Yesterday was a much needed lazy day for us, after our week at the RV show. We slept in, then didn’t do much of anything all day long. Terry did a couple of loads of laundry, we checked e-mail, cruised the internet, watched TV, and I napped for a while on the couch. 

We needed to unload our display tables, books and RV guides, and everything else we had used at the RV show from our van and get it all packed back into the bays of our motorhome, but we both seemed to be drained of energy and couldn’t get motivated to get started.

About 5:30 we drove to Hummelstown for dinner with longtime subscribers  Dave and Thelma Middleton, and their friends Gary and Donna Rath, at a place called Hoss’s Steakhouse. The company and conversation were great, but the restaurant seemed to be having an off day. Dave and I ordered our steaks medium rare, and they were very well done, we asked for bread a couple of times and never got it, and when I tried their chocolate pudding for dessert, it tasted sour.

Dave and Thelma felt bad, because they had invited us, but it wasn’t their fault, and they have had good meals there in the past. Maybe the manager was taking a day off or something.

Back at the Thousand Trails campground, I answered a couple of questions from readers who wanted to know about any suggestions I had for an RV park in the Rio Grande Valley in Texas, and how I felt about using synthetic oil and transmission fluid in a diesel pusher motorhome. I replied to the first one that since we have only visited the Valley once, and were not impressed enough to stay long, I didn’t know enough about it to suggest an RV park for their winter stay; and told the second person that while I don’t have synthetic oil and transmission fluid in our Winnebago Ultimate Advantage yet, I plan to switch to both at our next service. I know many RVers who do use both, and report good success with them.

Then we spent the rest of the evening watching television, including the season premiers of two of our favorite shows, Two And A Half Men, and Pawn Stars. They’ve moved The Big Bang Theory to a new night, so we’ll have to wait until Thursday to see its season premier.

And that was about it for our Monday. Like I said, it was a lazy day, and that’s just what we needed.

Thought For The Day – I don’t mind going nowhere as long as it’s an interesting path.

I closed yesterday’s blog by telling you we had tire troubles. Here’s the story:

From the time we left Gilroy Tuesday morning, until the time we arrived at the the Emigrant Trail Museum in Truckee that afternoon, one of our inside dual tires had lost over 35 pounds of air. This is the same problem we have been having with the inside duals ever since Camping World installed them the end of February. Supposed they fixed it when we went back a few weeks ago, but evidently not.

At that time it was determined that the problem was the valve extensions, and it might still be. Especially since one look at the scratches and tool marks on it told us that the valve extension was not new, and was probably the one that gave us problems before.

Our motorhome has an onboard air compressor, and I have an air hose, but as it turns out, there is a problem in our auxiliary air system somewhere and we couldn’t get it to work. We found a gas station where we could fill the tire, and I left the valve extender and PressurePro sensor off, and checked the tire again before we set off yesterday and it was still holding pressure. So once we get into Salt Lake City, I’ll find a new extender to put on the tire.

Yesterday morning we left Boomtown Casino and followed Interstate 80 east across Nevada, Traffic was busy in Reno, but the rest of the day we didn’t have much to deal with. The first part of our route was pretty curvy as we followed the Truckee River, and then we came into a big valley with salt flats as far as the eye could see. We zipped past this barren landscape in no time at all, but it took the pioneers of the Donner Party six days to cross the salt flats.

Miss Terry was taking pictures out the window as we motored along, and she managed to capture this smiley face somebody made to welcome travelers.

Some of the mountains off in the distance still had snow on top of them, but down on the highway it was over 90 degrees!

Part of our route had some steep climbs and downhill grades, but nothing compared to crossing the Sierras the day before. Both days, the Winnebago had no problems, the big Cummins diesel engine never started to get too warm, and carried us over the top as fast as I wanted to go. After years of being passed by eighteen wheelers in our old bus on even small grades, it’s sure nice to pull over into the left lane and pass them by as they labor up the hills!

We stopped at the Flying J in Winnemucca for fuel, but their RV pumps were out of order, and there was a long line of trucks at the truck islands.  We continued on another 50 miles to Battle Mountain. I don’t think the Flying J there was a company store, but rather an affiliate, but it was easy to get in and out.

We saw some nice rock formations alongside the highway!

We arrived at Crossroads RV Park in Wells, Nevada about 4:30 p.m., with  346 miles under our belt for the day. Crossroads is a small Passport America park, nothing much but a gravel lot with 30 amp full hookup RV sites. But at just $10 a night, it’s a good bargain. We have four bars of high speed EVDO internet service, which is always nice.

One of our subscribers recommended Crossroads to us, and said the managers, Dennis and Irma Sayers, were wonderful people. When I checked the place out on RV Park Reviews, their friendliness was mentioned in the first three reviews I read. So I was looking forward to meeting this nice couple.

Sure enough, they were just as nice and helpful as could be; Irma checked us in and chatted for a while, then Dennis got us parked and made sure we were hooked up okay. I asked about restaurants, and Irma got right on the phone to call the shuttle van from a local casino to come and pick us up and take us to the restaurant. You don’t get that kind of service very often!

When we got back from dinner, Dennis and Irma stopped by to check on us, and Terry gave them a tour of our motorhome. I think Dennis was thinking about going RV shopping by the time they left!

We have about 180 miles to go today to reach Pony Express RV Resort in Salt Lake City, and then we’ll have a few days to relax, do some genealogy research, and we have a couple of technical issues on the motorhome that we need to look into. Nothing major, but apparently the gremlins have been at work.

Thought For The Day – A true friend is someone who sees the pain in your eyes while everyone else believes the fake smile.

Click Here To Register For Our Eastern Gypsy Gathering Rally!

I’ve said many times before that saying goodbye is the hardest part of the fulltime RV lifestyle. Yesterday evening when we took our leave from my daughter Tiffany and her family, we all had tears in our eyes. Seven year old granddaughter Hailey clung to us until we almost had to pry her arms loose, and we promised her that we will be back again, and that we’ll send her postcards and call her from the road. I love my family, and I always feel terrible for leaving them, but I know, as does Tiffany, that I’d be miserable living in one place all the time.

Today we will leave Show Low, where we’ve been for over two months, and travel 170 miles to Williams, Arizona, where we’ll hang out for a few days getting the new issue of the Gypsy Journal ready to mail out. As soon as that’s done, we’re headed for the California coast. We have enjoyed our time here in our old hometown, but we stayed longer than we planned to, and we are really looking foreyard to seeing some new territory.

Except for winds predicted at 15 to 25 miles per hour, we should have an easy drive today. But in northern Arizona, that’s not really windy, it’s just a breeze. We have to pick the new issue of the paper up from our printer in Flagstaff, which is 30 miles east of Williams, but we’ll probably go on to Williams first and get the motorhome parked, then drive back in the van. I don’t like driving a big rig in Flagstaff, and besides, there is a Chinese buffet there that I’ve wanted to try for years.

I have had several people ask us if we will have rally T-shirts available at our Eastern Gypsy Gathering Rally in Elkhart, Indiana. Yes, we will, and it would really help us plan our order if you reserved your shirts before the rally. Cost is $15 per shirt, and 2x and 3x sizes are $17. You don’t need to pay us right now, but knowing who wants what helps us make sure we get enough shirts in the right sizes, and that we reserve shirts for those who ordered in advance.

I was contacted by longtime readers Ray and Nancy Fassbender yesterday, asking if I could reach out to blog readers to help them with a problem. They have been stuck for several days while a repair shop tries to diagnose a problem with their 2001 Serengeti Safari motorhome, built on a 2000 Magnum Chassis with a Cummins diesel engine.

If anybody out there has an electrical wiring schematic for a coach like this, please contact these folks at 520-280-4715  or e-mail them at nfass@earthlink.net. Neither they nor the shop has the wiring diagrams, and they are at a standstill. Please contact them directly, not me, because we’ll be on the road, and it will only delay matters for them. RVers are the nicest folks there are, and I know if anybody can help them, it will be my blog readers.

I promised Bad Nick that I would let him play with the computer, now that I have the new issue of the paper finished, and he jumped right on it, posting a new Bad Nick Blog titled I’m Sorry, BP. Check it out and leave a comment.

Thought For The Day – If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there.

Click Here To Register For Our Eastern Gypsy Gathering Rally!

We pulled out of Juniper Ridge RV Resort about 9:30 yesterday morning, drove twelve miles  in to Show Low, and then followed U.S. Highway 60 south 48 miles across the White Mountain Apache Reservation to the Salt River Canyon, a dramatic chasm that folks here in Arizona refer to as the “Other Grand Canyon.”  The route took us from the high pine country of the Mogollon Rim to the fringe of the desert. The road between Show Low and the canyon is mostly two lane, with frequent passing zones.

The seven miles down to the bridge at the bottom of the canyon are a series of tight switchbacks, with more twists and turns than a politician’s biography. It can  be intimidating to a flatlander driving an RV through here for the first time, and the rule is slow and easy. I shifted our Allison automatic transmission down to third gear and let the transmission and exhaust brake hold us back.

Climbing back out of the canyon on the south side, the Cummins diesel engine did a fine job, and before long we were out of the curves and making good time rolling south. We did have to stop for a few minutes at a road construction zone that had the highway down to one lane.

In Globe, we picked up State Route 77, a narrow roadway with its own share of hills and curves, and took it south past the mining towns of Winkelman and San Manuel, then past the historic town of Oracle, and the turnoff to the Biosphere, until we eventually came to Tucson.

We pulled into Tra-Tel RV Park a little after 2 p.m. We had covered exactly 200 miles, dropping from 6500 feet elevation in Show Low to 2300 at the RV park. With that drop in elevation came a steep rise in temperature. On Sunday we had two inches of snow in Show Low, and it was 95 degrees when we stepped out of the Winnebago in Tucson!

Tra-Tel  is a small, friendly place, which is our base whenever we’re in Tucson. The RV park is less than half full, and we got a nice 50 amp full hookup pull through site. The minute I had the electric cable plugged in, Miss Terry turned on the air conditioner to cool it down inside the motorhome.

The purpose of our visit to Tucson is to spend some time with my cousin Beverly, who is one of my favorite people in the world, so once we were settled in, we drove across town to her apartment near Davis-Monthan Air Force Base. Along the way, we passed the Pima Air and Space Museum, with it’s impressive collection of military aircraft, and then the Davis-Monthan “bone yard,” where retired military aircraft are brought for storage and eventual dismantling. There sure are a lot of taxpayer dollars sitting behind those chain link fences!

We had a nice visit with Bev, took her out to dinner at Texas Roadhouse, and then went back to her place to chat some more. By about 8:30 I was getting droopy from our long day, so we said our goodbyes and promised to see Beverly again today. Miss Terry drove back to the RV park, and we spent the hours before bedtime catching up on e-mails that had come in during the day, and watching the Biography channel on television.

We’ll be here in Tucson a week or so, and it’s supposed to be in the mid-90s all of the time we’re here, so I expect our air conditioner will get a good workout.

Thought For The Day -  A smile is a curve that sets everything straight.

Click Here To Register For Our Eastern Gypsy Gathering Rally! 

We had originally planned to stay in Kingman, Arizona until Monday, visiting my old friend Mike Howard. But a combination of Mike not feeling very well, terrible cell phone and internet service, and a scheduling mix up changed our plans.

We had been in contact with the marketing folks at the Grand Canyon Railway in Williams, Arizona about doing a story on the train ride to the Grand Canyon. The original plan was to arrive in Williams Monday, stay overnight at the Grand Canyon Railway RV Park, and ride the train Tuesday.

But somehow communications between their main office in Denver, Colorado and the folks in Williams went awry, and after a lot of phone calls back and forth, a bit of frustration further complicated by it being the holiday weekend, and a false start or two, it was decided that we’d come to Williams yesterday, and take the train to the Grand Canyon today.

I know that Mike was disappointed to see us leaving so soon, but if he’s anything like me, the last thing I want to do when I’m under the weather is have to entertain guests. We hope to stop in and see him again in a few weeks, after we spend some family time with my daughter in Show Low.

I think Mohave County, Arizona was just as happy to see me go as I was to leave. Is it just me, or is that mountain giving me the finger?

What a difference a year makes! Exactly one year ago to the day, we left Kingman headed for our old hometown of Show Low. I just re-read my blog post for that trip, and noted that it was a slow, torturous trip uphill, and that between Seligman and Williams, we were crawling along on the shoulder of Interstate 40 in our old MCI bus conversion at 10 miles per hour, radiator misters on, and temperature gauge just bumping the red line.

This trip, in our Winnebago Ultimate Advantage, we were doing over 50 miles per hour, passing eighteen wheelers on the steep climbs, and our Cummins diesel engine never missed a beat. There are a lot of things about that old bus that I really loved, but driving it in the mountains wasn’t one of them.

Once we were settled into our site at the RV park, we went looking for someplace to eat. A girl at the railroad depot, and somebody at the local Visitor Center, both recommended the Pine Country Restaurant, which features 25 different pies, baked fresh daily. Well, let me at them!

The service was friendly, the portions huge, and while our dinners were good, I wouldn’t call them great. But the pies! Oh, the pies! The servings were just as large as with the rest of the meal, and beyond delicious. I had the pecan pie alamode, and Terry had cherry Dutch crumb, and we argued over whose was better. Miss Terry said the next time we go there, we’ll just have a sandwich to have room for more pie!

Once we had finished our dinner, we had to make a quick run into Flagstaff, 30 miles to the east, to go TV shopping. While we were at Best Buy, a pretty young lady sales clerk invited me to play with the new Apple iPad, which was just released yesterday. Anytime a pretty girl asks me to play with anything, especially a new gadget, I’m all over it!

To be honest, when I first heard about the iPad, I wasn’t at all interested. But after spending a few minutes browsing the web and watching a video on it, my thinking changed 180 degrees. This thing is cool, and I could find a hundred uses for it.

Would I buy one? Probably not, but only because in another month or so they are introducing a new, improved version with 3G capabilities, in addition to the WiFi the current models have. The young lady also told me that Apple will be making its iPhone available to Verizon customers by the end of the year. I’ve heard rumors of that before, and if it does happen, I’ll definitely make the change from my Blackberry Storm. I’ve used the Blackberry for almost a year now, and I have also played with a few iPhones, and the Apple product is far superior in my opinion.

Okay, we’re off to ride the train!

Thought For The Day – Finding fortune among the accidents of life – is there any greater talent?