Still Sidelined

Saturday - According to the CDC (via Bridget), I still can’t do anything for another five days. Bummer.

Sunday - I rode the Ural into Hondo to pick up a few groceries. It ran well. Even better than I remember as there is no longer a flat spot at around full throttle. Maybe it’s running richer from the carb cleaning. 

Monday - I finally got around to balancing the carbs today. I hooked up the TwinMax to the vacuum ports on the carbs after warming up the engine with a few runs up and down the street. I raised the idle speed a bit using the right carb and adjusted the left carb until the TwinMax needle was centered. Then raised the engine speed using the throttle and adjusted the cable on one of the carbs (the right carb) the needle was centered. Actually, bouncing around center. The whole process took only a couple of minutes. 

It’s been a couple of years since I last balanced the carbs. I’m glad to see that I still remembered the procedure and that the adjustments were minimal. 

I rode the Ural into Hondo and it seems like the idle speed is a bit high. I’ll repeat the balancing process again tomorrow after lowering the idle speed. 

Tuesday - The last day of 2024. This morning, we are heading into Uvalde which is around 35miles to the west. That is the closest Walgreens location. Plus, there is a Super H-E-B there. Much larger than the Hondo H-E-B.

I lowered the idle speed and re-balanced the carbs. The needle on the TwinMax is centered throughout the full rpm range. I’m still waiting for my exhaust gaskets from Raceway in OR. I suspect they’ve been shut down for the holidays. If I don’t hear anything by next Monday, I’ll give them a call. 

I believe today I can be out and about again…

Our “Slightly Delayed” Christmas

Friday - The “activity-of-the-day”, making the gingerbread house kit that Bridget had picked up for me last week sometime. It’s an activity that is fun though I’m not a fan of the gingerbread itself. Especially what comes in these kits.

The turkey is still in the sous vide and I’ll start into the grilled veggies that I was planning on making for the Christmas potluck. I do need to make some balsamic glaze as I had used up the store-bought stuff back in November. 

It is warmer today and not much humidity. Our Christmas dinner was pretty tasty! We have tons of veggies left over but it freezes well. The homemade balsamic glaze came out delicious. I probably used more of it than I should’ve but it is fantastic. 

Day After Christmas

Thursday - I’m feeling a whole lot better. Not quite normal (assuming I ever was “normal”) maybe 70%? Even though I raked all the leaves last Sunday, there was almost as many today. Though using a tarp with the sidecar is a more efficient way to haul them out to the field for dumping than leaf bags.

Most of the leaves have fallen so it’s not as bad as last year. The tree trimming really made a difference. There is a bit of a breeze today which makes the mid-70°F temperature feel pretty nice.

I still have quite a few things I want to get done. One task was filling the RV tires with air. I had picked up the DeWalt inflator in Tucson. The left display shows the current pressure and the right one shows the target. Then press go and it’ll shut down once the pressure is reached. No babysitting the pump. It does run through batteries pretty quickly. My DeWalt batteries are only 1.2ah & 1.3ah. Good for drills and drivers but I may need to pick up at least one higher capacity battery. The small, portable compressor I’ve been using takes a long time to fill up the RV tires. Especially the front ones which are 115psi. 

I had picked up a turkey breast last week (on sale) and today seemed like a good time to start cooking it. Sous vide, of course. But the first step is some caramelization for additional flavor. It’s now vacuum sealed and cooking for 24 hours. Christmas dinner tomorrow…

Merry Christmas

Tuesday - I noticed that the StarLink app has a holiday overlay with triangular snow. Speeds have been phenomenal after switching to residential service with >400Mbps download speeds. Not that we need it. 

Wednesday - Merry Christmas! Almost all of the Covid symptoms are gone except feeling drained. At 62°F and overcast, it’s feeling cold and somewhat dreary. But the forecast is for clear and sunny this afternoon. After it warms up, I may go out and pick up leaves again. You can’t even tell that it was done only a couple of days ago. I need to find a more efficient way to dump the leaves. Maybe a tarp and the trailer. Maybe tomorrow. Relax today…

We watched Polar Express casting from Bridget’s iPad to the TV through the Apple TV. It actually worked. 

Merry Christmas!

Covid

Bridget had Covid earlier this week and it looks like I’m not going to escape it. I took a test yesterday and it showed negative. Today, I have many of the symptoms. Cough, headache, aches, fever… I have an appointment at the clinic in Castroville for this afternoon. She thinks she caught it while waiting in line at a Walgreens in Tucson.

This is a bummer. We are missing out on several of the events here at the park. It happened last year as well. At least we were able to get an appointment in a timely manner. But, of course, we had to wait quite a while in the waiting room. 

They tested me again and this time the test was positive. They prescribed some medication and we were out after a couple of hours. I think we were the last patients in the clinic. The nurse and the doctor were wonderful. 

Leaves…

Sunday - This tree drops a lot of leaves. I went through three batteries on the leaf blower moving most of the leaves onto the driveway so they could be bagged for transport to the field. There are still quite a few leaves but also more getting ready to fall. The Ural was used as my garden tractor hauling bags of leaves. 

No more gas appears to be dripping from the right carb! I’m glad that’s fixed. But, I’m still thinking of installing a gas shutoff valve or the manual Yamaha petcock and not relying on the vacuum operated petcock. 

Another Ural Task Completed

Saturday - I pulled the right carb to clean it thoroughly. It was still functional but it looked pretty grungy compared to the left carb. Plus, it looked like the needle valve wasn’t sealing very well. 

The carb is nice and clean, I’ll balance them tomorrow but the bike runs nice and smooth even after all the monkeying around with both carbs. I’ll see tomorrow if the needle valve seats better. Gas was very slowly seeping out of the bowl vent when we arrived back. That also implies that the peacock leaks. Waiting for some exhaust gaskets before it can be called “done”.

Tomorrow, I’ll need to get started on the leaves. RichardK, another lot holder, offered to trim our tree back while we were gone. He did a fabulous job! It no longer touches any part of the RV and also meets the Texas Railroad Commission’s rules about propane tank clearance. 

Ural Fixed

Friday - Is a Ural really ever “fixed”. I picked up a cheap gear puller at the local auto parts store and it eventually got the shift pedal off of the spline. But the new/used shift pedal is installed and I can now get it into first without pulling up on the heel shifter. I still want to clean the right carb as I had done the left carb. 

Overall, It was a really relaxing day. Nice after all the travel. Just under 6,000 miles on the RV plus several more thousands from WA to AK and back. Lots of travel.

Back in Hondo - SKP

Thursday - The weather app uses Girvin instead of Iraan as the location. The rest area is located near both but Iraan is a few miles closer. 

Since I prefer to have the fuel tank near full while the RV is somewhat stationary, we filled up in Sabinal which is around 10 miles from the Co-op. And it was easy to get out even with the Jeep connected. And, the price was decent at $2.999/gal. That was less than our last TSD fill-up. 

We arrived back at our site around 2pm and finished setting up around 4:30 or so. It was over 70°F when we arrived. Since we used most of our onboard propane over the last couple of days, I needed to reconnect to the large tank on our site. 

I changed our StarLink back to Residential for a little bit of savings. Speed is pretty respectable at this location with the dish mounted on the ladder/pole

It’s nice to be back. I’ve been on the road since the beginning of September except for 12days in mid-November. No trips planned for a bit.

Iraan, TX

Wednesday - Today was a 288 mile travel day landing at a rest area on I-10. Tomorrow, we should arrive back at the SKP park with a slightly shorter drive than today (distance not necessarily time). A pretty uneventful drive though there was a crosswind for much of the drive. The wind forecast for tomorrow is about the same except it’ll be from the south instead of the north. 

Someone isn’t sure about this place.

I guess I wasn’t either. I moved the RV to the large space across the way. I think it’ll be a bit quieter as vehicles won’t be going by as close. The SoC of the batteries was 90% when we arrived. I ran the generator for an hour this morning to run the block heater as it got down to 36°F. Tonight, it’ll be about the same. The DC-DC took the batteries from 65% to 90%. About what I expected. 

Socorro, TX - HH

Tuesday - A 300+ mile travel day from Arizona into Texas. We are at a small brewery south of El Paso which is part of the Harvest Host program. It was challenging to get here as the GPS kept listing toll roads around El Paso. The route preferences are set to “no tolls”. It turns out that toll is $0 at the moment. It really was a nicer route around El Paso and ran right along the border.

The Three Missions Brewery has only been open for three years and it’s a pretty laid back. They are new to Harvest Hosts.  We had stayed at a dairy/farm near here but I wanted to try this place out. 

There was a food truck out front and I had the Hatch green chile cheese fries. Delicious. I’m really a fan of the Hatch green chilies. 

It’s still 530 miles to Hondo and we’re not sure where tomorrow’s stop will be. Maybe a parking area along the highway. 

Tucson, AZ - Desert Museum

Sunday - Dave made this gingerbread park model, complete with car port, which is on display here at the park. He didn’t do an event like we were able to participate in a couple of years ago. 

I went to Home Depot to pick up some replacement water things. A brass “Y”, a shutoff valve, a new spray nozzle, and some hose gaskets. Just on a whim, I looked at the DeWalt tools for the battery powered air compressor that I have been looking for since last Spring. It’s not on Amazon and up until today, I had not found it in any store. They had one in a sealed box. So I picked it up. Unfortunately, my batteries are in Hondo…

I stopped at Far Horizons to say “hello” to friends we made while staying there a couple of years ago. 

Monday - Kathy took us to the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum west of Tucson. There was a raptor free-flight demonstration with crows, owls, and hawks. Very nicely done show. I ended up watching it from a nearby shelter in the shade with benches. I’ve walked most of the paths a couple of times trying to get in some needed exercise. 

The temperature is in the upper 60s. Perfect weather. Though we are using the propane furnace at night as the overnight lows in the upper 30s (°F).

This place is on a monarch butterfly migration route and there were more than a few butterflies. Hard to photograph with the phone. 

For some reason there were quite a few dinosaurs as part of the displays. They moved and had sounds. Though I’m not sure how they know what sounds they made. 

Not animatronic but real and standing very still. As if posing for the tourists. There were lots of nicely done exhibits. 

One of the few large cats out and about. I believe this is an ocelot. 

Another >10k step day. Not quite “Disney park” steps but more than sitting in the RV park. I may need to hit the jacuzzi later on. Tomorrow, we start heading east again back to TX.

Tucson, AZ

Friday - Today was a short travel day to Tucson. We are staying at an RV resort for four nights. It was a really good rate thanks to Passport America. Even cheaper than the fairgrounds. 

It has a very nice pool and hot tub and the site is paved and level. Kinda cramped but that seems to be the norm in these places. 

When we arrived, we were greeted by Dave and Julie whom we had met at Far Horizons a couple of years ago. Dave was the baker of all the gingerbread when we made the houses a couple of years ago. He gave us the recipe but I had lost it. He brought another copy. I may make some this weekend since we have a 50amp site. 

We had dinner with Mike & Kathy, aka ToadMama in her motoblogger days. We also met them in Oregon last summer in Bend, in the middle of their RV trip. 

Saturday - After a morning test session, I did a little more setup. The passenger side of the RV is facing south so it was getting pretty hot. And the refrigerator is on that side. The awning and the sun shade makes a huge difference. I also put the MagnaShade on the front windshield as the bright morning sun was shining in. 

The low temperature was around 40° so the heat pump was struggling a bit. But I had neglected to turn on the propane. So I had an early morning trip outside to turn on the propane. 

This afternoon, I took another crack at guacamole. Watched a couple of YouTube videos including one by Rick Bayless. He provided a lot of information and not just a recipe. I think it came out pretty good though I may add a second Serrano chile. 

Casa Grande, AZ - TT

Wednesday - A modest travel day from Quartzsite to Casa Grande about an hour south of Phoenix. As usual, I turned south from I-10 towards Gila Bend and I-8 east to Casa Grande. A slightly longer but a much more relaxed drive. We’ve been to this Encore park numerous times and enjoyed our stay. We are only here for a couple of days.

Thursday - It was quite the busy day. After stocking up on some groceries, we drove into Phoenix. The first stop was meeting up with Steve and Paulina. We first met them purely by chance in Palm Springs back when we still had the 5th wheel and were seated with them at a German restaurant. We met them again at a Thai restaurant in Fairbanks. Then again at a bbq restaurant in TX. They now have a home base here but still travel in their class A. 

The next stop was the reason we were in the area. The RV rental company Cruise America refurbishes their rental fleet here and sells them. They have attractive features such as no slides, no awnings, no roof ladders, no TVs, no blinds (just curtains), no carpet, E450 chassis. And fleet maintenance. We were looking at a <30’ class C with a decent price. They looked really pretty good.

We then stopped at Costco to pick up a few more things and a couple of shoe stores. We then met up with a younger couple, Dan and Jen (not Nevada), at a Texas Roadhouse. We had only met them on Zoom. This was the first face to face meeting. We got back to the RV around 8:30 and will be heading to Tucson tomorrow. 

Quartzsite, AZ - BLM

Saturday - It was much faster leaving the Los Angeles basin than coming in. Traffic flowed smoothly and we arrived in Quartzsite around 2:30 MST after a four-hour drive. We filled up after crossing into AZ. $3.14/gal versus $4.959 in CA. Fortunately, we didn’t need to get diesel while we were in CA.

We are set up for several days so I went ahead and tilted the solar panels. We’ll see how much power we can get out of them. 

Monday - Yesterday was a quiet, relaxing day. I sous vided a port loin roast with garlic and rosemary. It was alright, not a standout but I didn't have any fresh garlic or rosemary. The grocery stores here in Quartzsite could be better stocked but, then again, it's Quartzsite so low expectations. 

Tuesday - It was a cool night with a low of 36°F. But it was clear and sunny all day. I ran the generator until the SoC was up to 88% and I hoped that the solar would be able to top off the batteries. 

Even with the panels tilted to the south, we max power was about 520 watts. But the angle wasn’t steep enough to match the low sun angle. 

It has been wonderful to visit with @blazeourway (on Instagram). Thank you for making your way down from northern AZ!

Knott’s Merry Farm

Friday - This morning, we headed to Knott’s Berry Farm which claims to be one of the oldest theme parks around. It is really extensively decorated for the Christmas season. 

The steam train has been running as an attraction as well as the reconstructed ghost town. The buildings were originally in Calico ghost town east of Barstow, CA. The buildings were relocated here forming the core of the park. 

The Calico Mine Train ride was here way before the much more advanced animatronics at Disneyland. The story is the Walt Disney was a frequent visitor. 

There is a lot of live entertainment such as the Calico Carolers wandering the streets in the old western town. The focus of the park is now thrill rides such as wooden and steel coasters with lots of loops and inversions. Too much for me these days. 

The ride behind the lights is Bear-y Tales which is a shooter style ride like Buzz Lightyear at Disney. This had the most inefficient staff running the ride with it taking upwards of five minutes to unload and load two cars. No seat belts just sit down on hard seats and the bar slides toward you. And, there were 3-5 staff managing the load/unload process. I got the idea that some safety guys had their way. 

Downtown L.A.

Thursday - We drove the Jeep to downtown Los Angeles to pick up Kenji for shopping, haircut, and lunch. Not necessarily in that order. We hadn’t seen Kenji for a couple of years since we were last here staying in Culver City around Christmas. Initially, we stopped at a Walmart Supercenter to pick up some clothes and groceries. I took advantage of the stop to pick up some more ATF fluid for the hydraulic system. 

The next stop was Supercuts in Downey. Then Acapulco, a wonderful Mexican chain restaurant that I used to frequent. We’ll see how it has survived the years. The only significance of the coffee cup is that’s where I’m sitting while working on this post. And every post should have some sort of picture.

Yesterday, I saw a lot of frustrated people trying to take pictures in front of the Christmas tree at night and the tree would be perfectly exposed but their faces were underexposed. I couldn’t find a setting on the built-in camera app for fill flash or whatever it’s called. But it was easy to do other camera apps. On the iPhone camera, there is a flash setting for “on” which is what needs to be selected. I just couldn’t find it last night. 

Later - It was a slow drive from downtown back to the RV park. About 90 minutes for 35 miles. 

Disneyland

Wednesday - We took the shuttle back to the Disney parks and this time we were in the park before opening (8am).

This is the “rope drop” crowd waiting for opening. After opening, we walked back to the holiday themed Haunted Mansion. The theme was The Nightmare Before Christmas. I never watched the movie but I gather that it was popular. 

On our way through Adventure Land, we noticed that Pirates of the Caribbean had a very short line. It was a walk-on. No waiting. We then headed into Fantasy Land and walked through the Sleeping Beauty dioramas on the second floor of the castle before going on the Snow White ride. Pretty nice that you can walk through the castle.

Then on to Toontown for the new, for Disneyland, Mickey’s and Minnie’s Runaway Railroad. It was exactly the same as Magic Kingdom. We are using the Lightning Lane Multipass for most of these rides so our wait times were very low to a walk-on. Pretty nice. 

It’s a Small World, Alice in Wonderland, Mr. Toads Wild Ride, and now we are waiting for the next one. Astro Blasters in Tomorrow Land. Then Space Mountain right after that. Dinner was a deluxe grilled cheese with tomato basil soup from Jolly Holiday. It was delicious. We then did the Nemo submarine ride. Bridget went to watch the Christmas lights and the holiday parade. I am pretty tired and sore so I am at the Star Wars area relaxing with some ice cream. It’s very quiet here. Everyone is at the parade!

I must say that watching DFBGuide, Mammoth Club and the AllEars YouTube channels really helped planning our visits. 16,626 steps for today.

Disney California Adventure

Tuesday - We caught the shuttle to Disney at 7:30 this morning. By the time we entered the park, it was around 8:30. The security line was slow. 

We rode the Monster’s Inc ride a couple of times. 

We then rode the single rider line for Radiator Springs. Only a 15min wait instead of an hour. 

Mid-afternoon, some relatives came by to visit. They were in Disneyland and park hopped to see us. 

I managed to snag a dinner reservation at Lamplight Lounge, which is a Pixar themed restaurant with some incredible food.

Striped Bass…

Brussels caesar! 

Lobster nachos!

After dinner, we went back to Car’s Land to see the neon and Christmas lights on our way out of the park. By this time, the phone battery was fading fast so not too many more pictures. 

15,439 steps for today. Tomorrow, Disneyland…