Got up early this morning, hooked up, then drove down to RV Doctor to have the wheel bearings packed and the awning repaired. After dropping the fifth wheel off, we went to I-HOP for breakfast and then stopped by Mom's house for a visit.
After leaving Mom's house, we drove by Sun City RV to look at some Teton fifth wheels. The guy that showed them to us was really hot to sell one to us...if we bought TODAY, we could get a $80,000 RV for $40,000! Yea, right...and I have some ocean front property in Arizona to sell you!
Just after we left Sun City RV, we got a call from RV Doctor to let us know that the work on our fifth wheel was finished, so we headed back, paid the bill, hooked up, and were on our way to Quartzsite.
We arrived in Quarzsite shortly after 3:30 PM and made our way to Don and Patti Hellman's house (amazingly, Earl remembered how to get here from last year). Don & Patti also have a tri-colored Basenji. After setting up, we had a nice visit with Patti and then she fixed us all a delicious spaghetti dinner.
Views from the Hellman's place:
Friday, March 2 through Sunday, March 4
On Friday, the four of us drove into Quartzsite and walked around the vendor area. Most of the activity is over for this winter season, but there are still quite a few vendors around selling their wares. I bought some t-shirts that were on sale at 3 for $10 and Earl bought a sweatshirt. We also got a shedding blade for Maxx to help pull out the old hair. Maxx sheds every spring once the weather starts warming up and we have been using a pumice stone to strip out the old hair, but the shedding blade works even better.
Friday evening, we took Don and Patti out to dinner at the Palo Verde Cafe. We all had their fish and chips which was quite good.
On Saturday, Earl took the truck down to one of the local truck stops and filled up with diesel. Then we went grocery shopping...had to go to a couple of different grocery stores to find what we wanted. Then, later, Patti took us by the General Store...we hadn't stopped at this store previously...which had a nice looking meat counter.
Hi Jolly's Monument:
On Sunday, Earl, Patti, and I took a drive down to the local cemetery to see Hi Jolly's Monument. Hi Jolly came to the U.S. from Siria in the early 1900's and drove camels in the desert for the Army in what was a failed experiment. We walked around and looked at the grave markers, some of which were quite old.
Of course, Maxx and Chico had fun playing together as they always do:
Chico:
Maxx:
Wanna play?
Can't reach me!
I'm gonna get ya!
Monday, March 5
We left Quartzsite about 10:30 AM and drove 235 miles to the Adalanto RV Park in Adalanto, California. We decided we wanted to go out for dinner and drove around town for quite awhile looking for a restaurant. Most of the business in Adalanto seem to be boarded up, but we finally saw the Thai Siam Restaurant and decided to try it. It was a good choice...they had really delicious Thai food!
Tuesday, March 6
We were going to leave Adalanto today, but it was raining when we got up, so decided to stay one more day and complete doing our laundry. We drove into Victorville to do grocery shopping. I was hoping there would be a Kinko's in Victorville so I could download e-mail, but no such luck. The RV park where we're staying has a modem hookup, but they want $2.50 for it's use and I refuse to pay for a phone hookup particularly when I'm already paying to use AOL's 800 number. Not to mention the fact that $2.50 is an outrageous price!
Wednesday, March 7
Drove 305 miles to the Santa Nella RV Park in Santa Nella, California. We stopped at the Flying J north of Bakersfield on our way north for lunch and to fill up with diesel. This Flying J had modem hookups at the tables, so I was able to download e-mail. The morning started out rainy, but by the time we crossed the Tehachapi Mountains, the sun was shining.
Thursday, March 8
We drove into Los Banos to tour the AutoMate factory, which is a factory-direct custom fifth wheel manufacturer much like New Horizons. We were really impressed with some of the things that they are doing...like air ride suspension and hydraulic disc brakes. Plus, they have a very sturdy framework similar to the one on the New Horizons. And they will do the three things we want in a new fifth wheel that New Horizons currently does not do...triple slides, flat floors, and ducted air conditioning.
So, after the tour, and a lengthy discussion with the owner of AutoMate, Bill Warrick, we went back home (after stopping for lunch, of course) and added up what it would cost for the fifth wheel we wanted. It came out to over $80,000! Since we'd be dealing directly with the factory instead of a dealer, there's no wheeling and dealing like you might do with a dealer...whatever the price turns out to be, that's the price you pay. The thing that struck us was that it seemed like they were nickel and diming the buyer to death. "Everything" seems to be an option...things that are standard in many, many RV's (such as a microwave). The other thing that bothered us was the fact that, for the price they're asking, they don't use solid oak for the cabinet framing...it's all vinyl wrapped pine...and some of their other woodwork just wasn't up to the standards we've become used to in our New Horizons. At any rate, although AutoMate does produce a very nice unit, for what we want, it's out of our price range.
Nap buddies:
Saturday, March 10 and Sunday, March 11
We drove 67 miles to the Big Bear Park in Waterford, California.
After setting up, we drove to Judy Maynard and Gus Gurule's house in Modesto. Gus and Judy are friends whom we became acquainted with through the Internet. They'd just recently purchased the house and have already put in a lot of work to fix it up -- new kitchen appliances, hardwood floors, painting, and new carpets. They've done a really wonderful job and their place looks great!
Gus and Judy served us lunch and then the guys went off to play a round of golf (the golf course is just across the street, a situation Earl would find very appealing!). Gus and Judy have taken some Indian cooking classes (Eastern Indian) and they prepared a delicious Indian dinner for us.
Gus, Judy, and Manchas:
On Sunday, Gus prepared his world famous tortilla breakfast -- homemade tortillas with scrambled eggs, bacon, salsa, avocado, etc. YUM!
While the guys went golfing again, Judy and I wandered around, stopping at a roadside stand where Judy picked up some fruits and vegetables which she was kind enough to share with us. We also stopped at a book store where I found the new Milepost. We both bought a copy for our trip to Alaska this summer. That evening, Gus and Judy fed us another delicious dinner.
Monday, March 12
We left Big Bear Park and drove 225 miles to Bakersfield Palms RV Resort in Bakersfield, California. This is one of the few parks that have "instant" telephone hookups at each site, so I was able to do some surfing on the Internet.
Tuesday, March 13
We drove 162 miles to Twin Lakes RV Park in Newberry Springs, California. On our way there, we stopped at Boron, California and had lunch at Domingo's, a Mexican food restaurant. The next time we come this way, we're definitely going to stop here and eat again because they had really GOOD Mexican food -- even better than one of our favorites, Lilly's in Glendale, Arizona!
After lunch, we continued heading east on Highway 58 toward Barstow. We started having problems with the truck which, at first, we thought might be a tire or driveline problem. We pulled off the road and Earl crawled underneath the truck to look for problems while I checked out all the tires. We didn't find anything that looked amiss, so we continued on our way. We remembered an article we'd read in the last "Freightliner Towing Times" we'd just recently received about someone whose truck had the same symptoms and it turned out to be a fuel filter which was plugged. We figured this was probably the problem and it was confirmed when we lost power going up a small hill once we got on Interstate 15. We stopped at a Rip Griffin just a mile south of where we'd entered the freeway to have both fuel filters changed. Fortunately, we had a spare small fuel filter, as Rip Griffin didn't have that one in stock. We were back on our way within about an hour, problem fixed.
Wednesday, March 14
We drove 203 miles to Emerald Cove, a Coast to Coast park in Earp, California (across the Colorado River from Parker, Arizona). We stopped in Needles before arriving at the park to do grocery shopping and have lunch.
Thursday, March 15
As we were preparing everything to leave Emerald Cove this morning, Earl noticed that the front, curb side tire on the fifth wheel was flat. In attempting to loosen the lug nuts on the tire, we found out that the person at RV Doctor who had packed the wheel bearings had tightened them way too tight and Earl had to struggle to get them loosened. After getting the lug nuts loosened and the tire off, Earl had another struggle getting the spare tire off -- it's underneath the fifth wheel just behind the rear tires. Fortunately, the guy behind us came over and helped. Finally, the tire was changed and we were on our way back to Cotton Lane RV Resort, 144 miles down the road.
Friday, March 16 through Wednesday, March 21
We took a trip over to Mesa to look at fifth wheels, stopping at Flying J on our way to fill up with fuel. We didn't get to see much, however, as most of the places that used to carry the RV's we are interested in have either gone out of business or are no longer carrying the brands they used to carry. You'd think in a place as big as Phoenix and with as many snowbirds as there are in the area during the winter, there would be lots of places that sell the high-end fifth wheels; however, it seems that most of the places are going with the low-end products. Very disappointing.
We did a lot of running around while we were back in Phoenix for the week: we stocked up on supplies at Costco; Earl took the flat tire to Goodyear and got a new tire (they gave us a credit for the old tire since the flat was due to tread separation); Earl did some golfing; stopped by the local Napa Auto Parts store to pick of a couple of extra fuel filters; I got my hair cut; and, we went back to Murphy's of Glendale with Philip and Lorraine Steinberg, friends from Cotton Lane Rv Resort, for some of their delicious German food.
Thursday, March 22
We drove 392 miles today to Dream Catcher RV Park in Deming, New Mexico, an Escapees park. This was a very long day for us as we normally don't drive that far in a single day. We didn't arrive until 6:00 PM and were exhausted so we decided to go to K-Bob's Steakhouse for dinner.
Even though we had a long day, the drive was very pretty. The southwest has received a lot of rain this winter and the desert is in bloom. We passed areas that were a carpet of yellow flowers with splotches here and there of orange and purple.
Desert in bloom:
Flowers up close:
After resting a day in Deming, we drove 223 miles to El Campo RV Park in Van Horn, Texas. This is the same RV park we at which we stayed last year when we got our Class A driver's licenses.
Sunday, March 25
Well, this just wasn't our day! We started out the day with the intention of driving to Junction, Texas to spend the night on our way to the Freightliner RV Haulers Club rally near Medina Lake (northwest of San Antonio).
We'd had breakfast and fueled up at the Truck & Travel Truck Stop in Van Horn and started on our trip. Later that morning, we pulled off the road at a rest stop and Earl noticed that the rear, curb side tire of the fifth wheel was flat! Again, Earl struggled to get the lug nuts loosened. At least the new tire we'd bought in Phoenix was riding up on the bed of the truck, so he didn't have to crawl underneath the RV to get it. After changing the tire, we proceeded on to Fort Stockton to find a Goodyear dealer and get a replacement. However, we found the Goodyear dealer closed (it was Sunday, after all).
Later that afternoon, after passing the small town of Ozona, Texas, a trucker passed us and told us, via CB, that one of our rear tires was flat. We had the good luck to be in an area that had a wide, flat, grassy area to the side of the road, so we pulled off onto that area. Sure enough, the rear street side tire on the RV was flat -- and not only flat, but shredded!
Well, here we were, our second flat tire of the day (and the third one within less than 2 weeks), and without a spare. What to do? Fortunately, we were in an area where our cell phone had good coverage, so I called Good Sam Emergency Road Service. I figured that, being Sunday, we probably wouldn't be able to get the tire changed until Monday and someone from Fort Stockton would have to come out. Again, good fortune shined on us -- Good Sam ERS found a tire shop in Ozona that was open and had a tire the size we needed and in about an hour we had our tire changed. We followed the buy back to town and bought another tire just in case our last remaining original tire gave up the ghost, too. By this time it was about 5:00 PM so, instead of continuing on to Junction, we stayed at an RV park at the eastern edge of Ozona.
Monday, March 26 through Friday, March 30
We made the remaining 189 miles to the Freightliner RV Haulers Club rally without incident. We arrived late morning at the Thousand Trails park near Medina Lake at which the rally was being held and checked in and set up. It was great seeing all those Freightliners all in one place!
During the week we had seminars with people from Freightliner, Allison and Eaton (transmission manufacturers), Cummins and Catepillar (engine manufacturers), insurance specialists, a fire safety seminar, and others. We had a catered breakfast, a lunch, and a dinner plus a potluck on Thursday evening. A good time was had by all.
Earl and I drove into Bandera on Wednesday to pick up our mail and get fuel. Tuesday, we drove into San Antonio so that Earl could see a doctor about the recurring problem he has with the glands in his neck swelling. On our way back, we stopped and did grocery shopping.
There were lots of deer and rabbits around the park which drove Maxx crazy -- he'd forget why he was out on his walk because he wanted to get to the animals, the deer in particular.
Saturday, March 31
We drove 161 miles to the Smith's Trailer Village and RV Park in George West, Texas. We had a beautiful drive on the back roads -- flowers in shades of yellow, red, pink, purple, and while carpeted much of our route. It was awesome!
