Jun-July 98
Folks,
Well we are doing it. We left Louisiana and went to
Rainbows end, the HQ of our club (Escapees) and stayed there
a week to begin learning the lifestyle. It was beautiful and
unique. Many folks have permanent lots there that have buildings
that are totally unique to the RV lifestyle.
Some are just a hard cover for their coach and a shed, others
have attached living rooms or sun rooms to the hard cover that
integrate the RV into a module of the house. Others have regular
but smaller homes with RV setups.
All are neat and well kept up, and have beautiful layouts.
From there we went to Arlington just outside of Ft Worth.
There for two weeks for business. Then on to Odessa and the real
traveling. The truck was overheating a bit and anticipating even
more severe temperatures as we crossed the deserts in Arizona and
California we decided to check on a Cummins or Dodge place in
Odessa, our next stop. We ended up spending three days there so
Cummins could remove the radiator and clean it out thoroughly.
The fan clutch wasn't strong enough to cool the engine in
the 100 plus temperatures we had to travel in so we replaced
that too. From there we went only to Pecos, a 90-minute trip
to check out the cooling system. We drove in 105-degree
temperatures and it worked fine. We spent the night in a
club park and pressed on to Demming New Mexico. We had
planned to spend one night and take off in the morning.
The next morning the circuit breakers all tripped and we
smelled something burning! I removed the panel where power
comes in and found two inches of the black wire burned up!
We were in another Club Park called Dream Catcher thank
goodness. My neighbor was a retired electrician and we
determined that when I installed the wiring, I had a loose
connection there and running the A/C all the time caused it
to begin to heat and burn. We then proceeded to redo all
the connections and everything worked fine. But just to be
on the safe side we decided to wait to leave till the next
day and monitor the wiring during the hottest part of the
day with the cover off. We met several other couples and
had a wonderful time visiting and swapping tips and tricks.
The next morning I told Lee (the electrician neighbor)
that I was going to pick up a new brake controller as the
one that came with my truck didn't seem to be working as
strong as it should in kicking on the trailer brakes when
traveling. He took one look and laughed because he had
just removed the same unit to upgrade to the newest state
of the art digital controller. The reason he laughed was
that he had just put his perfectly good old controller on
the swap table in the clubhouse. Our club parks have a
table in every one where you can put items you no longer
need or want and someone else can pick it up and donate a
dollar to the can.
The money goes towards our snacks and drinks for the
traditional Escapees social hour every day at four PM.
I hurried up there and got it and Lee found the instruction
pamphlet for it as well. As I had asked a Camping World
Tech what the problem could be, and he told me it sounded
like a bad diode in the controller and I'd need another
one, I was sure my problem was solved. Well, when I read
the instructions (which I didn't get with mine)
I found that the little white pointer on the side must be
pointed straight down for the pendulum brake actuator to
work. Mine came with the pointer set in a horizontal
position. I adjusted it correctly and . . . Voila!
It worked fine. My controller had been fine the whole
time! I just never had access to the instructions to
know how to set it. More to the point, I had been
driving with no trailer brakes the whole time except for
when I manually applied them. Had Frank not taken the
time to educate me about weights and their importance
in matching the trailer weight to the tow vehicle, back
in November when I was still looking for a trailer, I
would have had an accident by now. Since I'm more
1500 lbs. under my trucks max capability, I had no
problems. Thanks Frank. The luck continues as we had
to cross the mountains two days later. Now my rig is
adjusted perfectly and I can stop in half the distance I
could before with no problem. I am pulling all the
Truck brakes down to be sure I haven't worn them too
badly during the previous trips as a precaution. Talk
about a lucky stop. And I have a spare.
Next, we went to The KOFA Escapee Park in Yuma AZ.
We arrived at two PM and the temperature was 115 in the
shade!! Our A/c unit had only cooled the coach down to
96 after an hour and we decided to leave until dark and
get the dog and us into the truck A/C before he or us
had a heat stroke.
We went to the proving grounds and checked out their park
and it was worse than the one we were at for shade so we
then headed back hoping to find a place where we could
bring in the dog and hang until dark. By now we'd been
driving for about an hour trying to kill time and I
had to use a bathroom desperately. We saw a VFW in the
middle of nowhere and pulled in.
It said it was open but all the doors were locked.
I headed back to the truck and a very old man opened
the door just as we were about to leave. I went back
and explained that I wasn't a member but was just retired
from the AF and would he let me use the rest room.
"Sure he said and opened up.
I decided to buy a beer to thank him for opening up and
told Lynn that I'd be a few minutes which was OK with her.
His name was Jim and he said to bring my wife in
"for god's sake!" I explained that we had our dog with
us and were trying to stay cool until the sun went down.
But if we left him in the truck alone he'd start hopping
around the seats and might hit the gearshift and cause
the truck to come in as well. And we couldn't leave him
out in the heat without A/C. He told me the dog was
welcome too.
So I went and got Lynn and Bogart and we ordered some
more drinks and visited with Jim. He sure seemed glad
for the company and Bogart sure seemed glad for the cold
floor. It seems that almost all of his members take
off from July to September to get out of the heat and he
rarely had anyone to talk to in the summer as he lived
alone and ran the VFW post year round.
Jim had to talk very low as he'd had six strokes
in 1992. But he did OK and as we became acquainted
found that he'd been a B-29 waist gunner with Doolittle
in the Japan raids and subsequent occupation. His last
touchdown was as a B-52 tail gunner at Barksdale AFB, LA.
We asked him how he tolerated the heat there and what drove
him to settle there. It turns out he was a very successful
miner until the strokes and he had worked every day in his
mines, where it is only 55 degrees. As the sun headed
towards the horizon he decided he appreciated the company
so much that he wanted to give Lynn a nugget as a gift.
We of course had to decline as it would be wrong to take
advantage of his largesse when we were the ones who needed
a place out of the heat until our little A/C could catch up.
But I did ask if he still had the mines. He said that not
only did he, but would we like a tour, complete with a pick
and shovel and we could keep whatever we found? (and he
assured us we would find more gold that we'd expect) It
seems he was averaging 50 pounds a month when he had to
quit because of his strokes. He lived in an RV out back
that validated his income and we knew he was telling the
truth because he got a little peeved when we declined.
I told him that we'd love to but had to leave the next day
as we already had too many delays on each stop beyond our
control, but could we have a rain check? He said he'd heard
that several thousand times before and not one person ever
came back! It seems our declination was read by him as
disbelief. He was about to call his guard to set it up
for us and go with.
I insisted that we had no desire to keep any gold from
his mine except maybe a tiny nugget as a souvenir.
Just being able to video it and actually find something
would be enough, as we'd never worked a mine before.
Then he tried to give us the nugget again. Talk about
a character! I think he thought we didn't believe him
and won't return. He doesn't know us! We will be back
to see Ol' Jim next winter if we have to fly out.
We left Yuma at nine the next morning and the
temperature was 105 already! We didn't realize that
the California border was only one mile out of town.
We thought the heat and desolate grandeur we'd already
driven through was the desert. NOT! Within 50 miles
we were in pure sand dunes as far as you could see,
and the outside temperature was 115. I had been told
that there was a long pull over the mountains 60 miles
from San Diego, and with the heat was becoming a little
concerned about getting up what I thought would be a
five or 10 mile 3% grade. It was a 6-9% 15-25 mile
climb! We got about a third of the way up before we
had to pull over and let the diesel cool down, which
took 30 minutes in that heat. We got another third
up and had to stop again to cool. We could only do
35 miles an hour and were passing many other vehicles,
including cars and vans as all were overheating.
Had it been winter we would have been over the top in
45 minutes at about 45 mph. In the heat, it took two
hours with the stops.
The truck did fine and were we glad we did the
maintenance back in Odessa!
As we descended, we found that it would have been a
little scary had we not gotten the brake controller
working two days before in NM! As we pulled into
San Diego (Tuesday 14 July 2 PM) the A/C in the truck
started acting funny. We had to turn it down four
times because it seemed to want to freeze up! We
decided to give it a rest and open the windows for
awhile. That's when we found out what was wrong . . .
the outside temperature was 71 degrees! The A/C was
fine . . . we just didn't expect to be able to turn
it off until Oregon or somewhere.
The traffic was very heavy and we followed
directions to the Naval Amphibious Base Marina and RV
park right on the Bay on Coronado Island.
We didn't think we'd get a spot as it is reservations
90 days in advance.
Our luck held, and we not only got a space, but our
back window was ten feet from the water! We were told
that we could only stay two days as the park was
booked from that time on solidly. Yesterday (Thurs.)
we prepared to try and find another park, and started
to break camp. I went to the office and asked about
an empty space I saw that should have been filled by then.
She looked it up and called the guy who said that he was
just about to call and cancel. The lady told him that if
he would transfer his reservation to me, instead of
canceling, he'd not be charged for canceling too late.
Again serendipity! We are here for the duration of our
stay here. And we are talking with the sailors and
live-aboards here in the Marina and visiting their
boats. Everyone is so open and we've spent hours
learning about different kinds of boats and how other
couples have full timed in them.
We met a marvelous couple, Dick and Eileen, who spent
thirty years sailing.
Dick is retired Coast Guard. Eileen and Lynn hit it off
and she took Lynn under her wing for hours, telling her
what she could expect sailing full time and cruising with
her husband. She explained that we could expect to
find new very creative words to call each other after
several days at sea, that Lynn would never use on shore.
They had us in tears most of the afternoon, sitting
by the water in the shade of their RV with ice cold
beers and 70 degree weather. We also met two other couples
we spent afternoons and evenings with. RVrs are a different
breed from the people you meet traveling any other way.
As we try to walk to the phone everyone will say hi and a
ask us to sit for a spell and share some stories and beers.
We have fire rings for the cold (yes cold!) evenings and we
take turns hosting at each other's sites with a blazing fire
and the waves lapping at our feet. Good friends after an
hour, and great conversations. And we are all "characters".
I'm just an average talker in this group, the gift of gab
seems to be a prerequisite for this lifestyle and we fit
right in.
I got to see my Mom and two brothers Wed for the
first time in over twenty years. It's been great. I found
out that my niece lives here too. I invited them all over
tonight for a fire and some visiting. I haven't seen
my niece since 1983.
We will leave here and head north to Stockton for
some add-ons to the truck (PAC Brakes, a transmission cooler,
and performance mods, before we tackle the Rockies in a
couple of weeks from Seattle). It has been almost impossible
to connect to the net and send email or retrieve it for the
past weeks. It seems no one has come up with a solution
to provide low cost, easy systems for park owners, and I've
come up with one with the folks from Webley that I think
will revolutionize the access at every park in the country.
It's so simple and so cheap that I expect 75 to 90% of parks
and Marinas to have it within the next year. I just wish
some one had preceded me and done this a year ago, so I
could already hook up wherever I go.
Speaking of which, when I do finally get to connect
somewhere I usually receive 60-100 emails. Then it
takes all my spare time for a week to answer them.
So if my replies are a little shorter than normal, you
know why. I'll try to use this mail list to fill in the
details. If you need to contact me personally in a crisis,
just call my toll free number and leave a message.
I check it daily and will return your call if you tell
me the best time to return the call. I've had several
folks call me and leave a cell phone number which is
always unavailable when I try to return the call. So
let me know the best time to call for a few days after
the message. Oh! and tell me your time zone too.
I forgot and called my brother in NY last night and
it was midnight there, 8 PM here! Sorry Flip.
Well that's all for now. We need to get over
to my brothers to send this and get ready for the
bonfire tonight. It's Friday 2 PM, the temperature
is 70 outside and Lynn is talking with a couple of folks
who just landed their catamaran on our beach where the
water is clear blue green and the sun is shining without
a cloud in the sky. We might be forced to go for a ride.
Lovin' it
dg
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