midget-San and put the paddles behind the seats again. (We left the boot packed upon our return from Greer yesterday.) We headed out on US191 toward Nutrioso and parked at Nelson Reservoir on the west side of the highway. It was a bit breezy, but we set up the kayak and gave it a go.

We hugged the west shoreline to avoid the stronger wind coming from the south on the open water. We paddled south for about 25 minutes.

Looking across the reservoir east toward US191

Nelson Reservoir is about a mile long – we didn’t paddle the full length. Going into the wind was a little tough, but we thought we would have an easy cruise back to the boat ramp. It wasn’t that easy. It took just as much work to get back. The wind kept pushing us off course and we had to make corrections every minute or two. But it was fun and good exercise.

The weather is unusually hot here – we should see a high of 84 today. But that’s better than the 102 degrees forecast for Mesa, Arizona where we were five days ago. The forecast here calls for more normal highs in the low to mid-70s by the weekend. Most days have been windy with sudden gusts. The 10-day forecast calls for winds over 15mph each day.

Flying The Koop

…from real estate to wheel estate and back again

Category Archives: Uncategorized

Saturday Night’s Alright

Mesa Verde

Temperature Under Control

It Could Have Been Worse

Virtual Birthday

Show Low and the Deuce of Clubs

Preserving the Old West

Size Matters

Quiet in Round Valley

14 Years Later

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