Not a whole lot of commentary on today’s blog post… most of the pictures will just have to speak for themselves. We’ve either been ‘on-the-go’ or got too busy socializing for me to spend much time on the blog today and I don’t want to get behind. Plus, the internet connectivity slowed waaayy down here with all the folks sharing the bandwidth. So here we go…
Here’s the rally agenda again (below), but instead of attending the scheduled Safety Meeting, we joined our friend Frank Krauland in his Jeep and went on a 4-wheel drive trip with 5 other couples in their Jeeps.
Updates on the whiteboard in front of the rally tent (below).
This morning’s donuts… ya gotta get there early to get some 🙂
Ultra-lights buzzed around over our coaches early in the morning:
Alpiners socializing in the morning sun just outside the rally tent:
Safety Meeting (below) with Mac the Fire Guy (←link to his website). We’ve attended a couple of his seminars before at other venues and he has a booth in the “Big Tent” at the rally show. If you get the opportunity, you’ve got to see his presentation. We passed on the meeting today and went Jeepin’.
Stilla and I jumped into Frank’s Jeep and we spent the day off-road… follow along:
We stopped to check out an old mine:
We stopped at the ruins of another cabin with a mine pit (shaft) nearby.
We checked out the mine shaft.
We finally found “Dripping Springs” 🙂 But it wasn’t dripping today. A really beautiful location.
Cabin ruins at “Dripping Springs”.
Indian (er… I mean Native American) petroglyphs at “Dripping Springs”.
The 4-wheel drive crew (most of them) posed for a pic at “Dripping Springs”.
Time to head back…
But first we stopped at “Moe’s Cabin”. A popular stop for 4-wheelers and off-road vehicles:
I put a new card on the wall with the others. Our old card from last year was still there 🙂
Inside Moe’s Cabin:
Moe’s gravesite (?)
Hwy 10 bridge (below) where the smaller ATV’s can cross under the highway. We skirted the highway in our larger Jeeps.
Some of the Jeeps aired their tires back up with on-board air compressors before getting on the highway back home.
A couple of us had to stop at the Chevron™ in town to air the tires back up.
What a great 4-wheel drive trip. Thanks for the ride Frank! We’ll have to come back to some of these trails again with my mom, stepdad, brother Steve & Cheryl when they get here Sunday with their ATV’s.
We made it back to the Alpine Coach rally site off Plomosa Rd just in time for Happy Hour!
The pizzas arrived courtesy of Silly Al’s Pizza (←link) in Quartzsite. If you ever get a chance… it’s really good, but good luck finding a seat for more than a couple people if you visit the place during the RV show week 🙂
Happy Campers:
After filling up on Silly Al’s pizza and salad, we had live entertainment by Art Michaud. His website (←link) says that he has a repertoire of over 1500 songs and has over 30 plus years of musical experience as a One-Man-Band/vocalist extraordinaire utilizing both acoustic and electric guitars, guitar synthesizer, bass pedals, drum machine and vocal harmonizer for background vocals. I think everyone would agree, he was really good and provide for awesome entertainment until late in the evening:
Party time!
Great times… Great people… 🙂
The crowd slowly dwindled down and we finally called it a night. And what a great night it was 🙂
Sorry readers… haven’t been able to post since we got to Alamo Lake State Park last Thursday due to limited connectivity. Our Verizon MiFi Jetpack had zero signal and our iPhones on the AT&T network only had one bar and we were “off network”. We were lucky to even be able to make phone calls.
We are now in Prescott Valley at the home of Scott and Julie Richardson. Julie is a friend and former co-worker from my days at the Missile Defense Agency (MDA). We were both in the MDA Contracting Directorate together at Schriever Air Force Base in Colorado Springs. Julie retired at about the same time that I resigned from my position back in May of 2014 and moved here to their lovely retirement home in Prescott Valley, AZ. We drove straight here from the lake (about 150 miles) when we learned that they were home and also willing to put up with us for a day or so.
Plus – They have great internet connectivity 🙂
But first, let me bring you up to date with our adventure(s) since I last posted. It’s been a fun week with lots of off-roading on the ATV and even some fishing in the Sea-Eagle inflatable…
19 Feb (Thursday):
We got ready to leave Havasu Springs Resort and I noticed one of the tires was low on the Silverado. It was only at 20 psi, it should have been at 35 psi. The truck has a built-in sensor in each tire that alerts the driver on the instrument panel when it’s started or while driving. At the same time, one of the rear tires on the Coach was reading about 85 psi and it should be at 95 psi. I have a tire pressure monitoring system from Pressure Pro that I bought shortly after we got the Coach. It has sensors that replace the valve caps on each tire. Each of these valve caps have a non-replaceable battery in them that send a wireless signal to my display that I plug into a cigarette-type power outlet each time we get ready to roll. This particular tire, a rear inner dual, has been slowly leaking down (2-3 psi each month) since I last filled it in Colorado Springs back in January. I’ve had this problem before on the opposite side inner-rear tire. It seems that Redlands Truck & RV didn’t properly tighten the stainless steel valve stem extenders that I had them install a couple years ago while we were in Quartzsite having new shocks put on. The only way to tighten the valve stem is to remove the tire.
So, I used a can of Fix-a-Flat that I keep on hand, for the Silverado tire and then topped it off with my air hose connected to the Coach’s on-board air compressor. With that done, we hooked up and headed into Parker AZ, only a few miles away, to find a tire repair shop for both vehicles.
After a quick stop at an RV Supply store to ask for recommendations and directions, we were directed to a small garage/service shop in downtown Parker. The tire technician couldn’t find a leak on the Silverado… guess the can of Fix-a-Flat did it’s job. They even pulled off both rear tires and leak-checked them. Although, this was due to miscommunication between their techs. Oh well – Total cost was only $13.
While a tire technician was working on the Silverado, another one made good time removing the rear tires on the Coach. He was amazed that I was able to use the HWH leveling jacks to raise the right rear of the coach when it was obvious his hydraulic floor jack wasn’t up to the task. Once the inner tire was off, we quickly confirmed that the valve stem was leaking by using a soapy water solution in a spray bottle. The leak was evident where the valve stem goes through the rim, and was made worse by wiggling the stem. A quick tighten was all that it needed. Total cost $14.
With our tire situation resolved, we stopped at the local WalMart to stock up on groceries for our week at Alamo Lake State Park. We were told about this state park by our new friend and fellow Alpine Coach driver, Nick Escamilla. We met Nick at the Fireworks Rally that we had just attended (link here). Nick and his wife Romana did an awesome job hosting the rally. They told us they had spent a week at the park prior to going to the Fireworks Rally and said it was a “must-see” for anyone that likes ATV’ing and fishing. But they warned us to take everything we might need in with us, because it’s about 35 miles from the nearest gas station or grocery store.
I made online reservations for the park and was able to find what looked like a good spot in the C loop for the 20th through the 27th. The park has different rates for different areas, depending on whether you want full hook-ups, just electric and water, or are willing to dry-camp. We followed Nick’s advice and reserved a spot in the C loop. Our cost was $22 per night for 30 amp electric and water hook-up.
So, we headed south out of Parker and turned east on 60. We figured we would find an overnight spot somewhere on our way there since it was still the19th and our reserved site wasn’t available until the 20th. However, after passing several opportunities that just didn’t have that “it” factor we quickly found ourselves at the turn-off to Alamo Lake at the town of Wendon. So we decided to just head on up north towards the lake.
After traveling the 35 miles or so up to the lake, we still hadn’t seen any spots to spend the night at, so we ended up at the ranger station and asked the nice ranger guy if a spot was available for the night. Our reservation wasn’t until tomorrow and the spot was currently occupied by someone else, but the site across from them was open.
The park ranger directed us into the site across from our reserved spot and told us that when the current occupants leave our reserved spot in the morning, to just move on over and then come back to the ranger station to settle up the extra night’s cost.
20 Feb (Friday)
On Friday morning, the occupants in the site across from us left early in the morning, so we moved on over, put up the flagpole, set out the tablecloth, and put up Stilla’s chili pepper/cactus awning lights since we were going to stay put for a while… Nice spot with nice views! We even have a few Saguaro cacti in the back yard.
Then we went back to the ranger station / general store to pay for the additional night and got I also broke down and got an Arizona fishing license for $55. The general store portion of the ranger station had plenty of basic commodities, like milk, cereal, drinks and ice cream. But I was certainly glad we had already stocked up on food after seeing the prices.
Here’s a layout of the parks campsite loops. We are now in site C34.
And here’s a bonus… it’s a hand-drawn map of the area ATV trails and significant destinations, courtesy of the nice ranger guy.
We took the pickup and toured around all the campgrounds and quickly decided we liked our choice of spots. We even drove over to check out the dam.
Here’s Stilla and little Coach with Alamo Lake in the background. You can tell the water level is low.
After we got back from touring the campground loops and the dam, we downloaded the ATV and rode down to the lake.
We found out that there is a dirt road that bypasses the state park campground and leads to many boondocking spots. Oh well, maybe next time… it’s nice to have electricity sometimes.
Back at our campsite, we relaxed for the evening. Nice view eh?
And Stilla made us some Nacho plates for our own personal “Happy Hour”.
Well, gotta go now… Scott and Julie are going to show us around the Prescott Valley area… maybe Sedona…
Sunday morning found the Alpine SoCal family enjoying another continental breakfast courtesy of our fine rally hosts. Another warm and sunny day was on tap.
After our continental breakfast, coffee, and chit-chat… folks started heading off to begin their individual planned activities for the day.
As we headed back to our coach, we met a couple of our fellow Alpiners returning from their morning hike. Jack had returned to “The Crack” to conquer the route he had attempted the day before. I reported in my last post that Jack turned around yesterday when confronted with the dry waterfall “cliff” that I wrote about. This time, he reported that they had conquered the canyon and had basically taken the same return route that we did.
This park has some very neat trails, hopefully we can get the opportunity in the future to check out some of the others.
However, we had already decided to spend the day checking out the ATV trails on the east side of US 95 that we’d heard so much about. There was reportedly a massive network of riding trails waiting to be explored.
David Guhse took a photo of us – all geared up and ready to go…
We put little “Coach” in his doggie back pack and after a short drive through the residential area across from the SARA (Special Activities and Recreation Area) Park where we are staying, we soon hit the network of trails and were on our way.
Luckily, we had taken our hand-held Garmin GPS so we can find our way back by following our “bread-crumbs”. Otherwise, with the many forks and criss-crossing trails, we might still be trying to find our way back 🙂
Lots of beautiful desert scenery:
After stopping at a particularly difficult section – deep in one of the many valleys. We decided to stop to eat the lunch (sandwiches) that Stilla had packed for us.
We were soon joined by another couple that were out exploring on their Can-Am ATVs. They are also staying at the SARA Park to enjoy the fireworks. Since we also have a Can-Am ATV, we already had something in common. We chatted with them while we had lunch and they shared the location of a mine that they had just found.
They were also carrying along their own little dog, so Coach had someone to talk with as well, while we ate lunch.
After our lunch break, we followed the directions our new acquaintance(s) had given us and soon found the abandoned mine.
It turns out there were at least three separate mines in the immediate vicinity. We walked a little ways from the ATV to check them all out.
Here’s a few pics of some holes in the ground… in case you didn’t know what those look like 🙂
I dropped a rock into this one and never even heard it hit bottom.
More holes:
We used the GPS to keep us on somewhat on track but took an alternate route to get back near our starting point.
What a cool area… so much to explore… definitely have to come back here.
We made it back without incident with plenty of time to spare before our scheduled chicken dinner, also courtesy of our rally hosts.
Here’s some fellow Alpiners enjoying their chicken dinners.
Looks good, doesn’t it? Tasted good too!
After dinner, we had our general membership meeting to discuss old and new business. We successfully dodged (I think) being nominated to host any future rallies. Unfortunately, we just don’t know what our long-term plans are until we can get the house sold, and can’t afford to make any commitments just yet.
Our rally hosts (Nick & Ramona Escamilla) and co-hosts (David & Nicole Guhse) now officially get an A+ rating for their outstanding performance… after the meeting they broke out “make-your-own sundaes” with all the fix in’s.
Everyone crowded in for the dessert. No one was to be denied.
What a treat! I topped mine with the Snickers crumbles as well as the Butterfinger’s chips… yumm.
And what better way to enjoy our dessert than with some more fireworks!
Yes, it’s official… you can get tired of fireworks. After 4 nights – they were still spectacular but were wearing on us just a little. Even little Coach hardly noticed them at all tonight.
It’s been a great rally! A big thank you to our host(s), co-host(s), and all the great Alpine Coach Association members! Tomorrow morning everyone will be going their separate ways… see you down the road 🙂
Stay tuned to see where we end up next… even we don’t know.
On Tuesday morning, we jumped on the ATV to check out some of the trails behind our campsite. Stilla carried our dog, Coach along for the ride.
We ran into a lot of “dead end” trails:
At one point, we rode down through the “wash” below our camp site. You can see our Coach on the hilltop.
The Urban Escape Vehicle is 2nd from the left.
We found a lot of hidden campsites… some occupied, some not.
We even found a Pet Cemetery. We stopped to look around and pay our respects. It was rather unexpected to find this as we were riding along one of the more improved roads. Some folks put a lot of work into their pets’ final resting place.
There were even a couple gravesites marked “Unknown” that some caring folks took the time and effort to do. I thought that was nice.
One of the trails we followed ended abruptly at a cliff-edge overlooking the canal.
After backtracking a ways… we got on a trail that went as far as the border which you can see in the pictures below. The parking lot is the one we paid our $6 to park in when we visited Los Algodones last Saturday.
We had worked up an appetite, so we decided to spend the afternoon on another trip into Los Algodones, Mexico for a late lunch. We left little Coach in the big Coach with some windows and vents open for cool air circulation, and took the Silverado to the $6 dollar parking lot, which is just a couple minutes down the road from our campsite.
It wasn’t long before we were sitting in the shade at one of the restaurants in Los Algodones, Mexico.
I took pictures of the menu in case any of you “blog-readers” want to place an order for delivery… might take a while tho 🙂
I ordered a Pacifico beer with my meal expecting to get a normal size one… this guy was huge, but it was OK, Stilla helped me finish it.
Stilla ordered one of the combo plates – burrito, enchilada, and tostada.
Stilla also ordered the tortilla soup that we shared.
I had the fish tacos, they were delicious. I’m becoming a fan of these.
After, lunch we ran the gauntlet of vendors again… I couldn’t count the number of times we heard; “look here – almost free”.
I was thinking of Cheryl and my brother Steve when I saw this horse sculpture:
I was thinking of myself when I took a picture of these neat stained glass items:
When we had enough of the vendors and peddler’s, we headed back to the border crossing, which to our surprise and amazement, had a line that stretched for blocks… it wasn’t at all like this last Saturday! We walked right out as quickly as we walked in the last time we were here. We overheard some folks say that they hadn’t seen it this busy since 2008… it was like some sort of weird star alignment and everyone decided to come visit at once on this Tuesday.
Here’s a picture of the front of the line. The border crossing building is at the end of this covered walkway and to the right where there is still more covered walkway up to the checkpoint.
Here’s a picture of the middle of the line. You can see more vendors and peddlers trying to get everyone’s last dollar up to the last minute.
And here’s a picture of the end of the line… way back in the distance is the end of the line. As you can probably tell from these pictures… Stilla and I sat at the outside bar section of one of the restaurants, took pictures, and waited until the line became more reasonable. We sat there for almost two hours while we nursed a margarita. Sometimes, you just have to do, what you got to do 🙂
It was almost dusk again by the time we got back to little Coach. He was just fine again. What a good guard dog. Sadly, we missed “Happy Hour” with our neighbors today since it took so long to get back out of Mexico.
And that’s all for now… it’s late morning on Wednesday as I finish up this journal entry. We’ll probably hang around the Coach today and maybe go check out the casino at some point later this evening.
On Monday we decided to head over to the Quechan Casino Resort. It is located on the south side of Interstate 8, about 8 miles west of Yuma and 2 miles north of Los Algodones, Mexico. This is the place we reconnoitered last Saturday when we visited Los Algodones for the first time.
We settled on a boondocking spot just south of the main RV parking lot at the casino. The spots here are more open than at the casino and we backed up to a dry river bed, aka “wash”, that is about 20 feet below the back of the Coach.
I wonder if I can take the ATV down this embankment into the wash? Hmmm?
Before we headed over here in the early afternoon, I spent a little time getting some more waxing done on the Coach, which as I mentioned before, is a multi-day chore. It’s best to tackle a little at a time until I get it done… and then when I’m finally finished… it’s probably time to start again, right?
We said our goodbyes to our friends from the Alpine Coach group. They are going to stay at the Cocopah Casino for a while longer. And then we followed their advice, and found the Union 76 service station that allowed us to dump and take on water.
When we arrived here and picked out a spot, we had just backed in and started to put down the pads to keep the jacks from sinking into the sand, when the neighbor came over and introduced himself and his wife. They invited us to come over for “Happy Hour” – they (and other’s) were grilling up some shrimp and had made some jalapeño poppers stuffed with smoked salmon to share.
It’s amazing the number of nice people you meet out here RVing 🙂 After we extended the jacks, put the slides out, and staked down the patio mat, we pulled our chairs over and enjoyed an hour or two with our new “neighbors”.
After “Happy Hour” we fell back into our usual routine – Stilla had made a stew earlier, so we had dinner and then watched TV. And also, as usual when boondocking, we ran the generator for an hour or so to top off the batteries for the night.
Stay tuned… I wonder what we’ll do tomorrow?
BTW – Have I ever mentioned that Monday is my new “favorite” day of the week now? Since I retired – when I wake up on a Monday morning and realize I don’t have to go in to work – I feel good. Life is good 🙂
As mentioned in my last post, my brother Steve and his longtime girlfriend Cheryl as well as my Mom and Stepdad Jim arrived Friday evening from Casa Grande to camp out with us for the weekend.
On Saturday, we drove into Quartzsite to check out all the vendors. This was their first time here. We literally spent all day walking through the “big tent” and adjoining vendor areas. I didn’t take many pics – so, if a couple of the following look familiar, it’s because I reutilized the same ones from the last time we were here. Trust me – it didn’t change much… just as crowded as ever 🙂
We found a vendor that sold the same dog pack that Stilla and I purchased when we were in Oregon. It’s really handy for those times when it’s crowded and you can’t use a leash. So my brother and mom each purchased one of the packs called; “Outward Hound“. Too bad we didn’t see the cheaper price on Amazon.com. Oh well, someone has to support those local vendors or else we wouldn’t have any shows to go to, right?
I also found a decent deal on an ATV flag which I am carrying in the picture above. I guess I felt that I was missing something because the last time we rode with a group, because everyone had one of these flags except me. I understand it is a requirement if we go to the sand dunes near here.
After we completed our Saturday shopping day, on Sunday we took the ATVs into the hills just East of our campsite. Cheryl didn’t feel up to it so she stayed at the campsite and watched the dogs.
We primarily stuck to the major trails and found a few abandoned mine shafts that we briefly explored.
After a while we came across one of the many dry river beds, aka “washes” and followed it until we lost any evidence of a trail. We ended up using the GPS to “bushwhack” cross country to get back to a road. Good times… loads of fun!
Here we are taking a snack and refreshment break.
And all good things have to come to an end 🙁
Here they are packed up again and ready to roll back to Casa Grande on Monday.
It was great that they were able to come out here for the weekend. This was the first time in ages that they got out on the ATVs. They just get too busy at the “dirt farm”. I wish they could have stayed longer. We’re not sure when we’ll get back to Casa Grande. We signed up for the Fireworks show in Lake Havasu starting February 11th. So we plan on just killing time in the Yuma area until then… maybe we’ll head back to Casa Grande after the fireworks.
For my next post, we headed on down to Yuma because; 1) we’ve never been, and 2) we got 3 free nights at the Fortuna de Oro RV Resort. A few of our fellow Alpiner’s are already down there taking advantage of that, so stay tuned…
On Thursday we got a call from fellow Alpine Coach Association member (Tom Polk). He had left the Rally Site the previous day to join some other friends at a RV Resort in the town of Quartzsite. He invited us to go on an ATV ride with himself and some other friends that were at the resort. So, on Friday, we got an early start around 8:30, and rode the ATV into town to meet the group.
For those of you that haven’t spent any time in the desert before, trust me – It can get really cold at night and in the early morning! We rode the ATV about 10 miles to the designated start point, and it felt like our fingers had frozen, even with our gloves on! Of course, we were doing about 45 mph or faster at times in order to get there on time.
Once we were in town, I noticed that one of my front tires was really low on air. I could feel it wallowing around when we took corners on the asphalt streets. It wasn’t so noticeable when we were still on the dirt and rock trails. Luckily, one of the riding group members had an air compressor in his casita/garage. The mini-compressor that I have been carrying around in the back of the ATV all these years didn’t work when I plugged it into the cigarette lighter-type outlet on the dash of the Can-Am ATV. 🙂 Good thing I found out it didn’t work while we were still in civilization – instead of when we were out in the middle of nowhere.
Anyway, we hit the trails with the group without further delay. Stilla was able to take some pics while we were riding throughout the day:
We had four ATVs in our group for the day.
We had to keep a little distance between vehicles to keep from eating too much dust.
Here we are traveling through a scenic wash. We did that several times throughout the day. Good thing it wasn’t raining, eh?
We even did a little boulder hopping.
Here are our ATV’s in a circle, during one of our breaks throughout the day.
The town of Quartzsite is in the background behind that hill in the middle.
Everyone had a side-by-side ATV except for us. It seems that most folks are trending towards these type of off road vehicles (OHVs) nowadays. I still like to have the ability to “jump off” the ATV when you get into big trouble… you can’t do that with a side-by-side. Those side-by-sides are sure cool though… almost makes you wonder why anyone would buy a Jeep anymore. I said “almost”.
One of our “breaks” during the day was at a lonesome “cabin” in the middle of nowhere. It even had a name – I believe I was told it’s called “Moe’s Cabin”. We took time to eat the lunch we had packed with us. There was even a picnic table and a couple lounge chairs outside the cabin. Fellow Alpine Coach driver “Steve” is on the left and “Tom Polk” is on the right.
This cabin had all sort of bric-a-brac and memorabilia inside. It seems that folks leave odd items all the time. Someone said that there used to be a couple mannequins there, but they probably got swiped. I added one of our non-business “business cards” to the collection on one of the walls.
The cabin even had a satellite dish 🙂
We ate a lot of dust but had a lot of fun… what a fun day! Thanks for inviting us along Tom Polk!
We made it back to the starting point in town by 3 PM. It was about a 45 mile trail ride, but when we add the distance traveled to and from our campsite out in the desert North of town – we had put on 65 miles for the day!
After we said our goodbyes to the group, we headed back out to our campsite in the desert. We made it back by 4 PM and let our little dog “Coach” out of the Coach. Boy was he happy to see us! He did just fine during the day.
By 4:30 or 5 PM, we heard from my brother Steve, his long-time girlfriend Cheryl, along with my Mom and Stepdad, Jim… they were enroute to join us for the weekend! They had left Casa Grande earlier in the afternoon with their pickup camper towing a trailer full of ATV’s. They found us without much trouble and we had a happy reunion.
We all piled into my pickup after I emptied the back seat and drove to the Grubstake Restaurant in Quartzsite for dinner. Almost a big mistake… it was great food, especially the fish dinner. But it was so crowded that we had to sit outside in the chilly evening air and we waited about 2 hours to get our meals! We didn’t even get the meals at the same time, they brought them out piece-meal. Oh well, it was still great to have them join us here in the desert 🙂
We made plans to visit the “big vendor tent” in the morning (Saturday) and decided to save an ATV ride for Sunday… but I’ll put that in my next post. Stay tuned for more desert fun…