WMHA Rally is History

We finished the rally by cleaning up the large lot on the south side of Dr Carron Road with Anita Price and Luke Rinehimer.  There was no scrap of paper, cigarette butt or dead battery left after we finished.  Cool Judy had checked out the extended parking options while we tootled around in our golf cart filling our garbage bags, and then we moved to our new spaces.

While we were parked during the rally we noticed some water that was leaking into our bay.  There was no time to take care of it while the rally was going on so after the move we attacked the problem.  Tom pulled out the drawer in the bay and I crawled inside.  I was able to twist around, over the rail and into the ‘bowels’ of the rig where the water heater, and inverter are stored. (Why would Monaco put water sources that could leak right next to all the electrical equipment?)  I discovered the source of the leak, the gray ‘T’ fitting where it was screwed into the brass ‘T’ fitting. 

Now where can we get a replacement for the gray ‘T’?  Nope, Luke did not have a single ‘T’ that we can use.  So we all jumped into the Jeep and picked up a ‘T’ and a couple of nipples and went to the Fisherman’s restaurant for dinner.  Boy was that a good choice. The Chivichi was outstanding as was my fish tacos.  Everyone else was very happy with their choices too.

Later that evening I revisited the cave under the motorhome and installed the new ‘T’ with new nipples all wrapped with Teflon tape.  No leaks. Big bruise though.

We left Indio for Quartzsite on Tuesday morning, and though a little windy, the trip was an easy one.

We are having some repairs made at Lifestyles RV in Q so we did not want to make the long drive on a rough dirt road over to Boomerville since we will be having the work done on the rig Friday. Things are starting to look pretty busy near the big tent.

We drove up Hwy 95 for Propane at the Pit Stop then drove on to Plomosa Road and parked at a nice open area.  The view was nice as we watched RV’s move onto the BLM land.  We did notice another small leak in the bay and then during the cold night suddenly our heater sounded like a rock was spinning around inside of it.  It was VERY loud and we shut the heater off immediately.

We had decided to move closer to Lifestyles RV for the repair and because it was closer to the Escapee Happy Hour and the Local Geocacher’s Event.

We drove west on Dome Rock then south on Cholla Road.  We entered the parking area and  Tom avoided the deep rut as we entered, but then things started to go south when we heard a scraping sound and the warning beepers started going off.  We pulled around to a flat spot and turned off the engine.  The warning lights indicated Low Air.  Tom walked out to the road and saw the deep groove in the pavement.  Back at the rig he checked the air bags – no damage.  He checked the tow bar.  The problem he found was a broken air connection at the tow bar.

OK, problem 1, AOTHER leak in the bay.  Problem 2 heater not working.  Problem 3 no air pressure, no brakes, no leveling.

Yup, I was back in the bay cave– this time the leak was from the pipe leading to to the water pump. I unscrewed the pipe, but the water kept flowing even though the pump was turned off.  It filled a pan 3 times! I had my finger in the pipe and felt like the little boy with his finger in the dike.  Tom discovered there was a siphon out of the fresh water tank and disconnected from there and we finally got the water stopped. 

We left to drop off the flyers for the SKP Geocacher’s rally at the Escapee Happy Hour and then drove to Boomerville to drop off some there too. We were happy to see friends from last year even though we follow most on Facebook or Blogs, there is nothing like hugs in person.  Then to Hanks Hardware for an o-ring for the pipe and an easy-out and plug for the broken air pipe.  O-ring was installed and the water leak was fixed.  However the easy-out would not ease the broken piece of the brass pipe out of the housing, but Tom was able to unscrew the air hose from the back side of the tow housing.  We went back to Hanks and exchanged the plug for a cap. Back to the RV and the air leak was temporarily fixed.  We leveled up and pulled out the slides. 

Next chore was to investigate the heater problem.  We had checked out how to remove the motor from the heater on the internet.  The internet is invaluable to finding out how to fix things that go wrong on the road.

The Heater Repair VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

We pulled the blower squirrel cage and found 1/3 of the blades were GONE!  We took it over to Lifestyles RV and low and behold they had them in stock.  The SHOCK was not only were almost half of the blades were gone… HALF of the squirrel cage was missing. The old one is on the left and the new one is on the right. 

I got it all installed and even got a kiss for my pay from Mr. Westerfield!  So all in all it was a very productive day.  Tomorrow we will be manning Table G at the geocaching event and dinner with friends, Anne and Leroy Willis.  AHHHH, life is again good.

I know, I know

When my friends and regular bloggers, Dan Change and Nancy Kissack reminded me this morning that it has been over a month since I checked in to the blogging world, I was ‘guilted’ into getting back in the groove; after all I did promise I would do better.  I just don’t know how the time flies by; it seems like just last week or so that I did a blog. 

Well, it has been a busy end of the year and this will be a catch-up blog. 

We got back to Fresno and were treated to a wonderful play, Wagons West, put on by our local elementary school. This was another outstanding theater production that is put each year. Our daughter, Jennifer, has for many years made the costumes for the kids. Even though Granddaughter, Julie graduates from college, Jenny made her costume when Julie was in 6th grade. That’s Julie on the left and this years ‘school marm’ on the right.

The kids do an outstanding job and we expect to see one of them on Broadway on day just like Audra McDonald, a Fresno girl.

We celebrated Thanksgiving in Fresno at Mom’s house.  Boy was it good. This is  left to right, SIL-Greg, GD-Jamie, Julie’s BF-Claudio, GD-Julie, SIL-NanCy, D-Julie, Mom, and Niece, Denise.

The day after Thanksgiving we drove to the Coast and stayed in Lompoc at the Elks Lodge and drove to Ventura for Cousin Bob’s Son, Greg’s and Anna’s wedding. It was a wonderful time with all our Westerfield relatives.

Wedding Pictures VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

I did have one very embarrassing wardrobe malfunction occur on the way to the wedding.  I put on my Clark shoes when leaving Lompoc, but when we arrived in Ventura they had split wide open… totally unwearable. So this is what I had to wear, Tom’s shoes.

We loved the Pismo Beach area for the rest of the week especially the extreme high and low tides we saw.

We enjoyed the very friendly pelicans on the pier, too.

Shore Birds VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

Then before you know it it was time to get ready for Christmas.  We spent time with the family, shopped, took family Santa pictures and had a fabulous Christmas morning breakfast.

For Christmas this year I decided to knit some hats.

		Christmas hats VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

I even knit a couple for me… I know it will be cold in Q this year.

We’ve had a couple of challenges with the RV and most are getting fixed.  Tom and Jason pulled the awning off and we had it restitched. Then Tom and I put it back up. When they pulled it down it was so cold they had to use the hair dryer to melt the ice that wouldn’t let the fabric unroll.

We left for the WMHA Rally in Indio on Jan 5, stopping in Boron for the night, and continuing to LaQuinta and the Sam;’s Club parking lot the next day. Jenny and Greg, Scruffy and Sampson gave us a big sendoff as we left.

Tom has been the Conductor (president) of the Golden Spike Chapter for the last 2 years in spite of being promised that he would never have to hold an office again. So turning over the Conductor Hat and President’s plaque to Kurt Simon was a very happy event. 

We gathered for our annual group chapter picture and also served ice cream only one day due to a mess up with ordering the ice cream.  Fortunately it was so cold missing ice cream for one day wasn’t too bad.

The rally entertainment this year was very good: Doo Wop, Blue Grass / Jazz and the final night, a tribute to Billy Joel and Elton John.

At long last… A Blog

My apologies to those who have checked out blog only to see Tucumcari again. That’s kinda how we felt in September/October, seeing Tucumcari again.  We can now say we have REALLY done Tucumcari AND got the shirts.

But we did get rolling to Albuquerque only no Balloon Fiesta, the balloons had moved on to happier skies.  Cool Judy and Luke Rinehimer had not moved on as they were waiting for an important mail delivery of their tire monitors. Lucky for us though so we joined them at FamCamp for several days.  We even got to meet up with our CokeCacher friends Wendy and Mike Lawrence for a yummy dinner.

We finally started to move slowly west stopping often to see SKP friends. For our readers who are not RV’ers, that’s  Escapee friends. Our first stop was in Holbrook. We met Bob and Pat DeSpain, friends of the Rinehimers, and stayed the night at their beautiful ranch just outside of town. What a fun time we had going to their favorite Mexican restaurant, playing with their very energetic ball (and rock) retrieving dog, touring the ranch, and admiring the amazing petrified logs that Bob’s father found many years ago in the quarry he owned. Super couple who are now Facebook friends.

We moved our caravan down the road the next morning stopping to rest, have lunch and get a geocache on our way toward the Elks Lodge in Clarkdale. I cut the bottom of the picture of Cool Judy off so there is no ‘spoiler’ (a giveaway of the location of the cache) shown.

We stayed a couple of days in Verde Valley visiting our favorite sites like Jerome, built on the side of a mountain, and the museum in Cottonwood that houses an amazing model railroad.

Verde Valley-Clarkdale & Cottonwood VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

When we visited Jerome we had lunch at the Mile High café. I love the grilled cheese sandwich which is like no other. This time I had the fried spinach as the side. It is hard to describe this other than to say the spinach just melted on my tongue. Amazing!

We then drove to Prescott to visit more SKP friends, Greg & Sally Schindel.  They had just gotten back from their trip to the northeast and their RV was still being unpacked in their spacious driveway. We enjoyed their hospitality and especially their beautiful view of Prescott. The Schindel’s took us to one of their favorite historic Prescott eatery, The Palace Saloon.   This is the oldest Frontier Saloon in Arizona. Greg told us the interesting story about this saloon.  On July 14, 1900, the town of Prescott was burning and when the fire reached the Palace the drinkers just moved the enormous bar out of the saloon to a safe place across the street and the beautiful bar was saved.

As you can see we were SLOWLY moving toward California, but we were not done visiting SKP friends. Our next stop was the Avondale Moose, dry camping and visiting Robert and Barbara Moore. Dinner was a blast as Betty and Duane joined us.  The restaurant almost had to kick us out as we talked and laughed long after our dinner was done.  We sure have a great time on the road, traveling with friends and meeting old and new friends as we travel this USA.

We finally arrived back in California landing in Indio after 10 months on the road. We checked into the Indio Elks to rest for a couple of days. We even had the rig and toad washed by the mobile RV washers that regularly visit the Elks drumming up business. They were recommended by others staying at the Elks and we felt they did a good job getting 12,000 miles of road dirt off DA PAD and DA TOAD.

We met MerrieAnn and Jeff Martin for dinner in Desert Hot Springs. I think this blog should be titled “Eating our way to California adding friends along the way”. 

Our next stop on our way home was without Cool Judy and Luke. We were so sad to leave such fun traveling companions, but they had to get home to Cool and we were on our way to Fresno with one very special stop along the way. We found the West Covina Elks was pretty close to Arcadia where Kay and Tom Tierney live.  They have been friends, very dear friends, since we met them just weeks after we were married over 50 years ago.  We lived next door to each other for several years and visited them almost weekly after we moved to Redondo Beach and they to the San Gabriel Valley. (If it were not for Kay typing my homework, I probably would not have a college degree ).  When we get together with Auntie Kay and Uncle Tom it is just one laugh after another.  We got to see their new remodel of the room addition started about 35 years ago and check up on their Westie, Mensy.

Tierney abode & Mensy VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

Daughter, Karen, joined us for dinner and we talked about Sherrie & Kevin.  That’ll teach them to not join us for dinner.  tee hee.

We finally arrived back in Fresno just in time to see the grandboys, Logan and Ryan, dressed up for Halloween.

 

Until next time we will be On the Road Again Caching  Places that we’ve Never Been. Thanks for patiently waiting for our blog. Next one will not be so late… I promise.