Tomorrow's Journey

It got down to 26 degrees early Sunday, March 26. Fortunately nothing froze. After breakfast, we headed south for Sedona, still looking for reservations as we drove. We finally found a reservation at Distant Drums RV Resort, Camp Verde. It was well south of Sedona, but the closest thing we could find. But we couldn’t get into our spot till afternoon – so we decided to take care of some chores.

The truck was complaining it needed an oil change. We had gone past the miles our normal oil change place recommends, but we use synthetic oil which can go longer. It was Sunday and the only place open was Walmart. Apprehensive, we disconnected the trailer in their parking lot and took the truck in. First, they didn’t have a filter – so they gave us the truck back and we went to an O’Reilly down the road and got oil and air filter. Went back, got in line – and eventually they started work again. We watched from the exit door – as close as we could get. One person was working above, one below. The person above, dropped the filter bolt down into the front grill – and eventually rescued it. The person below – exclaims – “there is a temporary plastic drain plug!” Nope, that is the normal Ford

drain plug for this truck. Its tricky – you have to squeeze two tabs, rotate then pop out. This is a 2015 F150, Ecoboost engine. There are a lot of these on the road – and they’ve never seen one? There was a FORD dealer 1000 feet away down the road. This is why I almost never will go to a Walmart for any kind of vehicle maintenance. When finally it was done, we hooked up and headed for our camp at Distant Drums RV Resort, Camp Verde. This was an upscale resort. It was also mostly occupied by longer term stay Class A vehicles. We had to move after the first night because the sites they put us in first, were reserved as groups of people park together there. The place was fairly meticulously maintained – they even rake out the gravel before they let you move in. There was a casino just across the road, but we didn’t avail ourselves of their services. Just being there was gambling enough for me…. 8^}

So, we were settling into our spots, disconnecting everything when my daughter came over and said “there are metal pieces breaking off our hitch”. What? Sigh – nothing should surprise me. I went and looked and sure enough, the receivers that the load distribution springs lock into were cracking and pieces breaking off. This was a better Equalizer E4 hitch (I just had the E2 on mine). In retrospect, I believe it was a combination of the receivers for the spring bars were not the right ones for the bars that were installed and/or the hitch was not adjusted right for the two and trailer or the weight on the hitch tongue. Whatever the issue, it was still under warranty and so began the adventure of “replacing the hitch in the middle of no-where”.

Continued next post.

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Saturday, March 25 – time to leave for Sedona. The “mountains” to the west on I-40 were not as bad as we had feared and the winds were quite tolerable. We stopped in a little town of Holbrook, AZ and ate lunch at a “hole in the wall” family run Mexican restaurant, Sombrerito’s. It was very good. We parked nearby next to an abandoned apartment complex. As we are traveling out west, it seems every little town has quite a number of abandoned buildings. Very old and not so old victims of economic changes. I think these left-behinds survive longer in the dry sun than they do back home or maybe there is just so much land here, there is no need to tear them down to put up something else.

Most of the way on the road we were searching for campground reservations in Sedona. We weren’t finding anything. But that didn’t stop us from charging ahead toward the Grand Canyon. We looked around Williams for a short while, then headed north on 64 to the canyon. Much of that road doesn’t have AT&T cellular so that didn’t help. It was also intermittently raining. When we got to the canyon – it almost felt like snow, was misting as we bundled up the kids and headed for the vistor center. The center of course was closed so we headed for the overlook and were greeted by a magnificently lit canyon. There were broken storm clouds and the sun was sneaking in under the cover to hit the far canyon walls. See the gallery below.

We took lots of pictures. JC shot a pano with my camera. We loaded up and tried a campground near-by – but there was not only no wifi, but no cellular. So, we headed south, still trying to find a campground. We finally gave up and headed for a Cracker Barrel in Flagstaff. Fortunately, they let us boondock. We had supper and breakfast there. The night in between was something else. We had not been able to find any place to go in Sedona and we didn’t want to head that way and take a chance on where to stay after dark.

Up till now, we hadn’t had to boondock in cold weather – as in, below freezing. It meant, we’d have to run the furnaces all night. I was concerned about battery life. We had a pair of deep cycle 12V batteries in parallel on both trailers. While that seems a lot, some equipment on the trailer is voltage sensitive. We’ve learned that at 11.6 volts the CO detector on my daughter’s trailer starts to complain – as in go into alarm mode. We also couldn’t run the tank heaters as they’d drain the batteries even faster. Se we tucked in to sleep.

Most Cracker Barrels are near interstate and railroad tracks it seems. This one was a bit farther away. There was a main street right next to the parking lot, but it wasn’t too bad. Early in the morning, I heard their van start up. Apparently, they hit 11.6 volts and the CO monitor started whining about low voltage, so Phil started the van as I suggested the night before. There is a power connection between the tow vehicle and trailer with our rigs to keep the batteries charged for the brake break-away switch. It supplies just enough power to keep the batteries topped off. Nothing actually froze on the trailers, this time…. Breakfast at CB was good as usual. Yes we broke our chain rule, but anyone that lets us stay the night is allright with me.