Big day today. Yesterday we saw antelope; today the buffalo made an appearance. Almost half of this herd were lighter brown new calves.

We climbed very, very slowly to the top of Monarch Pass, 11,312 ft. This is the highest Odyssey has ever been! In the background is the tourist tram to the very top of the mountain, over 12,000 ft.

The view back down the mountain from inside the tram. Odyssey is the larger white rectangle in the center of the photo.

Opal rode the tram with us. We were thrilled, but she was a bit nervous.

Once at the top, Opal put her toes on the Continental Divide. We are inside the observation tower. There is a very windy balcony around the outside of this room.

Our campsite at Stevens Campground, Curecanti National Recreational Area.

Our visit to Capulin Volcano National Monument. We see the mountain from miles away, across a field of yellow flowers. We also see antelope, but small mobile beasties don't photo as well through the windshield as large stationary cinder cones.

We drive two miles to the top of the volcano and park in our personalized space.

We look over the edge of the caldera at the surrounding countryside.

We take a photo of Odyssey from the top.

We camp at Trinidad Lake in Colorado another hour or so up the road.

Whew. We are pretty wiped out.

General Assembly is over. We had a great time, and got a lot out of it, but the schedule had us on the run the whole time. Louise more so than myself -- I finally made time to fix the bay door (although one of the replacement joints fell apart in my hand while I was installing it, so I put the other one in, and we are crossing our fingers until we're in Sumner).

It's hard to list the high points of such a full conference here, so I won't even try. A couple of things stand out in my mind, though. One was the music, starting with folk music legend and fellow UU Pete Seeger on opening night. Pete's voice is pretty much gone now, but he still led us in a rousing rendition of Turn, Turn, Turn which brought down the house, and made me tear up. Also, there is a brand new hymnal out, and many of the musicians who performed and/or led songs at the conference have pieces in the new book, which they peformed here for the largest audiences to date. The music was very upbeat and moving. And, lastly, the combo that accompanied much of the music, consisting of piano, bass, guitar, drums (trap), percussion (latin/african) and sax/flute, was really, really hot. More so considering they came together from across the country and had little time to practice together.

The other thing that stood out, for me, was the incredible dedication of so many people to justice in the world at large. There are too many examples of this to go into detail, but let me say that I am leaving the conference with a renewed commitment to standing up for equal rights for all people, in whatever small way that I can.

Closing ceremonies were last night, and Louise sang in the choir. They were great, again especially considering that they had exactly four rehearsals in which to get the entire program together. The closing ran to 9:20, so we missed the 9:15 bus and had to take the 10:15, making it that much harder to get up this morning.

We caught up with quite a few people that we know, and met a few new friends as well. Definitely an uplifting experience, and we are already thinking about attending next year's conference in Saint Louis.

We did the whole holding tank drill this morning, packed everything up, and bailed out of cowtown on US 287. Tonight we are in Childress, TX (map), after fuel and grocery stops in Wichita Falls. We are at the fair grounds, where they have five camp sites with 30 amp service, cost $10.00 (Texas, I must say, has been the most welcoming place in this regard). They also have a pool ($2 per person) but it closed half an hour before we arrived. Oh well.

Tomorrow we will fill our fuel tank in Amarillo (the cheapest diesel we will see from here to the west coast), and cross into the very northeastern corner of New Mexico.

Big update today, since I have not posted since Tuesday morning.

Which brings me to my first point: frequency of updates. I have to mention here that, actually, I have surprised myself with how frequently I have been posting updates here. Part of my motivation is that I want to write things down while they are still fresh in my mind, and all the positive feedback we have gotten on the blog has reinforced the behavior. Also, we are using the blog ourselves as a sort of tracking mechanism, where we can go back to the appropriate blog entry and click on the "map" link to remember where we were on any given date (you would be surprised how jumbled-up it all gets in one's mind after a month or so, especially when changing locale on a daily basis). That means keeping current with the map links, and those need to be either posted or otherwise saved in near-real-time or I have no way to retrieve them.

All that being said, I want to remind all our readers that my original goal for this blog was to post perhaps every week or so, or maybe just when we changed venue in some significant way. At the outset, neither of us thought we would feel motivated to chronicle our journey on anything close to a daily basis. I bring this up because we have gotten some feedback of the "where are you and why haven't you posted" kind lately. And, of course, while now is not really one of those times, I am anticipating some days when we just will not feel like being found, or informing the entire world of our travails. So it's best to get this out on the table now: we enjoy keeping everyone informed, and we are pleased so many people are following along, but please, folks, relax and just enjoy it as it comes -- if it starts to feel like a burden to post here on some kind of deadline, I'm certain that I will lose interest in doing it at all.

There. I said it, and I feel better already.

Moving on, and in keeping with my trend here thus far, let me pick up where I left off Tuesday morning. You may recall that we spent Monday night at Mineral Wells State Park, which was one of our nicest stops in recent memory. Tuesday brought us all the way to Fort Worth, and our first order of business was to check out the small commercial RV park we had booked for Wednesday, since our experience with urban locations leads us to be cautious. The park was small but well kept, and the neighborhood appeared to be fine. While there are few amenities, the sites have 50 amp service and several are large and unobstructed. We decided it would be fine for our purposes, but no need to check in a full day earlier than necessary.

We opted instead to check out the Arlington Elks lodge, since the directory said it had a pool. Unfortunately, the one location where the lodge had power was inaccessible to us, and we had to fall back to plan B. That brought us to Grapevine Lake and the Silver Lake Park (map). Louise posted a photo of our site there on Tuesday. The folks at the gate took one look at Odyssey and put us in the group pavilion site, since it was unoccupied. We could easily have fit in one of the regular sites, but I didn't argue because (a) the group pavilion was quiet and isolated on its own little peninsula and (b) it had not one but four 30-amp pedestals, thus I was able to use my "cheater" cord to double up the power so we could run two A/C's and still get hot water.

Grapevine lake is a Corps of Engineers project, and the CoE built this campground along with several others around the lake. At some point, this one was turned over to operation by the city of Grapevine, which is doing a great job with it.

We even swam in the lake, which was quite warm, though a bit muddy on the bottom. At some point, I noticed that the pilings for the marina across our little arm of the lake rose quite a bit higher than our camp site, which I thought was odd. Turns out, a good bit of the campground, power outlets and all, is inundated when the lake is full. Have a look at this Google aerial view. That thing that looks like a roof right in the center of the photo is our camp site, and specifically it is the roof of the pavilion ramada.

Wednesday morning we drove over to Buddy Gregg Motorhomes to see if we could get an appraisal on Odyssey for our insurance. Pretty much the entire sales staff came out to see it, but no one would commit to a reasonable appraisal on it. Harumph. Interesting to note, though, that even surrounded by dozens of brand new, million-dollar-plus bus conversions, Odyssey attracted attention from most of the staff and all of the customers on the lot. Our experience at Buddy Gregg is just another chapter in the ongoing insurance saga -- one of the serious shortcomings of owning a one-of-a-kind vehicle.

We finally checked in to the Fort Worth Midtown RV Park (map) Wednesday afternoon, and settled in for our conference.

We are attending the 2005 General Assembly of the Unitarian Universalist Association, just a few blocks from here at the Fort Worth Convention Center. This is essentially the annual meeting of the church, with delegates from all the congregations nationwide. We have been to one General Assembly previously, when Louise was a delegate for our congregation in Palo Alto, California. Now that we live full time on the road, we no longer belong to a bricks-and-mortar congregation (and isn't that such an internet-era expression?) and instead belong to the Church of the Larger Fellowship (CLF), which is a kind of cyber-congregation (even though it pre-dates that concept). CLF really exists to serve those UU's who are isolated from a regular congregation, usually by distance, and most have fixed residences. It is a perfect fit for us, of course, though we are still a bit unusual even by CLF standards.

I mention all of this because Louise is once again a delegate to the assembly, and, as an official representative of CLF, is journaling her conference activities. This also means that she has to attend all the plenary sessions at oh-dark-early or whenever (she's at one now, even as I type), whereas I get to sleep in, and just go to the sessions that I find interesting. And the cocktail parties, of course. Her other blog is the one getting all of the update attention while we are here, and that will continue until the conference is over Monday night.

As it stands right now, we are planning on packing up and heading out sometime on Tuesday. We will have just about a week to make it to Rickreall, Oregon for Bus'n'USA, so we will be taking the more-or-less most direct route, which will take us into the Texas panhandle and through Amarillo.

I will end this post with another problem-du-jour Odyssey anecdote. The last thing we did at Mineral Wells was dump our tanks, in case we ended up spending a week in Fort Worth in some parking lot. I pulled up to the dump station and opened the large pantograph bay door enclosing the tanks, and the door came right off in my hand. Sort of. Actually, one side of the pantograph hinge was intact, and the other side disengaged, and the door fell off to the point where the wiring for the turn signal and marker light, which just happen to be mounted to the door, caught most of the weight on that side. Of course, I couldn't let go of the door or the wires would snap and the weight of the door would pretzel the other side of the pantograph. So I screamed. It took several screams before Louise understood I was in trouble and came out to help, and between the two of us we managed to get the door precariously balanced back in the pantograph. We found a way to temporarily secure the whole mess with a C-clamp.

It turns out that the nylon socket for the ball-and-socket joint on the end of the pantograph simply disintegrated from age. Likely the other three similar items are close to doing the same. Wednesday morning I called Infinity Coach to see if, perhaps, they still had the other two pantographs, which had been removed from what are now the drop-down ramp doors for the motorcycle bay. Thursday morning they called to say they had found the pantographs, all of which have similarly deteriorated nylon inserts, and they overnighted the ball-and-socket ends to us. Sometime before we leave here I will replace the broken end with one of the spares, and Infinity will replace the whole lot of them with new items when we are there next month.

Our site on Silver Lake. Going swimming now!

Sean swims under a rising moon. Lake Mineral Wells was warm, quiet, and deserted. Perfect!

Well, I was going to post something last night, but a giant storm over the Hughes NOC in Virginia had us off-line all evening.

The pictures Louise posted below are of the KOA (ugh) in Abilene, TX (also ugh, but here's the map). You may recall that the vet in Andrews was going to refer us to a clinic in Dallas for Opal to have a myelogram. He was going to make calls on Monday for a Tuesday appointment. So Sunday morning we headed due east to Big Spring, fueled up, and then blasted up I-20 to Abilene, planning on blasting the rest of the way to Dallas on Monday.

There are not many camping options along I-20, and the choices are more limited if one requires power. Abilene had two AAA-rated campgrounds, and, believe it or not, the KOA was the nicer of the two. We also needed groceries, so we ended up driving around Abilene for twenty minutes looking for a store. The city is physically huge, sprawling for several miles in all directions, yet we had great difficulty finding a supermarket. We finally ended up shopping at a Wal-Mart, and having dinner at the nearby Olive Garden. Outside of this one little district, the city seems to be defunct, with oodles of boarded-up storefronts. Of course, it's hard to assess any town in the bible belt on a Sunday, since the sidewalks stay rolled up.

We settled in at the KOA, since they had 50 amp service and a pool. Although, in hindsight, we could have run our genny the whole time we were in Abilene for less than we spent at KOA, and we probably would have had essentially the same experience.

Monday morning, the dog had recovered even further. She was going up and down the stairs without much trouble, was more alert, and was returning to her old self. Around 10am I called the vet as we had previously arranged, and we discussed the situation. When we picked up her x-rays on Sunday morning, I had handed him a couple of articles I plucked from the internet on Metronidazole Toxicosis, and on Monday morning he was pretty much in agreement that this was the most likely diagnosis. We agreed that the recommended strategy was now continued observation and supportive therapy, and that we would hold off on a myelogram unless there was a symptomatic relapse. He allowed in any case that a clinic would be unlikely to want to proceed with the radiology given that her symptoms had mostly disappeared.

So there we were in Abilene, on I-20, just 160 miles or so from our destination of Fort Worth, where we do not have to be until Wednesday. We bailed off the interstate and headed north a bit to our originally planned route of US-180, a much more comfortable sort of road for us.

That landed us here, at Mineral Wells State Park (map), just about 50 miles west of Fort Worth. The park has 50 amp service (though there are also loops for primitive camping and 30 amp service) for $15 per night, and there is a nice lake, a small store, and some other ammenities here. The sites are wooded and have good separation -- more than twice as nice as the KOA for less than half the price. We paid $3 extra for a "premium" site, meaning it fronts the lake. Although the swimming beach is a mile away, we were able to swim right from our site, and this is the best water we've been in since Mexico. Checkout isn't until 2pm, so we will probably get another swim in before we leave here today.

As of this morning, Opal seems to have made a full recovery, so we are very relieved. Tonight we will find ourselves somewhere in the Fort Worth area, a full day early. We will not go directly to our reserved campground, since it is reputed to be a crappy little place. We chose it because it is right on a city bus route that will take us to the convention center. We don't want to ride our motorcycles in our convention duds in the heat, nor do we want to have to pay to park them, so access to transit was our main campground selection criterion.

Why we don't usually stay in commercial campgrounds...

...and why we are here tonight. 50amps of juice = comfortable temperature inside bus.

We had a very nice visit today at Carlsbad Caverns. We've been to quite a number of limestone caverns, and each is different. I have to say that Carlsbad is the largest and most impressive that we have visited to date.

We opted to forego any guided tours on this visit, and instead chose the self-guided route into the cave via the natural entrance. This route descends 750' into the cave via a winding, steep, and narrow but well-graded and paved path. Many interesting formations and other cave features can only be viewed this way.

Upon reaching the main portion of the cave after about an hour's walk, we rested briefly in the underground lunch room (really) where we had a snack. Louise opted to head back to the surface (the 750' elevator is the only choice of exit) and I continued on through the "big room," another self-guided route consisting of a loop of something over a mile, and featuring many other speleothems. Even more interesting scenery, I am told, can be seen in other rooms only accessible on various guided tours. We'll save those for a future visit on a less crowded date (in other words, not on a Saturday in the summer). Two-plus hours and over a mile (Louise) or two (Sean) of walking was plenty for our first visit.

After leaving the park, we surveyed our camping options for tonight heading east, and they are slim pickin's in this area. We had planned to head due east on US180, but there were no good overnight options along that route either in east NM or west TX. Instead we chose to divert a tad south along 176, landing in the small west Texas town of Andrews (map), principally because they have a free municipal campground here with 30 amp hookups. Apparently, the chamber of commerce is doing all it can to attract visitors here. (The camping consists of seven or so spots on an asphalt lot behind the chamber's building, each with a power pedesal and a hose bibb). Certainly the price can't be beat; they allow up to three days for free.

It turned out to be quite fortuitous that we stopped here. While we were fixing and eating dinner, we noticed Opal was having some difficulty moving around. Specifically, her whole hind quarters do not seem to be working right. She is having difficulty just walking, or even sitting or lying down, and stairs are now impossible for her. She was fine earlier today, and this came on very suddenly.

Given how hot it was today (we traveled through temps up to around 105), and how much warmer it sometimes is in her kennel than in the rest of the cockpit, which was running around 91-95 today, we immediately began checking her for signs of heat stroke. When that turned up normal, and nothing we could do for her seemed to help, we called the vet in town, who maintains an emergency on-call number. Turns out he was patching up a horse, and agreed to meet us at the clinic when he was done.

We packed everything back up in a hurry, and drove Odyssey the 20 blocks to the vet's. He arrived ten minutes or so after us, and brought Opal in for an exam.

An hour, two x-rays, and $140 later, we had only a diagnosis of some neurological problem originating possibly in the spinal cord somewhere below the cervix but above the sacrum. He gave her a steroid shot, and us some more pills to continue giving her for a few days, and said he would make some calls on Monday and refer us to a hospital in DFW that could do further diagnosis on the spine, involving dye injection and other techniques for which a country vet is unequipped. And oh, by the way, there is a very remote chance that this is a side effect of Metronidazole, which we have been giving her for the last two weeks to treat her colitis.

Well, after leaving the vet and getting squared back away again here at the chamber of commerce, we began investigating this on the internet. We are now relatively convinced that this is the effect of Metronidazole toxicosis -- the symptoms are a good match, and the spinal tissue explanation is suspect because she is experiencing no pain, and there has been no trauma at all that would explain the sudden onset. We can't rule out a spinal origin, of course, but we are seeking to treat the toxicosis possibility first.

Of course we have discontinued the Metronidazole, but case studies show that it may take several weeks to effect recovery once the medication is stopped. It is said that administration of Diazepam can speed this process tremendously, and we may ask a vet about that option.

We have our fingers crossed that the effects of the toxicosis (or whatever it turns out to be) are completely reversible.

The vet is closed tomorrow, but he could not give us the x-ray films until they dry, so we are meeting him at 9:30 at his office to pick them up. I will ask about the diazepam then. We will also continue to pursue the spinal assesment as well, so we will blast over to DFW on I-20 to be there for a possible Tuesday clinic visit.

Opal always rides in her kennel behind the driver's seat, and lies at our feet when we are upstairs. Since we are always in new areas, she never goes outside the coach without being leashed.

We are at Brantley Lake State Park near Carlsbad, NM (map). The weather forecast says it will get to 107 today. Ugh.

New Mexico has a great state park system. We chose this place to stop last night because they have electric hookups here, which is a great deal at $14 per night. A handful of sites even have 50a service, and we were able to snag one of those, so we've been able to run three of our four A/C's. 50 amps would normally run all four, except the breaker is outside in the heat, of course, and pulling 40 amps on one side trips the breaker thermally after 20 minutes or so.

We had a nice drive yesterday across US 70 and US 82, visiting White Sands Missile Range and White Sands National Monument. We also drove past Holloman AFB, and spotted an F-117 stealth fighter taking off.

Highway 82 from Alamagordo to Cloudcroft is a continuous 16 mile 6% grade, climbing 4300 feet. At nearly 100 degrees at the bottom, we had to work our way up slowly, keeping the revs down and the power level around 50%. Even so, we got overtemp alarms three times and had to pull over and let the system cool down. It was a good test, though.

Today we will visit Carlsbad Caverns, then head east to Texas.

Odyssey at White Sands National Monument. It was way too hot to use the George Jetson picnic ramada, although Sean and Opal climbed the closest dune.

A boy and his dog.

Opal in super stealth mode. White dog. White sands.

We had a nice visit with our friends Alfred and Linda in Tucson, which was the purpose of our stop there. As it happens, we also had some dinnerware sent to us in care of them, way back when we thought they were a logical next step from Phoenix, where we had stopped to fly to Mexico. Oh well.

In any case, we now have our new dinnerware, which is a replica of the Santa Fe dining car dinnerware from back in the day, known as Mimbreño. The originals were designed by Mary Colter, the famed architect of many Santa Fe (later Fred Harvey) facilities in what are now the national parks of the west. Specialty china fabricator Pipestone has licensed the original patterns and makes the china today, essentially identical to that used on the Super Chief and other famous Santa Fe trains. We originally fell in love with these items at the California State Railroad Museum, and again at El Tovar in Grand Canyon National Park. We finally caved in and just ordered the pieces we needed on line. We ended up with four each of the "buffet" plates (a tad larger than the "dinner" plate, and also with a more interesting design), "cereal" bowls, salad plates, and mugs. If you get a chance to dine aboard Odyssey, you may even have the sense that you are on one of those old trains...

I neglected to mention in my last post that part of the reason we stopped at Beaudry was the fact that the off-season summer rate there is $14.95 per night. On the drive today I did some quick mental calculations, and determined that we used something like 225 KWh of electricity during our stay there. At a typical rate of around $0.10 per Kilowatt-Hour, we used nearly $22.50 of power, while our stay cost us a grand total of around $32 (with tax). Considering we also dumped and filled, this is an unbeatable deal. The park operation is, of course, subsidized by the dealership, which needs the park open for customers, and incremental visitors such as ourselves serve to offset those operational costs, so everybody wins.

Today we blasted across I-10 (well, OK, the limit is 75 and we drove 60, so maybe blasted is not the right verb), since we are heading to White Sands and there is really no other decent route. Tonight we are in Las Cruces, at the Elks Lodge here (map).

We had actually intended to stay at a nice state park about 15 miles north of here, as they have electric hookups and are nicely situated on the Rio Grande. However, we took another rock hit to our windshield about 100 miles west of here. We did not notice any damage immediately after we heard the strike, but we found a chip with a 1" star around it at our fuel stop just west of town. We decided to stay in town tonight so that we can get the chip patched, at least as much as possible, first thing in the morning. We have our fingers crossed that this one does not spread -- we're not looking forward to another $3,000 windshield replacement, and we know the next glass has to come from Germany on a lead of at least three months.

The Elks lodge here has 30-amp electric hookups, and a cocktail for each of us in the bar was included in our $15 camping "donation." On top of all that, Lupè the bartender just happened to know someone that did on-site windshield repair, so we will give that person a try tomorrow morning. Our fall-back is Speedy Glass, but that's the outfit that screwed up our upper window installation in the first place, and I'd rather not give them any more business if I can avoid it.

On the plus side of the ledger, I opened up the fan junction box for the genny last night, and switched the four-speed fan from its lowest setting to the second-highest setting. That seems to have made a difference, and we were able to keep it running today for a half-hour test while driving in 98 degree temps. It did run its temp gauge up to 210, though, so I will try the highest speed setting next chance I get, to see if we can get it down closer to 200. Ultimately I will install a switch, so we can use the high-speed setting for driving in hot weather, and a lower setting for quieter campground parking in cooler temps.

Tomorrow, after the glass repair, we will drive through White Sands missile range, with a stop at White Sands National Monument, on our way to Carlsbad Caverns.

Our site at Beaudry RV in Tucson. Although the landscape is spartan, each site does include a wrought iron table and four chairs. The sites are generous, too: ours stretches from the street behind Odyssey through the red colored gravel. Most of our "neighbors" are inventory for nearby Beaudry RV Sales, and so are very clean and quiet. At $15 per night for full hookups, nice swimming pool, and clean laundry facilities, this is a pretty good place to be, if you have to be RVing in Tucson in the summer.

They say you can calculate the ambient temperature knowing only the length of the cat. George is stretched out to 36". What is the temperature?

It is unbelievably hot in the southern part of Arizona right now. Knowing this, we stopped last night just short of the Mongollon Rim, the sharp elevation change that marks the edge of the Colorado Plateau and separates Arizona's northern highlands from the Sonoran desert to the south.

Louise has already posted a photo of the nice forest service campground we found, just a few miles off our route, called Rock Crossing, near the Blue Ridge reservoir (map). By chance, it had only opened a few days earlier after a two-season closure for renovations, and those renovations were definitely in evidence throughout the campground.

Before we drove up to this spot, we first stopped in to another forest service campground just off our route, called Clint's Well. Driving in, we noticed a sign warning us that there was no turn-around for rigs longer than 22'. No problem, we thought, the whole campground is only a dozen or so sites, so how bad could it be to just back out if we needed to?

We passed the camp host on our way in, who took no notice of us whatsoever. However, about two sites down the road, some old codger came running at us with an angry look on his face, gesturing wildly. Now, mind you, this is just some random camper. So we popped the door to talk, and he commenced screaming at us about "can't you read" and "how long is this thing," and generally carrying on like he was the resident ranger or something. We finally told him that we were perfectly content to back up the whole way if we needed to, and then shut the door on him and drove on. As it turns out, there is a turn-around loop at the end of the road, and Odyssey made the loop with no trouble at all (though it was, I admit, a tight fit). So no backing was needed, and I smiled and waved at the old coot as we passed him again (pointed, of course, the other way), while he stood there with his jaw open.

What he might have told us that would have been more helpful, instead of ranting about our size, what that the campground was actually full. So we ended up leaving anyway. In hindsight, we regretted not driving around the loop several times, just for effect, and then stopping to mention to him that they put those signs there for lesser drivers and/or lesser rigs, such as him and his.

Today we blasted south to Tucson through the heat. Odyssey struggled mightily in the 100+ temps, and driving the very hilly terrain south of the rim was quite a challenge, keeping her engine from overheating on the upgrades, and her tranny from overheating on the downgrades. On top of that, we ran two air conditioners most of the way, and the heat's effect on the charging system meant that they ran off batteries more than the alternator. The genny won't stay running in this kind of heat, at least when we are moving down the road, which is another issue we will address in July at the Infinity shop.

We are now at the Beaudry RV Resort (map), which is a high-zoot campground that is attached to a giant RV dealership, Beaudry RV, which also encompasses a Camping World location. As I have mentioned many times, this sort of "camping" is not really our cup of tea. However, it's well over 100 degrees here, and we need to run all of our A/C units (even when we are away from the coach, on behalf of the pets). This place has full 50 amp hookups. It also has a pool, which felt mighty nice in the heat, and a restaurant and bar, where we will head shortly for dinner.

Within half an hour of parking, we must have had at least ten people come by to look us over, all, it seems, employees of the dealership. I'm thinking of going in there tomorrow and asking them what they have that we can trade up to.

A very different part of Arizona from yesterday. Our campsite at the Rock Crossing campground in the Coconino National Forest. We are the very first people to camp in this newly refurbished site. Note how pristine the fire ring and BBQ grill are. Immediately beyond the site, the forest drops precipitously into a canyon full of oak and pine trees.

On our way south on Hwy 89A, we drove through the Vermillion Cliffs National Monument. There are no roads into the almost 300,000 acre area, only 89A along its southern edge. What passes for a visitor's center is on Hwy 89, which was not on our route. With no place to stop along the narrow, rough 2 lane road, I had to content myself with taking photos through the windshield. It is difficult for an amateur with a digital camera going 50mph to capture the beauty of almost any landscape, and the Arizona desert proves particularly elusive. But trust me, it is gorgeous.

If you are just clicking on this post as the latest update, let me point out that I also just posted the two updates below this one, dated this morning and last night respectively. We had no satellite access at the Grand Canyon.

We are now headed south along US89, and have stopped at a forest service campground just outside of Sunset Crater National Monument (map). We skipped driving through the monument, along with nearby Wupatki, since we did both of those last year in a rental RV. We came through in April, and this campground had not yet opened for the season, so we dispersed in the forest on the other side of the crater. All the roads there consist of loose cinder material ejected from the volcano, and I suspect Odyssey would sink in irrecoverably. The sites here, however, are paved.

We had a nice stop at the historic Navajo Bridge, and decided to check out the NRA campground at Lee's Ferry, six miles upstream. We pulled in to the campground, and found a nice spot with a view of the river and a short stretch of rapids. Mere minutes after pulling in to the space, the camp host came by to tell us that we could not park head-in, we had to back in. Which, of course, would mean no view. Now this, mind you, is in a remote park service campground with perhaps 40 spaces, of which only about six or seven were occupied. On top of that, one could see all the way around the campground from any site -- yet his concern was that, if the campground filled up (on Sunday night?), we could not jockey back out of the space in such a way as to proceed the correct direction around the loop (we had entered the space through a vacant pull-through, so no wrong-way shenanigans were involved).

If, indeed, the worst came to pass (oh my!) we might have to drive the wrong way around the campground loop for, gosh, about 30 yards. In a place where there is no traffic, and complete visibility!

After being a complete jerk about our parking, he then wanted to chitchat about the bus. We were both steaming at this point, so I blew him off, and we left in a huff. It was only 3:00, and we knew there were places on the way to Flagstaff that would work for us. It would have been nice to stay at Lee's Ferry, but this kind of attitude just doesn't fly with us. It was a marked contrast to last night, when a uniformed Park Service ranger went out of his way to accommodate us.

We had a nice dinner last night at the lodge. And, even though the hike over along the rim was lovely, we were glad to be able to bum a ride back to the campground at 10:15, when the trail would be pitch black and we would have to travel by head-lamp.

The canyon was eerily beautiful in the mist, even though visibility was somewhat limited. Although things cleared up enough for us to enjoy a beautiful sunset and a lovely rainbow.

The rain has stopped, and today is shaping up to be a beautiful day. This morning we will drive over to the lodge again so we can have a look at the canyon in clearer conditions. After that, we will head back out to 89A and on to the river crossing at Navajo Bridge, just downstream of Lee's Ferry.

Bleaky day, soon turn drunk...

It has rained on us off and on today, and is raining as I type. There is also thunder and lightning, so the dog is inconsolable.

Rain normally would not bother us, but Odyssey has several leaks, and some of them are actually pretty severe. In particular, the upper windshield was installed incorrectly (by a glazing subcontrator that we long since fired) and leaks quite badly, especially while traveling. We've gooped it up twice to no avail, and the ultimate solution will be to remove the trim, gouge out as much goop as possible, and inject BetaSeal into as much of the gap as we can expose. Since Odyssey was painted after the trim was installed, we will then need to have the paint touched up. We're hoping to have all this done in July when we return to Infinity.

In spite of the rain, we had a lovely drive from our wonderful camp spot last night to the Grand Canyon, where we are now (map). We are actually in the park service campground here, which is a stark contrast to our attempt to do just that at the south rim in April. The campground here technically has a 35' length limit, and is usually fully booked months in advance. Nevertheless, we stopped at the campground on our way in to the park and, notwithstanding the giant "Campground Full" sign right in front of him, asked the ranger if there was any way he could accommodate us. After seeing Odyssey he expressed grave doubts, but agreed to look at the list. It turned out there was a space available (due to a cancellation), but his chart said it was for a 27' rig. He invited us to check it out, though, and told us that we could have it if we could fit with all our wheels on the asphalt and nothing protruding into the road.

Now, as is often the case with these government campgrounds, the spec is far from reality: the space is actually a pull-through that could easily fit 50' or so of rig. I suspect that the lengths on the chart are for trailers, and they assume another 17'-20' or so of tow vehicle. We had to back into it, because a low tree precluded just pulling through, but otherwise Odyssey fit the space easily. The biggest problem we had was a handful of low branches on the loop road, but they were small and non-damaging.

You may recall that, in April, we had tried to get into the Mather campground on the south rim. We knew from experience that Odyssey could fit in many parts of this campground. Nevertheless, the rangers at Mather would cut no slack on the "max 30' motorhome" rule (even though trailer/tow vehicle rigs could be, ostensibly, any length). We're glad they are more flexible here. Also, note that it always pays to ask, even when the sign says "full."

Tonight we have dinner reservations at the Grand Canyon Lodge, which is a 1.2 mile hike from the campground.

We are at the Red Canyon campground in the Dixie national forest (map). While the sites are vey close to the road, it is very beautiful here. From our site we have a view of redrock hoodoos that rivals some of the scenery in nearby Bryce Canyon National Park. This campgound has also been recently renovated, and the sites are nicely kept.

We had been forwarned that it is very wet right now in southern Utah. Even though this campground is close to 7,000' in elevation, several of the camp sites are closed off due to flooding. The water flooding the sites appears to be seeping directly out of the canyon walls.

Our route here brought us along the Sevier river, which is a mighty current right now, and has overrun its banks in several places. We saw a few towns with some minor flooding, and the first campground we surveyed, a state park some 40 miles north of here, while open, was almost completely inundated.

We are heading south along US 89, en route to the north rim of the Grand Canyon. We made a short detour to this spot on Utah 12, which, when we traversed its length by motorcycle several years ago, we decided was the most beautiful road we have ever traveled. Proceeding east from here would take us past Bryce Canyon and through Grand Staircase-Escalante National Park and Capitol Reef National Monument, some of the most beautiful yet least visited places in the country.

Louise has never seen the North Rim, so we are heading that direction instead. From there we will head east and cross the canyon at Navajo Bridge, which will be a first for both of us. Then it's into the oven that is central and southern Arizona.

Our campsite at Red Canyon campground, with hoodoos across the road. The photo does not do justice to the vibrant colors.

An astute reader noticed that there was a stealth mammal in the MotoSat picture from yesterday's post. Can you spot the mammal in this photo? Hint: it is a rare wily Chameleon Cat blending into its natural evironment.

Odyssey at MotoSat. Arthur and Sean work topside.

Our DataStorm is fixed! Hooray!

Actually, fixed does not quite describe today's experience. It's more like we have an entirely new dish.

Arthur Wilson, the MotoSat tech support wizard who has been helping me by phone, came out to the coach this morning, and together we removed the dish from its mounting rails. We loaded it onto a waiting forklift and they whisked it into the factory. There, it was completely rebuilt. They installed new gears and motors for all three axes, a new circuit board (known as the Upper Control Board, or UCB), some new wiring, and even added the trademark blue LED's that wash the dish in blue at night. Cosmetically, they also replaced the missing "D" on the dish (we have had an "ataStorm" since we got the thing). About the only original components are the reflector, transceiver, arm, and the moving frame of the mount.

They had the whole thing ready to go by around 1:00, and we bolted it back on. Unfortunately, we had some issues with communication between the positioner down in the coach, and the UCB. Three UCB's and three hours later, all was finally working, and, with nothing more than a handshake, we were cleared to depart.

I have to say that I am impressed with MotoSat's commitment to customer service. I should note here that Arthur is apparently one of only two tech support people who are handling the entire installed base, so they are streched pretty thin. Nevertheless he remained doggedly devoted to getting us fixed and back on the road. Much of the time he was working with us, he was simultaneously handling another support call on his cell phone, which he wisely was using with a headset. Periodically he would ask for something to be done (e.g. "stow the dish") and I and whoever he had on the other end of the phone would have to figure out to which one of us he was talking ("no, no, I didn't mean for you to stow the dish -- I was talking to someone else).

In any case, we are really happy with the final resolution of this situation, and many kudos to Arthur and MotoSat for taking care of us. We will be switching our monthly service over to MotoSat in October when our one-year contract with Ground Control runs out.

One consequence of the extra three hour UCB-swapping extravaganza was that Opal had to miss her 5:15 follow-up appointment with the vet in Provo. So we called the vet and rescheduled for tomorrow morning.

We drove down to Provo (in commute traffic, bleah), had a nice dinner at Olive Garden, and proceeded to the Provo Elks lodge, which, our directory told us, has several nice RV spots with hookups, and plenty of dry camping in the parking lot. When we arrived at the lodge, however, we found it shuttered and surrounded by a construction fence. They are undertaking major renovations, and the parking lot is closed (although the lodge is operating out of a small trailer on the grounds).

So we find ourselves, tonight, parked at a Sam's Club (map), which is, conveniently, right across the street from the Elks. Another night, another parking lot.

Lest any of our erstwhile readers gets the impression that all is now well aboard Odyssey, remember that every solved problem is replaced by a new, yet-to-be-solved problem, according to Hornor's third corollary to Murphy's Law.

At some point today, Jim Pendleton, president of MotoSat, came over to chat and check on things. We got to talking about coaches (he has a 45' Newell), and I offered him a tour of Odyssey. During the walkaround portion, I detected the odor of propane when I opened the compartment.

After wrapping up the tour and our chat, I got out the spray bottle of soap solution and started hunting down the leak. It turned out to be in the worst possible place: between the regulator and the shut-off solenoid. It's location ahead of the solenoid means the only way to stop the leak is to close off the valves on both cylinders. A quick fix is out of the question -- the gas line from the regulator, through the solenoid, and beyond into the innards of the coach is all hard pipe. To tighten the leaking fitting (at the junction of a nipple and an elbow) would require removing the entire regulator assembly, which first requires removal of the sewer hose storage.

We will live with turning the tanks on and off every time we need them until we get back to Infinity in July. Some work needed to be done in this area anyway, since the sewer hose storage tube inadvertently got installed in such a way as to prevent operation of the change-over lever on the two-cylinder regulator. Of course, we did not realize this until two or three months into our voyage, when we needed to use it.

Tomorrow we will head south on US 189 toward the north rim of the Grand Canyon, just as soon as we are done at the vet.

Today we had the carpets cleaned, and they actually look pretty good for the first time in at least three months. It's amazing how quickly carpet soils in a motor coach.

Based on comments and recommendations on a variety of RV forums, we chose to have the carpets cleaned via a "dry," "chemical" process. I put both of those in quotes because the process is neither completely dry, nor a chemical reaction, as an engineer or chemist would understand that term.

As it turns out, cleaning fluid of some sort (the actual formula being proprietary) is sprayed on the carpets. The technician uses one of those strap-it-to-your-back pump spray tanks, identical to the type used by exterminators, or, for that matter, the folks who water the plants in some office buildings. After the carpet is completely coated, he goes over the carpet with a rotary floor scrubber, to which has been affixed a cotton pad that resembles a very short-napped mop.

For smaller, hard to reach areas, the technician uses a piece of equipment that looked to me to be identical to a rotary polisher that you might buy at Auto Zone to wax your car. He then uses terry rags by hand to reach the corners.

We will definitely not use this type of service again for a whole bunch of reasons:

• The process certainly picked up some of the soil. But it did not get as much as the traditional steam-cleaning apparatus gets, at least to my eye.
• The floor scrubber was a huge and clunky machine moving in a very small and delicate space. Not surprisingly, it bashed into cabinets, walls, and heater vents, and it did some (minor) damage to at least one cabinet corner. We will touch this up, but I can forsee repeated cleanings taking a heavy toll.
• The nature of a motor coach, with many irregularly shaped spaces (nooks and crannies, if you will) meant that the scrubber just did not reach everyplace. The hand process for the irregular corners was not as effective.
• The rotary nature of the scrubber imparted a "twist" to the fibers of the carpet. I imagine that this will relax out over time, and perhaps vacuuming a couple times will also help. But, again, I can forsee that repeated applications would irreparably damage the carpet.

Overall, I have the subjective impression that the process did more to move the soil around and make it even than it did to actually remove it. Objectively, the "used" scrubber pads going out of the coach were not as soiled as was the waste water from even the store-rental machine that we used when we were in New Jersey in November. I know from past experience that professional steam cleaners get even more than the rental machines.

On the plus side, they gave us the "two-room promotion" rate, and threw in the stain protectant for free, so we paid less than $30, which is less than it cost us to rent the stupid machine and buy the cleaning fluid.

Next time, we will just go with the steam-cleaning pros.

The cleaners finished just in time for us to make the 2pm checkout deadline, although we did stop at the dump station on our way out. We had previously availed ourselves of the provided water and electric hookups to top off our fresh tank and batteries.

We wanted to catch MotoSat before they closed, so we then proceeded directly here (map). After checking in with Arthur in tech support, and finding out where to park for the night, we headed out to do laundry, arriving back here just in time to meet up with some of our stalkers --oops, I mean: loyal blog readers.

Actually, fellow bus nuts Ron and Judi Walker had previously exchanged emails with us, and we had invited them to drop us a line if our paths ever crossed. It turns out they are attending a seminar in nearby Orem, and when they saw we were in Salt Lake, asked if we could get together. They were very kind to drive all the way here from Orem (about forty miles or so), in their coach no less, just to chat. On top of that, they were in class until 5 today, and have to be back at it by 8:30 tomorrow, with homework no less!

I had hoped to meet them a bit earlier, before their class started, but the situation with the dog and the carpet supervened, and we simply ran out of time.

It turns out we have a lot in common with the Walkers. We both prefer boondocking to RV parks, and they are also motorcyclists looking to put some kind of bike in one of their bays (which has a scooter in the interim). They are fairly early in their conversion of a Prevost H3-45, but are already living in their coach full-time. We spent a good deal of time discussing the boondocking-specific features of Odyssey and their plans for their own coach.

We are glad to have met them and are looking forward to seeing them again, perhaps at one of the rallies.

This is the view down our stairs, which are tiled. The pale green shape in the lower left corner is Sean's chair in the penthouse. Only moments before, Sean was sitting in the chair. If you look closely, on the bottom two stairs are the two halves of Sean's phone. Yes, Sean drop-tested his phone five feet onto tile. No, the phone did not pass the test. A moment of silence for the phone which has been literally "attached at the hip" to Sean for over five years.

We have a deck on the roof of the coach, which is accessed via a hatch above the penthouse. A folding ladder, usually stored under the couch, makes it easy to climb up. George demonstrates her climbing technique.

Getting down, however, is trickier.

You know what they say about the best laid plans, and life aboard Odyssey seems to prove that maxim on a regular basis.

While we had planned to skirt to the west of Utah lake today and not arrive in the greater Salt Lake area until sometime tomorrow morning, Opal the dog had other ideas.

Opal has been having some digestive issues lately, and we have been monitoring her closely, both her diet and her, umm, output, to see if it was just something she ate or if we needed to bring her to a vet.

Last night, things came to a head when, sometime between her last urgently needed walk around 3 am, and when we woke around 7:30, she had an "accident" in the living room. This is completely out of character for her, as she is very good about asking to be let out, and usually very fastidious. So we made the decision this morning to find a vet for her ASAP.

Louise set to work tracking down vets on the internet (though, with no cell service, she had to make a list for call-out later in the day), while I got busy cleaning the carpet. Fortunately, dog poo is water-soluble, and we had plenty of paper towels on board (though I did go through our entire reserve of three rolls). We also carry an enzymatic cleaner made specifically for pet stains, and I applied this liberally after I had removed all the material through conventional means.

So after we broke camp this morning, we headed east to I-15 via the most direct route, and made arrangements with a vet in Provo. They got us in right away, and they had an in-house lab. Her blood work was mostly normal, and the diagnosis is colitis, probably brought on by something she ingested. A couple of shots, some prescription food, and $250 dollars later, and we were again on our way, with a follow-up appointment scheduled for Thursday afternoon, after we are done at MotoSat.

Tonight we are still in Provo, on the eastern shore of Utah Lake at Utah Lake State Park (map). We'll be here until the 2pm checkout tomorrow, since we also now have a noon appointment to have the carpets professionally cleaned. Frankly, with the use it gets, the carpet was already soiled enough that we needed to do this within the next few weeks anyway, and last night's episode just cemented the decision. We have selected a company that uses a dry chemical process, to avoid getting the wood underlayment and cabinet bases soaked as the steam-cleaners are wont to do.

The park is very nice, if a bit buggy at this time of year. It's also quite empty -- there seem to be only three other rigs in the whole park. Odd, considering there were quite a few rigs at the commercial park next door, and yet this state park also has water and electric hookups at every site.

After the carpet is done, we'll head up to Salt Lake and check-in at MotoSat before they close.

After we left the lower Lehman Creek campground this morning, we headed to the park visitor center, located adjacent to the entrance for the park's central feature, Lehman Cave.

Security restrictions in the cave prohibit purses, bags, and the like -- in fact, the only items permitted are cameras, flashlights, and jackets. We wanted to take a 60-minute ranger-led cave tour, but Louise can not stand for that long, and there are no places to sit in the cave. We had quite a negotiation with the rangers to allow us to bring a folding tripod-style stool for her to sit on at the various interpretive stops along the route. After checking with a supervisor, they finally agreed to allow it as a medical necessity.

We're really glad they let us in, because the cave was spectacular. We've been in quite a few limestone caverns, but this one was easily the wettest and the most "highly decorated," as it is called, that we have ever experienced. We saw several types of cave formations we have not seen before, including "shield" formations. Unfortunately, this was also one of the most highly damaged caves we have seen, at least along the tour route. Before the cave came under the protection of the park service, souvenir hunters had broken off many stalactites, and many of the lower formations have been "handled" to the point where they are now dead.

After departing the park, we made a brief stop at the Baker Archeological Site, which is the site of an excavation of 750 year old ruins left behind by the Fremont people. While the excavation has been filled back in, the archeologists have capped the foundation walls above ground, so that one can easily see where all of the structures stood. The self-service interpretive trail guide was quite informative.

From there we once again picked up US 50 east, which in this area is colinear with US 6. 50/6 took us into Delta,UT, where 6 peeled off to the north. We continued a short way on 50 to Utah 125, which took us into Oak City and the turnoff to a forest road leading into Oak Canyon. We are now at the Oak Creek forest service campground in the Fishlake national forest (map).

This is a primitive campground, and the loop road is narrow with low-hanging trees. While we were scoping the area on foot, carrying our trusty tape measure, we ran into the camp host, who told us it would be no problem for us to park in the group area. There are four nice group sites here, and, it being mid-week, they are not in use. So we are parked at Group Site 1, adjacent to Oak Creek, which is a raging torrent at the moment. Come to think of it, I neglected to mention that Lehman Creek (last night) was also a raging torrent, having overrun its banks in the campground area in several places. This has been a very, very wet season.

We are within a day's striking distance of Salt Lake, but MotoSat can't get us in until Thursday. So we will head north from here, staying west of Utah lake, and circle around the hills to the west of the city. That should keep us far from the madding crowd for another day, and we will head in to the metro area on Wednesday.

Angel studies her world.

Lower Lehman Creek campground, with Wheeler Peak in the background.

We are at Great Basin National Park, off US 50 on the eastern edge of Nevada (map).

We had a wonderful drive through the great expanse of eastern Nevada today, crossing several mountain ranges. (Nevada, it turns out, has more mountain ranges than any other state.) We passed through the quaint town of Eureka, and the relatively large town of Ely, which owes its existence to being at the junction of US 50, US 93, and US 6.

US 50 follows, for the most part, the route of the old Lincoln Highway, and the various towns along its route grew up with the great road. At many places along our route today, we could see the remains of an older road grade. Presumably an older alignment of US 50, but one can easily imagine that parts of this old abandoned grade are the very same alignment of the original Lincoln.

We picked up US 50 yesterday, about 40 miles outside of Reno, in the military town of Fallon. We ended the day just east of the old town of Austin, at a free forest service campground on Bob Scott Summit (map).

I had intended to post here last night, but, frankly, I was too upset. I ruminated about something most of last night and all of today, and, as seems to be common in blogs lately, I'm going to use this space to vent about it.

There was a good bit of sturm und drang around Odyssey last night, all on account of an anonymous comment posted to our site. What was posted was a question which, in and of itself, was reasonable. While we don't feel the need to justify ourselves and our lives to anyone, the question was raised here in a public place, and, because we have hundreds of regular readers (really!) I'd like to answer it, in the interests of completeness.

What bothered us about it, though, was the fact that it was posted "anonymously." (Of course, the internet is not an anonymous medium -- you leave tracks everywhere you surf. Virtually all internet sites track their visitors in some way or other, and ours is no exception. The companies that provide our web sites and the software that runs them actually supply us with fairly detailed reports. So we have a good idea, for example, when any of our three sets of parents is checking up on us, or maybe those people we met in Jamaica -- even though "what happens in Jamaica, stays in Jamaica, mon.")

Louise was so upset by this that she has disabled anonymous comments. We realize that this means some of our readers will have to make more of an effort to communicate with us -- Blogspot will now require registration before you can post a comment here, or you can always email us at the addresses listed on our main site. We welcome any and all comments, including those posted directly on the site, so please don't think we are trying to exclude anyone (well, OK, there have been a couple of hate-mail anonymous comments at times, and those folks can consider themselves excluded), we would just like to see a little about you, since you already know so much about us.

The question that was asked, for anyone still following this diatribe, was, to paraphrase, "why are you going to Salt Lake to have your satellite dish fixed instead of back to PEDCO for a follow-up on the engine work?"

There are many, many factors that went into this decision, which was the subject of a great deal of discussion. I will list them, in no particular order:

• The visit to PEDCO (along with the diagnostic work done at Williams) took a huge bite out of our schedule -- three full weeks. Sixteen full days in the shop, plus four travel days. That's over and above the expense of both visits, 150+ gallons of diesel fuel, camping fees, etc.. We really, really needed to get back on schedule, and a return visit to PEDCO would have to be well-justified to warrant another three days and 400 miles.
• The in-frame was complete five full days before we left PEDCO. In those five days we ran the motor for several hours, including a dyno run and over 100 miles of test drives. So it's not like we just drove away after the in-frame -- the PEDCO folks had several opportunities to catch anything that might have gone wrong with the in-frame.
• The satellite dish broke down unexpectedly after we left. PEDCO would have been an easy stop-over on our way to Tucson (our next planned stop), but it is definitely not on the way to Salt Lake. There was no "good" way to route PEDCO, Salt Lake, and Tucson on the same leg.
• Our satellite dish is not some kind of toy or luxury item. It is our lifeline to the world. As I type this, for example, we are completely out of cell phone coverage (as we often are). In many remote locations, the dish may be our only way of summoning help if we need it. Beyond that, it's how we pay our bills, track our finances, manage our affairs, get our news, and communicate with our friends and loved ones. It is one of the few completely non-redundant systems aboard Odyssey, and, if it goes completely off-line, we are in a real fix. We have been able to get it on line sucessfully through manual intervention thus far, but the broken azimuth gear threatens a complete failure at any moment.
• The guys at PEDCO were great, and we would (and will) go back there in a heartbeat when we need their services. But, frankly, only issues of a certain magnitude can induce us to go to LA. Otherwise, we avoid the LA area at almost all costs.
• We trust the PEDCO people to have done a good job. They gave us the list of things to be looking for in the first several hundred miles, and we have confidence that, absent any symptoms, the job was done completely and correctly.
• Finally, we always have the option of diverting back to PEDCO should the need arise. We will reevaluate our situation after our dish is repaired, and before we set out for Tucson. If there is any cause for concern, we can delete or delay our Tucson visit in favor of a return to LA, or even a shop in Salt Lake, as required.

More things came up, but those were the major factors. And here we are, en-route to Salt Lake.

Another gorgeous Forest Service campground. This one, the Bob Scott in the Toiyabe Nat'l Forest, is free.

We had a nice visit yesterday with two different sets of friends here in Reno/Sparks. For no reason other than that it was convenient (and free), we spent the night in the parking lot of the Reno Hilton (map).

The Hilton is one of the largest casino hotels in Reno, but it is several miles from the downtown "strip" (Viginia Street), and has a large expanse of parking surrounding the hotel. There is also a commercial, full-hookup campground on the property, which is now operated by KOA. Boondocking rigs use the far reaches of the northwest parking lot.

The hotel also has five restaurants, a shopping mall, and a bowling alley, though we have not availed ourselves of those services on this visit.

This afternoon we will head out of town and make our way to US 50.

When we spoke to the MotoSat people yesterday, it turns out that the earliest they can get us in for repairs is Thursday morning. So we have a full five days to make our way to Salt Lake, a distance of only about 600 miles. We'll probably take two days to cross Nevada, then have some time to play in the hills southwest of Salt Lake before we settle in at MotoSat Wednesday night.

We're in the high Sierras, just over Donner pass, near Truckee. We found a nice little forest service campground just off state route 89, a bit over a mile from I-80 (map).

Our camp site is right on the Truckee river, which is running pretty high right now. It's a beautiful spot, even though it is right along the highway. We're under a lovely canopy of connifers, which has the unwanted side effect of obstructing our satellite access, so I am posting tonight to a file for upload tomorrow sometime.

We had originally planned to be in Reno this afternoon, where we will visit some friends. We were waylaid by a lengthy grocery stop, an unexpected but much needed stop at a Camping World, and lunch at a nice sit-down place, all in Rocklin. By the time we were cresting the summit, it was well past 5, and we decided that the forests around Truckee would be a much more pleasant place to stop than some parking lot in Reno.

We'll spend tomorrow night in Reno after our visit, and head east on Saturday. Looks like we will be at the MotoSat plant in Salt Lake either Monday or Tuesday.

Coming up the west side of Donner Pass, Odyssey felt like her old self again, and it's really nice to have full power, and confidence in the engine.

Our campsite next to the Truckee river. This is the Granite Flat campground in the Tahoe National Forest. No satellite coverage here in the trees. We had a lovely evening here, complete with roaring campfire.

Right after we arrived, a neighbor told us about a bear sighting across the river. We walked about 100 yards upstream and watched a black bear browsing in the greenery. The river rushing past made us feel pretty safe, although the bear could have easily waded across. We also saw chipmunks and blue jays in the piney woods.

We're at Dos Reis county park, on the Sacramento river (map).

We had a nice family visit in the bay area, and pulled out late yesterday afternoon. We then made a brief stop at Les Schwab in Livermore to have a couple of low tires topped off. By the time we got back onto the highway, we were in the thick of the afternoon commute. This park, which is off I-5 just north of where 205 comes in, was in a handy spot when we were ready to stop.

Interestingly, the park is not in any of our directories, nor is there a sign on the freeway. I remembered it from having stayed here many years ago on my way to a motorcycle rally, but when I suggested it as a good stopping point, Louise wouldn't believe it even existed, with no evidence in either the directories or the maps. Once we got here, though, it turned out to be better than I remembered it. I'll let the photos that Louise took, below, speak for themselves.

We are heading east, over the Sierra Nevada range and into Reno. We'll then pick up US-50, which will take us all the way to Salt Lake, where we will have the satellite dish repaired. This stretch of US-50 is billed as "the loneliest highway in America" (it isn't really, though -- we've done it more than once on our motorcycles, and we've found many other roads to be more deserted than 50) and we are looking forward to getting off the interstate and back on to 2-lane blacktop.

A little slice of heaven. Even though we can see the freeway from the levy, we can't hear it. The little campground is about 1/3 full, and very lush and green. To the west is a pasture and we can hear goats bleating (fortunately, we cannot smell them). Being right on the river, the park is full of birds feasting on tasty bugs. We've seen Red Wing Blackbirds, Mockingbirds, Swallows, Robins, and a Seagull.

Odyssey at Dos Reis County Park, near the intersection of Interstates 5 and 205. Behind the levy is the Sacramento River.