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California

Tuesday. We did something different. Judy did all the guy stuff this morning. She
did all her stuff too, so really that means she did everything. She
disconnected the dump hose, the fresh water line, and the electrical. She
put the slides in, set us down off the jacks, and reinflated the suspension.
She released the air brake, put it in gear, and drove us out of our site,
out of the campground, and down the highway before she pulled over. She
doesn’t really want to drive this big thing, but she wants to make sure she
knows how to drive it. She can drive it. She can even drive it towing the
car. We’re getting close to California, so we planned out the remainder of our
trip so we won’t get stuck driving the big rig through any large city’s rush
hour traffic. Winnemucca to Reno. Past Lake Tahoe. Over Donner Pass.
Interstate all the way. An easy day. We’ll stop before we get to
Sacramento, then wait until the next morning after rush-hour, and have an
easy day down to the coast. It was a good plan. Until we forgot the part about stopping before we got
to Sacramento. We picked out a place to stop for the night on the other
side of Sacramento. The west side. We arrived on the east side of
Sacramento at 4:30 today. Oh well. This rush-hour experience will help us
keep our focus on the rest of the days we drive in California. Stop before
rush hour! It was a tough drive. I don’t know what they do with their gasoline tax
revenue in California, but they don’t appear to spend any of it maintaining
Interstate 80. What a rough road! And then, rush hour in Sacramento!
That’s it! Don’t leave before 9am. Make sure we stop by 3pm. No
exceptions. Not if there are any big cities involved. A warm evening in Sacramento. Over a hundred. I think the surge protector protected us tonight. I plugged it in to shore
power. It went through its usual set-up routine. That takes about two
minutes. Then it started rattling and buzzing until I turned it off. I
reset everything and tried it again. Same result. I moved it to another
post and got clean current, so I plugged in there with an extension cord.
The guy from the Park office came to check the outlet with a meter and found
it providing low-voltage. Yea for the surge protector. It kept us from
scrambling or frying our electronics on low voltage.
Rags the cat disappeared. He hasn’t been very good at escaping lately. In
fact, he never got out the entire trip, last trip. We searched all over.
No luck. We looked inside again. No luck. It wasn’t too alarming. He
always gets out, and he always stays close by. Finally, we found him. Judy
had opened a cabinet door under the dinette seat to get out her step stool a
few hours before. When she was through, she closed the cabinet. There he
was, perfectly happy, sitting alone in the dark, quietly waiting for someone
to open the door and let him out again.

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California

Monday. A morning visit with Tom and Kathy, and a late start. We just needed to
make it to somewhere in Nevada today. We stopped at Winnemucca. The High
Desert RV Park. Not a destination RV Park, but a nice overnighter along the
way. Now all four brothers have stayed here at one time or another. Spoke with Jacob. He says not to hurry. They’re home with the baby, Erin.
She’s sleeping in a crib in their room, and they’re still working on
adjusting to the baby being here already. We’ll check in with them later in
the week to see how they’re doing. Figured out how to make the sliding closet doors in the back work better;
not perfect, I’ll have to replace a broken roller for perfect, but much
better. Before we met up with Tom, I had figured out why the vanity lights had quit
working and I replaced them. We figured out why the side door was
squeaking, and how to lubricate it to make it quiet. Strong cross-winds
would cause the outside rear view mirror housings to rotate out of range.
Found the set-screws and bought the right tool to use to put a stop to that.
Next up, replace a broken fitting for the driver’s side windshield washer.
And then there is that window that creaks right next to my head when we’re
driving on a rough road. A rough road, like, say, concrete without joiners.
Houses always need attention, don’t they.

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California

Sunday Spent the night in the bottom left corner of the state. Evanston Wyoming.
Good data connection on the cellphone. Checked our email. Got a note from
brother David. The baby came a month early, on Thursday, her Grandpa’s
birthday. Mom, Dad, and baby are fine. But now they have the baby, and we
have the bassinette. We’re still three days away. A cold night. Thirty
two degrees. Morning mist rising from Echo Lake as we crossed into Utah. Met Uncle Johnnie at an empty shopping mall parking lot in Salt Lake City.
Sunday morning. Lots of space to maneuver the rig in and back out again.
Had a nice visit. Judy fixed us all breakfast. Moved on to meet up with Tom and Kathy at Utah Lake State Park. We each
left our home-state Friday mid-day. We crossed paths in Utah, them headed
south, us headed west. They’re out for a month. Got a nice afternoon and
evening visit. Tom and Kathy have their giant 30′ green Lazy Days. You won’t find many of
them on the road. Except for the one we found on our evening walk. There
are two campground loops at Utah Lake. We were parked in loop A. The other
30′ green lazy Days was parked in almost exactly the same space in loop B.
A conversation with them on our way by, revealed the trouble that had caused
the people in the other Lazy Days. Tom and I both parked in pull-through
spots and left our tow cars attached. The other Lazy Days drivers had been
out driving all day in their tow car, and pulled in just about dark to head
for their camp. He was headed for loop B, but she pointed out their rig in
loop A and directed him to it. It didn’t seem quite right, but clearly,
that was their spot. Then, when they got closer, they were really offended
to see how close someone had parked right behind their rig (Tom’s tow car
Elmo). When they go close enough to see that the car parked right behind
was actually hooked up to tow, they stopped to reconsider, and figured out
that all was not what it seemed. They moved on to loop B and settled in for
dinner, until these two strangers came by to visit and enjoy their story. When you visit with Tom, you figure things out. We figured out the easy way
to make our awning retract properly. We figured out why the brake buddy had
quit working. We figured out what I would need to do to realign the backup
camera so it would work as a rearview camera like Tom’s and give me a better
view of what is happening down the road behind me, not just straight down in
front of the tow-car. Thanks Tom.

Posted on

California

Our yard is so birdy. This time of year, the nesting work is done, birds
give up their territorial nature, and are more social as they gather into
flocks. Nobody has begun the long trip south. We wake up to a hundred
birds in our yard every morning. It is a joyful noise. But off we go to deliver the family bassinette to Jacob and Yousun. Becky
reluctantly parted with it, and put Conner to sleep in the crib. This will
be the 24th baby to sleep in the bassinette since 1937. We can take our
time. The baby is not due for another month. We started the trip Friday
afternoon with a one hundred fifty mile drive to Wheatland Wyoming. An
afternoon and evening visit with Bill and Marge. They have since escaped to
Wyoming, but they are our first Colorado friends, the first people to come
see Becky when she was born. Longtime friends. While we are there, we get
our farm fix. Warm windy Wyoming weather. Cattle pens. Chickens. A
guinea fowl. Blue sky and cumulus. We reacquaint with Shania, the farm
dog. Bill has a calf to bottle feed. The dog waits. I can’t say the dog
waits patiently. The dog is a border collie, australian shepherd cross.
Patience is not a part of this bloodline. The dog waits obediently, though,
until Bill finally relents and says “Okay Shania, go get the sheep.” The
dog is gone in a flash. One full speed swoop around to the back of the pack
of sheep in a nearby pasture, and in comes the entire flock of twenty
through the gate, down the alley, into the pen, and milling around in the
back with the dog lying dead center in the opening until Bill comes to shut
the gate. No sheep are going to leave this pen. One swoop. Twenty seconds
at most. No stragglers. After, the dog patrols the fence and a few sheep
come up to the other side to get their faces licked. They’re all just doing
their job. They haven’t had any rain. Wells have gone dry. They haven’t had any rain
all summer, so we brought some with us from Colorado. While we were
there, it started raining after dinner and rained off and on all night. The
next morning, they had six tenths by the time we left. It was still
raining. We left the rain with them, and headed west. We have a lot of ground to cover. Back to Cheyenne and Interstate 80. Past
the rocky outcroppings at Chugwater. Chugwater chili. They make it there.
We’ve never stopped to try it, but we’d like to. Railroad tracks. River
bottom. Scrub forest just starting to show some color. Fall is on the way.
Rivers of the old west. The Laramie. The North Platte. The Medicine Bow.
We crossed the southern edge of the state to Evanston. The freeway has concrete joiners. New concrete freeways can be pretty good.
Not smooth and quiet like an asphalt freeway, but pretty good. But old
concrete freeways… well, Nevermind. I’ve already ranted enough about how
rough old concrete freeways are. Old concrete freeways are bad, until they
retrofit them with those concrete joiners. Every joint gets several
joiners. But what does a joiner do, really? What can you do with giant
slabs of concrete? If they’ve warped, you can’t bend them back into shape,
can you? If they’ve shrunk and separated, you can’t pull them back together
without making an even bigger gap in the next joint. Old concrete freeways
with joiners are definitely smoother than old freeways without them. Why is
that? What do they do, really?