A non-standard day

The part that could potentially fix our refrigerator problem arrived Monday.  I put it in and I immediately heard the propane fire up and the flue gets hot.  Sounded good.  However, when I got in the trailer the display was still not working.  The light was on inside the fridge which was a good thing.  About 5 minutes later it all shut down.  That is some progress.  I spent many hours trying to find the other part.  One RV part store said they could get the part the next day but by the time they returned my call it was too late to get it next day.  We decided to order the part and have it sent to my mother’s house and leave on Tuesday, the non-standard day.

We knew this was the day to leave.  We went through our normal routine at breakfast but then it all changed.  We had to ensure that everything was out in the truck or trailer.  Take multiple passes through the house and we still managed to miss a few things.  Our son can get those to us though.

We said goodbye to our neighbors and she took a few shots of us (her name is Tatiana Ruelas and does photography if you are interested).  Here is one in front of our old house (right) and the new house (left):

And us driving down the street, leaving for our adventure:

Off we go!  May 2, 2017 10:25am

Since heat was descending on us, and Arizona, I was hoping to find something cooler  I was thinking Kingman as it was higher in elevation and about 10 degrees cooler.  CA99 to CA58 to I15 to I40.  A path we know very well.

We ate lunch late in Tehachapi after a bit of driving around because I missed the main road.  Barstow was next for a fuel stop.  More driving around because of a new stretch of 58 and a misinterpretation of a detour sign.

We eventually got on I40 and saw the famous mileage sign:

We will probably get there sometime.

2 hours of extremely boring driving before exceedingly boring Needles to eat.  Fortunately, we tow our own toilet because there is not much on that road.  But without everything working right in the trailer (refrigerator), it feels more like we are just towing this:

This is the first real test of the new truck and it did great!  I love the engine braking going down hills.  The dash is mostly a flat screen so Ford can put up whatever information it wants.  Normally the gauges are the standard analog (along the top) but when it goes past the mid-point, Ford puts up the actual numbers:

Other than me being unemployed, leaving our home of almost 23 years, our town of 31+ years, getting confused twice while driving, having the rig loaded the heaviest I ever have, and driving 400+ miles in one day, there was one more non-standard.

We were out of California.  At 9:25 pm we crossed into Arizona. Some 11 hours later.  Another non-standard for us, not being California residents.

I hope that the days to come bring many non-standard days as we have had many years of standard days and it is time for a new part of our lives.

 

Hightailing from the hot!

We had been at my mother’s for about a week.  We have helped her transition, actually Roxie did 90%+ of the work, to a life of recovery at home.  We cleaned out her pantry, 4 hour job, but got rid of 80% of it.  Went through her shoes and purses, put them on an organizer but only got rid of 10% of those.  We decided we would leave in the mid to late evening so we could beat some of the heat, much like we did on the way over.  We were able to tolerate the heat there with the 30amp connection and we got to test out our A/C units too!

We got out of Sun City West around 7:30.  We weren’t quite sure of the goal for the night but we wanted somewhere cooler.  Going back on I10 was not going to make ‘cool’ easy.  I was thinking of possibly staying at the Flying J truck stop in Ehrenberg, AZ.  We did so in our February trip to AZ.  But February weather is much different that July!  As we came into Quartzsite Roxie asked about staying at one of the BLM areas we have done so before.  With further thought that seemed like a very good idea.  My thinking was it was not going to be very crowded and it might be a bit cooler since there is no asphalt near.

We got to the Hi Jolly BLM site around 11pm and it was 93°.  Better than Barstow on the way out at least.  We could see another vehicle or two way in the distance but that was all that we saw.  We didn’t go too far in, checked we were level and stopped.  Put down the tongue jack a bit, set the truck parking brake, disconnected the umbilical and we were set.  We turned on the fantastic fan, opened all the windows and let the breeze go.  It did start cooling down but slowly.  We didn’t much care as we were tired.  I slept very soundly and I think Roxie did too.

Here we are in the AM:

2014-07-17 07.23.37

It started getting hot right away.  Time to leave!  We had a quick breakfast at Steaks and Cakes in Blythe and continued west.  It wasn’t getting much cooler!

As we kept on trekking we came across Chiriaco Summit.  Roxie wanted to look at the dry camping spots that they had behind the General Patton museum.  We looked at the spots and it is nice to have such free spots for travellers.  We also decided to stop and check out the General Patton museum itself.  It is something that we always say we should do sometime so this was ‘sometime’.  We found it to be a very interesting stop.  Not just Patton memorabilia but all branches of the service.  It shows a relief map of the area with all the camps that were in use for the summer training.  Patton chose this area of California, Arizona and Nevada for training troops to fight in Africa.  This was very good preparation for what they were going to encounter.  If you remember another post, they used the Salton Sea for amphibious training and that is what introduced the barnacles to the Salton Sea.  Time to stream Patton from Netflix.

Here are some shots.  Something you don’t see every day, a propeller on a vehicle with wheels:

2014-07-17 11.22.50

Then a statue of the man himself:

2014-07-17 11.25.28

We got back in the Air Conditioned truck and headed down the hot road.  We started looking for lunch around Indio but ended up eating at Ruby’s Diner in Cabazon as we did in an earlier trip.  We filled up on diesel at Morongo and headed to our RV spot for the night.  We had to be there by 6pm or we would be in the overflow area.  We didn’t want to do that.  The GPS said 2 hours but this was going through LA and we had 4 hours available.  Did we make it, find out on the next entry…