Perhaps foolishly, given the two lingering mechanical issues we are dealing with (a likely bad alternator and a power steering leak), we thought we could nurse the bus onward for a few more days and swing through Joshua Tree National Park before turning towards the coast or north and a mechanic.  Our research suggested that as long as you arrive on a weekday other than Friday, you can find a site in one of the half dozen campgrounds within the park.  We even called the park an hour before arriving to confirm, and they told us that the most appropriate campground for our rig and arrival point, Jumbo Rocks, had eight spots left.  We hurried in, the ranger at the gate basically told us good luck but don’t get your hopes up.  We plugged along anyway, driving the 17 miles into the park to Jumbo Rocks only to find… total chaos.

Most of our Joshua Tree National Park pictures are from the bus windows, since driving is about the only thing we did there

I can’t speak to the management of the park as a whole, but this campground is the single worst managed site of any national, state, or county park or recreation area we have visited, and it’s not even a close call.  Let me correct that statement a bit; to say that it is poorly managed implies that it is managed at all.  Rather, it seems that somewhere along the way the park manager just through up his hands and said “let the people work it out, whats the worst that could happen?”  Despite being full, and unlike every other national or even state or county park we have visited, there was no volunteer camp host, thus there was no one, absolutely no one, who actually knew if there were any available spots and where they might be.  You basically had to drive through every side loop, some of them quite narrow and winding, and examine every post marker to see if it had an updated orange claim receipt on it.  Eventually I parked beside the road while Rosemarie explored on foot amidst the scores of families and children and at least half a dozen other campers coming in every few minutes also looking for a spot.

Very large, even jumbo rocks near the campground of the same name.

While Rose walked, I maneuvered the bus out of the road I was blocking, and in the process somehow lost reverse gear.  Unlike the previous and now repaired reverse gear problem, which was simply a shaky solenoid operated air relay assembly failing to tell the transmission to go into reverse, this issue appears to involve the tranny itself.  My light indicators show that it goes into reverse, the bus will even back up a foot or three before a horrid grinding brings it to a halt, and further back it will not go.  Deeply frustrated, we continued out of the this campground and continued along our path towards the southern end of the park and our last hope for a campground spot near the Cottonwood entrance.  Unfortunately the warning sign for the campground turn off road was within feet of the turn itself, and we missed it.  With the bus unwilling to back up the distance necessary to make the curve, we continued forward several miles trying to find a turnabout large enough for to make a 180 degree turn without reverse gear.  While we rumbled south, four more large motorhomes passed us going north, and we assessed our odds of getting a spot were approaching nil.  So out of Joshua Tree we drove, turning west on I-10 towards the unknown.

More very large rocks

This may have been our lowest point since fulltiming.  Even the full on break down in Big Bend resulting in a 200 mile tow, 11 days in a hotel, and a major repair bill did not phase us as much as our current state of disrepair.  Partly from having it occur so soon after we had dealt with that mechanical work, and partly from it coming on top of the two other continuing problems, this is the closest we have come to wondering if we are doing the right thing.  We were numb enough that we didn’t properly stop, take stock, and develop a revised plan.

Tired of views from our front windshield? Then we shall vary things with a side window shot.

All we could come up with was to head straight for San Francisco, where we have both friends and family, and thus some options, and use the intervening time to get some referrals for a mechanic.  We didn’t really plan a route or stopping points, we just drove west to intersect the northern routes.  Near sunset we pulled over in a random town and researched our nearest park options, and thus suffered the consequences of RVing on the fly: we had driven straight into the heart of wealth, in-between Coachella and Palm Springs, and the campground prices reflected this.  We are lucky that we did not happen to pull into this town one week later, when the actual Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival would be in full swing.  We pulled into one park that, per our rapid internet research, seemed reasonably priced, only to discover an incredibly rutty dirt road, a large hump that bottomed us out at the entrance, and a park that looked like it might double as a dog-fighting arena.  Facing reality, we humbly called the overpriced resort nearby and reserved their last pull through site, necessary since we could no longer back into a spot.

and back to the front window

Thus we found ourselves at Shadow Hills RV Resort, a lovely place, but the most expensive one we had every paid for.  We used that one night to recharge ourselves and the bus, and to make somewhat more detailed and careful plans for the rest of our journey north.

The Distance: 2,271 miles, or longest month yet, nearly twice as far as we drove in January.  The differences between our January and February driving patterns are even more pronounced: we travel further between spots out here in the West, and we have not yet slowed our frequency of movement at all. If anything we increased our frantic pace after being stuck in Odessa for 11 days in February and March.  Our total mileage since starting fulltime RVing at the beginning of the year: 5,402 miles.

The Places: Since we finally left Odessa on March 9 we have stayed in 12 different places, including three national parks (Guadalupe Mountains, Grand Canyon, Death Valley), a state park, a country park, three private parks, a BLM campground, a national recreation area, an unknown boondocking site, and a residential neighborhood.  We also visited without camping in two other national parks, Carlsbad Caverns and Saguaro.  Of the 23 days on the road since Odessa, we had hook up campgrounds 13 nights, dry camping sites 4 nights, and free boondocking 6 nights.

The Budget: Totally blew the budget, and I am not even counting the major bus repair cost in Odessa as that came out of our set aside bus upgrade funds. We went nearly 30% over our monthly allocation.  Four main causes: Diesel fuel, Odessa hotel, unaccounted for bus repairs, and clothing. We spent $583 on diesel this month, $133 more than our estimate. Obviously those 2,271 miles of travel came at a cost.  Though we were able to use points for the first seven nights of hotel stays in Odessa, I elected to shift to a government/military rate cash payment the last four as I could find no reasonable rate of return on the brand of hotel points we have after expending all the Marriott ones.  Even if I average that hotel rate out over the entire eight day March stay, it comes out to way more, $260 more, than our average daily budget estimate for lodging would allow.  The potable water system breaks that cost us $250 to repair while in Carlsbad where entirely avoidable and self-induced, so I am counting them against our monthly budget rather than taking them our of our dwindling bus improvement set aside.  Lastly, and most significantly, we spent over $400 filling in our winter and outdoor active clothing, and this is not even a designated line item in our budget, simply falling under miscellaneous expenditures.  The only bright spot is that aside from the Odessa hotel, we finally brought our average daily campsite cost down to $20/night, much closer to our hoped for budget estimate than we achieved in earlier months.  The significant increase in dry camping and boondock sites interspersed allowed this, and we hope we can continue the trend in coming months.

The Drama: One would hope, after our ridiculous repair bill in Odessa, that we could go a couple of months without bus related drama, but no.  We had the cold weather induced water breaks, easily repaired in two hours in Carlsbad, and our messy but basically free to fix sewage problem, but that is nothing compared to the new problems that developed at the very end of the month.  We have a power steering leak, which I am still tracking down exactly where it is occurring, and even more significantly our two big bus starting batteries are no longer getting recharged while driving, which strongly suggests an alternator problem.  Unfortunately, as we will reveal in an upcoming post, those are not the most significant problems; one more major issue hit us on April Fools Day as well.

The Improvements:  Hmm, very little to say in this department.  The water repairs in Carlsbad mean that my hose hook up is much easier and doesn’t leak like the old one.  Our storage situation continues to improve as we get rid of unneeded items and find better ways to place our stuff, and we are getting better at finding free boondocking or affordable dry camping spots.

Death Valley broke us a bit.  The Big Kahuna was not running quite so smooth as in the before time, and the dust and heat had taken its toll on our bodies as well.  We resolved to move on, driving without rest for hours and even into the dark, which behind the bus wheel I hate, heading towards some point vaguely south of the valley, one that offered us a choice.  Loop around northwest to Sequoia National Park?  Continue south to Joshua Tree?  Southeast to Ventura and the Channel Islands?  We were thinking the first option, right up until we pulled into a Barstow gas station, light all but gone, trying to get a bearing on a place to stay for the night, and met up with a European couple in a rental RV who had recently come from Sequoia.

In between our mutual efforts to find an affordable RV park with an office that was still open (and really KOA? $53 for your campground? Pshaw), we discussed where each of us had been and was heading. They advised strongly against trying to take The Big Kahuna up the entry road into Sequoia National Park, a recommendation that would prove, after further research, to be absolutely accurate.  But for tonight, the problem remained: it was dark and we needed a place to stay.

Our fancy stealth camping spot for the night

The young Europeans, with their no doubt genetically engineered night vision funded by some secretive U.N. collective, elected to continue west towards more reasonably priced areas.  I honestly don’t remember what we “decided” because Kahuna vetoed all options by refusing to change gears or do anything other than idle in place.  Seriously, even the turn signals would not come on.  We shut him down, set up the generator and battery charger, and “consulted” with the young man behind the counter at the gas station currently hosting our big hunk of non-moving metal.  He seemed… unconcerned with our predicament or our intention of staying the night right there.  OK then.

An hour or less of charge did the trick, and we maneuvered ourselves back into the large paved shadowy area adjacent to a restaurant, the Jenny Rose, currently closed for renovations.  And so we found ourselves “stealth camping” in an open lot behind a gas station near an I-15 exit.  We slept well, and undisturbed.

We took the restaurant sign as an, er, sign.

We left Saddle West Casino and RV Park refreshed and ready for Death Valley, making only one wrong turn on the way. Unfortunately that wrong turn cost us nearly an hour, but it was not an unpleasant drive across the NV-CA desert-country border.  We slid down into the valley in early afternoon and pulled into the visitor center to watch the usual, high quality movie in the theater and get advice on the various available RV camping options.  We selected Sunset Campground near Furnace Creek because it had the very important feature of having availability, plus it was close by and had the most generous generator hours.  I know that doesn’t sound like a big deal, but when you are beholden to electricity magically created from your Honda box, then you pay attention to the holy writ of generator hours: the longer you can run, the better your fridge and freezer keep things cold.    

Sunset campground was little more than a large gravel parking lot.  It had basic bathroom facilities and deep sinks for washing dishes, but no electrical, water, sewage, or shower facilities. Being less than 10% full, it provided plenty of space, but we can’t really compare it to the other nearby campsites in Furnacce Creek or Texas Springs.

Can you see me? I am lizard. Do you have a bug? If so, give it to me.

We weren’t there for the facilities,, we were there for the surprising and at times shocking diversity of vistas and life.  In this we were not disappointed.  From the winding, miles long entry road to each scenic overlook, Death Valley defies expectations and encourages a wonder even in the jaded cynic. We managed to see Zabriskie Point, offering a peek at the Golden Canyon on the first afternoon before setting up camp.  Yes, we hit a high temperature day, about 102 degrees, but the lack of humidity and the continuous breeze made it tolerable, and as the sun set the temps dropped rapidly towards comfort with a significant increase in winds.

Us, golden canyon behind. We look awesome.  Canyon is alright too.

The next morning we broke camp and headed north, spotting a coyote rambling along near the camp as we drove out.  Strangely, he did not respond to my specialized coyote call.  We visited Salt Creek, a high salinity area home to the endangered pup fish, a minnow sized little thing that is very active in the shallow creeks, and we were fortunate enough to observe them during mating season. Mating, it turns out. Boom chicka wah wah.

Lone coyote, pondering his next Acme purchase. Rocket skate? Giant slingshot? Yes… all of those.

We moved on to the Mesquite Sand Dunes, a giant expanse of, you guessed it, huge sand dunes, then parked at Stovepipe Wells, another dry camping spot in a wide open gravel lot.  The plan was to claim a site, then head out to visit several more spots within the park.  Unfortunately, Kahuna disagreed with the plan and refused to restart after lunch.  After some, and again pardon the tech-speak here, “jiggering around” with the parts and pieces, I deduced that the batteries were, mysteriously, dead.  I hooked up the battery charger for an hour and voila, it started.  A bit spooked, we took stock and elected to break camp fully and just visit a bunch of the key sites and decide on our plans for the night as the afternoon progressed.

Salt creek, pup fish habitat. They are doing it. Nonstop. We watched.

We drove nearly an hour down to Badwater Basin, the lowest elevation dry point on the continent, 282 feet below sea level, complete with salt flats from evaporated saline water.  It was interesting, but neither of us could escape the cold feeling that Kahuna was still unimpressed, and sure enough when we made to leave, he wouldn’t start again.  With growing worry, we charged for another hour, started him up, and decided we had had enough of Death Valley; it was time to head back towards civilization, or at least cell phone access and a greater density of diesel mechanics.  Besides, after a couple of weeks in New Mexico, Arizona, and now the driest parts of California, we were more than a bit tired of the desert, the heat, and the dust.

A valley. Apparently of Death.

We left Death Valley with mixed feelings: tired of the desert heat and dust, but realizing that we had not given it a chance, had not really had the opportunity to see some of the more extraordinary sites, like Mosaic or Artist Canyon, or Darwin Falls. Maybe next year.

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Badwater Basin, look closely: Big kahuna lower left, sea level sign upper right

We are a bit behind on this blog.  We have moved three times since the Lake Mead post, but a challenging couple of days dealing with The Big Kahuna combined with limited cell reception in Death Valley have worked against us.  We departed Lake Mead mid morning a few days back, intending to take care of a few chores and errands before driving all the way to Death Valley across the Nevada-California border.  We found a laundromat and managed to knock out several weeks worth of stuff in a couple of hours, then headed for the Hoover Dam for a look see, which turned into a much more, er, exciting drive than I had planned with steep downhills and twisty turns, but still nothing as bad as the Sedona incident.

Sometimes you just want everything to be flat and straight

Hoover dam really is an impressive and beautiful structure, but given all the things we had to accomplish that day, we spent just a couple of hours driving down to it and across one way and then turning around back around for the return journey.  By this time it was getting towards late afternoon and we still had several chores to knock out.

Pat Tillman bridge from the Hover Dam

We found a post office to mail out some ebay stuff (always clearing out…), a Camping World to return some unneeded items from our potable water pressurization repair, and about this time I noticed a significant binding in the steering, particularly during left turns.  I found what I thought was the general area of a leak, consulted with one of the Camping World mechanics, managed to locate the well hidden relevant dip stick, and sure enough: almost empty.  Fortunately this was a free temporary fix: it turns out that our power steering system uses the same automatic transmission fluid as our transmission, so I had over a gallon of the stuff available… of course I figured this out only after spending well over an hour in the Walmart parking lot pouring over the manuals and investigating via the internet.  Fluid refilled, we headed down the road towards Death Valley, but by this time it was nearing dark so we only made it as far as Parhump, NV, a small town with a lot of casinos, perhaps because it is just across the CA-NV border?  Given Kahuna’s rather paltry headlights and my aversion to driving him at night, we elected to stop for the evening and regroup.  After a few false starts with an overpriced Best Western RV center, a full resort a few miles off the main route, and a few unanswered calls we stumbled upon the Saddle West Casino and RV Resort.  Full hook ups for $25, a decent sized lot, typically shaky RV resort WiFi, and immaculate bath and shower facilities.  After three days of boondocking, we needed the battery recharge, water fill and sewage dump, and relished a night with full services.

The next morning, on to Death Valley.  Rosemarie excitedly spotted a sign for a Cherry Patch and Ranch, which lead to an interesting discussion about exactly what kind of Cherry Patch one would have in the Nevada Desert.  It’s this kind, so we skipped it:

As Cormac* mentioned in the last post, travelling from Tucson Mountain to Lake Mead’s north shore in Nevada was our single longest travel day yet in the Big Kahuna.  Everything takes longer in an RV, especially when your diesel engine only makes 28 mph on uphill grades of any significant length or steepness, thus our eight hour journey which might have taken only six in a car.  The reality is that Lake Mead was not the intended destination, it was just a stopping point on the way to Death Valley National Park in California.  That journey would have added another three hours, so we decided to break it up.  But even that plan was an alteration of the original schedule, which had us going to Joshua Tree National Park first.  As Joshua Tree is particularly popular this time of year the campgrounds fill up quick on the weekends.  Therefor we made the decision to change the routing such that we would hit the popular national parks on the weekdays and less popular, or at least more accessible, places on the weekends.

The bottom corner of Nevada, but Nevada none the less

Once again we consulted the campground history on Wheeling It, which lead us to the Government Wash site on Lake Mead.  We arrived at dusk, which made finding the spot harder than necessary, and we made one false turn down Gypsum Wash, but caught our error right away (the “camping prohibited” sign sort of helped), turned around and continued on to the correct road heading down towards Lake Mead.

Panoramic of the Government Wash camping areas

Government Wash starts as a couple of miles of paved road which ends in a large circular parking lot, with a hard packed dirt road leading off the lake side edge that soon diverges into three: high right, medium center, and low left.  The next morning in clear light we would learn that the high right road is generally furthest from the lake shore, but offers a handful of private spots and one medium sized cul-de-sac for several rigs.  The center road gets closer to the lake, and has about 10 private single sites and one very large cu-de-sac suitable for 15 or more rigs.  The lower side goes closest to the lake, but is also the roughest and most challenging road for a large RV.  We knew none of this when we pulled in the fading light, and simply picked the right hand road as it looked widest and pulled in to one of the first spots available.

Our view, fantastic but awning absolutely required here

The next morning, once we had a chance to view the entire area, we repositioned The Big Kahuna to the center road area which got us closer to the Lake and in our own, private, very large and level spot with an excellent lake and mountain view.  Despite the desert heat, we had a nice, continuous breeze, and with the awning providing shade it was more than tolerable, pleasant even.  We did a full site set up, pulling out tables and chairs, grill and hammock.  We had such a relaxing day, intermixing some bus adjustments and other needed choirs, that we extended our two day stay into three.   Rosemarie pulled out the beads and jewelry making supplies, I swam in Lake Mead, and we sat outside each evening watching the growing star field, dancing by moonlight, and listening to the coyotes yip and howl.

On the precipice…

… and like an oversized rain drop I disappear

On our first morning we counted approximately 45 RVs plus many single vehicles there for the day and a handful of tent campers.  By the time we left Monday morning the crowd hand dwindled to maybe a dozen RVs, reenforcing the importance or arriving early, before the weekend, at first come first serve sites if you want a good spot, or a spot at all.

Us, Lake Mead, perfect weather

* Not really Cormac

Bus coughed with hesitation, then embarassed us all with unneeded volume. Wide eyed neighbors shuttling kin inside.  Last you’ll see of us, we shouted, grinding out the turn towards freedom.  Truth be told, we’ll be back when the season cottons, but it felt good to say, or maybe just think.  Dumped tanks in the usual spot, needed or not. Filled too.

Papi watch, she screeched again, another damn fool in his tiny machine careening through the stop almost daring us to touch metal. Jesus Christo again woman?   Always the same, unneeded warnings, until the’re needed.  Gilbert Ray, Tucson, and all the rest in the mirror, fear and hope and uncertainty and yes thrill in the big walleye window front and center.

400 miles, exact.  Simple enough in your little machines with your get up and go, with your unhindered pace.  But we faced mountains, and plenty of them.  Slow up, and best be slow down lesson you want to slide off the side like some have.  You know who I mean.  The crosses mark their spots, closest anyone can tell anyway.  400 miles, never been so far, least in one day.  We’ll see how it goes, long as the back and the neck holds out, we can try it.

The woman puts on the lotion, some remedy from no one knows that heals even as I complain.  Come on Papi, not much further.  I know.  I know.  Cross the big stopper, Hoover they call it, river crammed hard on one side, tickle on the other.  Sun getting low but we are close, so close.  Fighting light and road, turn right and right again ever down towards the big lake.  It’s not Gypsam wash, that way lies madness, as any who been before can tell, but past that, to the old government dock, the landing.

Finally.  Don’t relax yet, she says.  Again, I know, but I was relaxin, and too soon.  Got to find the spot first, level and secure, close but not too close to them others, we don’t know them.  Not yet, anyway.  400 miles.  Longest yet, not sure it was the hardest though.  Bus done right, settled in and level for the night.

* Not really

As we were preparing for our full time RV life, we made lists of all the places and events we wanted to see.  While most of the places involved nature in some significant form, a few metropolitan areas definately made the cut, largely because they had some unique or interesting cultural aspect to them. one of those was Austin, which would be particularly great to visit since the owners of one of the RV blogs we follow, Eric and Brittany at RV Wanderlust, also run the biggest Austin social and cultural blog available, Austinot, so we would have had plenty of available online guidance.

In february, when both our budget and schedule plan fell victim to RV breakdowns and repairs, we reluctantly chose to skip Austin.  Primarily it was about the money: cool cities are a weakness, we tend to deny ourselves little, partaking of the restaurants, bars, cafes, stores, entertainment venues, etc.  New Orleans proved that, and we felt Austin would be another example.  “Skipping Austin” has become sort of code for avoiding a place in order to avoid temptation and keep our budget on track.

We “Skipped Austin” in Sedona, staying on the outskirts in a boondock site and only driving through the town in The Big Kahuna for a look see.  We “Skipped Austin” in Santa Fe, and we will do the same for San Diego for sure and likely a host of other fantastic cities in favor of national, state, and county parks in the wilderness with less monetary temptation.  So while we may slide right past Monterey, it’s not because we don’t love that town, but rather we need to save money for San Francisco and all the vinyards and associated wine tasting rooms heading north.

As I mentioned in our Fun With Sewage post, Saguaro National Park, like Carlsbad and The Petrified Forest/Painted Desert, is another one that does not allow RV camping on the grounds, and that our on line research lead us to Gilbert Ray Campground within the adjacent Tucson Mountain County Park.  The great things is that unlike some national parks, the areas near Saguaro are pretty much just as spectacular as the park itself, and Tucson Mountain did not disappoint.

Before crossing the Continental Divide and entering Arizona, I had complete misperceptions about the state as well as “the desert.”   Arizona has far greater diversity and beauty than I had understood, and so too this section of the Sonoran Desert.  Sure, the TV nature shows go on and on about the incredible beauty and hidden biodiversity and jadda jadda jadda, but seriously, it’s mainly sand with an occasional what, lizard and wasp, right?  Not so this area; it is exploding with life and so… unexpectedly green!

This is a desert?

We liked it here so much that we extended our two day stay to a three, and didn’t even leave Gilbert Ray for the first two.  We used the time to make some repairs on the RV, including the previously discussed sewage fiasco, but also our potable water system pressurization issue magically resolved itself (I think the check valve was just stuck), I reglued thee of our oak cabinet doors, and reconnected one of our metal understorage doors with the last of our rubber hinge material.

Aside from repairs and some reorganization, we spent the rest of our time enjoying the atmosphere of our large and lush campsite, particularly the evenings and sunsets.  On our second night we attended a star party.  Several of the residents and volunteers arranged for amateur astronomers to set up in one of the more isolated sections of the grounds and let anyone view the stars, moon, and other celestial bodies through a variety of telescopes, ranging from a small 2″ one on a tripod to a giant contraption about 7 feet long.

These flowers, look at them.

Only on our last day did we finally leave the grounds, in what is for us a rare instance of using the Big Kahuna as our local transport vehicle, we drove up to the Sonoran Desert Museum and the Saguaro National Park itself.  The museum is more like a combined open air botanical garden and zoo covering a much larger area than we expected and with excellent exhibits heavily focused on local flora and fauna.  At $18 per person after a small military discount, we found it well worth it, leaving after several hours only to get to the national park in time for a short hike before sunset.

The Big Kahuna from Signal Hill

The saguaro National Park visitor center was the usual combination of modern, informative, and well staffed.  We listened to the end of a lecture on the geological formation of the region, then got some advice on a short hike to Signal Hill where we would have a nice view of the park and get to see thousand year old petroglyphs.  What the ranger didn’t mention was the washboard bumpiness of the dirt road leading up to the trailhead.  Our fault, we didn’t mention we were driving a 52 year old bus.  We were in no danger of getting stuck, it’s just that The Big Kahuna hate’s washboard with a passion and lets us know with teeth rattling shakes unless you creep along at a walking pace.  We made it, but it was a bit of a combined lesson: ask about the road next time and we still need to resolve our local transportation problem.

Ancient Native American hypnotism device.

It was almost with relief that we left the park and returned to our campground, stopping for one quick geocache along the way in order to keep up our streak of at least one cache in every state we visit.  With some regret we spent our last evening in the Tucson Mountain, resting up for our longest drive yet the next day.

We left the GC two days ago, managing to roust ourselves in time to (barely) beat the 11 AM checkout. We swung by the Grand Canyon Village post office to pick up our mail, forwarded from our account at MyRVMail.com.  We drove an hour south to Williams where we impulsively stopped at Bearizona, one of those drive through zoo/animal encounters, this one heavy on bears, wolves, and big horn sheep, plus a walking area with otters, foxes, beavers, porcupines, new born bear cubs and other assorted southwestern animal life.  The great thing was that they were fully capable of taking our 35 foot motorhome through the park, and since the price was per person, it didn’t cost anymore than a car: $20 a head (minus $2 military discount,) so $36 plus tax got us in for the day.  Truth be told we enjoyed this more than the equivalently priced Meteor Crater.

Exiting the zoo we headed east on I-40 towards Flagstaff.  As we were experiencing some potable water and sewage system issues, we swung into the Camping World in Bellemont about 10 miles west of the I-40/I-17 intersection.  We have benefited from our Good Sam membership, which has relationships with Camping World and the Pilot/Flying J gas stations, but the actual assistance that the Camping World staff provides can be hit or miss.  I am pleased to report that staff at this Camping World, especially Eddy, went the extra mile to understand our issues and find solutions.  He was not content merely to hear my no doubt overly lengthy descriptions of the potable water pressurization issues and the macerator (sewage chopping/blending device) clog, he came out to the bus and examined our fittings before proposing solutions.  And not expensive “looks like you need to replace all your dilithium crystals and repack the hydraulics with ball bearings and 40 weight” solution, but an easy $20 in parts and advice on how to proceed.

We made our purchase and continued on our way, fortunately turning south before the brush fire that had closed off I-40 east of Flagstaff.  The toughest part: 18 miles of 4-6% downhill grades on I-17, but after the Sedona 89A fiasco, we had researched this route and were more prepared for the brake heating issues. Besides, I-17 is much wider and gentler on the turns, so this stretch entailed little drama. We pulled in to Phoenix an hour before sunset to visit a New York friend of Rosie’s, who helped us arrange our “stealth” camping spot for the night: parked in a nice golf course front neighborhood in front of another friend’s house.  We are truly out of the mountains and back in the southern region as even the night temperature stayed quite temperate.  The next morning we headed out towards Tucson and the Saguaro National Park.

Saguaro does not have any RV camping within the park, and we contemplated a boondocking site on BLM land south of Tucson that came recommended from some of the more experienced full time RVers, but our research suggested that the Gilbert Ray Campground, located within Tucson Mountain County Park and just a few miles from Saguaro National Park, would be ideal.  At $20 a night for 30 amp electrical hook up in a spacious site with a picnic table and nearby clean bathroom, we were sold. Sure, it doesn’t have water or sewer hook up, but it does have a fill and dump station for both of those, respectively.

And this is where the fun begins.  We pulled into the campground in the early afternoon, checked in at the front office and headed towards the dump station.  We have a macerator, a device that chews up and shreds all material from our sinks, showers, and toilets, but it had become clogged.  Most RVs do not have macerators and instead of our 1.5″ outlet hose they have a great big 4″ flexible hose that they just connect to the sewage dump station and let her rip.  Their advantage is simplicity.  Our advantage is we usually don’t have to worry about using special, ultra thin, rapidly degradable toilet paper.   At least, that’s the theory.

The good thing is that even if the macerator clogs, I can use the alternative sewage connection with a traditional 4″ hose to dump the tank, except we didn’t have one of those hoses.  So I purchased a 5′ section with bayonet fittings, the cheapest and most compact section I could find, at the aforementioned Camping World.  My thinking was that I would only have to use it once, just to empty the tank in preparation for disconnecting and unclogging the macerator, and then we would go back to our traditional macerator method of dumping tanks.  We pulled alongside the dump station and set up the 4″ hose… which was one foot short of connecting from our outlet to the dump hole.

25′ long, 1.5″ diamater macerator hose on the left, 5′ long, 4″ diameter traditional sewage hose on the right. Hopefull the latter will never be needed again.

We spent a good 20 minutes backing and adjusting the bus position to get the hose close enough to at least spill into the hole if not connect completely.  We finally got it done; I held the hose in place while Rose pulled the knife valve open, and whoosh, with little drama we emptied the tank in seconds.  Or so we thought.  We washed up and continued on to the fill station, but something nagged at me: it had been too easy and too fast.  As I was filling the potable water tank it hit me, I had not opened the primary isolation valve, so all we had dumped was a couple of gallons that had leaked by the primary valve and was up against the secondary valve we had opened!  So back to the dump station we went.

Javelina. Not a pig.

It took a bit less time to get ourselves aligned, but I still could not get any closer than five feet, which meant we still had to physically hold the 4″ hose over the dump hole.  This time, when Rose opened both valves, a deluge of sewage showered forth, spraying mostly, but not entirely, into the hole. Fighting back a retch we soldiered on, emptying the tank, awkwardly holding the hose in place while avoiding the growing pool of nasty liquid around the drain hole.  After about 50 gallons dumped we finally closed the valves, used the nearby hose to clean the area and our equipment, washed up, decontaminated, and continued on to our spot.  But of course, the sewage fun was not done as all I had accomplished was to empty the tank; the macerator was still clogged.

So this morning I set to work on it.  Since I knew that the primary isolation valve was leaking, I started up the bus and used the air ride system to raise the front end and lower the back so as to create as much of a backward slant as possible, hoping to limit the amount of liquid sewage I would have to deal with while disconnecting the macerator.  That done I opened the bypass hole and caught only about half a gallon of nastiness in a bucket, better than I had expected.  I was then able to disconnect the macerator at both ends and get to work on pulling out the jammed material, which turned out to be a plastic baggy and part of a white latex glove.  Success, and now I hopefully will not have to stretch our 5′ hose and manually dump that way ever again.  Such are the occasional joys of RV life.