Month: February 2018

 

Today Mav got me up at 0715 to see the sunrise and pee. I promptly crawled back in bed for an additional hour of sleep. No need to conserve too much water or holding tank since we are only here for 2 nights so I took a nice long shower. We checked out the RV flea markets and even bought a new patio mat. We have a very nice and large patio mat but it’s a bit of a pain to take out and put up. At the flea market we bought a smaller easier to manage mat for $20. I think we will enjoy it, especially for short stays.
Tomorrow we have reservations for Lake Havasu State Park. It is also a big snowbird location. We wanted two nights but could only secure one. We may stay there an extra night in overflow depending on availability. The nice thing about pressing forward to Quartzsite is Lake Havasu is only about 1 1/2 hours away. An easy commute tomorrow.

A common theme online is that newbie full timers like us travel too far/hard early on. The rule is 2-2-2. That is no more than 200 miles a day, no driving after 2pm, and stay at least two nights. Also, fulltimers say they hate a schedule because its forces travel decisions and adds stress to the journey. We definitely appreciate both of these idioms. I feel we have pressed harder than we might otherwise due to our breakdown and ski vacation fixed schedule. I really look forward to after the vacation when we don’t have a fixed schedule to meet. That said….. We were going to be back in McKinney in June due to our planned Saint Thomas vacation. That vacation was cancelled due to the Hurricanes last year wrecking havoc. Now we are notionally planning Alaska this year and that could dictate schedule all over again. What wonderful problems to have.

If you were wondering….sitting here at the dining room table, looking at mountains in 70 deg weather is SO MUCH better than working for a living. Hopefully we can keep it up financially.
THIS IS AWESOME!!!!!!!

 

This morning we changed our plans. We were planning on staying in Phoenix but I realized that just outside of Phoenix is a RV Mecca, Quartzsite AZ. I only know about Quartzsite by its online reputation. This area  normally has less than population of 1000-ish during the summer. During the peak of winter the population is as much as 1 million (cue Doctor Evil voice here). I think the peak is during the big RV show that was 1/20-1/28 this year. The cool thing is this is a big BLM free camping site. What is BLM you ask? Bureau of Land Management. BLM camping is federally controlled land typically free to camp up to 14 days in a 28 day period. Quartzsite has many cheap full hook-up RV parks, but if you are willing to go “dry camping” in the desert it is totally free. On the RV forums Quartzsite is famous for friends meeting up in the desert. I just had to check it out. So……

 

Quartzsite is pretty cool. The BLM land is vast and has many places to camp. The BLM sites are in the middle of the rocky desert. We picked a site only hundreds of yards from a nice paved road. Quartzsite is surrounded by desert mountains and is much more picturesque than I expected. In a rig like ours with generator and satellite it’s still not exactly roughing it. The nearest camper is about 100 yards away but we could have easily found a spot with no-one closer than 1000 yards. It’s pretty close to town at about 10 miles. The weather at this time is absolutely perfect. Very dry, high 40’s at night and 75 peak today. The sunsets are awesome as only the desert or ocean can provide. Quartzsite is only here because of RV’rs and everything caters to us. There are 3 or 4 big RV flea markets with all sorts of tools, RV supplies, and curio’s. I was pleasantly surprised. We are staying here 2 nights, totally free.

We got here about 4pm and just ate here in the coach. We watched the sunset with a nice Margarita in hand. We ran the Genset (Generator Set) about 2 hours and watched a movie. Sweet.

 

This morning we took off for Seguaro National Park (East). It is only about 10 miles north of the RV park. There is an 8 mile driving loop that takes you through a lot of the terrain. There are very large and old Sequaro Cacti. Donna read that a Sequaro gets its first arm around 75 years old. Wow. There are many throughout this landscape. Donna also read (Wikipedia) that the Seguaro’s are highly protected and only found in Arizona. They are very cool.

We programmed in the Sonora Desert Museum into google maps and headed that way. That museum combines a desert museum, botanical garden, and zoo. Sounds fun. Oops, on the way we found ourselves driving by Davis Monthan AFB. This is the giant boneyard of aircraft. There were hundreds of old C-130’s and other aircraft visible from the road. Also directly on our route was the PIMA Air and Space Museum. It seemed silly to pass it up on our route so we decided to see it first. Surprise, the museum is Maverick friendly so we put on the leash and headed out. The museum is great. It has 5 hangars full of WWII, and modern aircraft both military and civil. I was pleased to see a Pitts S-1S hanging from the ceiling (that’s what I flew for 17 years). It also has about 300 aircraft over 80 acres in outdoor exhibits that are really great (includes a B-36). But….as we left the first hangar the skies opened up. Did we bring the umbrella, No. Did I bring a rain coat, No, not even in the RV (don’t ask). After a very quick run around the yard we ran into the Space hangar literally dripping wet. Maverick didn’t seem to mind at all. Normally the museum runs trams through the outdoor segment but it was too muddy from recent rain. If there was any disappointment it was in the space segment. It seemed pretty lame. I think the great collection of rare aircraft is probably related to the closeness of the boneyard. IF you make arrangements 10 days in advance you can see the boneyard through a bus tour. We didn’t discover that in time.

After the museum we were hungry and had some good local BBQ for lunch. We reconsidered our plans. The rain simply would not let up, in spite of forecasts, so we decided to go to the (indoor) Mini Time Machine of Miniatures Museum. I opted to stay in the car for this one but Donna really enjoyed it. I spent my time fighting with Net Benefits on the phone over their mess up on my Lump Sum pension payment. Donna had much more fun than Mav and I.

We debated about trying for one more night in the RV park so we could see the Sonora Desert Museum. I pinged the front desk and we were going to have to move if we wanted to stay. In the end we decided to move on. By the way, temperatures during the day remained about mid-60’s, so despite the rain we were pretty comfortable.

This morning we went back by Pro-Tech to make sure they used the ABS diag port instead of the chassis diag port to check out the ABS problem. They assured me they tried both ports. I’m still not 100% confident they tried the ABS port but decided enough was enough. We took off for Tucson. Unfortunately it started raining just West of Las Cruces and continued until 8pm here in Tucson. We checked in to Cactus Country RV park. Mostly dominated by long term residents but seems really nice and quiet. It is only 10 miles from Saguaro National Park but a bit further from central Tucson than I like. Tonight we just grabbed a burger and watched a movie. The weather wasn’t good enough to site-see. Tomorrow we will try to see the PIMA Aviation Museum, and the Sonoma Desert Museum of Natural History that combines museum, zoo, and botanical gardens. We are considering either seeing the National Park Saturday morning before heading for Phoenix or staying another night to give us more time. We are still working to a hard schedule of leaving Las Vegas on 2/24 to go skiing at Park City.

We got up early to have the coach at Pro-Tech Diesel. They took our info and promised to look at the air brake leak and the ABS light that has been on since we bought the coach over a year ago. While they worked on the coach we took off for the War Eagles Aircraft Museum. The Museum was really nice with mainly WW2 planes. After the museum we headed back to Las Cruces. We ate at the Cattle Baron. It was another favorite from my work days and remains one of the better Las Cruces restaurants. We then headed to Mesilla and walked the old historic square. Before leaving Las Cruces, we headed out to the Sierra Vista trail head where we had considered staying. Like I feared the relatively small area was already full of campers. It would be a great dry camping spot. We went to pick up the coach at about 5:30. They had repaired the air brake leaks in one day, including procuring two new valves. Unfortunately they didn’t solve the ABS problem and I will see if they can take another look tomorrow. We ended up back in the same KOA parking lot campground.  Hmm…. somehow I don’t seem to have any pictures of the museum.  Bummer.

 

Today we took off for White Sands Missile Range and the White Sands National Monument. I was able to show Donna the Small Missile Range where I spent so much time and you can see the main base from the mountain pass. We continued on to the White Sands Monument. It is really cool. Giant dunes of Gypsum that you can slide down. We both thoroughly enjoy the White Sands. We got back to the coach relatively early so I could diagnose the furnace in nice weather. I would have done this in Carlsbad but it was too cold. Now it’s 70 deg outside and sunny. I disassembled the furnace enough to see the shaft has significant free play along the shaft. I also discovered a piece of wood wedged under the fan, and another housing kludge fastener. I guess both of these were attempts to mask the furnace noise we have been fighting. I believe I need a new fan motor and YouTube showed me exactly how to change it pretty easily. I checked with Camping World and they showed they had the motor in stock but couldn’t find it. I’ll have to wait until Tucson or Las Vegas to get a new motor. The good news is removing the Kludges has, at least temporarily, seriously improved the noise. I’m guessing this is temporary. Afterwards we drove to Texas Roadhouse south of Anthony Texas. It is our favorite chain restaurant and was awesome as usual. Another problem that has been getting gradually worse during our travels is the air brakes seem to be leaking. It was never bad enough to do anything about it…until now. During the last two road segments the leak has gotten worse. Now the air leaks significantly just during a fuel stop, where it used to take a full day or more. Camping World recommended a local shop nearby. I called them and setup a 9 AM appointment for tomorrow.

We departed about 9:30 and headed West toward Las Cruces NM. The drive was easy, and low traffic. We stopped at Guadalupe National Park only 39 miles past Carlsbad Caverns. Not much to see here if you don’t want to commit to a pretty serious hike. There are no roads into or around the park. We took a very short hike to the old Butterfield Stage Coach stop ruins. Not really a “hike”. It was pleasant enough, but not spectacular. Guadalupe Peak is the highest point in Texas and there is a hike to the peak that is probably a 8 hour round trip for those more adventurous.

We continued on through El Paso towards Las Cruces. Unfortunately we were unable to find any RV park openings in Las Cruces and I wasn’t confident the state park dry camping at Sierra Vista trail head would have any openings. We chose to stop at Anthony Texas just over the Franklin mountains from El Paso. There is a Camping World here and I thought it might have furnace parts that would fix our issue. There is also a gravel parking lot called a KOA campground adjacent to Camping World. We are very concerned about getting the furnace to work properly if we intend to continue this Journey long term. A note about Las Cruces. I chose that as our stopping point because I spent 3 years, every other week here supporting the LOSAT program. Donna was stuck home with a new born and 2 year old during that time. I wanted to show Donna around my old stomping grounds. Tonight I took her to Las Posta Mexican restaurant. It is the only surviving Butterfield coach stop. Billy the Kid, Pat Garrett, Pancho Villa, and other old West characters used to hang out here. The restaurant is nearly identical to my memory from 25 years earlier. We had a great meal in a very historical building. Very cool.

Today we headed for Carlsbad Caverns National Park. The caverns are really great. We took the most popular hike that is a 800 ft elevator ride down to the caverns and a 1.5 miles, 2 hours loop hike in the caverns. We had a really great time. If you are up to a longer hike you can start at the natural entrance and hike down instead of taking the elevator. You can also sign up for Ranger guided tours to less traveled portions of the caverns. We were content with the self-guided 1.5 miles hike. It was awesome. After we returned to town we had a Chili’s. It’s really nice having access to services, restaurants, etc. There was very little to choose from at Big Bend, Terlingua, and Lajitas.

This morning we headed out from Lajitas, TX to Carlsbad NM. We made reservations at the Carlsbad RV Park. The drive took us back through Fort Stockton where we ate a Truck Stop Subway sandwich. The drive was uneventful except that the road from Pecos to Carlsbad was atrocious.  That section of road has more oil development construction than I have ever seen. The road is lined with temporary housing of some sort the entire distance. They appear to be developing many oil wells, running new oil pipelines, and building a new oil refinery. It made for a very rough ride in the RV. The park at Carlsbad was nothing spectacular but very serviceable. We got in about 4pm and replenished supplies at Wal Mart. We got Pizza Inn for dinner and retired for the evening. The park was quiet. Our furnace in the coach has been noisy on and off since Thanksgiving and I continued trying to diagnose. In the interim we bought a better electric heater at Wal-Mart with a thermostat so we could do without the furnace heat Unfortunately, the temps here are predicted to be in the low 20’s for both mornings we are here.

Today we decided to explore the Big Bend Texas State Park. At the visitor center we discovered to go into the Range Station in the middle of the park was about a 2 1/2 hour one-way trip with half on unimproved dirt roads requiring a high-clearance vehicle. While our Jeep qualified, that was a longer drive than we were interested in. The ranger showed us locations for good views and easy trails accessible from Hwy 170. Starting in Laitas, Hwy 170 passes through the park for many (40-ish?) miles. We decided to head that way. This is a VERY scenic drive. It has the highest and steepest highway pass crossing in Texas. That section of road is very pretty with shear canyon walls. The grade is very steep but has only a short ascent and descent both sides. There is a trail we thought about taking called Closed Canyon but opted out. There is a lot of river access and dry camping available along this route. We stopped at one point where the Rio Grande was probably 20 feet wide and up against a sheer canyon wall. Very pretty. Very few people on this route. I highly recommend if you get to Terlingua to take the drive through Lajitas and at least across the pass. It is very beautiful and not a long drive at all.

After the drive through the park, we had lunch at the Candelilla Cafe once again. We returned to the coach and did our laundry. We are preparing to leave in the morning for Carlsbad Caverns National Park.