Category Archives: Uncategorized

Buying, Selling and Trading

It’s been nearly a month since I added a post, so here are a few lines and pictures. In my last post, I went over my woes with the Celestron NexStar telescope mount. I’m happy to report the Sky Watcher HEQ5 Pro I replaced it with has been great. It’s a little harder to set up, but it tracks targets nicely and is very sturdy. I found a buyer for my old mount and shipped it off.

I used the Sky Watcher with the Celestron 8SE SCT telescope to image Jupiter. Jupiter is a harder target than I thought it would be. In fact, astrophotography as a whole is a lot harder to learn than I thought it would be. I’m not getting the detail I would like. There are many steps involved to capture a succesful image.

First you need to achieve focus on a distant object – hundreds of thousands of miles away. Then you have to find the right combination of gain and exposure time for your camera – kind of like setting aperture and shutter speed on a conventional camera. The rotation of the earth and the orbit of the object come into play – the target doesn’t just sit in the center of the frame. What we do is basically shoot a video recording where we can adjust the frame rate of the video and set the number of frames we want to record. I control the camera with a small laptop running a program called SharpCap, developed by a British astronomer.

Once you have accomplished that, the raw image needs to processed. There are some really smart guys that have developed software specifically for this. They are astronomy enthusiasts and many offer their programs as free-ware for amateur, non-commercial use. I use three of these programs to process my images.

The first is called PIPP – planetary image pre-processor. This program takes the individual frames and aligns them so the image is centered in every frame. I typically shoot 2,500 frames or so at a time.

Next I use AutoStakkert – a program written by a Dutch astronomer – to sort each frame by quality of the image. Then I choose how many frames I want to keep by rejecting all below a certain quality threshold. Autostakkert then “stacks” or combines these frames into an image. This is called “lucky imaging,” because we are lucky to get a percentage of frames with a sharp image, largely unaffected by atmospheric conditions.

The output from Autostakkert is then opened in RegiStax 6 for sharpening, de-noise and color adjustment. I may use Photoshop for a final touch up. Here are few pictures – crude compared to professional and many amateur results, but I’m learning and will get better at it.

I bought a another telescope – I found it on the classified ad section of a site called CloudyNights. This is a completely different approach than my Celestron 8SE Schmidt-Cassegrain reflector. This one is a refractor type telescope – one of the oldest telescope designs. It’s simple and well-made with high-quality optics.

It’s from a company called William Optics and it’s model is ZenithStar 73. It has a 73mm objective lens, 430mm focal length and it’s relatively fast at f5.9. I mentioned quality optics – the objective lens in this telescope is ground from a material called FPL 53 optical glass. FPL 53 is made from a synthetic fluorite crystal grown in a lab by a Japanese company called Ohara. FPL 53 is a desirable material for telescope lenses.

When used visually with an eyepiece I can see the entire surface of the moon with this ‘scope and it is less affected by atmospheric conditions than the larger Celestron. More magnification requires a stable atmosphere for sharp images. The astrophotography camera I use increases the magnification of the image with this ‘scope though. Here’s a moon shot I took Saturday night.

I described this astrophotography session as a near disaster on Facebook. I think considering the real disaster that was hurricane Ian, my description is a bit of an over-reach. Here’s what happened.

I set up my mount and telescope behind our back deck, adjacent to the golf course behind our place. I use a small card table for a couple of small cases with some of the gear I use and also place a small notebook computer on it to record the image. My plan was to take a shot of the moon, then move to Saturn and finish the night with Jupiter. I wanted to try the Z73 ‘scope on the planets just to see what I could get with it.

After I captured the image above, I programmed the mount for Saturn. While the ‘scope was slewing toward Saturn, I heard water sprinklers start up. Oh no! The golf course decided to start watering at 8:30pm – I’d never seen them water much past 7pm before. I closed the notebook computer and ran it over to our deck, then went back for the rest of the gear. Donna was out and she started grabbing things as well. We weren’t quick enough – the sprinklers got us and my gear briefly before we could get everything out of range.

I’ll have to rethink my telescope set-up position for future sessions. This is not so easy – I thought I found the perfect spot to get clear views of most of the sky. Well, that’s probably more about astronomy than you ever wanted to know.

Donna went to Vermont for eight days, beginning on September 13th, to visit her parents. While she was away I decided to make another change. We’ve been using our 2015 Nissan Frontier for daily transportation. When I bought this truck, it was intended to be towed behind our motorhome as we traveled about. For this reason, I bought a used work truck with a manual transmission and no frills.

We won’t be towing behind a motorhome now, so why drive a beater and shift gears manually? I looked around for something more comfortable that we could live with. The best solution would be a company lease car – as a Volkswagen retiree, I have lease car privileges that allow me to select a new VW on a very favorable 12-month lease. However, in the current state of things, new cars are in very short supply and lease car choices are extremely limited.

I found a nearly showroom condition 2019 Jeep Compass with all of the bells and whistles and only 36,000 miles on the clock. So, we went from a manual transmission, noisy truck with manual roll-up windows to a loaded compact SUV with power everything. Of course, this means electronic control modules galore and lots of potential for things to malfunction, but you only live once. I traded our truck and put a dent in my savings as I don’t like to finance anything – we are debt-free other than the lease on our park model home lot at Viewpoint Golf Resort.

Donna returned from Vermont on the 20th, so I’m back to eating like a king. Here’s a dinner plate she made. The main dish is parmesan crusted tilapia with cauliflower penne pasta and steamed spinach on the side.

We’re past the monsoon season and humidity levels are back to a more normal range of 10-25%. The triple-digit heat is behind us as well with the forecast calling for low 90s and mid-to-high 80s for the rest of the month.

Night Sky

We’ve completely transitioned from the RV lifestyle to full-time residents of Viewpoint Golf Resort. Viewpoint is a gated community for people 55 years old and older. It’s a very active community with two golf courses, a tennis club, pickleball club, four swimming pools and various hobby clubs such as woodworking with a fully equipped wood shop.

Viewpoint occupies over three hundred acres of land in east Mesa, Arizona and I’ve been told there are more than 3,000 park model homes. There’s always something to do here, although activity slows down during the hot summer months.

Donna keeps busy with tennis, golf and pickleball. She also works in the community as a companion caregiver to elderly residents. We were playing indoor pickleball at the air conditioned Red Mountain Recreation Center, but they closed for remodeling for the last three weeks and will re-open next Monday. So, I haven’t been very active lately.

We took an Allegiant Air flight out of Mesa Gateway airport to San Diego on July 22 and spent five days in La Jolla while Donna dog-sat for her sister, Sheila. Flying out of the small Gateway airport was a treat. I don’t think there were more than 400 people in the whole place! San Diego was a nice break from the heat and it’s always nice to be by the ocean. We met up with Gary Stemple at Offshore Grill and Tavern and Rick Miller was with him. I think the last time I saw Rick was 1974. We had fun catching up over a few beers, then I dropped Rick off at the airport for his return flight to Florida.

Donna and I hit the beaches and took a drive up the coast for lunch in Oceanside. We also played pickleball in Pacific Beach and Ocean Beach and saw some of our pickleball friends that we last played with three years ago. Time flies. The flight back to Mesa had us in the air for under an hour and the drive from Gateway airport to Viewpoint was about 15 minutes. Nice!

Last week, Donna and I drove up to Canyon Lake and met up with some of her tennis club friends. Tom had his pontoon boat on the lake and we cruised across the lake and up the Salt River to a point just below the Apache Lake dam.

The northeast end of Canyon Lake at the mouth of the Salt River

We saw Desert Big Horn sheep on this bluff

We saw a group of four Desert Big Horn sheep across the river from where we stopped by the dam. I couldn’t get a good picture of them though.

With too much time on my hands, I’ve taken up a new hobby. Someone once told me that hobbies were my hobby. I always like to learn new stuff and can really get lost in new ventures. I went through a couple of photography phases when I was younger and sold event photos. Later, when my kids were in high school, I took sports photos of the high school sports team – many were published in a local newspaper called the Arlington Times.

I also have an affinity for science – I really enjoy electronics and ham radio. So I kind of combined the two interests and took up astronomy. My longer term goal is to pursue astrophotography. It’s a steep learning curve though and I can see myself chasing this subject for years to come.

After reading up on the subject, I bought a Celestron NexStar 8SE telescope. This is a reflector ‘scope – a catadioptric Schmidt-Cassegrain to be precise. Reflector type ‘scopes were invented by Isaac Newton and utilize one or more mirrors to reflect the light path. This allows a longer focal length in a more compact package than a traditional refractor type ‘scope.

The NexStar 8SE came with a computerized electronic mount, known as an Alt-Az mount. This mount slews the ‘scope in two directions – altitude (vertically up and down) and azimuth (horizontally right and left). You can program the amount by pointing it to guide stars and it triangulates the position and then you can select from a list of targets and it will automatically slew to the target. Some fine adjustment is required to center the target, but it really simplifies things.

Celstron NexStar 8SE telescope and mount

The 8SE has an aperture of 8 inches – about 203 millimeters. The focal length is 2032 millimeters. It reaches that length by “folding” the light path back and forth before sending it to the diagonal and eyepiece.

I had a budget in mind as I embarked on this hobby, but I soon found out that it’s hard to stay within the confines of a budget when you don’t have enough experience. I soon went down the rabbit hole and upgraded a lot of the equipment. I bought upgraded eyepieces, a higher quality diagonal, a 9×50 finder scope and an electronic focuser.

Then the mount started acting up. I found excessive play in the altitude axis. I opened up the housing and found a defective bearing.

Defective bearing on drive axle for altitude adjustment

I sent the photo above to Woodland Hills Camera and Telescope where I bought the unit. They, in turn, contacted Celestron and they sent me a return authorization and shipping label. I sent it to them for repairs.

Meanwhile, I did more research on this mount and found some disappointing information. Generally speaking, you should limit the weight of the telescope and accessories to about 80% of the mount maximum for visual use and only 50% of maximum for astrophotography. The mount Celestron supplies with 8SE has a maximum weight rating of just 12 pounds. The ‘scope itself weighs that much before you add eyepieces, finder scope, electronic focuser or any other accessories. It was overloaded with my set-up. Lesson learned.

I bought a new mount. This time I went with a Sky-Watcher HEQ5 German Equitorial mount. It’s rated for 30 pounds. This design points the ‘scope along two axes – they’re called right ascension and declination. It’s more complicated and hard to describe. Suffice to say it allows the mount to compensate for the rotation of the earth and keep the target centered and prevent background stars from turning into streaks across the image. This is important for astrophotography.

When I started down this rabbit hole, I was mainly interested in visual astronomy. With my assortment of eyepieces, I can vary the magnification level from around 80X up to about 400X. I used 400X to view Saturn under excellent viewing conditions and could clearly see the rings of Saturn with a sharply defined Cassini Gap.

Atmospheric conditions – astronomers call it seeing conditions – are often the limiting factor to what you can see or photograph in the sky. When bands of turbulent air move across your vision, it creates distortions like the heat waves you can see rising from hot pavement. This is what makes the stars appear to “twinkle” in the night sky and can wreak havoc for astrophotographers. High levels of magnification increase this effect.

I used my Samsung Galaxy S22 to snap a photo of the moon through the eyepiece and it wasn’t too bad. This piqued my interest in astrophotography. I bought a dedicated astrophotography camera. There are many to choose from and it’s another learning experience.

With the long focal length of my ‘scope and the sensor size of my camera, I have too much magnification. Even with a focal reducer, which drops the focal length to 1280 millimeters, I get 400X magnification. This makes seeing conditions limit how sharp my photos are. Seeing conditions haven’t been too good lately. Soon though, when the temperatures drop a bit, it’ll improve. Here are a couple of moon shots somewhat spoiled by poor seeing conditions.

I’ll discuss the processing of astrophotography images another time, as it will be long-winded and this is long enough.

Here are a few dinner plates to close this post.

Wild King salmon with garlic smashed potato and asparagus

Filet mignon with crash hot potatoes and cut green beans

I bought a whole USDA Prime beef tenderloin and cut it into a dozen filet mignons and about a pound of beef tips. Spendy, but it’s delicious.

Donna is heading off to Vermont to visit her parents on Tuesday. Once again it’ll be just me and Ozark the cat for a week.

Beating the Heat

I know I said my last post would probably be the end, but old habits die hard. So, I’ll add a quick update. We’ve really settled in to the Viewpoint Golf and RV Resort lifestyle. The summer months can be a bit tough in central Arizona, but we’re adapting. The pickleballers here play very early in the morning to beat the heat.

I don’t like playing pickleball before 6am. By the time I’ve loosened up and feel like I’m starting to play well, they’re quitting for the day. Donna found indoor pickleball a couple of miles away from us at the Red Mountain Multigenerational Center. It’s air-conditioned! We paid the $4 daily fee and played a few times to try it out. Then I found out that my Medicare Part G supplemental medical policy through Untied Health has a provision called Renew Active. The Multigenerational Center participates in this program, so I get a free membership and can go there anytime for free! This will be our summertime pickleball place – Donna and I have been a successful team winning most of our matches there.

Another way we’ve embraced the Viewpoint lifestyle is through another purchase we made. We’ve joined the majority of residents here by buying a golf car for convenient travel inside the park. They’re especially useful in the summer – it’s too hot to walk or bike in the afternoons and a regular car isn’t convenient. I’ve always called them golf carts, but now I’m told they are referred to as “golf cars,” I think this is because many are street legal low speed vehicles – most people here don’t use them for golf! We bought a Yamaha G19 electric golf car. It is a pre-owned unit that was always stored indoors by only one previous owner up in Fountain Hills.

It’s well-equipped with full lights including turn signals, brake lights and flashers. It has the optional horn. It also has a folding, two-piece windshield. It’s powered with a 48-volt electric motor powered by six 8-cell, deep cycle Trojan batteries. Batteries for these things are a big deal – they’re expensive to replace and are something to consider when shopping for a used golf car.

The first time I charged the batteries, I monitored the voltage. Typically these are charged with “smart chargers” that use a three-stage charging algorithm. They start with a high, constant current charge and build voltage as it charges – this is called the bulk charging stage. At a pre-determined voltage point, it switches to a constant voltage as current slowly drops as the internal resistance of the battery goes up – this is the absorption stage. Finally it reaches a point of nearly 100% charge and goes into the finish stage which is low current and lower voltage than the second stage.

I found the original charger that came with the golf car had a problem. It wouldn’t complete the second charging stage – it would set an error and quit charging with the batteries at about a 90% state of charge.

Original Yamaha charger – old technology

The original Yamaha charger is built with an old-school design with heavy components – it weighs about 35 pounds. I shopped online and decided to replace it with a 48-volt charger from a company based in Minnesota called Formcharge.

Formcharge 48-volt charger – newer technology

The Formcharge charger is built with more modern components and technology. It weighs about seven pounds and charges the battery bank perfectly. It further refines the three-stage charging with a seven-step algorithm. Trojan battery says a 100% charge of a 48-volt battery bank should show an open circuit voltage of 50.93 volts when resting at full charge. My volt-meter doesn’t read in hundredths of a volt, only tenths, but it bounces between 50.9 and 51 volts after charging with the Formcharge. Just right.

We don’t have room in the carport with our Nissan Frontier and MG Midget already in there, so we have to store the golf car out front. I bought a cover for it to avoid sun damage as well as water damage from rain.

Yesterday we beat the heat by going to a matinee at the AMC Superstition East movie theater. This facility features 12 small theaters which seat about 44 people each. The seats are roomy electric recliners – a very comfortable experience. We saw Top Gun Maverick. It was entertaining, but there were too many holes in the storyline for me.

Our granddaughter Gabi up in Washington injured her knee playing volleyball and had surgery to replace her anterior cruciate ligament (ACL). This is a major surgery and the recovery time is long. On Monday, Donna will be celebrating Independence Day by flying up to Everett, Washington to keep Gabi company until the 15th. I’ll be here keeping Ozark the cat company.

I haven’t taken many dinner plate pictures lately, but there’s one I’d like to mention. A couple of weeks ago, Donna grilled salmon. We had about half of the filet left over. Donna often makes salmon patties, but she usually makes them from canned salmon. This time, she flaked the left over salmon and mixed it with red onion, celery, capers and few other ingredients before coating it with wheat panko bread crumbs. It was excellent, definitely superior to making it from canned salmon.

We’ve had triple-digit heat for several weeks now. The swamp cooler has been effective and it’s keeping the Arizona room about 25 degrees cooler than the outside ambient temperature. This morning, I replaced the batting in the cooler to increase its efficiency. The long-range forecast calls for daily highs between 100 and 109 degrees. We’re in the monsoon season here, so high winds, heavy thundershowers and flash flooding are possibilities at any time.

Nine Years After

A week ago Wednesday, I drove Donna to the Cortez Munipal Airport as planned. She was flying out to San Diego for a long weekend with her sisters to attend her nephew’s high school graduation commencement. Her flight out of Cortez was on a regional airline, Boutique Air, in a Pilatus PC12 aircraft. These are small, single-engine turbo-prop planes built in Switzerland. They have an excellent reputation and safety record. Boutique Air configures the planes to carry eight passengers and two crew – pilot and co-pilot. The co-pilot doubles as a flight attendant.

They have two filghts between Cortez and Phoenix daily as well as four flights between Cortez and Denver.

Pilatus PC12 arrived from Phoenix and will turn around and go back to Phoenix

In the photo above, the plane arrived from Phoenix and is being made ready for the flight back to Phoenix. The Cortez Municipal Airport has one runway (3/21) that’s oriented roughly northeast/southwest – 30 degrees northeast and 210 degrees southwest. The prevailing winds are from the southwest so most takeoffs and landings are on the 210 degree heading.

The airport was made famous in 1959 when a USAF Lockheed U2 reconnaissance plane made a forced landing there after its engine flamed out at an altitude of 70,000 feet above sea level. The pilot was a Chinese (ROC Taiwan) Air Force Major on a night training flight from Laughlin AFB in Texas. He flew to Salt Lake City and turned back on a secret flight path. The U2 was a highly classified secret aircraft at the time. When his engine quit, he didn’t have much of a plan.

He glided to a lower alitude and attempted to restart, unsucessfully. It was dark and he didn’t know his precise location, just a general idea. He knew the area was mountainous and didn’t know of any airports in the area. By a stroke of luck or the grace of God, he ended up gliding between mountains in the high desert valley and spotted runway lights. His glide path and speed coordinated perfectly to line up a landing at the Cortez airport! If he had been a few miles east or west of the valley he would have slammed into a mountain in the dark night. It’s quite a story.

I had an uneventful four nights as a bachelor while Donna was away. I played pickleball, read books and took care of Ozark the cat. Donna had a nice time with her sisters – she hadn’t spent time with the three of them together in years.

Sunday afternoon Donna flew back to Cortez, backtracking her flights to San Diego. The Boutique Air flight from Phoenix landed at 3:36pm. She said she enjoyed the small aircraft – she hadn’t flown in a Pilatus before.

Donna in the doorway exiting the Pilatus PC12

In the photo above you can see Donna in the doorway exiting the aircraft and get a sense of scale for the small airplane.

Sunday evening we went to J Fargo’s Family Dining and Micro-Brewery on Main Street. We had dinner and a couple of brews and discussed our future plans. The water leak situation is only a minor leak, but fixing it is problematic. Our friend and fellow Alpine Coach owner Lynda Campbell told me she found an access panel in the back of the cabinet in the kitchen behind the shower wall.

I hadn’t seen this panel because it’s behind a wire rack where we store canned goods. I emptied the cabinet and removed four screws and pulled the panel out. This wasn’t going to help much. First of all, the guys that built this coach covered half of the access point with lauan plywood. This could be cut away without too much trouble, but there were still two concerns. It wouldn’t access the shower valve if that’s where the leak is. If the leak is at the shower head, I would need arms about a foot longer than I have to reach through the cabinet to fix it.

The leak is really small, but over time it will create water damage. Water damage is an RVer’s worst fear. We’ve been minimizing the leakage by only using the onboard water supply and turning on the water pump as needed. When we turn the pump off, we leave a tap open to relieve the water pressure and stop any subsequent leakage. This had been a tedious process and uses a lot more water than we normally use.

We need to get the coach into a shop where they can create a better way to access the shower plumbing. If we continued on to New Mexico as planned, we could probably find a competent shop. But we would need to have an open-ended stay at a motel while the work was being done and would have to bring Ozark into a motel room. Been there, done that and it wasn’t good.

We decided to leave Cortez a week ahead of schedule and go back to Mesa, Arizona. Here we have our own home and I can research repair shops to see who would be the best fit for this work.

At that point we agreed that moving forward, once repaired, we would sell the motorhome. Donna always said we would know when our time on the road was done. We’re done. Our future travel plans will probably involve B&B stays around the country in the summer months and we’ll stay in our park model home at Viewpoint Golf and RV Resort the rest of the year.

When I started this blog nine years ago, the stated purpose was to keep my family and friends informed of our whereabouts and our activities. With the RV lifestyle in the rearview mirror, this may be the last installment of this blog.

Not an Amazon Affiliate

I haven’t been motivated to write a post as we haven’t done anything too exciting lately. The biggest highlight of the past week was dinner at Olio in Mancos for Donna’s birthday. Her birthday was actually on Friday, but celebrated a day early because we couldn’t get a table reservation on Friday.

Olio is upscale dining by reservation only. The owner and chef, Jason Blankenship, prepares locally sourced dinners and the menu will vary according to what may be available at the time. The place only seats about two dozen people and the tables are reserved for the night – no rushing through a meal while people wait for your table.

They have an extensive wine list. We started with the house salad – fresh salad greens with sauteed mushrooms, marcona almonds and piave and saba cheese. Their house dressing was fabulous. I ordered a bottle of 2013 Domaine les Bastides – a blend of cabernet sauvignon and grenache from Aix-en-Provence, France. It went well with our dinner entees. Donna went for the Pan Roasted Pheasant Breast on Grilled Corn Maque Choux with Tomato-Marsala Sauce while I had the Grilled, Dry-Aged, Piedmontese New York Strip with Olio Signature Steak Sauce. We split a slice of Chocolate Silk Pie with a 5-Nut Crust  for dessert. What a meal.

Our time has been mostly occupied with activities in the mornings and leisurely afternoons. I play pickleball for about two hours most mornings while Donna alternates between tennis three or four days a week and pickleball. I didn’t play over the weekend as we had high winds with gusts of 40mph. Donna has also been helping our friend, Carolyn, with chores at the Owers farm a couple of days a week.

There was a lot of turnover here in La Mesa RV Park over the Memorial Day weekend. Weekenders came in while some of the longer term people went away for the weekend, presumably visiting family. Some of the longer term people here are workers staying here while they work in the mountains. I think they’re stringing electrical cable.

We had a young couple with a baby pull in next door on Friday. They were from Kansas and came here to visit with family. They pulled out Sunday morning and had to drive 900 miles back home. Their intention was to do it in two days so he could be back at work on Tuesday. This seemed awful ambitious to me – especially towing a travel trailer in the gusty, windy conditions on Sunday.

We had a few excellent meals in the last week prepared by Donna. We started the week with grilled chicken with the barbecue sauce that Donna whipped up. She served it with crash-hot potatoes (an Australian recipe) and green beans.

Last Tuesday, Donna made lemon butter scallops served with a side of sweet potato-spinach hash. I cut the spinach into thin strips and this worked much better than preparing it with whole spinach leaves.

Wednesday night Donna made something a little different – she made salami pasta alla gricia. I chopped salami into small squares that went in with the pasta and it was topped with chopped parsley and grated parmesan.

Donna bought wild Bristol Bay salmon on Sunday and she grilled it with a dijon-brown sugar glaze. Really tasty and a simple sauce to make. The side dish was gingery bok choy.

Dijon-brown sugar glazed salmon with sauteed bok choy

The weather has been much cooler than it was at this time last year. A week ago Monday, the thermometer only reached 62 degrees. It gradually warmed back up into the 80s by Thursday. I already mentioned the windy weekend conditions. Yesterday we had another cool Monday with a high of 68 degrees. The pattern will continue with low 70s today and tomorrow before we reach the 80s again.

Tomorrow I’ll drive Donna to the Cortez Regional Airport. She’ll take a small commuter flight back to Phoenix, then carry on to San Diego. Her sister, Linda, will arrive at about the same time and they’ll be visiting her other sister, Sheila. Sheila’s son, Connor, is graduating high school and they’ll attend the graduation Friday. Donna will fly back here on Sunday. So I’ll be on my own for four nights.

By the way, Amazon notified me that they were removing my affiliate status. They said I violating their rules by having friends and family make purchases through my website link. Huh? I thought that was how affiliate links worked – I provide the link and people that follow my blog utilize it. Whatever. I removed the Amazon link – it didn’t earn much anyway.

Day Trip to Hovenweep

It’s been an eventful week – some good, some not so good. I’ll start with the good stuff. Monday afternoon we drove over to the Cortez Elk’s Lodge and enjoyed a cold brew on the patio. The view was similar to our back deck – we were overlooking the golf course. Donna wanted to check out the golf course and driving range there.

Golf course view from the Cortez Elk’s Lodge

Donna wants to hit a few balls at the driving range and maybe play a round on the course while we’re in Cortez.

I played pickleball on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. I took Thursday off as I had an appointment with Clint, the only local RV repair guy – but that’s another story I’ll get to later in this post. Donna alternated between pickleball and tennis. Friday was too windy for pickleball.

On Friday morning, Donna went over to the Owers Farm to help Carolyn with weeding. Then, after lunch, we made a trip to Hovenweep National Monument. It’s about an hour drive from Cortez on mostly two-lane county roads across the border into Utah. Hovenweep is an interesting place. It was inhabited over 800 years ago by a large number of ancestral Pueblo people – what were formerly called Anasazi. These people were farmers and also skilled at building, utilizing bricks made from mud, rock and plant material. Most of the building ruins there were originally built from 1230 to 1275 AD.

The area is thought to have had many creeks and springs providing water to the canyon where Hovenweep is located. Around this same time, the Mesa Verde cliff dwellings were also built. The people of Hovenweep didn’t stay here for long. It’s theorized that after the towers, storage buildings and dwellings were built, decades of drought ensued. It was once thought that the ancient Puebloans simply disappeared. Nowadays we know that they relocated – some went to the Rio Grande valley in what is now New Mexico, others went south to the Little Colorado watershed in Arizona.

Today, the Navajo, Hopi and Zuni tribes can trace their ancestry back to these people. We hiked from the visitor center to the Square Tower, then on the way back we took the Tower Point loop. The hiking path was well-marked with stone boundaries and the terrain was uneven, flat stones. Wear good, sturdy shoes if you come here!

Square Tower – Hovenweep House on top of the canyon in the background

I should have had Donna pose in a picture or two to give a sense of scale. These were large structures, many stories high. It was a fun and entertaining way to spend the afternoon. When we came back to town, we made another stop at Loungin’ Lizard. Once again the beer was cold, but the food was off and the service a bit hit or miss. We’ve heard from a local person that’s what you can expect there – hit or miss.

On Saturday, Donna and I played in a pickleball tournament put on by the Cortez Pickleball Club. They call it a “Shootout.” I didn’t play all that well, but we had fun. The format had us playing three games with a different partner each game, then based on total points scored you either moved up one court or down one court for another three games with different people.

Now the not so good stuff. In my last post, I mentioned two issues we were having, both related to water. We have water dripping from behind the shower, either from the water supply line at the shower valve or the shower head connection. I cannot find a way to access either area. So, in the meantime, we are only running the fresh water pump on an as-needed basis to prevent a constant drip.

As if that weren’t enough to contend with, the fresh water supply suddenly lost flow and pressure. I was fairly certain the problem was the check valve at the hot water tank. I ordered a new one. When it was delivered on Tuesday, I drained the hot water tank by pulling the anode rod. I was surprised to find the rod had eroded down to the core material – it was about the diameter of a clothes hanger wire. The tank was full of anode rod bits and mineral deposits.

Once I had the tank cleaned up, I embarked on a comedy of errors – at least that’s how I think of it now. When I removed the check valve, I saw I had ordered the wrong replacement part. The Amazon description says it’s for our Suburban water heater and it will fit the heater tank, but the other end of it is a female coupling and I needed male couplings on both ends. Grrr. I cleaned up the old check valve as best as I could and reassembled it and filled the hot water tank.

Good news – it worked fine then! I went back to Amazon and ordered replacement anode rods. I enjoyed a nice, hot shower with good water pressure and flow. Donna had half a shower before trouble hit again. We lost water flow and pressure. I went back to Amazon and found the proper check valve and placed another order. We were stuck for the remainder of the week without good water pressure.

Thursday morning, the only local RV repair man came out. I explained the water drip situation to Clint and showed him the dilemma regarding access. He looked at the options and couldn’t come with a good solution. As I feared, he said it wouldn’t be a mobile repair job and would have to be left at a shop – it wasn’t something that could be done in a day. The only way to do it would be to either cut through the wall or cut the shower enclosure and patch it afterwards. Not good.

Friday Amazon delivered the new anode rods, but the check valve wasn’t scheduled to arrive until Saturday. I would need to remove the anode rod to drain the tank to install the new check valve, so I waited to do the repair on Saturday.

New anode rod on the left, old eroded anode rod on the right

In hindsight, I can see that I should have drained the hot water tank when I put the coach in storage. Leaving water in the tank for eight months without use eroded the rod.

I should mention that I had to buy a 12″ adjustable end wrench in order to remove the anode rod. When we were full-time RVers, I always had all of my tools with me – now I only pack a handful of tools. An adjustable wrench should have been in that handful.

The check valve arrived mid-day on Saturday and I set to work. I removed the old anode rod, drained the tank, then replaced the check valve. After installing the anode rod, I opened the pressure relief vent and turned on the city water supply to refill the tank. I opened the bathroom faucet to check for flow and pressure and was disappointed. I couldn’t figure out what was going on.

I went back outside to check the hose and saw water dripping from behind the hot water tank. I shut off the water and hustled back inside. The pex hose connection to the check valve was leaking profusely. After fiddling with it, I could see that I was missing the rubber gasket. I looked around inside the cabinet where I was working and couldn’t find it.

In a panic, I drove to the hardware store and found a Sharkbite-type 90 degree pex elbow fitting that I thought would work. I came back and started disassmbling the fitting when I had a sudden epiphany. I picked up the old check valve and sure enough, the rubber gasket was lodged inside it. Doh! I installed the gasket on the new check valve and put it all back together. Another refill of the hot water tank and pressure check was a success. Good flow and pressure, no leaking. This was not one of my finest repair attempts.

New check valve – note arrow showing direction of flow

After that long winded tale of woe, I’ll talk about dinner plates. Last Monday, Donna grilled shrimp kabobs with onions, mushrooms, tomatoes and pineapple chunks. She served it with tare sauce on the kabobs and I put soy sauce on the side of rice.

Tuesday she made something new – hoisin glazed pork bowl. The recipe called for thinly sliced carrot, radishes, mushrooms and scallions – it recommended using a mandolin the get the radish thin enough. We don’t have a mandolin but with my Japanese 180mm bunka knife, I was able to cut the radish nearly paper thin.

Japanese 180mm bunka – forged by Teruyasu Fuijiwara

The vegetable medley was placed over the thinly sliced pork that was seared and then baked with a hoisin marinade. I mixed everything together before eating it and it was delicious. I would happily go the through the meal prep for this dish anytime.

The daily temperatures were in the mid 80s through Thursday. Then a front came in bringing wind and cooler temperatures – the high was 71 on Friday, only 68 on Saturday. The overnight lows have been around 40 degrees. We’ll see more of the same for a few days before it begins to warm up again mid-week.

Roughing It

Things went according to plan last Thursday – except for one thing. We noticed our fresh water pump would run for a few seconds with an interval of a few minutes before it ran again. I checked for drips and didn’t find anything. Before we left, I saw a drop of water fall next to the left rear wheels. This would only come from a leak up high – I was guessing the bathroom sink area. We’d left the pump turned off all night. I couldn’t deal with it where we dry camped, so we hit the road.

We drove north through the Petrified Forest National Park, then hit I-40 eastbound. After about 20 miles, we exited on US191 north through Navajo Nation land. It was an uneventful drive until we were north of Chinle, then we hit a series of construction areas where work was being done on bridges, leaving only one lane available. These stoppages added several minutes to our drive.

The road surface also deteriorated north of Chinle as we hit unexpected dips and heaves in the roadway. We turned northeast at US160 and that road had a number of bad areas that rocked us. This route took us to the northwest corner of New Mexico – about a minute later we left New Mexico and crossed the Colorado border. The Four Corners monument where Arizona, Utah, New Mexico and Colorado meet is less than half a mile off US160.

We entered Mountain time and lost an hour when we left Arizona. We made it to La Mesa RV Park in Cortez around 3pm local time. The camp host, Jim, said we had our pick of three sites – 7, 11 or 13. He said satellite reception should be good at any of the three. I took 13 to get us as far from the street and car wash as possible. This turned out to be a bad choice.

We set up without any issues. Donna heard a drip behind the back of the kitchen counter. She pulled out the bottom drawer and we found the leak. It’s coming from the water supply line to the shower. The problem is, it’s up high between a wall and the shower stall with no access point. Until I can figure out a way to get to it, we aren’t using the city water supply. Instead, we only run the fresh water pump with a faucet open to prevent pressurizing the shower supply line. This is a real pain.

At that point, I tried to tune in the Dish satellite TV. No good. The tree at the back of the site has grown and was leafing out enough to block reception. I talked to Jim and told him I didn’t want to go without satellite TV for a month. We decided to move to site 11 in the morning. I wish I had checked the satellite reception before we set up. Tearing it down and securing everything to move 50 feet is just as much work as securing everything to move 100 miles.

Friday night Donna manned the grill and made barbeque chicken thighs. She made barbeque sauce from scratch with a base of tomato paste, maple syrup and sriracha along with a few other ingredients. It was excellent. She served it with garlic mashed cauliflower with chives.

Barbeque chicken thigh with mashed cauliflower

Later, while she was washing dishes, the water pressure from the fresh water pump dropped and only a weak stream of water came out of the kitchen faucet. When I checked it out, I found the sprayer head on the faucet we clogged. We chalked it up to eight months of storage. I took the sprayer head off and soaked it in vinegar. After soaking overnight I could blow through it – it wasn’t clogged anymore, so I put it back together.

The water volume didn’t improve and now we aren’t getting hot water – only lukewarm on the hottest setting. We had this issue seven years ago – I wrote about it in this post. I think the check valve is bad again. I ordered one from Amazon and should have it tomorrow, but I might have another problem. I only packed a few tools that I thought might come in handy. I didn’t include a 1-1/8″ socket, which is what I usually use to take out the hot water heater anode to drain it. I’ll see what I can figure out when the parts come. Meanwhile we are roughing it with low water flow and no hot water.

Saturday morning we went to the pickleball courts at Centennial Park. The Cortez pickleball club had a social event with round-robin style play. We had a good time. I felt I played really well. Donna said she was a litlle bit rusty, but she had fun.

Saturday night we went to the Loungin’ Lizard downtown for drinks and dinner. Our friend Rocco Gerardi raved about this place when we met up for a cold one at Wild Edge Brewery here a couple of years ago. He was right – the beer was cold and the food excellent!

The weather is agreeable – it was cool when we arrived on Thursday – in the mid 60s. Daily highs have varied from mid 70s to mid 80s since then with overnight lows in the mid 30s to low 40s. It’s very dry – humidity is only 10-15%. But we’re used to that as it’s dry in Mesa, Arizona too.

Moving Out

Last weekend, Donna started packing up stuff that we’ll need over the next four months for our summer vacation. We moved our departure date back by one day – we learned last year that it’s too much work to try and pack four months of necessary stuff in one day. Donna obtained a two-night parking pass and I parked the motorhome in front of our park model home.

Our park model is hidden behind the coach

The first thing I did was fill the fresh water tank and dose it with Chlor Brite. Chlor Brite is a product from Leslie Pool that’s basically granulated chlorine. Sodium diclor is the active ingredient – it’s 99% of the product. It’s a concentrated form of chlorine and a little bit goes a long way. When used in swimming pools, as little as three ounces will treat 10,000 gallons of water. Chlorine in drinking water is at a much lower level than swimming pools use.

I mixed a fairly strong solution, filled the fresh water tank and left it in overnight. After sitting in storage for eight months, I wanted to sanitize and remove any contaminants from the water tank. Early Tuesday morning, I dumped the tank and refilled it with filtered fresh water. We use a two-canister filtration system – the first stage is a five-micron sediment filter followed by a one-micron carbon block filter.

This is what 100 gallons of water quickly dumped in the street looks like

The dump valve on our fresh water tank is relatively large and empties the tank quickly. I dumped 100 gallons and it created a small stream in the road. During a storm in last summer’s monsoon season, our neighbors told us the street was completely flooded and ran all the way down through our carport to the shed! I can’t imagine how many gallons of water had to dump from the clouds to cause that.

Most people not from the area don’t realize Arizona has a monsoon season. In central Arizona, that season usually begins around mid-July and runs through August. Flash floods are common as these storms can drop a lot water very quickly.

Our neighbor across the street from us on the 1600 lane just bought the place. Donna told him we planned to place a barrier at the shed end of our carport to prevent flood water from entering our shed. His Arizona room addition is built on a slab at the back of his carport. Last year it flooded and suffered water damage – all the carpeting had to be ripped out. He was leaving the next day to go back north. He asked me if I could put up a water barrier for him – he gave me $100 for materials.

I found a product called Quick Dam Flood Bags. These are cloth tubes filled with a gel product that swells and seals the tubes, creating a useful flood barrier. They are stackable, so I bought enough to stack two high in front of our shed and his Arizona room. When they’re fully activated, they will create a barrier six to seven inches high.

Flood barrier for our neighbor’s Arizona room

I used a garden hose to activate his Quick Dams and make sure they’ll work. Job done!

I put Midget-San up on jack stands for summer storage. Then I removed the wheels – not only will this prevent the tires from flat-spotting, it’s also an anti-theft measure. It’s pretty hard to steal a car without wheels. I fastened the car cover over it for the summer.

Last Thursday was Cinco de Mayo – our anniversary day. We planned to celebrate our 16th anniversary with dinner at Baja Joe’s. Donna wasn’t feeling up to night out after her trip back from Vermont, so I ordered take-out from Baja Joe’s. Donna had her favorite shrimp dish with poblano cream sauce. I had the chef’s special fish filet with a seafood sauce containing pieces of shrimp and octopus. It was excellent – we’ve never had a bad meal at Baja Joe’s.

Saturday evening I manned the grill and cooked a pork tenderloin that Donna marinated in her mojo marinade. She served it with Cuban rice and a steamed vegetable medley. Another nicely balanced and nutritious meal.

Donna had shrimp again on Sunday when she grilled it and served it over cilantro-avocado-lime sauce. Tasty!

Grilled shrimp, Mexican corn and grilled shishito peppers

We had a warm weekend with the thermometer reaching the upper 90s – it was 99 on Saturday! The temps held in the 80s as we packed on Monday and Tuesday. Packing for four months is more like moving from a furnished apartment to another furnished place. It’s not like we’re just heading out for a weekend.

We hit the road around 9:15am. Our route took us over Usery Pass to the Bush Highway past Saguaro Lake and on to the Beeline Highway (AZ87). We climbed to Payson which sits at an elevation of 5,000 feet above sea level. It was much cooler – in the low 70s there – and continued across the Sitgreaves National Forest to Heber on AZ260. This road runs through pine forest all the way to Heber – not what most people picture in Arizona.

At Heber, we turned northeast on AZ277, then AZ377 to Holbrook. The wind really picked up at Holbrook – it’s a steady 30mph wind with higher speed gusts. We’ve stopped for the night near the entrance of the Petrified Forest National Park. We stayed here last year – it’s a dry camping spot. I positoned the coach near the leeward side of a building to shelter us from some of the wind gusts. This is about the halfway point to tomorrow’s destination – Cortez, Colorado. We’ll spend a month there. Tomorrow we will go north through the National Park, then head east a short way on I-40, then north again through the Navajo Nation past Four Corners and on to Cortez – that’s the plan.

Meatless Mondays

I took a break from writing this blog for about a week and a half. I bemoaned the high prices in my last post. I’m sure everyone is feeling the squeeze of inflation and high fuel costs. High fuel costs creates more inflationary pressure as the cost of transporting goods rises.

I usually fill up our Nissan Frontier whenever we get down to about a quarter of tank of fuel. I could fill up for less than $30 a year ago. By January of this year it was costing me nearly $50. Last week I paid almost $70 for the same fill-up.

The cost of diesel fuel is higher than regular unleaded gasoline. We have plans to get out of the heat here in central Arizona and spend the summer months in southwest Colorado, New Mexico and northern Arizona. This means we will miss spending time with family and grandchildren this summer.

In my last post, I wrote about our swamp cooler here in our park model home. Even with temperatures reaching the upper 90s, we have yet to run our air conditioner this year. This is a great saving in energy costs and the house maintains a comfortable temperature in the mid-70s.

The thing that has been uncomfortable for me is the pollen levels. It seems like everything is blooming and my allergies have really kicked in over the past month or so.

More flowers here at Viewpoint Golf and RV Resort

Last week on Wednesday, April 27th, we were up before dawn. I drove Donna to Sky Harbor Airport (Phoenix). She had a flight to Albany, New York to visit her parents in Bennington, Vermont. Her father fractured his hip and had to stay in a rehabilitation facility until it was healed well enough for him to begin putting weight on that leg. He was due to come home on May 2nd. Donna wanted to help out around their house and be there to assist him when he returned home.

That left me in temporary bachelor status while she was away. Donna served up a couple of fine meals before she left. She started this meatless Monday thing, which I’m not exactly crazy about. On the Monday before she left, she made a spanakopita pasta casserole.

The day before her departure, she served blackened tilapia over cheesy grits with green beans on the side.

I didn’t observe meatless Monday while Donna was away. I also didn’t quite meet her standard of meal preparation. She returned late last night and now we’re preparing to close this place and hit the road. We plan to pull out of here on Tuesday.

While Donna was away, we had daily highs in the low to mid 90s. It’s forecast to hit 98 on Saturday before we cool down to the 80s on Monday and Tuesday. That will be a relief while we load up the motorhome.

Swamp Thang

I mentioned how well our swamp cooler works in my last post. When our friends Ginette and Greg were visiting, they were amazed to find we weren’t using our air conditioner and kept the house cool with the swamp cooler. In fact, they had never heard of a swamp cooler.

They live on Vancouver Island, Canada where a swamp cooler wouldn’t be very effective. Swamp coolers are evaporative cooling devices and are most effective in dry climates. They take advantage of the physics behind the effect of changing water from liquid to vapor. The swamp cooler is a simple device – it pumps water over a matrix – in our case, it’s batting material made from cellulose fibers. This batting is held in the louvered housing on three sides of the cooler. The fourth side is a duct connected to our Arizona room.

The batting is soaked with water drawn from a sump in the bottom of the cooler. A large squirrel-cage fan sits inside the housing of the cooler. This fan draws air through the louvers past the wet batting and pumps the air into the Arizona room. As the hot, dry air passes over the wet batting, the water absorbs heat from the air and changes from liquid to gas (evaporates), thus cooling the air. The drier the air is, the more effectively this change of state occurs.

This also has the benefit of adding some moisture to the dry air in the house. It’s common to have relative humidity levels under 20% here in central Arizona and last week we had single digit relative humidity.

We typically see a change of temperature in our house of about 20 degrees – it’s about 20 degrees cooler inside than the ambient outside temperature. So, last week when we had temperatures in the 90s outside, our house was comfortably in the 70s inside. The swamp cooler doesn’t require much power – only a couple of amps to run the fan and water pump. Considerably less than the demand of a compressor on an air conditioner unit.

When we bought this place, the previous owner said the swamp cooler didn’t work very well when the temperature reached triple digits. I wondered about this – it should still provide the 20 degree drop regardless, unless humidity rose high enough to slow the evaporative process.

By the way, the 20 degree drop is an average of the interior temperature versus outside. Swamp coolers don’t have any temperature regulation – it’s not governed by a thermostat. I checked the temperature of the grill where the air from the cooler enters the Arizona room with a non-contact infrared thermometer and it’s typically 60-62 degrees. To regulate the interior temperature, I leave a window and the front sliding glass door open, otherwise it would get downright chilly inside!

When it was in the upper 90s, I noticed the swamp cooler seemed to struggle – in fact, it quit working. I checked it out and found the problem. The water supply to feed the sump was feeble and couldn’t keep up with amount of evaporation taking place at that temperature. I could see the water dribbling from the supply valve – it has a float arm like you would find on a toilet ball cock that opens the valve as the water level drops.

Swamp cooler side panel open – you can see the batting on the side, the squirrel-cage fan, sump, pump and water supply valve below the fan

On Monday, I went to a shop that sells swamp coolers about a mile from here and bought a new supply valve. I took the old valve off and found the water supply still only dribbled a small amount of water. Hmmm.

I went to the other end of the water supply line and took it off the fitting – still only had a dribble. The clamp over the water pipe holding the water supply feed line was mis-aligned. Once I straighten that out, I had ample water flow to the swamp cooler.

Now the swamp cooler works better than ever and maintains plenty of water in the sump. Job done!

Last week, I played pickleball six days without a break. After taking Sunday off, I played for the next four days. That’s a lot of pickleball and my 65-year-old legs were feeling it. When I first started playing pickleball, I bought a Pro-Lite paddle. I used it for a few years, then I replaced it with a Head paddle. I bought the Head right when they hit the pickleball market – Head was well established as a tennis racquet supplier also sold ski equipment.

Head had their pickleball paddles manufactured in China. As an early adopter, I was a victim of poor quality control – my Head paddle literally fell apart. Then I met a Paddletek representative in Colorado and bought new Paddletek paddles for me and Donna. Paddletek makes their products in the USA – Niles, Michigan.

I’ve been using the Paddletek paddle for over three years now and I decided it was time for a replacement. I did a little research. The biggest factor in pickleball paddles is arguably the shape. The rules give a restriction on overall dimension, but it can be long and narrow or shorter and wider to meet the specification. My game is more of a control and shot placement game rather than power and speed. I opted for the more traditional shape rather than the elongated power-paddle.

I settled on a paddle branded by the tennis racquet company, Prince. These paddles are actually made by Paddletek right here in the USA.

I found it on sale at Pickleball Central for $103 and they included a nice paddle cover. These regularly sell online for about $130 and the cover is an extra cost $17 option, so I think I got a pretty good deal. I’m liking it so far.

As always, Donna is feeding me like a king. Here are a few examples. Last Saturday, she made a new twist on chicken – garlic-roasted chicken thighs with carrots. She served it with guasacaca sauce, a Venezuelan sauce made with avocado, jalapeno, rice vinegar, zest and juice of lime, plus loads of fresh parsley and cilantro. The sauce can be drizzled over grilled flank steak too or used as a dip so it’s very versatile not to mention tasty!

Roasted garlic chicken and carrots with guasacaca sauce

For our Easter Sunday dinner, she grilled wild Alaskan salmon and served it over asparagus with peas and capers in a brown butter sauce and chantilly potatoes on the side. Yummy!

On Tuesday we had real man-food. I grilled New York strip steaks with bok choy and Donna made jalapeno poppers to go with it.

As I mentioned, we had some hot weather. On Monday and Tuesday the thermometer hit 96 and 97 degrees respectively. If the weather guessers are correct, we might see triple digits for the first time this year next Tuesday.

Speaking of next Tuesday, I have an appointment to change the oil in the coach in preparation for hitting the road. Last time I had an oil service, I think I paid $280. Now, every place around here is charging around $400 for the seven-gallon oil change plus filter on a Cummins ISL diesel engine. I don’t see any plan from the current administration to curb inflation and energy costs. It’s disheartening to see these price hikes while my investments are losing value.

Flying The Koop

…from real estate to wheel estate and back again

Category Archives: Uncategorized

Buying, Selling and Trading

Night Sky

Beating the Heat

Nine Years After

Not an Amazon Affiliate

Day Trip to Hovenweep

Roughing It

Moving Out

Meatless Mondays

Swamp Thang

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: