Driving in Circles

The rest of our stay at Pilot Knob near Yuma was relatively uneventful. I decided not to ride the Husky any more until after it went to the shop in Phoenix. We took the dogs for a lot of bike rides and hikes. We also met up with a couple of my parents friends that were staying right down the road and had a nice afternoon of playing games with them. They taught us a couple of new games that we have been playing quite a bit. The cactus's all bloomed from  the two day rain storm a few weeks back. 

Also, when the wind is out of the South, the sunsets can be pretty spectacular. 

We loaded up and headed to Phoenix early on the 12th to drop off the bike. This brought us full circle from when we had passed through Phoenix on our way to Quartzsite a month before. We had 2 days in Phoenix while they were working on the bike and thankfully had quite a bit to do. We went to Camping World and picked up a few parts to make some small repairs on the rig, plus we picked up a few goodies. We did not bring a toaster with us since they are bulky and only run on 120. We got one of the camping toasters that sits over a gas burner and toasts 4 pieces of bread at once. We were skeptical about it but it was only $3 so we took the plunge. It works great! A definite suggestion for those of you that want toast while camping. Whit also got the really soft silicon ice trays. They feel like rubber and are really easy to get ice out of them. She was really tired of putting all her strength into cracking the cubes loose from the plastic trays only to have them fly everywhere once she finally cracked it. Nala, on the other hand, is quite disappointed with the new ice trays. She has always been under the assumption that any ice that hits the floor is fair game for her to eat. Now that no ice hits the floor (or the walls/ceiling) she is not as in love with the new trays as Whit is. 

After camping world we spent the rest of the day at a laundromat and then headed to Walmart for the night. Oh, and we had Whataburger for lunch and it really hit the spot since I haven't had it since my last visit to Texas. We stocked up on groceries at Walmart the next morning, took a quick trip to Barnes and Noble for Robert Jordan's long awaited finale to the Wheel of Time series, and then headed to another Walmart for another night in Phoenix. Staying in Walmart parking lots is not ideal. It can be really loud and with the parking lot lights on all night it is really bright for sleeping. It is also free, so that is all the complaining i will do about it. Whit got her wish for Chipotle that night and we gorged ourselves on burrito bowls. 

We did not sleep much that night due to a lot of loud kids with loud cars messing around in the parking lot all night. This greatly upset the dogs. So much so that they felt they needed to growl and bark all night long to let those kids know they were being naughty. We had not slept much the night before  either so were pretty wore out at this point. We went to the bike shop to wait for them to finish it that day. It was Valentine's day and since Whit had gotten what she wanted the night before (Chipotle), I was off the hook. For breakfast I got her a shamrock shake from Mcdonalds that she had been craving because that's just how great a husband I am (almost word for word direct quote from her). We ended up waiting until after 6 that night to finally leave the dealership with the bike. Everything was fixed and she ran great. On the other hand, we were running on very little sleep and still had a 120 mile drive to get back to Quartzsite.

We got to Quartzsite around 8:30 and were beat. We decided to park at the closest spot we could find and find a more permanent one the next day. We got some much needed rest that night and felt much better in the morning. Even Nala was beat and did not want to get out of bed. 

 After dumping the tanks and filling up on water, we headed to the Scaddan Wash BLM area to find a site for the next 2 weeks. We scouted around on foot and found an area we liked so we went back to get the rig. We dragged the trailer hitch going through a couple of washes, but we made it unscathed. 

We did the Dripping Springs ride yesterday that we almost finished a few weeks ago (cancelled due to rain).

 The springs are at the bottom of the rock formation in the picture, hidden in a little canyon pretty much right behind where my helmet is. Water is continually dripping out of a rock wall in the middle of the desert where there is not a drop of surface water for miles around. 

Another little pool nearby. 

There are tons of petroglyphs on the surrounding rocks. Some are obviously newer (MNN 2007), some are older (G.C. Welsch 1898), and some are really old. We took a few shots of some that we thought were really old. 

All in all a great ride and a HUGE milestone for Whit. It was her first ride that she did not fall once. Way to go baby! We are loving life on the road and so far living in an RV is a lot easier and less confining than living in a house. We have already started making plans for next winter. It looks like we will be renting a house in Tulum, Mexico with my parents for ~ 3 months. We can't wait! We will also be doing some modifications to the rig while we are back in Colorado this spring. Mainly we will be turning the rear bed into a large L-shaped couch with a table that folds into the wall when not in use. The rear bed takes up about 1/4 of the space in the rig and we never use it other than for a dog bed. We finally decided that we will never have anyone along to sleep on it, so why keep it? Now we will have a huge couch with two large picture windows to see out of. We have been taking a lot of measurements and doing all the planning so we can get started on it right away when we get back. That's all to report for now. Until next time, try to take it easy, and most importantly - enjoy the little things! Oh, and happy birthday Kati!!!

Yuma

It has been over 2 weeks since the last blog post for a few reasons. We forgot to take the camera with us for about a week and for that we apologize. Internet service has been spotty since we left Quartzsite. Also, I have been doing a lot of maintenance and repairs around here for the last two weeks so not much to write home about. 

I got the oven pilot light fixed and we have used it a couple of times with limited success. It seems that the temperature sensor may be faulty. If you set it at the correct temperature, the burner just stays on indefinitely and makes you some nice meal shaped charcoal briquettes if you don't constantly watch it. We found that turning the temperature about 200 degrees lower than what you actually want to cook at works a bit better. I will be looking further into this and possibly replacing the oven in the spring. 

I took a 60 mile off road ride the day after the last blog post. Whit was still recuperating from her last ride so she did not join me. I came across some really cool rock formations but did not have the camera with me. We will be doing that ride again when we return to Quartzsite next week and will take the camera with us. A couple days after my ride we took a ride to a place called Dripping Springs. It supposedly has a spring coming out of a cave wall that drips all year long regardless of how long it has been since it has rained. There are also some very old abandoned cabins and Indian hieroglyphs. We made it to within 1/2 mile and it started raining so we high tailed it back to the rig. It was a ~45 minute ride back so we were soaked by the time we got back but it was warm so no big deal. We will also be doing this ride again and taking pictures next week. 

The rain that started on that ride did not stop for 2 days, so we had 2 much needed days off :). After the rain stopped, we found that our black water tank was leaking. For those of you that do not know rv lingo, there are 3 types of holding tanks (fresh water, gray water, and black water). Fresh is obvious, gray is where the sinks and shower drain into, and black is where the toilet drains to. Of all the tanks to be leaking, black is the worst. It looked like it was just a hose coupling so I drained the tank and replaced the hose coupling with a rubber one so it would have some flexibility. That seemed to do the trick. About 4 days later, the tank started leaking again. The hose coupling was the lowest part on the tank so was the first thing to start leaking. Once I fixed that, the level in the tank could rise to the unseen crack in the tank where it began leaking again. Once again we drained the tank and this time I used epoxy and silicon tape to repair it. I do not enjoy working in poo and had to do it twice in one week. That was over a week ago and it has not leaked since. Hopefully that is the last of Bryce's adventures with poo (or is it?). 

We were sitting having dinner one night when we heard a loud hissing noise coming from the rear of the rig. It turned out to be a broken coupling on a hot water line inside a wall. It had let go and sprayed water all over the inside of the wall. The previous owner made several repairs on this rig in the past and I guess the only tools he owned were wire coat hangers and string. He had broken all of the roof vents and wired them shut with coat hangers. One of my first repairs on this rig were the vents. The aforementioned coupling had ruptured in the past and instead of fixing it properly he had tied it back on with what appeared to be a shoe string... I was extremely surprised that it lasted as long as it did. I repaired it correctly and we have not heard from it since. I am positive that this is not the last I have heard from string or coat hangers in this rig. 

Upon leaving Quartzsite we stopped at Mittry Lake just North of Yuma. It is a water fowl conservation area just off the Colorado River. The road getting to it from the North was 5 miles of washboard gravel - very annoying in an RV. It was so rough that it cracked a hinge on our fridge. Upon further inspection, I found that all of the fridge/freezer's hinges were plastic. What a stupid design. We had a ton of condiments and a half gallon of OJ in the door shelves of the fridge. That weight combined with the rough road were the culprits. They really should put a warning on the inside of RV fridge's not to put any weight in the door compartments. We moved everything out of the doors and started doing research and making calls to replace the hinge. 

The site we found at Mittry Lake was pretty and right next to the spillway from the lake so had running water noise all night long which was nice. There was a quarry a few hundred yards away but there was no one there when we arrived (after 5 pm) so we hoped we were safe. They arrived promptly at 8 am the next morning and commenced to breaking rocks on our doorstep. We then realized why this was one of the only camping spots left open at the lake. We loaded back up and left through the South side of the lake. We hit paved road about 400 yards from the campsite so we decided we would come from the South if we ever came to Mittry Lake again. 

We had decided the night before to take a bunch of stuff out of our rig and get rid of it. We called around and there were no used RV parts places or anywhere that wanted the stuff we were getting rid of. The city dump happened to be between Mittry Lake and Yuma, so it was our first stop that day. We removed the big chair that was behind the front passenger side seat. It was useless and uncomfortable and just taking up valuable space. We also got rid of the second mattress on the over cab bed (our bed). Over cab mattresses are really just 4 inch thick pieces of foam. We had gotten a memory foam mattress to put over the foam and had decided that it was all we needed and could ditch the foam. This made our bed much larger and 4 inches further from the ceiling (which was a lot). Now I can almost sit up in bed. Almost. We unmounted our awning and got rid of it as well. It was ripped and bent so of not much use anyways. Lastly, we got rid of the ladder that went up to the over cab bed. It was bent and annoying to store. The over cab was now lower so easier to get into anyways. 

After our trip to the dump we went to a Walmart in Yuma. We replaced the chair that we removed with a couple of storage ottomans for added storage and somewhere to put our feet when watching tv. We had found after making a few phone calls that the fridge hinge could not be replaced without replacing the entire door which was quite expensive. I repaired the hinge with epoxy and a metal bracket in the Walmart parking lot and it in now stronger than it was before. 

Next we headed to a place called Pilot Knob just West of Yuma. It is BLM land and is free for 14 days so we will be here for another week. We have to be in Phoenix on the 12th to get some warranty maintenance done on my Husky. Here are shots of our current digs. 

The weather is in the mid 70's during the day and mid 50's at night, so pretty much perfect. I would not like to be here in the summer though. We have been training Ivy to run with the bicycle and it has been going pretty well. I trained Nala when we first got her and she took to it with relative ease. She stopped in front of the bike a couple of times and got ran over, but soon learned to stay to one side or the other. Since I trained Nala, Whitney is training Ivy. The first day Ivy was doing great at first running as fast as she could right beside the bike. She saw something off the side of the road and decided to jump in front of the bike to either get a closer look or end it all (the jury is still out on her motive). Whit promptly hit her and went over the handlebars. Thankfully neither had more than a scrape and both came away with a lesson. Ivy learned that if she tried to run over the bike, the opposite would happen. Whit learned to be more vigilant on the brakes and that if she tried to run over Ivy she would briefly get to practice flying. Since Nala and I had already learned these same lessons long ago we just tried to comfort/encourage them and tried not to let them see us laughing. The last two rides they did were much better.

We took a bike into Yuma on Sunday and watched the Super Bowl at a local Chili's. They had happy hour for the whole game so we stuffed ourselves on all of the greasy fried stuff we could handle (which we regretted later) and enjoyed the game. We took a great ride yesterday into some nearby dunes. We both got to play around in the dunes (and if I may brag a bit, Whit did great in the sand and is improving with every ride). Here are some pictures of the ride.

 Haven't been able to convince Whit to try a wheelie yet.

Sand is great for roostie's.

This bowl is a lot steeper than it looks in the picture. We will get some better shots next time out.

 Her first bit of air!

Concentration face.