Tonight we are parked at Peninsula Glass, makers of "Motion Windows," in Vancouver, Washington (map). We don't have an appointment, but we are hoping they can deal with us in the morning. Peninsula made the four "operable" windows on Odyssey's main level, and we have a couple of small drips, plus three of the screens need to be re-screened due to vicious, killer cats. They were conveniently on our way to the paint shop in Eugene, and who knows when we will be back this way again.

Last night we stayed on a city street in Kirkland, Washington (map) , where we visited our friends Pat and Carol, owners of Yacht Products International. These are the nice folks who built our nifty portable spa, the YachTub, which can be seen in this photo from one of our camp spots in Florida. In addition to wanting to stop by and socialize, we needed to have our unit looked at. As the very first beta-test RV unit, we had some issues that have since been ironed out in the production model. Also, we needed to exchange our pre-production two-person tub for the production four-person model that we originally wanted. Pat and Carol are great people, and it is nice to see the production units working so well and incorporating many of the suggested changes that we proposed during the test phase. We were also a bit surprised, but pleased, to see the photo of Odyssey on the new marketing flyer for the RV version. (A small disclaimer and commercial is in order: we are actually itinerant YachTub dealers, and I am pleased to offer a 10% discount from the current list prices to readers of our blog. Also, I am happy to answer any questions and assist with installation issues.)

We wrapped up at Infinity Coach around mid-day yesterday. While they were not able to complete our rather extensive list of repairs and upgrades (nor did we expect them to, as we gave them a fixed time frame and a list that we knew would exceed it), I think we were able to hammer out the most pressing and major issues. All the windows have been re-caulked to Neoplan specs, the roof seams have all been re-sealed, as have the cutouts in the rear cap for the high-mounted stop and turn lights. The generator has been quieted down some, and we have hopefully dealt with the issue of it losing its prime frequently. Various "warranty" items have been equitably addressed, and several gremlins that we noted in the last ten months got some attention. In addition, the custom trailer hitch that nestles into the OEM tow-out pintle was added, as well as the absolutely killer "brush guard" whose photo Louise has already posted.

This last item, lest it seem like some over-indulgent kowtowing to modern SUV-styling one-upmanship, is actually to protect Odyssey's rather delicate, expensive, and impossible-to-get plastic front-end bodywork, as well as her equally delicate, expensive, and impossible-to-get Mercedes headlamps. The custom brush guard incorporates Lexan covers for these latter items, and the whole assembly should stand up to minor parking-lot fender-benders and similar accidents. We've already replaced the glass lenses on both headlamps ($165 each, on three month lead from Germany) due to rock strikes, and we figured it was only a matter of time before some bozo backed into us and took out $1,000+ worth of bodywork and headlamps. (Why didn't Neoplan include a bumper, for crying out loud?)

After dealing with the windows tomorrow morning, we will head south to Eugene to see Mike Wilson, the gentleman responsible for our beautiful paint job, for some touch-up work. Some of the touch-up stems from minor oversprays and other issues from the original paint job that we simply did not notice until we were well on our way, while some of it is the result of some of the repairs and upgrades we have made to the coach in the last two weeks. I am ashamed to say it, but, yes, a handful of touch-ups are also attributable to attempted violations of the laws of physics, committed by yours truly, including a run-in with a post several weeks ago and, gulp, hitting a garbage dumpster with the tail-swing just last week at Infinity.

I will close my post today with a quick note about our map page. Observant readers will note that tonight is the first update to this page since we left the Jubitz truck stop nearly three weeks ago. The simple reason for this is that the satellite that we use for our internet service, by our own choice, is SatMex5, which has a coverage area that stops somewhere in the middle of Washington. In fact, we get no coverage in the northern halves of Washington, Idaho, Montana, and North Dakota. Things get better along the Canadian border as one gets further east. Since the software we use to update our map position relies on the dish working, we don't update it when we are out of the coverage area. (We have been relying on the office network at Infinity coach for the last week.) We chose this satellite because it has superior coverage in the rest of the US and well into Mexico, and we expect to spend much more time south of here than north of here.

Odyssey up on the lift. A little disconcerting to see five feet of daylight under one's home.

Our new brush guard. The clear lexan covers over the headlights make it look a bit like reading glasses for the coach.

Sorry for the long absence -- things have been a bit hectic since we returned to Washington Sunday night.

Actually, I said Sunday night, but it was really Monday morning, since Amtrak was eight hours late by the time we arrived. We were scheduled into Tacoma at 7pm, but arrived instead at 3 in the morning. We slept part of the night on the train, and the rest at our old haunt, the La Quinta Inn Tacoma. We got back to the Infinity shop Monday afternoon, but Odyssey had fresh caulk on the roof and they wanted to keep her inside for the night, so we ended up at a motel Monday night as well, and did not pick the pets up from the kennel until Tuesday.

We were not really in any rush, of course, so it was really just an annoyance that we ended up having to both board and disembark our train in the middle of the night (the train was five hours late leaving San Jose, at 1 or so in the morning versus the scheduled 8:30pm). On the plus side, we saw a good bit of scenery that the train normally slips by in darkness. It's also hard to complain too much, since we were traveling on a free ticket, the result of our last Amtrak adventure being 14 hours late, with reduced amenities to boot.

We had a nice visit in San Jose. The entire downtown area was busy gearing up for this weekend's Grand Prix race, a first for San Jose. We are a bit sorry that we had to miss it, since the whole town seems to be a giant party for the weekend. On the other hand, getting around town with so many streets closed off will be something of a zoo.

We spent five nights in the San Jose Hilton (which will be inside the race perimeter this weekend), and found it to be quite pleasant in spite of a few quirks. Those included the world's smallest pool (capacity: 5), the fact that poolside cocktails were delivered in paper coffee cups, since, apparently, the bar/restaurant has no plastic available, and the baby grand piano in the lobby which attracted every half-baked amateur within five miles to wander in and tickle (or mash) the ivories, with that beginner-endlessly-rehearsing sound that is endearing only to parents listening to their children.

Five nights blew out the last of my HHonors points, and we moved to the newer, taller Marriott at the other end of the convention center for two nights (all the Marriott points I had left, as well). I spent both days shuttling back and forth across the convention center to the Hilton, because the Hilton had free high-speed (DS3!) wireless internet access in their lobby, whereas the Marriott wanted ten bucks a day. Oddly, the Hilton also wanted ten buck for access in the guest rooms, even though it was free in the lobby. Go figure. I did have to endure more piano recitals, though.

From the Marriott we again transferred to the Hotel Montgomery for our last night in town. This was a night that we had purchased at a charity auction last year, and included dinner for two, which was quite nice. (In case you missed my post on buying hotel stays at charity auctions, read it here.) The Montgomery is a historic downtown hotel that was moved a hundred feet or so south of its historic location to make room for a giant addition to the ritzy Fairmont Hotel next door. Soon afterwards, the Joie de Vivre hotel chain bought it and renovated it to modern standards in JdV's own boutique-hotel style.

Somewhere in all of this we saw some family and friends, and got several errands handled. We spent Saturday, after checking out of the Montgomery, at the home of our friends Jason and Laura, just in time for their annual Yard Sale, which is something of a block party involving many friends, neighbors, and a good deal of beer. Our friends John and Linda graciously invited us to await our train in their air-conditioned and very comfortable downtown townhome and offered us a lift to the train station. They got a few more hours of us than they bargained for, compliments of Amtrak. We finally took pity on them and went to the station around 10:30.

It's taken us most of the week to get back on top of things here, and I am just now getting caught up. Posts should be a bit more regular now, although I expect the next one will wait until we leave Sumner.

No blog updates for while; we're flying to California tomorrow to visit friends and family. Odyssey will remain in Washington at Infinity Coach for some repairs and minor tweaking. If you're in Sumner, drop by the shop during business hours to see their spiffy new facility.

I am hoping to reorganize and update our main website during this hiatus, but I don't make any promises. If you just have to have an Odyssey fix, there are plenty of photos here at Smugmug.

The new Infinity Coach shop. The three bays are very deep, and with doors at each end can accomodate two coaches each. We are parked along the building to the left.

The view from our overnight parking space at Infinity's shop. The river lies just beyond the field. Horses graze across the railroad tracks.

BusNUSA in Rickreall, OR. It was a sea of buses...

buses...

...and more buses. Yes, that's George on the roof.

We are back at Infinity Coach in Sumner, Washington (map). I say "back," but it is true what they say about not being able to go back -- Infinity has moved since we left in October (actually, they continually threatened to withhold the address of their new location from us, but I think that conflicted with their promotional objectives). Their new facility is quite impressive, with six full-length service bays, shop space, warehouse area, and tidy offices. They even have a lift system capable of hoisting Odyssey and her ilk. And while it is nice to see them move in to these professional new facilities and we are very happy for them and their success, part of us pines for the mom-and-pop feel of the old barn on the hill and the our-home-is-your-home philosophy that carried throughout the conversion project. (Insurance concerns have the new shop chock full of "employees only beyond this point" signs.)

We had a nice time at the Bus'n'USA rally in Rickreall, which was very relaxing (in stark contrast to last year's rally, where our status as an exhibit coach had us on our feet doing presentations all three days). We were parked alongside two GM "buffalo" coaches, and were promptly adopted by their owners, Kevin and Barbara, and Jeff and Tracie. They were even kind enough to invite us to sit with the GM crowd at dinner. We are very glad to have gotten to know them.

After leaving Rickreall we headed to Portland for a brief visit and dinner with our friends Terry and Karen there. It took us all evening to catch up, since we have not seen them since we were in Eugene to be painted in September. We did not want to drive far after our visit, so we pulled in to the Jubitz truck stop just north of the city (map). Jubitz' claim to fame is that they have been voted "best truck stop in the US" more than once, and we can see why. Touting the virtues of a truck stop is something like making silk purses out of sow's ears, but Jubitz boasts a hotel, decent 24-hour restaurant, cocktail lounge, cinema, postal center, Oregon state visitor center, two convenience stores, gift shop, deli, laundromat, arcade, and, of course, fueling islands and big rig parking. It is also extremely clean and well kept. We needed a place to stay in Portland and we also needed a laundromat, so this was a natural stop. Other than the typical downside of every truck stop, namely diesels idling constantly (which is white noise that does not bother us, although some people can't tolerate it), it was actually a pretty nice stop, and the price is unbeatable.

Infinity is working to get us into the shop tomorrow sometime. We have a long list of items for them, and we'll try to get all their questions answered by the end of the day Thursday, since we are leaving by plane Friday morning for a week in San Jose. We return here on Amtrak's Coast Starlight on Sunday the 24th.

I'm proud to be the 500,000th visitor to the site of my friends, George and Tioga!

Howdy from Bus'n'USA at the Polk County Fairgrounds in Rickreall, Oregon (map).

We arrived late yesterday afternoon after a pleasant and uneventful drive over highways 126, 20, and 22 from central Oregon. Being a full day early, we thought we would check out the situation at the fairgrounds, then go get Odyssey washed and maybe do some laundry before settling back in.

We were amazed to find the fairgrounds more than half full with coaches. Given that there were a limited number of power hookups, and they were going fast, we decided to forego the washing and get parked straight away.

We were able to get a nice spot with ample power, and even a spigot to fill the hot tub. We set up camp yesterday, and today we pulled out one of the bikes and I was able to give Odyssey a half-hearted bucket wash just to make her a bit more presentable for the show.

We've reconnected with many old friends, including the folks from Infinity Coach, and have made some new ones as well. Several people have introduced themselves as readers of this blog.

It turns out the "disappearance" of my seminar was a mixup involving a schedule from last year's rally remaining posted until last week. So I am not on the schedule, and I apologize to anyone who was hoping to attend. If I can find a way to do it, I might try to host some kind of "round-table" session on our patio after hours.

The fairgrounds are nearly full tonight, and there are so many people here they ran short of food at the hot-dog feed this evening. I have not heard the total coach count, but it looks like it will be in excess of 200.

Tomorrow the seminars and exhibits open, and we will try to get the coach in shape for anyone who wants to drop in and check it out.

We are at the Elks lodge in Prineville, OR (map). We had intended to stop last night a little earlier, but a paucity of camping opportunities had us come all the way into town. While the lodge here has seen better days (as have so many), they have four power pedestals for visiting RVs with 30 and 50 amp service. More importantly, they have a large level parking area, and it is right downtown, so we were able to walk to dinner last night at a decent Italian place.

Yesterday morning we had the latest chips in the windshield repaired, and then had a nice, scenic drive across US26, following generally along with the John Day river. We also stopped briefly at the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument.

We are now only 160 miles from our destination of the Polk County Fairgrounds in Rickreall, and I expect we will either spend tonight there or someplace very close by. We have some errands to do today as well, including having Odyssey washed.

I was expecting to present a seminar at this rally, but an updated seminar schedule has just been published, and my seminar has disappeared from it. I have sent a note to the rally organizers asking what happened to it -- I'm a little baffled that nobody bothered to contact me first.

We are looking forward once again to being parked in one spot for a few days.

We are at the Wal-Mart in Ontario, Oregon (map). We had intended to be in a more rustic setting tonight, perhaps at one of the parks along the Snake river, but we took yet another rock to the windshield today, resulting in a small star that we want to have repaired ASAP. Since today is a holiday, it will have to wait until morning, and we decided to spend the night in a major town with a glass repair shop.

The dirty little secret, though, is that we are indeed parked right along the Snake, as you will notice if you zoom in on the map. This store borders the river, and the river is particularly close to the rear parking lot where the loading dock is located. At this particular store, the front and rear lots are not interconnected. We originally parked at the very front, in the RV "ghetto," but moved back here when we realized that it was right by the water, and no one else would likely come back here. Well, except for the trucks -- there have been two deliveries already tonight, even though it is a holiday. In any case, we can walk right to the river from our spot, although the bank is a bit overgrown here. I am hoping Louise will get a photo in the daylight tomorrow.

I set up the deck and we were able to see the city fireworks from here, along with hordes of private ones. Of course, we had to drug the dog -- she hates fireworks. The city's display was at the fairgrounds, perhaps a mile away, and they went on for nearly an hour. Many fireworks, and some quite impressive, but the whole thing seemed to lack organization and timing. It's hard to complain, though, about a free show that we could see from our own deck.

We had a great drive today, more or less following the Snake the entire way. US 30 did become co-linear with I-84 for a couple dozen miles, but we bailed off onto Idaho 78 which was very rural and much more to our liking. US30 west of Twin Falls happens to the the "1000 Springs Scenic Byway," and, in the fullness of time, we came upon the 1000 springs. We had no idea they would be so spectacular -- an interesting quirk of geology has hundreds of springs gushing forth from the canyon walls of the Snake River gorge, and they are easily viewed from the byway, which is across the river. Spectacular waterfalls, but oddly originating mid-cliff. We were thankful that a roadside marker explained their origin and geology.

Not much further down the road, we stopped in at the visitor center for the Hagerman Fossil Beds National Monument. We had previously read that the fossil beds themselves were closed to the public, so we expected only to see a few exhibits and move along. Surprisingly, this turned out to also be the temporary visitor center for the Minidoka Internment National Monument, and the handful of exhibits on this particularly shameful chapter of American history were extremely moving. I am sorry we did not have time to drive out to the actual site north of Twin Falls. We also learned at the center that there are actually ranger-led visits to the fossil beds on Friday and Saturday evenings.

The rock that got us hit somewhere on US30, I think in Twin Falls, but the star did not appear until we were on 78, in the middle of nowhere. I also found a smaller chip from yesterday. We hope to get these patched up first thing in the morning, and we will head west out of town on US26.

Happy Independence Day! Our site at Heyburn Riverside RV Park.

Happy birthday, USA!

One of our loyal readers, Ben, inquires how many miles we put on Odyssey annually.

That's a difficult question to answer. We have only been full-timing for nine months. However, at this rate, we are doing about 30K or so per year. That's about double (or maybe more) than our planned usage pattern -- our intent is to park at each stop for an average of a week. This first year is different, for a couple reasons. First, we started with a big loop of the US to visit friends and family who have been following the conversion saga for two years. Between the visits and some other stops that had specific calendar dates attached, we were on the move almost every day, with only three or four long stops on the whole loop.

After this first loop, we had planned to slow down considerably, and we did for about two weeks. Problems with the engine, which I have chronicled here, followed by the failure of our satellite dish, forced us to backtrack, added another 1,500 miles or so, and ate up three weeks of our planned leisurely six-week jaunt to Fort Worth.

We are hoping to slow down to our originally planned pace after the Bus'n'USA rally in Rickreall and subsequent repairs at Infinity Coach in Sumner. My hope is that, in our second year of operation, we will put only 12-15K on Odyssey, and perhaps 10K or so on the motorcycles, which saw only very limited use this year due to the blistering pace.

This morning we are at the Heyburn City RV Park, a municipal park right on the Snake River across from Burley, ID (map). After leaving Flaming Gorge yesterday morning, we followed Utah 43 into Wyoming, and then Wyoming 414 until it dropped us onto Interstate 80. As much as we dislike traveling the interstates, there really was no reasonable alternative to take us to Brigham City. This section of I-80, and the piece of I-84 that brought us into Ogden, are very rural and very scenic, and traffic was light for a holiday weekend, so it really was not bad at all. As a bonus, we were able to pick up 70 gallons of diesel in Evanston for $2.23 a gallon -- had I known we were going to detour through Wyoming when we left Texas, I would not have filled the tank in Amarillo.

From Brigham City we proceeded west on Utah 83 to Promontory Summit, site of the driving of the golden spikes and the connection of the east and west coasts for the first time by rail. The park service now owns this site, and they have built a nice visitor center with exhibits, and also re-laid the bit of trackage on either side of the site, and commisioned exact replicas of the two locomotives that stood pilot-to-pilot on May 10, 1869. Unexpectedly, we arrived just in time to see one of the locomotives, the Jupiter, build up steam and head off to the locomotive barn for the night. Live steam is always an impressive sight in today's diesel-electric world.

We opted not to tempt fate by driving Odyssey on the old historic railroad grade that is part of the self-guided auto tour, but we looked at the rest of the exhibits. This is a little-visited park in a forlorn and remote place, but the monumental undertaking it commemorates changed the country forever, in ways no less significant than, say, the invention of the light bulb or the telephone, or even the industrial revolution itself.

After leaving the park, we turned north onto 83 which took us past the vast Thiokol complex. Thiokol makes rocket fuel and rocket boosters, and you may recall the name from the Challenger disaster nearly 20 years ago, as Thiokol made the Solid Rocket Boosters (SRB's) that were implicated in the explosion (to their credit, Thiokol engineers had repeatedly warned NASA not to launch in freezing conditions, a warning that went unheeded on that fateful day). Now, making rocket fuel and solid rockets is an incredibly dangerous business, so we were not surprised that the plant is under tight security and there are giant earthen bunkers everywhere. We were, however, amazed to see several of the production buildings bristling with escape slides. Imagine those tubular slides you see in the play area at McDonalds, only adult-sized and two or three stories tall. Now imagine a building forty feet high and perhaps 200 feet on a side with dozens of these slides attached to it at regular intervals, leading to the large open space around it. You could not pay me enough money to work in this building.

As we drove by, I recalled the horrific explosion at the PEPCON rocket fuel plant in Henderson, NV which has been the subject of several of my beloved disaster-reconstruction TV programs. Given how bad things can be, every split second counts, and escape slides make perfect sense. I have just never seen this before. We're sorry now that we did not have the camera at the ready to post a photo of the more slide-endowed building here. Louise did get one in-motion shot of another building with a single slide.

A bit further up the road we pulled into the facility to visit the nice rocket and missile display they have there, with examples of perhaps 20 or 30 missiles in a park setting, including the SRB.

83 dumped us back onto I-84 north, but we were able to bail back off just south of the Idaho border and take a two-lane alternative, Utah 30 to 42 connecting with Idaho 81, which brought us all the way here. Tomorrow we will head west on US30 and Idaho 78 into Oregon.

Thiokol building with escape slide on right end.

Wow, we've had a spectacular couple of days.

After leaving Blue Mesa reservoir on the Gunnison River and the Curecanti National Recreation Area yesterday morning, we proceeded west on US 50 to the Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Monument. After climbing the considerable grade into the park at ten MPH, we were rewarded with absolutley stunning views into the canyon that many early explorers deemed impenetrable. With our binoculars, we were able to see kayakers on the river 2,000' below, and even two unoccupied kayaks involved in an earlier heli-rescue drama. It is a challenging class-V run with much portaging, apparently.

Our National Parks Pass (with Golden Eagle upgrade, natch) expired at the end of June, so we needed to buy a new one yesterday. The seasonal worker at the entrance booth and I had a long chat, since their credit card machine was unbelievably slow, a problem exacerbated by the fact that the Parks Pass and the Golden Eagle must be rung up and charged separately -- your federal government at its finest. At some point I mentioned that we were planning on stopping at Colorado National Monument, and she allowed that her brother happened to be working at that park. I also learned that she was a nursing student at U of C (or maybe that was CSU).

After leaving the Black Canyon, we continued along US50 which eventually returned to the Gunnison and followed it into Grand Junction, where it joins with the Colorado. The layout of streets in Grand Junction had us cross the Colorado twice, once just upstream and once just downstream of the junction, on our way to Colorado National Monument.

Entering our second National Monument of the day, we stopped at the entry booth to flash our brand-new Parks Pass, and who should be working the gate than none other than nursing-student-summer-ranger's brother, whom I recognized by his name tag. Small world.

This park also demanded a several-mile climb in excess of six percent, which we again did somewhere in the teens, and we still had to stop a few times for cool-downs. We now have a pretty good idea that something is not 100% correct with our cooling, and I am suspecting now a missing section of exhaust insulation blanket that stems from our work at PEDCO, coupled with a gap between the engine bay and the intake ducting for the radiators that stems from the redesign of that section at Infinity. The gap in the ducting is right next to the exhaust plumbing that is missing its blanket, and I am thinking that enough super-heated air is being sucked through this gap into the radiators to affect their performance.

The view from the rimrock drive was absolutely stunning, with red rock formations to rival some of the more famous parks in Utah. I kept expecting to see Wile E. Coyote-shaped holes in the ground next to the various balanced rocks. After stopping at many of the overlooks, we made it to the visitor center at the other end of the park just as they closed, and decided to call it a day. Conveniently, the park has its own campground perched on the rimrock, and that's where we spent the night (map).

It was still in the 80's when we stopped for the night, so we decided to run the generator for a while to get some AC going, but it absolutley refused to stay running. Between the heat in the engine bay and the high ambient temperature, the genny kept overheating and its temperature safety would shut it off. A week or so ago we were having similar problems and I rewired the cooling fan from its lowest speed setting to its second-highest setting. Next chance I get, I will switch to the highest speed, but I suspect even that will not be sufficient. A redesign of the fan ducting is probably in order. We ran one unit on batteries for a while, and an hour or so later, when the engine had cooled down and the ambient temperature had dropped, I was able to get the genny running long enough to replenish the batteries for the night. This last few weeks has really proven to be a good hot-weather test of Odyssey's systems, and a key finding has been that the generator installation is marginal in precisely the circumstance under which it is most needed.

After leaving Colorado NM this morning, descending another steep grade and transiting two tunnels right out of a Road Runner cartoon (the exact kind that a giant bus comes out of, right after the tunnel has been merely painted on the side of the rock), we crossed the river again and headed north on Colorado 139, joining up with US40 in Dinosaur, CO. US 40 brought us into Utah, and a brief detour from that route took us to Dinosaur National Monument, our third park in two days. At this rate, we will have recouped our annual park pass investment before another week goes by.

Dinosaur NM is a park that encompasses some of the most prolific excavation sites of dinosaur fossils in the world. Many nearly complete skeletons have been excavated here and are on exhibit in natural history museums around the world.

As part of the preservation of the history of the site, the park service has erected an exhibit building on top of one of the fossil quarrys, and painstakingly excavated a collection of fossils half way. That is to say, the fossilized bones are still embedded in the surrounding rock, just as they were found and as they have been preserved for a hundred million years, but they have been "relieved" or partially uncovered from the rock to be clearly visible to visitors. It is really quite impressive, and must be seen to be appreciated.

The green river runs through the monument, and a nice campgound accompanies the spot where outfitters put in and take out rafting trips on the river.

We continued on US40 into Vernal, then turned north on US191, for yet another 3000', 6% climb to Flaming Gorge National Recreation Area. We made a six mile detour east to have a look at the dam and stop in the visitor center (including, you guessed it, another 6% grade) before continuing west on Utah 44 to land here, at Greens Lake campground (map).

We first tried to get in to two other forest service campgrounds on this same side road, but a little closer to the gorge. However, this being a holiday weekend, they were already full. We counted ourselves lucky to get one of the last two or three sites here, and it's actually quite a nice spot. As a bonus, we were able to walk to nearby Red Canyon Lodge for dinner, which was actually quite good.

Tomorrow we will continue west, and intersect I-80 in Wyoming.

Balancing Rock, Colorado National Monument. Wiley Coyote took the photo.

You know you've watched too many Road Runner cartoons when you worry that the tunnel is merely painted on the rock wall...

Sean contemplates the REAL Kokopelli at Canyon Pintado. These pictographs are almost 2000 years old.

Sunset at Flaming Gorge National Recreation Area. The low thunderclouds made the sunset look like a forest fire.

We are finally out of the oppressive heat, and it feels great.

Our nice little spot at the fairgrounds in Childress turned into something of a nightmare after I last posted. Everything was running along smoothly until another coach pulled in and plugged in at the site next to us. After that, no matter what I tried, I could not get the inverter to stay on line. Between the two coaches and some pretty crappy wiring in the park, the voltage kept dropping below 80 (the lowest allowable input setting on the inverter). Our inverter would drop off the line and begin inverting, the voltage would come back up, we'd go back on line, and the cycle would start all over again.

I finally had to go out and re-wire the transfer switch to allow us to run one air conditioner by bypassing the inverter. Then, by turning the inverter's input amperage setting down to 2 amps, I was able to stop it from cycling. We didn't get any battery charging, but at least we stayed comfortable for the night.

Ironically, one of the park maintenance guys came over to us in the morning and asked if we had electrical problems during our stay. Apparently, they had just become aware of it the day before.

I had already had a miserable night, with running out several times to deal with the electricity (I finally rewired the ATS at 2:00 in the morning), and just to round out my misery, I hit a post while backing out of the space in the morning. It was a very low wooden post marking the space, and I could not see it either in my mirror or out my window. When I started my turn -- crunch. I just clipped the right front corner, which, of course, means I knocked the corner trim and headlight assembly off again, this time bending some of the mounts.

We managed to get the trim re-secured, but the bent mount had it offset too far from the center of the coach, and the center cover would not stay on. So we had to remove the trim and, with a Gorilla Bar and an engineer hammer, I was able to get the mounts more or less back where they belonged. We put the trim back on, and now the only visible evidence is a big white scrape in the wrap-around trim under the windshield. We will probably touch that up with a rattle can before our next rally. Nevertheless, the whole episode put me in a black mood for most of the morning.

We made a fuel stop in Amarillo and put 300 gallons in, since it was the cheapest diesel we will see for the forseeable future, at $2.23 a gallon. Then we blew out of Texas and into New Mexico on US87.

Drivers in Texas have an annoying habit (and expectation) of driving on the shoulder to allow passing. These rural roads in Texas are all posted 70 or 75 during the day (they have a separate night limit of 65), and we were driving between 55 and 60. I'm sorry, but I just can't bring myself to pilot 45,000 pounds of coach onto the shoulder at that speed, especially on wide open road with well-marked passing zones. I mean, c'mon, people, drivers in other states can manage to pull into the opposing lane long enough to pass -- are Texans really such bad drivers they can't manage this simple task? The other hair-raising situation this creates is the occasional driver passing when the opposing lane is not clear. The expectation, apparently, is that both the passee and the opposing driver will move onto the shoulders, thus allowing the passer to drive right down the center of the road. At a closing speed of 140-150 mph!

New Mexico, apparently fed up with Texans driving the Texas way into their state, has endowed their shoulders with hefty rumble strips, and giant signs every couple of miles announce "Do Not Drive on Shoulder." It was a great relief to us to be back where normal traffic laws are in effect, and we no longer had to clench our butt cheeks or endure angry glares every time we were passed.

The more relaxed driving put me in a much better mood, and we had a nice afternoon visit at Capulin Volcano National Monument, photos of which Louise has already posted. We were planning to spend the night while still in this little corner of New Mexico, and we had a look at a park just outside of Raton. It was already full, a harbinger of things to come during the July Fourth weekend, and we pressed on into Colorado. Just as well, because we ended up in a very nice spot on Trinidad Lake (map), a Corps of Engineers project with a nice state park.

By this point, the heat of the plains was behind us and temperatures were fairly pleasant. Nevertheless, we paid the $4 upcharge and asked for a space with electricity, just to top off the batteries, make hot water, and run one of the airs for a little while. Got parked and discovered that all the power at this park is GFI -- the pedestals are 30amp/20amp combos, and they have GFI breakers on both receptacles. GFI power is unusable for us, since our inverter always trips them, so we changed to a dry site. One of these days, I've got to find myself a 1:1 transformer and build an adapter to allow us to use GFI power.

Yesterday we had a lovely drive up Colorado 69, cutting diagonally from I-25 to US50. This is a true back-country road, with little traffic and gorgeous panoramas. It is also a fairly steady climb of about 2,000'. Once on US50 we headed west to Salida, where we stopped for a nice lunch and maybe a swim in the local hot springs. The hot springs turned out to be jam-packed, so we opted to skip it.

From Salida, we started north on US285, expecting to take Colorado 82 into Aspen and then on to only a brief section of I-70. As we headed north, Louise took out the mountain directory to see what grades we were facing on this route. That's when we discovered that 82 had a strict 35' vehicle length limit. Not wanting to take Colorado 24 all the way to I-70, only to have to do 100 miles on the interstate, we turned around and backtracked five miles to US50 and headed west to Monarch pass.

US50 rises to 11,000' at a steady 6% grade. Even though ambient temperatures were in the mid 70s and we took the grade at 35mph in second gear, we still had to stop three times for cool-downs after we got overtemp warnings. Also, at these altitudes, the engine works extra hard, and we blow copious amounts of black smoke. Once atop the pass, we knew we would need to stop for a good 15 minutes or so to get the coolant down below 180. We would need all the cooling we could get for the retarder on the downgrade. What better excuse to stop at the cheesy gift shop and take the 20 minute scenic tram ride?

After the challenging downgrade and another hour or so of driving, we were definitely ready to stop for the day, and we landed here, at Stevens campground in the Curecanti National Recreation Area (map), where we have a nice view of the Blue Mesa Reservoir. Now that we are back in the cool, and night temps drop into "chilly," all our cold weather problems are back with us -- coolant leaks, and so much air leaking down that it overwhelms our brave little compressor. Can't win.

Today we will visit the Black Canyon of the Gunnison and Colorado National Monument. We are bracing for a real challenge finding camping tonight and the rest of the holiday weekend.