Down Time, Planes and Desert

We meant to sleep late this morning but habit and the time changes conspired against us. We arrived at the Crazy Horse RV Campground yesterday evening a day earlier than planned and are taking a down day with leisurely showers, catching up on laundry, and not doing much of anything until my oldest son, Mark gets here this evening.

When Mark got here we went out to a nearby Dennys and had a nice long and talkative dinner there before returning to the RV and Mark to a hotel before our planned visit to the Pima Air and Space Museum the next day. Mark picked us up the next morning and we headed for the Pima Museum which is absolutely amazing if you care at all about airplanes and space.

They have a 2,600 acre aircraft 'boneyard' with all sorts of aircraft, mostly military. A bus with open sides can be ridden around the boneyard to see all the planes they have. There is also a page on their website listing the many planes they have indoors and outdoors listing the manufacturer, designation, name, serial# and with thumbnail images you can click to view more closely. These are just limited to airplanes but also includes many flight related vehicles such as the line up of helicopters shown below.

By the time the bus tour of the boneyard was done, I was hot and had had my fill of airplanes which are not really my cup of tea so I wandered off to the gift shop while Mark and Geoff toured the many indoor exhibits of air and space memorabilia including uniforms and equipment. The boys spent some time viewing stuff while I spent money in the gift shop including another ball cap for my collection, this one beige with the navy blue Pima Air & Space logo on the front. Oh, had my growing collection of ball caps escaped mention previously?

Mark returned us to Wolf and left us to rest before Geoff and I tackled the next day's visit to the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum. The museum was founded in 1952 and my mother took myself and my sisters there at least once in the mid-fifties. It was interesting then but now it has grown to a major experience. It's primary focus is the presentation of live plants and animals, including birds and reptiles, from the Sonoran Desert region.

On the way in and at the museum we were fortunate to see many of the cacti in bloom. The museum has mobility chairs available for rent and this gave us the opportunity to take our time touring the various sections and exhibits. There is an extensive aviary with many sorts of birds from ducks to tiny cactus wrens, an aquarium, a hummingbird sanctuary, raptors, prairie dogs and of course snakes.

The image above has a bird hidden in the middle of it. This bird is even harder to see in the full size image or in the aviary. I only spotted it at the time when it moved. Absolutely, if you are ever in the Tucson area, take the time to visit this museum. Of course, I got another ball cap!

The road in and out of the desert museum location is a little bit winding and a lot of ups and downs. Certainly not to be taken at speed in Wolf! We left the museum and headed north with enough time to get our rental car when we get to our next stop, the Distant Drums RV Resort. I mentioned this RV park briefly when we stayed there last year in the blog Seester visit! It's a very nice place, conveniently located for visiting the Verde Valley area so we returned there for this week long visit this year.

Our rented grey Dodge Journey showed up from Enterprise with enough time for us to return the driver to their location in Cottonwood and visit the WalMart there! I may not have mentioned before but unlike many RV'ers, we do not tow a vehicle. The Subaru Outbacks we own do not lend themselves to being towed and for the most part we do fine without a car, renting one only occasionally.  Enterprise car rentals policy of delivery and pickup has worked very well and our only complaint is that we often end up with a Dodge Journey which has seat rails that tend to chew up the back of my legs just above the ankle. Thus the problem isn't the rental company but the car itself.

Okay, off the soapbox about the car ... time to rest up for tomorrow's adventures.

Can I Shoot It?

The leveler alarm that is. Most coaches have an alarm system when the levelers that keep the coach steady and level when you are parked don't retract properly. Wolf apparently has a glitch in the alarm system as the levelers all seem to be fine but the alarm beeps randomly, frequently and annoyingly when we travel along. Geoff has some hearing loss in that sound range but I do not and there are times if I knew where in the system it would shut it up I would be willing to shoot it!

We get on the road early and, except for my desire to shoot the leveler alarm, cruise along in the Texas Hill country enjoying the flowering cactus, yucca and thistles. Around 10 am we are back on I-10 and stopping for breakfast at the Sutton County Steakhouse in Sonora, Texas, where I worked, ummm, way back in 1978 or so. Boy has it changed since then! Although I suppose nearly 40 years does change things, even me I suppose!

Our plans had included a digression off I-10 of about 120 miles to see Ft Davis but on a closer look, the route is up into mountains ... yes, Texas has mountains, sort of. We finally decide to bypass the national historic site which is one of the best surviving examples of an Indian Wars' frontier military post in the Southwest. Unfortunately driving winding mountain roads has to be taken more seriously when you're in an RV. Instead we will go further today and have more time elsewhere.

And here comes another adventure! Geoff caught movement out of the corner of his eye and asked me if I saw anything. I certainly saw something moving in the reflection on the back of the side view mirror. He pulled over at the next exit and sure enough, the windshield seal was coming loose and flapping in the wind! Good old duct tape to the rescue, fixing the situation at least for a while. We will certainly keep an eye on it. Those of you who have read the earlier blogs about last year's trip will remember we got a windshield full of rocks which we had to have replaced when we got home. Clearly something has gone amiss with the installation of the replacement windshield. The image to the right actually shows that same corner of the windshield after removing the tape but before it was repaired and cleaned up.

When we got to the next reasonably sized place, Ft Stockton, we called in about it but basically it seems that since we are not in immediate danger we should just keep an eye on it and deal with it when we get home. Of course now we have even more adventure ... the traffic pattern at the Flying J in Ft Stockton was horrible and we managed to scrape the lower part of Wolf's passenger side on the freshly painted yellow concrete things Flying J uses to direct and control traffic. It doesn't show as strongly in the image here as that bright yellow does in person.Wolf must now bare the shame of a long yellow streak along his paintwork.

After gathering up our jangled nerves we headed west along the Texas mountains stopping first at the WalMart in Ft Stockton where Geoff announced it was 109 degrees per Wolf! We drove through pecan orchards and saw burn scars on the land from wildfires until we reached the Van Horn RV Camp in, of course, Van Horn, Texas.

We left Van Horn at a more reasonable time, close to 8:30 although that might still be Eastern time! In all the excitement the last day or two I forgot to mention that Geoff discovered we were missing the lug nut on one of the wheels. Along with everything else we have made several stops trying to find a replacement. We tried again in Van Horn with no luck and are now headed towards El Paso.

This stretch of I-10 runs very close to the border and for much of it we can see the Rio Grande and Mexico on the far side. We've seen Border Patrol east bound and cameras west bound. I'd never really thought about being so close to the border and, although I have been to Mexico, it was over 50 years ago and that was Tijuana when I was in college!

There are nasty cross winds through El Paso and on over the border into New Mexico. Just into New Mexico we pass a Border Patrol Inspection Station but all we had to do was slow down, stopping people seems to be random. We also see a lot of dust storms and it is sort of neat when they cross over the interstate losing their dust and going nearly invisible until they reach the dust again on the other side.

I think the picture above was taken around Bowie. It shows the mountains of Mexico and, if you look carefully, in the middle is one of the dust storms with another, fainter one, to the left of it and a third one at an angle on the right side of the image.

We've decided to push on through and get to the Crazy Horse RV Campground in Tucson a day early, arriving the evening of May 27th and a call to them okays the extra days stay. Time for some down time!

Old and Lost Rivers

We're up early again, headed west by 6am, eastern time I think but I am not at all sure. Around Baytown, we see a sign marking the river as the Old and Lost River which sounds a lot like I feel sometimes! Later I checked it out and there are actually two bayous named the Lost River and the Old River and where I-10 crosses them they come together and thus the designation of the Old and Lost River. Shortly after crossing the river we stop at a Flying J to fill up and there are trees full of birds.

By mid-morning we passed through Sealy, Texas, where they had what they thought was a tornado late the day before. The weather bureau insisted it was just a microburst but I don't think the people in the Sealy area care which it was as it tore off roofs and destroyed buildings. We saw signs blown over or twisted in half and news reports say big rigs and power poles were blown over. We are very glad we were still well east when this happened.

With our odometer reading 13,333, we finally found what a Buc-ee's is like when we stopped at the one in Bastrop. It is huge with all kinds of food and souvenirs and a whole counter full of all kinds of fudge. After wondering around in there for a while we found that the Puppy Pad (RV GPS) had pooped out on us or something as it had no charge whatsoever. We are still not sure what did happen but some how it must have not been charging when we thought it was.




About mid afternoon we got to the Fredericksburg RV Park in the Texas Hill Country. We sat outside at the picnic table at our site and enjoyed a quiet dinner, purchased of course back at the Buc-ee's. It was quiet and pleasant and we simply enjoyed just sitting out there.The image to the right wasn't taken until the next morning but it shows where we just relaxed the evening before.

The RV Park is close to downtown so the next morning we took a cab to the Pacific War Museum which is absolutely great. Using one of their motorized chairs, we spent several hours studying their terrific displays and I got a lot better idea of what it was like for my dad who, in 1944, was serving in the islands in the Pacific including Iwo Jima and Tinian and for Geoff's dad who was an Army medic in New Guinea, the Philippines, and after the war in Japan. I of course had to get a USMC hat and garden flags for both the Army and the Marines.

Okay, are my lower legs doomed or something? First I do the near face plant into the console and now I tripped on a high curb when we crossed the street, managing to scrape up the front of my legs and one knee thoroughly. We had called a cab and were gonna head for the Pioneer Museum but instead just took the cab back to Wolf.

After tending to my injuries we had an early night, ready to move on the next day.

On the Road Again

In case anyone has decided we fell off the face of the earth when I didn't blog anything on our last trip, here I am again, trying to catch up with that before trying (again!) to be a good girl for 2018's trips. If you forgot, in 2017 I blogged our plans in "Now What?" about a year ago. Life conspired and I never managed to blog as we traveled ... anyway, time to catch up.

After a short shakedown ride on Sunday May 21st, down to the Pilot at CR 206 where we topped off the gas tanks - it was raining so they wouldn't do the propane - we headed out early. Well, we thought 5am was early but at 6am headed west on I-10, it was busy! Where are all these people going?

We've been out this way on I-10 a few times but there are often some interesting sights anyway like the whole bunch of itty bitty goats in a meadow out near the I-75 junction and a sign for Buc-ee's which isn't until Texas and said "You can hold it! 737 miles to go!"

We stopped around 11:30 at a rest area and made sandwiches and Geoff announced he had decided to put mayo on his ham sandwich! I nearly fell off my seat, in nearly 25 years he has never had anything but mustard on his ham sandwiches! When we left I was exceedingly grateful to those truckers who move over a lane when a pokey RV is coming out on to the highway.

For our first overnight we went to the Pensacola RV Park we stayed at last year and had beef stroganoff Mountain House meals. Nice and easy, just pour the boiling water into the pouch, wait a little bit and chow down.

Looks like our adventures are already starting to show their ugly little heads again. The gasket around the slide-out is poking out into the inside of the RV <sigh>. It rained pretty much all night but at least the gasket problem doesn't seem to be leaking.

We headed west again early, about 5am although being Central Time now that is like 6am I guess in Eastern, right? I was writing in my journal by the light of the Puppy Pad (the name we gave the RV GPS tablet) as Geoff cruised along I-10 west out of the Pensacola area. Of course I had to head for the head as he moved along and on the way back I managed to fall down for the first time in over 20 years, nearly doing a face plant into the console and definitely getting rug burn on my knees and bruises on my legs. I felt rather like a beached whale as I struggled to get back up, eventually scooting over to where the steps go down by the door out and with my feet down there I could grab hold of the side of the sink and manage to haul myself upright again. I think getting back up was worse than the fall!

It was a cold grey morning as around six we crossed Mobile Bay with strong cross winds and then a downpour shortly before the tunnel where a sign says 40 MPH and Geoff commented "40 my f**king ass," a rather un-Geoffrey like comment! By 6:30 we were in Mississippi with the sun coming up behind us as we crossed the Pascagoula River. The sun soon went behind the clouds again leaving us in a mostly grey day, windy and rainy, but the 'challenge' keeps Geoff awake and alert. By 8 we were lost in a truck stop parking lot. By the time we finally found our way out, we decided not to even try heading back in for gas but just continued down the road. Of course the sun came back up briefly so it could shine in our eyes as we struggled out of the truck stop.

It seems that Alabama, Mississippi and even Florida along I-10 have lots of wetlands and lily ponds and crossing the Pearl River into Louisiana did not seem to change much. The road seems to run forever elevated above the wetlands and swamps.

It is only mid-morning when we stop at a rest area at the beginning of I-12 near Slidell. I-12 cuts across avoiding New Orleans, making a shortcut in I-10. At the rest area we discover there is a rather large pool of water across the bottom of the windshield so we dumped some rags down into it pulling out three sopping wet rags, replacing them with more.

We are sure glad we are headed west as the east bound side is backed up and slow as molasses. Perhaps it is yet another pickup full of stuff that has not tied down their load. We have already seen two with parts of their loads flying off. This stretch of road is bouncy as can be and the water at the bottom of the windshield is jumping around and a screw in my side window has come loose.

It must be wet here a lot as we're now passing a number of rice fields and water ponds with something apparently being grown in them. At least there is one good thing about the rain, it washes away the bug guts that like to accumulate on the windshield!! Finally we reach Texas where we now face 880 miles of I-10 and we soon pull into the Gulf Coast RV Park in Beaumont for the night.

Sweating the small stuff!

Well, it is hot here so just loading Timmber Wolf and putting stuff away in there is hot and sweaty work. We did get some help cleaning and loading the Wolf and still have a ways to go tomorrow before we leave the next day. My house sitter's son and his wife came by to help and good thing they did.

We had him clean the windshield and since it had rained earlier in the day he found where it leaked from when they had to replace it! We decided it is no where significant enough to turn the whole trip inside out by not leaving as planned on Monday but made sure we have the phone number for the people who did the replacement so we can call and let them know that we will be in to see them when we get back!

We'll have to pay attention to the leak whenever it rains on our trip and make sure anything is cleaned up. Maybe the windshield is lonely or something, it seems to be trying to keep our attention!

As much as we may complain about how much there is to load, it is no where near what it was for our first trip last year but then a lot of that stuff just stayed aboard.

Picking up Wolf at the generator place went okay but then as I was following Geoff home, him in the Wolf and me in the car, I spotted one of the 'basement' doors swinging open and shut! Not a good thing. And now I discovered the definite drawback to not having our communication hats in action.

Usually we have them set up and on for something like this but we had not bothered for this short run but just try running down the interstate trying to tell someone in a big ol' RV that a door is swinging open and they need to pull over! Horn blaring, lights flashing, nothing seemed to get his attention although admittedly the Outback horn isn't real loud and it was daylight so flashing lights were not so noticeable. I finally pulled around in front of him and put my turn signal on and finally he pulled over.

Seems that the latch on the 'basement' compartment just in front of the entry door had gotten misaligned and although we could still pull it open even when it was locked it seemed like it held a bit better. We headed straight for our local Camping World and they realigned it so hopefully it will behave itself on the trip.

Anyway, we are mostly loaded down to the small and last minute stuff. After we finish loading and putting stuff away tomorrow morning we are going to head a couple of exits south to the Flying J aka Pilot station down there at the CR206 at Exit 305 on I-95 and fill up on gas and propane and check to make sure everything stays in place ... a literal shake down cruise.

And the answer to "Are we getting excited yet?" the answer is a resounding "YES!" ... I am ready to leave right now. Geoff maybe not and certainly Wolf isn't quite ready but I am!

Now What?

2017 started off with Geoff having the second of his cataract surgeries and once he healed a little bit he was astounded by how much better he can see. Seems the world had had a yellowish cast before the surgeries!

Tax Season started and I work six days a week so time slipped by quickly but it was also time to start thinking about whether we were going to travel this year and if so where. But first Timmber Wolf decided to have some additional issues with his batteries. Geoff would go down to visit him and he wouldn't start ... sooo we found out about kill switches, something no one had mentioned previously.

Apparently, if you are leaving your RV or trailer unused for any length of time you need a kill switch to totally disconnect your batteries or all those little things that suck power all the time will drain your battery dry! During normal traveling just going down the road or being plugged in to shore power take care of your power needs but not in storage! It all gets very confusing between the engine battery and the coach batteries and the generator. Glad that is Geoff's department!!!

Anyway, after getting that all sorted out and having things serviced and an appointment set up to have the generator serviced we started talking about where we were going. Last year's trip was humungous and all in all a bit much so we have trimmed down a bit. We're going to take I-10 out to Tucson and up to Phoenix where we get I-17 north to Flagstaff and there we catch I-40 and head back east.

Around Memphis, I-40 heads too far north and east so we'll head south on I-22 down through Tupelo, Birmingham, and then I-65 to Montgomery and then cutting down US84 through Dothan to get back to I-10 and home. Various stops are planned along the way of course and a nice week in Arizona to see my oldest son and my sister. Of course first we have to actually get out of town!

Departure is set for Monday, May 22nd, and this is already Wednesday, the 17th! Timmber Wolf is sitting up at the Cummins Onan generator service place and has been promised us for tomorrow. Of course it has been sitting up there for over a week, we better get it tomorrow. It was there so that the Generator could be serviced and apparently there was some warranty work that needed doing on it as well which caused the delays.

Of course on top of picking it up tomorrow, I have a doctors appointment and a lunch date (with my house sitter) and need to stop at the optometrist to have something fixed on my glasses and some how we have to get the windshield cleaned inside and out and the inside of the coach cleaned, all before getting everything loaded and put away! I think it is going to be relaxing to actually get on the road!

Life Just Never Slows Down!

We got back home Friday, July 22nd, about a week early having had to eliminate Mount Rushmore from our plans, driving straight through for three days of hot worried travel. By the time we got home not only were we exhausted but I was sick and needed to get well quick to prepare for my hip replacement surgery a month away.

In the meantime, Timmber Wolf spent several weeks in our driveway waiting on the insurance adjuster and then went to Camping World for another outfit to do the windshield and Camping World to do the body work from the rock damage. It is a very good thing we did not wait on a windshield in Wyoming or Colorado as the first one that was ordered arrived broken in transit.

Once the damage was repaired, Timmber Wolf had to go to the Ford commercial dealership up in Jacksonville for repair/replacement of the A/C unit that had failed us. Wolf was delivered there the end of September and spent Hurricane Matthew in their parking area.

On October 3rd, Hurricane Matthew arrived in the vicinity. We live enough inland that we did not have many concerns about damage for us personally but we have many friends who were in the evacuation  area. Fortunately, no one we knew suffered any significant damage. We were without power for a couple of days and the whole house power generator we had decided to fail us in our hour of need. Seems a power board in the model we have failed and there were a lot of unhappy people in the area, not just us.

Between rehab and recovery from the hip replacement and the start of Income Tax course of training that I lead every year where I work, we definitely stayed busy.  Wolf finally left the Ford dealer and went over to General RV for additional warranty repairs. Good Thing we weren't planning any trips! Wolf finally got back to storage sometime in late November or early December.

In November we finally got the fence for the side and backyard put in and made arrangements and decisions about house painting for December. We settled on having the popcorn ceilings removed. They are impossible to clean or paint and after ten years were starting to show where the heat ducts and kitchen added to the atmosphere. In addition we had most of the interior walls painted as well as the exterior stucco finish.

The colors are from Sherwin-Williams. The Trusty Tan was used on the exterior with white trim. The lightest color, Champagne was used on most of the interior walls and the Interactive Cream was used in the master bedroom and bath and white ceilings and trim. We used Straight Edge Painting of Jacksonville to do the job.

Now popcorn ceiling removal is a nasty messy event. First we moved what we could out of the house getting rid of our old bookcases which lined the living room. Of course this necessitated buying new bookcases and dumping the old tv stand for a nice credenza, bought from Sauder. While they did the popcorn removal we had to vacate the house for a motel for a few days which coincided with Geoffrey having the first of two cataract surgeries. We stopped by the house midweek to see how they were doing and the boss painter told us he managed to break the bookcase I used for a nightstand by my side of the bed so guess what??? a great excuse for new bedroom furniture! We got more of the Salt Oak finish line from Sauder, a couple of wardrobes, a dresser and a chest of drawers! So nice to replace all that 20 year old stuff.

Just in time for New Year's we were back in the house with fresh paint and new furniture, the latter being delivered on the 31st!!! And Wolf was safe and sound back in his storage space.