John Stephens
Well-known member
Here is a blog type post regarding our second lengthy trip in our 2005 Adventurer. Last year, we did a 2-? week trip to the Midwest and Smoky Mountains, our first since buying the coach in 1/15, and found several things needed changing or repairing. Afterward, we had the coach converted from 30 amp to 50 amp electrical service so we wouldn?t have to worry about turning off the a/c whenever we wanted to use the microwave. We also had the furnace completely removed and serviced since there was a wasp nest in the fan and a mouse nest in the heat exchanger that smelled a bit ripe when started in the mountains around Asheville. A complete tuneup with new plugs, wires, fuel filter, air filter and fuel injection service was performed the week before taking the coach on the road May 10th because the coach had 28,000 miles on it when we started and I knew it would need its 30K maintenance. The roof was resealed, the a/c was checked and ductwork that had come apart was completely resealed, and the coach was, to our knowledge, road ready.
This post will include problems we encountered along the way; things that will probably make the seasoned traveler chuckle at a rookie?s mistake or lack of knowledge. But these are things I want to pass on to other newbies regardless of how embarrassing they may be. If I can give the seasoned reader a laugh, that will be fine. But if I can give the readers that are new to RV?ing information that will save them from making the same mistakes, or make their first trip better, then I have accomplished what I wanted to do. Most important to myself is feedback from the readers to let me know what I could have done differently to make the vacation better.
The itinerary of this trip is to leave Cape Coral, Florida on May 10th, drive six days to Tucson, AZ as our first destination but not finding a place to set up camp with hookups until we reach Gold Canyon, AZ, then drive to Ft. Mohave, AZ, Las Vegas, NV, then turn around and head back to the Midwest, stopping in Hot Springs, AR, St. Louis, MO, Palestine, IL, Mammoth Cave, KY and then head home. While in St. Louis, we will make a side trip in our car that will be towed for the first time to SW Missouri to pick up a new addition to the family. We lost our beloved Collie two months ago and have the chance to get a nine week old pup from his same line while in Missouri.
Our trip last year was coach only, renting a car in St. Louis where the most driving was to be done. This year, we purchased an Acme Tow Dolly so we could tow my 2007 Hyundai Azera. It has 93,000 miles on it and is in excellent shape, but I know I am possibly sacrificing its front end depending on how many rocks are thrown its direction. Two days before leaving, we did a test run of hooking the car up and driving it around the block a few times to stretch out the new tire straps. It also gave me a reasonable indication of what to expect regarding starting and stopping speeds and distances, at least at 25 mph residential speeds. The highway would have to wait. I noticed a problem that would get worse on the trip when I realized that the air dam underneath the front of the car wanted to catch on the tire stop at the front of the tow dolly.
On the 10th, we got up early since we couldn?t sleep anyway and began the final packing. We already had pretty much everything in the coach other than refrigerated items. We weren?t sure what to do about turning on the refrigerator and leave it running for 24 hours to cool off enough for frozen items to be kept in the freezer. We have a four door Norcold, original to the coach, that served us very well last year and gave us no indication there might be a problem this year. Our concern was that our driveway is at a fairly extreme slope and the owner?s manual states that you should have the coach level to within 3 degrees side to side and 6 degrees front to rear in order to avoid a possible vapor lock in the cooling tubes that could potentially damage the refrigerator. In the past whenever we have taken the coach out on the road, I would simply drive out to the storage area where we keep the coach and turn on the fridge a day before we were ready. Then, the next morning, turn it off while being loaded in the driveway, and then turn it back on when we hit the road. This year, we took the coach out of storage two weeks early so we could get the necessary work done and didn?t want to drive it back to storage for only a couple of days, so we parked it in the driveway. I determined the slope of the driveway and set several blocks of wood under the front leveling jacks to get the slope to less than six degrees from front to back and then turned on the fridge.
We wanted to leave by 8AM since we plotted out ~400 mile distances every day. Last year, we followed the advice of the Forum contributors and calculated 300 miles a day for our daily trips. But after getting new plush Flexsteel seats, we realized that we could go a lot farther before getting tired and thought this time, we would try 400 miles a day. The unknown factor would be the toad and how much it would slow us down. I had my worries about the long distance every day.
But wanting to leave at 8 means we left at 9:30. I wanted to hit the interstate by then, but missed it by 45 minutes after stopping at the local Love?s to get weighed at the CAT scales and then adjusting the tire pressures. Last year, we ran at 105 in the front tires and 95 in the rears because that is what the placard on the door says the max pressure should be. I downloaded and printed off a tire pressure chart to tell me how much I actually needed according to weight and was shocked to find that since both my front and rear axle weights were well below their respective limits, I really needed 80 lbs in the front tires and 85 in the rear. I read on the forum that having the proper pressures would provide better handling on the road and better control when being passed by a big rig, and I now must state that information is correct. Dropping 25 lbs in the front tires makes me wonder what kind of effect it might have on gas mileage, but the handling is now excellent. It took me over a half hour to let the air out of the tires and reset the baseline pressures on the TPMS system I had purchased and was using for the first time.
We officially hit the road at 10:30. The first day of the trip, we would drive to Midway, just west of Tallahassee on I-10 and dry camp at a Flying J. The only way we could afford a five week long trip was to cut corners whenever possible and we decided to dry camp as much as possible when not at one of our destinations. I began the driving very cautiously, keeping my speed at 60 mph to try to get a reading on mileage with the toad and trying to make sure I kept it on the road between the lines. Driving through the flat land of Florida with the cruise control on gave me a mileage of around 7.2, about .8 mpg less than last year. Given the complete tuneup, I wasn?t sure just how much the toad was really costing yet.
Near the end of the day, I began getting erratic readings from the TPMS, telling me that both of my tow dolly tires were blowing out or having rapid air loss. When we pulled over for the night, I took readings with my gauge and found no issue, so in the morning, I called Minder Research and explained the problem. They first told me to change the batteries in the sending units, but when that didn?t work, they asked me if the tires had anything weird about them, such as having balancing beads. I told them that yes, the dolly tires had balancing beads and they explained to me that beads will lodge themselves in the tire valve stems and make the sending unit think there is less pressure, giving a completely inaccurate reading. So both sending units came off and stored. I considered that to be a waste of money until two others began giving inaccurate readings on their own and had to be replaced with the extras.
We had learned that I-75 north of Tampa was under construction and sometimes down to two lanes with both directions sharing the same stretch of road. I remembered from last year just how bad sections of that road was and didn?t want to take a chance traveling it while towing for the first time. So we bought a Sun Pass transponder and decided to take the I-275 bypass around Tampa, meaning we would take the Skyway Bridge and then take a toll road from Tampa to around Brooksville, FL before connecting up with U.S. 98 and taking it all the way to I-10 before Tallahassee. This made the first day?s trip quite uneventful and easy since I had to get used to towing a car.
The Flying J in Midway was quiet but not very level,so the refrigerator had to be turned off until the next morning. The Denny?s inside was okay but nothing special. The RV parking at this FJ is on the other side of the building from the truck parking, so there isn?t a lot of truck and road noise to wake you up as there is at some locations. They have an RV island to make it easy to get fuel, water, and dump your tank if needed.
The second day took us to Baton Rouge and to a Cracker Barrel that had good food and a very accommodating manager. Their RV spaces weren?t long enough for our rig. When planning out this trip, I checked each spot we would be staying in with Google Earth?s street view and bird?s eye view to attempt to determine if the parking would be adequate. Sometimes, without having an RV in the picture, there was no way to make an accurate determination. This was one of those times. I parked with the front end of the coach jutting out about five feet in front of the space and the toad sticking out three feet in the rear. I asked the manager if that would be a problem and she said we were fine. It was a quiet location and we got a good night?s sleep.
The condition of I-10 through Louisiana was the worst of any long stretch of road I have ever encountered in the Interstate Highway System. For 30 miles, the concrete slabs had raised up on their edges creating a steady thump, thump, thump. I have encountered this in the past but not to this extent. The highway could not be safely driven at speeds above 50 mph and driving a large coach with a toad, I didn?t feel safe going faster than 40 mph. It was shaking everything in the coach loose. There were some stretches where I slowed down to 25 mph, daring any cop to give me a ticket for going too slow.
While it took us a day and a half to get out of Florida, our second day saw us crossing four states - Florida, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana. Our third day took us into Texas. It was getting warm enough to turn on the generator and a/c to keep our heavily coated 13 yr old Sheltie from overheating. It was then that we noticed the a/c would not run while we were on the road. The generator was just fine and the a/c would run while we were sitting still, but the 20 amp breaker on the genset kept tripping when we began moving. We stopped at a Buc-ee?s in Baytown, TX to check out the problem, but couldn?t find what was wrong.
If you have never seen a Buc-ee?s, drive to Texas and find one. These are car stops, not truck stops. They do not cater to RV?s like Flying J, but they are big enough to get your fuel without a problem when you?re towing and can?t back up. We stopped at one of the small ones that had only 50 pumps. Some have as many as 260. The store is not your typical convenience store usually found when getting fuel. These stores are the size of a department store. If you can?t find something to eat that you like, you?re sick, because they have the largest selection of food and snacks I have ever seen. I mean, Las Vegas buffets are smaller than this. I guess it?s true - everything in Texas is bigger.
When we got to Houston, my GPS told me to go straight through town rather than going on one of the bypasses. I?m not sure if that was the right thing to do. We hit town around 2PM and assumed we would miss the bulk of rush hour but instead ran into some of the worst city traffic I?ve seen in years. Stop and go, lucky to get up to 20 mph for a 200 foot stretch, and then stop again. For 2-? hours. No a/c in the coach and now the cab air wants to quit as a protection mechanism to save the engine. We rolled the windows open and watched the temperature gauge on the dash climb from 93 to 112. It was probably about 95 outside, but the reading was showing the heat coming off the road. Fortunately, the engine never overheated and after nearly three hours, we finally were able to achieve a steady 50 mph, allowing us to turn the a/c back on in the cab area. Judy had held our Sheltie, all 37 lbs. of him, in her lap so he could get air from the open window most of that three hours.
Driving I-10 cross country many times, I knew it would take about 13-16 hours to cross the big state. That meant three days by coach. We stopped before San Antonio on the third day and was unable to find a place to dry camp because the Flying J I had planned on was too small for us, so we grabbed a spot at River Bend RV, a very nice place that allowed us to arrive late and leave early so we never saw anyone who worked there. The lady who took our reservation over the phone was nice enough to call us around an hour before closing the office to see where we were and ensure we would be coming in that night. Excellent customer service. No cable or wifi worth mentioning, but a level, gravel site and a quiet setting.
Day four was the long day that had us traveling across the heart of Texas and encountering our first hills to climb. Once again, the Flying J we had planned on staying at didn?t have spaces long enough for us, so we found a spot at Balmorrhea State Park. It seems as though Texas is difficult on RV?ers. There are few Flying J?s, overnight camping is prohibited in most of the rest areas, and it can be difficult finding a decent campground in some parts of the state. This state park had water and electric with a dump station. Level asphalt sites with plenty of room to spread out. Their claim to fame is a 175 acre swimming pool, but it was closed for cleaning while we were there. Instead, we had to be happy with sagebrush and jackrabbits.
The fifth day was going to get us out of Texas, finally. In less than 30 minutes from starting the day, we had a group of young feral pigs run across the road in front of us. Three of them made it but the fourth got hit by the back tires of the coach and I watched the pig go flying in my rear view mirror. It wasn?t until our next stop to take a break and check the straps on the toad tires that I found out I still had some of the pig, blood and hair, on the tow dolly and the side of my car. It had to be cleaned off as quickly as possible, but that didn?t happen until the sixth day. We stayed at a Flying J in Lordsburg, NM that night, knowing the next day would finally get us off the road and hooked up for three days.
When we started the next day, I checked out the closest truck washes and found one at the 340 mile marker in Wilcox, Arizona that was willing to pressure wash the dolly and car for $15. I asked how much to wash the entire coach since it was filthy, and was told $40. $55 for the whole rig sounded too good to be true. It was. I watched one of the workers spray his pressure sprayer directly into the refrigerator vent and remembered too late what members of the forum had mentioned about that possibly damaging the fridge. After hitting the road, my wife told me upon grabbing a soda that the fridge was dead. Great! It?s Sunday and we have plans to meet Judy?s daughter in Tucson for lunch. I drove to the meeting and called my mechanic back in Florida to see if there was anything I could do to fix it. No, it needs to be diagnosed and serviced by a qualified mechanic. Good thing we took a large cooler as a backup, just in case. We put everything from the freezer in the cooler with a couple of bags of ice and kept the doors of the refrigerator closed as much as possible for the rest of the day.
The lunch with Judy?s daughter took place at an Olive Garden in the center of town. I was assured we would have plenty of space to park since it was a Sunday. Wrong. I had to park in the OG parking lot sideways, taking up eight parking places. We got there before they opened so there was plenty of extra spaces, but when we were ready to leave, I found myself blocked in with cars parked directly in front of me and one empty space in back of me. The Acme tow dolly I purchased has surge disc brakes. That means it cannot be backed up without the brakes activating and locking up. It has a lockout key, but I couldn?t get it into place. I remembered one person on the forum saying that if you were very careful and slow, you could back the thing up about two feet, so I tried. It worked. I found out subsequently that you can back up if the coach and tow dolly are perfectly aligned and if you take it very slow, but if the dolly is at an angle to the coach, the brakes will lock up immediately. But in this instance, two feet was all I needed and I wiggled out of the crowded parking lot. I developed a healthy respect for driving a large coach with toad in city traffic and from then on, avoided doing so whenever possible.
I called two mobile mechanics in Tucson to see if I could get the fridge serviced, but one didn?t answer and the other said they would rather not because it was Sunday. So we still didn?t have a refrigerator.
We drove to Gold Canyon to stay at and check out an RV home community, the first of two. Superstition Views, according to the sales agent, is where you don?t buy a home, you buy a lifestyle. That?s code for purchasing a mobile home and paying lot rent for the rest of your life that goes up $24 per year, starting at $538 per month. I. Don?t. Think. So. I don?t care if you have bocce ball courts or pickle ball courts or sewing classes. Not for me. We stayed for three days and nights for free simply for taking a tour, so it wasn?t a waste by any means, and the community is very nicely laid out if this is the kind of home you are looking for. And, we found a mechanic in the next town, Apache Junction, who not only reset the fridge, but also knew it needed a recall kit and found out it had been wired wrong, probably at the factory. He also found a plumbing leak I couldn?t find before leaving on the trip and repaired it. Hitting that pig wound up being a good thing after all. If you are ever in Apache Junction, AZ and need service, check out Apache Junction RV Service and Supply, a family owned business that is supposedly one of the largest wholesale distributors of Norcold in the country. Very friendly and extremely knowledgable with an eye out for making new customers and not just taking their money. This guy worked on the coach for 2-? hours and only charged me $125 including parts.
For anyone interested, we had no desire to buy in Superstition Views for several reasons. Yes, there is a lot to do in that community and if you?re looking for friends, you?ll make them easily there. But the homes are manufactured housing; essentially mobile homes with some stucco thrown on to change the appearance. The fact remains that they are brought in on axles that must be removed before the home is set in place. It is really nothing more than a fancy mobile home park. You are not allowed to fence in your lot, something that completely killed any chance for us since we have dogs. The average size of your lot is 52X58, barely enough room for the home and buildout and nothing more, but the prices are the same as if you were owning your own lot. Compared to the homes in the next community we visited, this was a non-starter.
From Gold Canyon, we drove to the west side of the state where the three states, California, Arizona and Nevada meet. Close to the Colorado River is a growing community called Ft. Mohave, AZ, a supersuburb of Bullhead City, directly across the river from Laughlin, NV. Ft. Mohave is actually about 12 miles south of Bullhead City and just about equidistant to Needles, CA. Arizona RV Homes is building a small community there of houses with RV garages on lots that you own that are all at least 9500 sq. ft. These are sticks and stones houses, built from the ground up and the construction appears to be very good. We planned to stay there for two nights, giving us enough time to decide if we wanted to buy. It didn?t take us that long.
On our second day there, while picking out colors and styles of the home we wanted custom built, the sales agent walked in and asked, ?Didn?t you tell me you were driving to Vegas tomorrow?? I told him yes, that was our plan, and he strongly suggested that we leave then, on the spot, instead of waiting to the next day because a severe storm warning had been posted for the desert with 60 mph sustained winds predicted. He told us we might not make it if we waited. So we packed up, unhooked, said our goodbyes and began driving to Vegas a day early. I called the campground where we had reservations and asked if we could arrive a day early. No problem. I assured the sales agent at Arizona RV Homes that he had made a sale.
We arrived in Las Vegas a day early, but that wasn?t going to be an issue since we had a lot of people to see and things to do and places to eat. We changed our reservation from one week to eight days and simply paid the extra day. Duck Creek RV Resort is what I would call a good city RV park. It is all asphalt, so there is no place to really set up camp where it won?t burn your feet and the Sheltie didn?t want to walk too far when it was his time to do his thing. He was hitting the street, doing his thing, and turning right back around and wanting to get off the hot pavement. Aside from that, this park was nice with plenty of space at least for the pull through sites since they basically consisted of two back in sites put together. The staff was friendly and accommodating, and the weekly price of $213 couldn?t be beat. The park is located far enough south on Boulder Highway to avoid the street walkers and homeless, but is still only three miles away from Sam?s Town and about eight miles from the Strip. They have a nice pool and spa, and several dog parks scattered around the area. If I drive to Vegas again, I?ll stay there again.
Our time in Vegas, even with an extra day, still wasn?t long enough and we were sad to say goodbye to our friends and family. Judy?s oldest daughter and four children live there and we hadn?t seen them for seven years. We caught all our old favorite restaurants and a few news ones, deciding to eat out most meals since setting up the grill didn?t seem like a productive idea. There probably wasn?t anything wrong, but I had one of those feelings that can?t be explained that it wouldn?t be a good idea leaving anything outside the coach while we were not there. Call it one of the differences between a city RV park and one in the country. There were too many year round residents in this park, rather than true RV?ers and I didn?t get a good comfort level feeling from them. I lived in that town for 13 years and know the general mentality of its residents, and there are many people who will take anything they see that isn?t nailed down.
This post will include problems we encountered along the way; things that will probably make the seasoned traveler chuckle at a rookie?s mistake or lack of knowledge. But these are things I want to pass on to other newbies regardless of how embarrassing they may be. If I can give the seasoned reader a laugh, that will be fine. But if I can give the readers that are new to RV?ing information that will save them from making the same mistakes, or make their first trip better, then I have accomplished what I wanted to do. Most important to myself is feedback from the readers to let me know what I could have done differently to make the vacation better.
The itinerary of this trip is to leave Cape Coral, Florida on May 10th, drive six days to Tucson, AZ as our first destination but not finding a place to set up camp with hookups until we reach Gold Canyon, AZ, then drive to Ft. Mohave, AZ, Las Vegas, NV, then turn around and head back to the Midwest, stopping in Hot Springs, AR, St. Louis, MO, Palestine, IL, Mammoth Cave, KY and then head home. While in St. Louis, we will make a side trip in our car that will be towed for the first time to SW Missouri to pick up a new addition to the family. We lost our beloved Collie two months ago and have the chance to get a nine week old pup from his same line while in Missouri.
Our trip last year was coach only, renting a car in St. Louis where the most driving was to be done. This year, we purchased an Acme Tow Dolly so we could tow my 2007 Hyundai Azera. It has 93,000 miles on it and is in excellent shape, but I know I am possibly sacrificing its front end depending on how many rocks are thrown its direction. Two days before leaving, we did a test run of hooking the car up and driving it around the block a few times to stretch out the new tire straps. It also gave me a reasonable indication of what to expect regarding starting and stopping speeds and distances, at least at 25 mph residential speeds. The highway would have to wait. I noticed a problem that would get worse on the trip when I realized that the air dam underneath the front of the car wanted to catch on the tire stop at the front of the tow dolly.
On the 10th, we got up early since we couldn?t sleep anyway and began the final packing. We already had pretty much everything in the coach other than refrigerated items. We weren?t sure what to do about turning on the refrigerator and leave it running for 24 hours to cool off enough for frozen items to be kept in the freezer. We have a four door Norcold, original to the coach, that served us very well last year and gave us no indication there might be a problem this year. Our concern was that our driveway is at a fairly extreme slope and the owner?s manual states that you should have the coach level to within 3 degrees side to side and 6 degrees front to rear in order to avoid a possible vapor lock in the cooling tubes that could potentially damage the refrigerator. In the past whenever we have taken the coach out on the road, I would simply drive out to the storage area where we keep the coach and turn on the fridge a day before we were ready. Then, the next morning, turn it off while being loaded in the driveway, and then turn it back on when we hit the road. This year, we took the coach out of storage two weeks early so we could get the necessary work done and didn?t want to drive it back to storage for only a couple of days, so we parked it in the driveway. I determined the slope of the driveway and set several blocks of wood under the front leveling jacks to get the slope to less than six degrees from front to back and then turned on the fridge.
We wanted to leave by 8AM since we plotted out ~400 mile distances every day. Last year, we followed the advice of the Forum contributors and calculated 300 miles a day for our daily trips. But after getting new plush Flexsteel seats, we realized that we could go a lot farther before getting tired and thought this time, we would try 400 miles a day. The unknown factor would be the toad and how much it would slow us down. I had my worries about the long distance every day.
But wanting to leave at 8 means we left at 9:30. I wanted to hit the interstate by then, but missed it by 45 minutes after stopping at the local Love?s to get weighed at the CAT scales and then adjusting the tire pressures. Last year, we ran at 105 in the front tires and 95 in the rears because that is what the placard on the door says the max pressure should be. I downloaded and printed off a tire pressure chart to tell me how much I actually needed according to weight and was shocked to find that since both my front and rear axle weights were well below their respective limits, I really needed 80 lbs in the front tires and 85 in the rear. I read on the forum that having the proper pressures would provide better handling on the road and better control when being passed by a big rig, and I now must state that information is correct. Dropping 25 lbs in the front tires makes me wonder what kind of effect it might have on gas mileage, but the handling is now excellent. It took me over a half hour to let the air out of the tires and reset the baseline pressures on the TPMS system I had purchased and was using for the first time.
We officially hit the road at 10:30. The first day of the trip, we would drive to Midway, just west of Tallahassee on I-10 and dry camp at a Flying J. The only way we could afford a five week long trip was to cut corners whenever possible and we decided to dry camp as much as possible when not at one of our destinations. I began the driving very cautiously, keeping my speed at 60 mph to try to get a reading on mileage with the toad and trying to make sure I kept it on the road between the lines. Driving through the flat land of Florida with the cruise control on gave me a mileage of around 7.2, about .8 mpg less than last year. Given the complete tuneup, I wasn?t sure just how much the toad was really costing yet.
Near the end of the day, I began getting erratic readings from the TPMS, telling me that both of my tow dolly tires were blowing out or having rapid air loss. When we pulled over for the night, I took readings with my gauge and found no issue, so in the morning, I called Minder Research and explained the problem. They first told me to change the batteries in the sending units, but when that didn?t work, they asked me if the tires had anything weird about them, such as having balancing beads. I told them that yes, the dolly tires had balancing beads and they explained to me that beads will lodge themselves in the tire valve stems and make the sending unit think there is less pressure, giving a completely inaccurate reading. So both sending units came off and stored. I considered that to be a waste of money until two others began giving inaccurate readings on their own and had to be replaced with the extras.
We had learned that I-75 north of Tampa was under construction and sometimes down to two lanes with both directions sharing the same stretch of road. I remembered from last year just how bad sections of that road was and didn?t want to take a chance traveling it while towing for the first time. So we bought a Sun Pass transponder and decided to take the I-275 bypass around Tampa, meaning we would take the Skyway Bridge and then take a toll road from Tampa to around Brooksville, FL before connecting up with U.S. 98 and taking it all the way to I-10 before Tallahassee. This made the first day?s trip quite uneventful and easy since I had to get used to towing a car.
The Flying J in Midway was quiet but not very level,so the refrigerator had to be turned off until the next morning. The Denny?s inside was okay but nothing special. The RV parking at this FJ is on the other side of the building from the truck parking, so there isn?t a lot of truck and road noise to wake you up as there is at some locations. They have an RV island to make it easy to get fuel, water, and dump your tank if needed.
The second day took us to Baton Rouge and to a Cracker Barrel that had good food and a very accommodating manager. Their RV spaces weren?t long enough for our rig. When planning out this trip, I checked each spot we would be staying in with Google Earth?s street view and bird?s eye view to attempt to determine if the parking would be adequate. Sometimes, without having an RV in the picture, there was no way to make an accurate determination. This was one of those times. I parked with the front end of the coach jutting out about five feet in front of the space and the toad sticking out three feet in the rear. I asked the manager if that would be a problem and she said we were fine. It was a quiet location and we got a good night?s sleep.
The condition of I-10 through Louisiana was the worst of any long stretch of road I have ever encountered in the Interstate Highway System. For 30 miles, the concrete slabs had raised up on their edges creating a steady thump, thump, thump. I have encountered this in the past but not to this extent. The highway could not be safely driven at speeds above 50 mph and driving a large coach with a toad, I didn?t feel safe going faster than 40 mph. It was shaking everything in the coach loose. There were some stretches where I slowed down to 25 mph, daring any cop to give me a ticket for going too slow.
While it took us a day and a half to get out of Florida, our second day saw us crossing four states - Florida, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana. Our third day took us into Texas. It was getting warm enough to turn on the generator and a/c to keep our heavily coated 13 yr old Sheltie from overheating. It was then that we noticed the a/c would not run while we were on the road. The generator was just fine and the a/c would run while we were sitting still, but the 20 amp breaker on the genset kept tripping when we began moving. We stopped at a Buc-ee?s in Baytown, TX to check out the problem, but couldn?t find what was wrong.
If you have never seen a Buc-ee?s, drive to Texas and find one. These are car stops, not truck stops. They do not cater to RV?s like Flying J, but they are big enough to get your fuel without a problem when you?re towing and can?t back up. We stopped at one of the small ones that had only 50 pumps. Some have as many as 260. The store is not your typical convenience store usually found when getting fuel. These stores are the size of a department store. If you can?t find something to eat that you like, you?re sick, because they have the largest selection of food and snacks I have ever seen. I mean, Las Vegas buffets are smaller than this. I guess it?s true - everything in Texas is bigger.
When we got to Houston, my GPS told me to go straight through town rather than going on one of the bypasses. I?m not sure if that was the right thing to do. We hit town around 2PM and assumed we would miss the bulk of rush hour but instead ran into some of the worst city traffic I?ve seen in years. Stop and go, lucky to get up to 20 mph for a 200 foot stretch, and then stop again. For 2-? hours. No a/c in the coach and now the cab air wants to quit as a protection mechanism to save the engine. We rolled the windows open and watched the temperature gauge on the dash climb from 93 to 112. It was probably about 95 outside, but the reading was showing the heat coming off the road. Fortunately, the engine never overheated and after nearly three hours, we finally were able to achieve a steady 50 mph, allowing us to turn the a/c back on in the cab area. Judy had held our Sheltie, all 37 lbs. of him, in her lap so he could get air from the open window most of that three hours.
Driving I-10 cross country many times, I knew it would take about 13-16 hours to cross the big state. That meant three days by coach. We stopped before San Antonio on the third day and was unable to find a place to dry camp because the Flying J I had planned on was too small for us, so we grabbed a spot at River Bend RV, a very nice place that allowed us to arrive late and leave early so we never saw anyone who worked there. The lady who took our reservation over the phone was nice enough to call us around an hour before closing the office to see where we were and ensure we would be coming in that night. Excellent customer service. No cable or wifi worth mentioning, but a level, gravel site and a quiet setting.
Day four was the long day that had us traveling across the heart of Texas and encountering our first hills to climb. Once again, the Flying J we had planned on staying at didn?t have spaces long enough for us, so we found a spot at Balmorrhea State Park. It seems as though Texas is difficult on RV?ers. There are few Flying J?s, overnight camping is prohibited in most of the rest areas, and it can be difficult finding a decent campground in some parts of the state. This state park had water and electric with a dump station. Level asphalt sites with plenty of room to spread out. Their claim to fame is a 175 acre swimming pool, but it was closed for cleaning while we were there. Instead, we had to be happy with sagebrush and jackrabbits.
The fifth day was going to get us out of Texas, finally. In less than 30 minutes from starting the day, we had a group of young feral pigs run across the road in front of us. Three of them made it but the fourth got hit by the back tires of the coach and I watched the pig go flying in my rear view mirror. It wasn?t until our next stop to take a break and check the straps on the toad tires that I found out I still had some of the pig, blood and hair, on the tow dolly and the side of my car. It had to be cleaned off as quickly as possible, but that didn?t happen until the sixth day. We stayed at a Flying J in Lordsburg, NM that night, knowing the next day would finally get us off the road and hooked up for three days.
When we started the next day, I checked out the closest truck washes and found one at the 340 mile marker in Wilcox, Arizona that was willing to pressure wash the dolly and car for $15. I asked how much to wash the entire coach since it was filthy, and was told $40. $55 for the whole rig sounded too good to be true. It was. I watched one of the workers spray his pressure sprayer directly into the refrigerator vent and remembered too late what members of the forum had mentioned about that possibly damaging the fridge. After hitting the road, my wife told me upon grabbing a soda that the fridge was dead. Great! It?s Sunday and we have plans to meet Judy?s daughter in Tucson for lunch. I drove to the meeting and called my mechanic back in Florida to see if there was anything I could do to fix it. No, it needs to be diagnosed and serviced by a qualified mechanic. Good thing we took a large cooler as a backup, just in case. We put everything from the freezer in the cooler with a couple of bags of ice and kept the doors of the refrigerator closed as much as possible for the rest of the day.
The lunch with Judy?s daughter took place at an Olive Garden in the center of town. I was assured we would have plenty of space to park since it was a Sunday. Wrong. I had to park in the OG parking lot sideways, taking up eight parking places. We got there before they opened so there was plenty of extra spaces, but when we were ready to leave, I found myself blocked in with cars parked directly in front of me and one empty space in back of me. The Acme tow dolly I purchased has surge disc brakes. That means it cannot be backed up without the brakes activating and locking up. It has a lockout key, but I couldn?t get it into place. I remembered one person on the forum saying that if you were very careful and slow, you could back the thing up about two feet, so I tried. It worked. I found out subsequently that you can back up if the coach and tow dolly are perfectly aligned and if you take it very slow, but if the dolly is at an angle to the coach, the brakes will lock up immediately. But in this instance, two feet was all I needed and I wiggled out of the crowded parking lot. I developed a healthy respect for driving a large coach with toad in city traffic and from then on, avoided doing so whenever possible.
I called two mobile mechanics in Tucson to see if I could get the fridge serviced, but one didn?t answer and the other said they would rather not because it was Sunday. So we still didn?t have a refrigerator.
We drove to Gold Canyon to stay at and check out an RV home community, the first of two. Superstition Views, according to the sales agent, is where you don?t buy a home, you buy a lifestyle. That?s code for purchasing a mobile home and paying lot rent for the rest of your life that goes up $24 per year, starting at $538 per month. I. Don?t. Think. So. I don?t care if you have bocce ball courts or pickle ball courts or sewing classes. Not for me. We stayed for three days and nights for free simply for taking a tour, so it wasn?t a waste by any means, and the community is very nicely laid out if this is the kind of home you are looking for. And, we found a mechanic in the next town, Apache Junction, who not only reset the fridge, but also knew it needed a recall kit and found out it had been wired wrong, probably at the factory. He also found a plumbing leak I couldn?t find before leaving on the trip and repaired it. Hitting that pig wound up being a good thing after all. If you are ever in Apache Junction, AZ and need service, check out Apache Junction RV Service and Supply, a family owned business that is supposedly one of the largest wholesale distributors of Norcold in the country. Very friendly and extremely knowledgable with an eye out for making new customers and not just taking their money. This guy worked on the coach for 2-? hours and only charged me $125 including parts.
For anyone interested, we had no desire to buy in Superstition Views for several reasons. Yes, there is a lot to do in that community and if you?re looking for friends, you?ll make them easily there. But the homes are manufactured housing; essentially mobile homes with some stucco thrown on to change the appearance. The fact remains that they are brought in on axles that must be removed before the home is set in place. It is really nothing more than a fancy mobile home park. You are not allowed to fence in your lot, something that completely killed any chance for us since we have dogs. The average size of your lot is 52X58, barely enough room for the home and buildout and nothing more, but the prices are the same as if you were owning your own lot. Compared to the homes in the next community we visited, this was a non-starter.
From Gold Canyon, we drove to the west side of the state where the three states, California, Arizona and Nevada meet. Close to the Colorado River is a growing community called Ft. Mohave, AZ, a supersuburb of Bullhead City, directly across the river from Laughlin, NV. Ft. Mohave is actually about 12 miles south of Bullhead City and just about equidistant to Needles, CA. Arizona RV Homes is building a small community there of houses with RV garages on lots that you own that are all at least 9500 sq. ft. These are sticks and stones houses, built from the ground up and the construction appears to be very good. We planned to stay there for two nights, giving us enough time to decide if we wanted to buy. It didn?t take us that long.
On our second day there, while picking out colors and styles of the home we wanted custom built, the sales agent walked in and asked, ?Didn?t you tell me you were driving to Vegas tomorrow?? I told him yes, that was our plan, and he strongly suggested that we leave then, on the spot, instead of waiting to the next day because a severe storm warning had been posted for the desert with 60 mph sustained winds predicted. He told us we might not make it if we waited. So we packed up, unhooked, said our goodbyes and began driving to Vegas a day early. I called the campground where we had reservations and asked if we could arrive a day early. No problem. I assured the sales agent at Arizona RV Homes that he had made a sale.
We arrived in Las Vegas a day early, but that wasn?t going to be an issue since we had a lot of people to see and things to do and places to eat. We changed our reservation from one week to eight days and simply paid the extra day. Duck Creek RV Resort is what I would call a good city RV park. It is all asphalt, so there is no place to really set up camp where it won?t burn your feet and the Sheltie didn?t want to walk too far when it was his time to do his thing. He was hitting the street, doing his thing, and turning right back around and wanting to get off the hot pavement. Aside from that, this park was nice with plenty of space at least for the pull through sites since they basically consisted of two back in sites put together. The staff was friendly and accommodating, and the weekly price of $213 couldn?t be beat. The park is located far enough south on Boulder Highway to avoid the street walkers and homeless, but is still only three miles away from Sam?s Town and about eight miles from the Strip. They have a nice pool and spa, and several dog parks scattered around the area. If I drive to Vegas again, I?ll stay there again.
Our time in Vegas, even with an extra day, still wasn?t long enough and we were sad to say goodbye to our friends and family. Judy?s oldest daughter and four children live there and we hadn?t seen them for seven years. We caught all our old favorite restaurants and a few news ones, deciding to eat out most meals since setting up the grill didn?t seem like a productive idea. There probably wasn?t anything wrong, but I had one of those feelings that can?t be explained that it wouldn?t be a good idea leaving anything outside the coach while we were not there. Call it one of the differences between a city RV park and one in the country. There were too many year round residents in this park, rather than true RV?ers and I didn?t get a good comfort level feeling from them. I lived in that town for 13 years and know the general mentality of its residents, and there are many people who will take anything they see that isn?t nailed down.