I’ve been a little busy the last couple weeks, but wanted to let you all know that I’m planning on entering Mexico at Nogales this coming Wednesday, Jan. 22nd. Heading for San Carlos to spend the night, then it’s on to Mazatlan.
I’ll try to post a new article before I leave but it’s been a bit more difficult than I anticipated what with the travel planning and all. Anyway, thanks for your patience.
One thing about the River Lodge RV park…it’s right about in the middle of the area between Parker, AZ and Lake Havasu, AZ. It’s on the California side of the downstream section of the Colorado just 2 miles south of Parker Dam, on a winding 2 lane road with several signs warning of wild burrows potentially in the roadway. Lots of blind curves.
A bit of info about the wild burros…they are remnants of the lost or freed burros brought up from Mexico by the Mexican slaves as part of the Spanish searches for gold or silver. They combed much of this area. Well known for their cruelty, not hard to image periodic rebellions and other disasters befalling a group like that traveling here, allowing burros the opportunity to escape. The Apache hated the Spanish and would attack them wherever found so that’s another way they might have escaped. So that’s where the burros came from, and centuries later, the herd had grown so big as to be a danger. I was told that last year (2018) they rounded up and culled 500 of them. Because of overgrazing and inbreeding was causing problems. In the month I was in the area, I only saw 5 of the beasties and they look pretty healthy so I guess the plan is working.
You can only travel here in an RV from the California side using Parker Dam Road as RV’s and trucks aren’t allowed to cross the dam so you come up from the south. Cars and smaller vehicles are OK to cross the dam. So you can drive to Parker for shopping on that road and it takes 25 minutes. If you go the other direction, cross the dam, than head to Parker on 95, it only takes 20 minutes. Nice road, 4 lanes in some places.
If you want to head to Lake Havasu, it’s a 30 minute drive. Cross the dam, turn onto 95 going north whereas heading south takes you to Parker. It’s just faster for shopping to take the 95 into Parker.
After settling in at the RV park, getting my engine looked at by the diesel mechanic, and wandering around the grounds, visited the dam since I was so close. Had fish and chips special at a nearby restaurant…pretty good.
All the news about the engine was good, and it turns out that my engine is special. That very high pressure, special hose I thought I should replace soon is in such good condition, that it just isn’t necessary at this time. The mechanic says it’s not even the same hose as most he’s seen. Better, stronger, no cracks at all. Here’s a picture of the hose, right there in the middle of the picture, has the metal label on it…note there’s no cracks in the rubber like is so typical on other engines. The conflict in the idea of replacing it is that it’s not leaking now, there’s no cracks, so why mess with it? If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
So that’s what I’ve decided to do. Not mess with it. I have an excellent hose installed, I have the more reliable design for the HEUI, and according to the mechanic, what I should do is just change the oil more often. That’s it. Keep the oil fresh, and avoid a $5,000 HEUI pump failure.
That engine work only took a couple hours, including lubing the exhaust brake mechanical parts and I’d paid for a month here at this RV park so, time to explore. And since I’m only 2 miles from Parker Dam, that’s where we’ll start. First some pics of the first night along the Colorado River. And the next morning…
Heading South as the snow birds do. After 6 weeks in Pahrump, it was time to head south and a visit with an internet friend who’s a diesel mechanic with vast experience with Cat engines. He stays at a RV park just 2 miles from the Parker Dam, on the California side of the Colorado River. River Lodge Resort. And it was looking like from the long term weather report that pretty severe weather was on it’s way to Pahrump so time to get ready to leave.
But first, I wanted to get my RV washed and there is a guy who works here at Preferred RV that I saw around washing peoples RVs. So I asked him to do mine. He does both a wash and liquid wax. It was encouraging to see that he had a nice rotary tool to deep clean the rig, and a rotary waxing tool as well after applying the liquid wax. And all for just $140. Just what I’d pay in Mexico. So I hired him. And as I’m sitting at my desk surfing the web, he’s making some pretty loud banging noises. Eventually, I walk outside and there’s a brand new crack radiating up and down from a new ding in my drivers side window. Crap. So round and round we go and with me insisting he dropped a tool on it, and him insisting he didn’t. Crap. Not likely he has insurance anyway, and my insurance will likely cover most of it. So I put that on the back burner and headed south after drilling 3-4 relief holes in the top surface of the glass so the crack wouldn’t radiate out from there, put some lengths of clear tape over the crack in a couple places in case it did decide to brake apart, the tape would hold it together for a while, long enough to pull over off the highway. And off I went south. Everything held together, I arrived at the campground, and I’m now trying to find a repair service.
Anyway, check out the weather south of the campground as I headed off.
The road trip down from Wendell, Idaho was uneventful. Which I’m happy about…nice to have my RV run smoothly and the new tires gave me renewed confidence in the machine over long hauls. I shouldn’t have been all that worried back before I replaced the four 10 year old tires I’d had replaced in July in Walla Walla but before that it was a little nerve racking after reading about fellow RV’ers who had blow outs. Of course my rears blowing out wouldn’t have been as bad as a front tire blow out, but I replaced the fronts back in ’16 so had confidence in them. I did carry a 10 year old spare in the truck of my car for the last 3 years…but after I got the new rear tires, I left that with my son so now I don’t have one with me. But with all new and newer tires all around, less anxiety while on the road even without the spare. Anyway…
Stayed in Ely for one night, then the next day after four hours of driving, passed and stopped at the Death Valley Nut & Candy Co. there in Beatty, NV. I needed fuel too and that was an adventure as that place is always packed and not really designed for allowing an RV towing a car near the pump I needed to access and some bozo had parked his pickup truck, set the pump nozzle to fuel up automatically, then wandered into the nut store. Probably to use the bathroom. Leaving his truck sitting there blocking 2 pumps, and blocking access of my RV towing a car. I could not navigate around the pump island with his stupid truck parked there. I debated calling the cops because he’d left the highly flammable gas nozzle just hanging out of his filler hole. That’s a misdemeanor in many states. Just as I was getting ready to walk back in to have the idiot paged, he wanders out and I yell at him. Still took him 4-5 minutes to leave while I’m sitting there blocking traffic.
After carefully negotiating the RV wrecking type fuel islands and traffic there, I got a few gallons, left the station and parked across the highway where they have a giant overflow lot. I do not like that station because it was designed for cars and small trucks, not big RVs. I should have just gone up the road, there’s a better station a couple miles on. OK, next time I’ll do that. Anyway, after parking in the overflow lot, walked back over to the Death Valley Nut & Candy store, got myself a nice 2 scoop ice cream cone, and afterwards bought 3 bags of nuts and some sugar free candy.
Well, that was nice. Ice cream was good. After that pleasant interlude got back on the road headed towards Pahrump. Only two hours to go and around 4 pm, pulled into Preferred RV Resort, paid for a months stay and was soon settled in. Right at this point in my RV adventures, this park is one of my favorites and I always enjoy staying here. It’s not the park spaces really as they are just gravel with nose to tail parking, it’s the amenities, the relatively good wifi, the bike riding distance to so many good places to eat, the nearby casinos, one with a huge TV for game watching, the pleasant weather, and on and on. I just like it here. And after 16 years of full timing, I should know what I like. If I had made up a check list for my favorite things in and around a RV park, staying here would check nearly every item. Now there are times when I’m looking for a bit more solitude or adventure, and for those times I’ll plan a trip. When I’m just wandering N-S or S-N, this park is it.
It was getting to be the end of the season here where I was staying in Wendell, Idaho. I’d paid for a months stay after arriving from Milton-Freewater, Oregon in early September. There was a chill in the air, frost on the grass in the mornings, and far fewer campers. It was getting to be that I was one of the few long term campers left at Intermountain RV Campground. Which was fine with me as they only have one 50 amp RV space and I was finally able to move there when I only had 10 days left of my paid up month. My knee was really bothering me so I wasn’t able to get the wifi extension system up for them like I’d planned but I’ll drop by next spring and do it for them then, probably. Anyway, here’s some pictures of the camp and where I stayed after I’d moved over from the spot right next to this one…it took almost an hour to find the best positioning for the RV in this space to get wifi, satellite, and OTA signals all at the same time. Whew. That was a chore, lots of moving the RV back and forth, left and right. Eventually though finally found the exact right position where both entertainment antennas could peak through the trees and get a consistent signal.
Because of the cold front that was dipping down from Canada (made the national news it was so sudden and fierce) I really wanted 50 amp just for comfort. With it I could run my heat pump and all my electric space heaters and it would actually be able to warm up the RV quickly in the cold mornings instead of taking hours on a 30 amp supply. Here in southern Idaho, we only got the southern edge of the cold front but it was noticeably cool near and after sundown and definitely cold in the AM.
Take a look where I’m parked. A day after I parked there, I drove out to do my shopping and on the way back, pulled my little in-the-canal hearing aid out of my ear and put it in the console and when I parked behind the RV, picked it up and stuffed it in my pants pocket. The same pocket where I keep my keys for the RV’s front door. And I knew when I did that I’d have to be careful I didn’t drop my aid when I pulled out the keys. And damn if that isn’t exactly what happened. As I got to the door and pulled out my keys, trying to be careful, the aid went flying. So it was somewhere on the ground next to, under or way far away from the door. For the next week, whenever I went out, I’d slow search the path I’d taken. It was nowhere to be found.
But then I had a great idea, I went over to the office and asked Jessica the owner if I could rent her three kids to search for me. With their low to the ground stances, their good eyes, and tiny fingers, just maybe…
I offered them $1 apiece just to look and $5 to find it. The three of them wanted to look but I had to shoo away Jessica because she was looking too. Showed them my other one so they’d know what to look for, where I thought I’d lost it, and told them to have at it. TWENTY MINUTES LATER the smallest kid found it. She’s around 5, older brother around 8 and the oldest boy is around 10. She found it under a leaf in the grass just outside my door steps. From the looks of it, it had been smooshed into the dirt a few times as I stepped on it I guess. I was so happy I paid her her $5 and gave the boys $2 apiece instead of just $1. Girl saved me $60. It was nearly new too, I’d just bought it the month before. Happy to have it back. After cleaning it’s working fine too.
And here’s a shot across the way from where I’m parked that you can just make out the ‘temporary’ setup for the wifi extension system I made and blue taped to that shore power tower for testing. It worked really well, but there weren’t many campers either. Does need more testing but I think it will work fine right there. There are many reasons that would be a good spot and I’ll go into them when I actually permanently install the extension. Like I said, my knee was giving me fits so I didn’t want to have to dig holes for posts and things like a ditch for wiring so I didn’t finish the installation. 
At the end of the road is the parks dump station. This RV park doesn’t have sewer at each site, just this dump station. It is convenient, has water too, but usually I wouldn’t even use it, instead I’d drive to downtown Wendell the long way in order to warm up the engine and tranni. 
Every morning they would prepare and serve waffles. Free! Usually it would be warm enough to eat outside at the picnic tables under the cover but because of the cold people would eat inside the office where they have a couple tables set up. The antenna on top of the building is the wifi. It’s too far from the center of the RV parking area which is why I’m trying to get an extension installed for them.
While I was here in town I went to a local tire store and bought 4 new tires for my car. When they finished I noticed there were 3 large weights on two of the wheels, that ain’t right, so I took it back the next day, the owner understood my concerns and watched the tech as he re-did the spin balancing on all four of them. Turned out he’d used the wrong wheel cone on the machine so they were all wonky. Dummy. That’s the 2nd time a tire shop has done that to my wheels. After that was fixed, I was ready to head south…but first…
I’m on my way to Pahrump, NV as of tomorrow AM. I am here in Wendell, Idaho staying at Intermountain RV. It will take two short days of driving to get there. If any of you would like some help working on your rig, I’d be happy to help. I’m spending too much time on the computer and need to get my hands dirty so you’d be doing me a service.
The only projects I’ve got in the pipeline for myself are recharging the dash AC system and either repairing or replacing the dash heater core. That should be fun (?) as I have to drop the front end cap to access it if the core needs replacing. I don’t have dash heat right now as I’ve bypassed the heater core but I only have 1.5 days of driving in the coolish weather to worry about until I’m down in the sunny and warm Pahrump valley. I will run the genset to stay warm if need be.
I’ll be staying at Preferred RV Resort. They take the Passport America card or Good Sam so you can get a nice discount. Plus the park is within walking distance of 3 casinos if you’re into that sort of thing. Also it’s only 55 miles from Las Vegas. Has a nice VA clinic in town too.
I’ll be there for more than a month, until around Nov. 20th, then I’ll be heading to near Parker, AZ just below Parker dam.
Drop on by and say hi!
I graduated from Walla Walla high school back in 1964 so basically I grew up in this area. They say that 80% of people either stay or eventually return to the place where they graduated HS. I don’t know about that in my case, I’ve always had the wanderlust thing going on so when I stay somewhere, especially now that I’m a full time RV’er, I’m looking over the place as a potential ‘settling down’ area to plant my ass permanently. Same thing with Walla Walla.
And Walla Walla definitely has it’s charm. At one time it had more millionaires per capita then any other town in the country. So when you drive around the older residential areas, you can’t help but notice these older palatial homes…sort of like today’s McMansions only from early last century. Most of them very handsome. Some already refurbished and modernized attaining their former glory.
Back when I was the Montgomery Wards Service Manager here in town, I was lucky to be a field TV tech and got to visit many of these older homes. Even though at that time in the ’70’s many of them were beginning to look run down, they still retained that elegance they were built with. Since I was always in my car, never really got any pictures, I’ll try to do that the next time I’m in town. I did visit Pioneer park, a very large park just to the east of downtown about 10 blocks into an older residential area…where you can find many of those palatial older homes I mentioned. At this park is an aviary. Lots of exotic birds. Big open cages with bird netting over the tops so they can’t escape. Many smaller brooding cages too.
And here’s the duck pond. Used to come here with the baby daughter shortly after we moved back or when we visited the parents. Generally there’s lots of wild ducks here that people use to feed bread too. But now we know that bread isn’t very good for them so people have sort of stopped doing that. Bringing bird feed instead. You can see a cluster of the tame ducks in the picture. They stay the winter because they get fed enough here they don’t feel any need to fly south any more.
And here’s another look at the aviary. Pretty big affair. The birds probably enjoy it…free from predators, lots of quality food, some friends to hang with. What’s not to like?
And here’s the bandstand. Every spring summer and fall there are concerts here under the trees with thousands milling around and sitting on the ground enjoying the music.
And then the son, daughter and Scott came to another ball game with me. This time, I’d bought the expensive tickets at $17 each. Better view.
My son James.
And the Sweets won this game too. Big scores at these AAA games so that’s always fun.
Over all a very nice visit to Ely. But after a month it was time to move on. Not sure I mentioned it but the little RV park I stayed at had very fast Wifi. I was able to stream whenever I wanted to. And most of the people there didn’t use Wifi at all so I had it pretty much to myself over that month.
I’d tried to get a reservation at the Hagerman RV park where I stayed last year in the area but they kind of put me off. But whatever, I decided just to head that direction and see if they had an open spot when I got there.
And here I go traveling on a lonely road out in the middle of nowhere again. I really enjoy the wide open spaces.
It was July and on the 4th was the parade; I made sure to bike down the few blocks I needed to go to find a spot along the parade route to enjoy it. Chose the city park with all it’s shade trees to hang out at. Kind of your typical small town parade with antique vehicles, HS band, some town locals like the mayor, local businesses sponsoring small floats…but few fancy floats. It was in the mid 70’s so very comfortable. Lots of candy was tossed to the kiddies…
