San Diego secrets revealed

We are parked on the main street on Shelter Island (map), adjacent to the fishing pier and with million-dollar views of the city and the harbor. We are also in front of the Island Palms hotel, and thus, no doubt, interrupting to some extent their million-dollar views.

As I wrote a couple of days ago, this is a rather anti-climactic ending to a lot of anxiety about where we were going to park for the show. We've been here all three days, and we are prepared to leave when our 72 hours are up, although our observation is that some rigs have been here longer than that already without being hassled. I expect we will stay right here until tomorrow morning.

Of course, it cost us nothing at all to park here, which is why the street is lined end-to-end with RVs. That makes the Kona Kai resort's decision to deny us parking (for, it turns out, $32 per day) seem rather short-sighted. We did notice a Prevost belonging to one of the exhibitors slip in there Thursday night, apparently over the objections of hotel security. I'm not sure how they got around it -- perhaps the fact that the show had booked a certain amount of the parking lot for the exhibit tent came into play. We certainly weren't going to follow suit, when parking across the street is free and the view is nicer.

We've had a good show, and met lots of nice people. We are somewhat disappointed, though, that the shortage of guest dockage at the host marina meant no attendee boats could be there, and thus the "trawler crawl" that we remembered so fondly from Poulsbo was not a part of this show. For that reason, we got much less out of this show than the last, both information-wise and socially. Next time we do this, we'll choose a venue where attendee boats will be accessible and the trawler crawl is a scheduled part of the festivities.

We were also a bit disappointed with the selection of exhibitor boats available to tour. Although we did see a couple of boats that we felt we could sail away in today, had we been ready to do so. Also, there has been quite a visible shift in market dynamics in favor of buyers. We feel this trend will continue, and it will become even more of a buyers' market moving forward.

We met one other couple who had taken the same trawler school charter that we did in Fort Lauderdale, and came away with the exact same impressions of it, which was reassuring (and I realize that I have yet to post our experience and impressions here -- I still hope to do so, but I've been a little behind). And we connected with some folks associated with the biennial power boat rally to Baja, on which we'd like to crew this November.

The show is over now, save for the final cocktail hour and dinner, about half an hour from now. As usual, we've come away with more questions than answers, and there is much more research ahead of us. With each of these events, though, we feel incrementally more ready to hit the water. For the first time, I think, we can honestly say that if the right boat came along at the right price, we could make the shift. That being said, we'd really like a few more years in Odyssey, and so we will continue to watch the market patiently, and get in whatever sea time we can as the opportunity presents itself.

Image uploaded by ewww

Website Wednesday: Exploring the Archives

On Wednesdays I write about websites that I visit often.

Some of you may have noticed a new feature here on the ol' blog. At the bottom of every post are three links to Our Odyssey's archives under the phrase, "You may also like these stories."

The links are automatically generated by LinkWithin, a widget that searches through the site for related content. If you are reading a post about Hawaii, for instance, LinkWithin looks for past articles with the word "Hawaii" in them. How it decides which words to match seems to be a bit of a mystery, but hey, the widget is free, so I'm not complaining. It even pulls out old photos to spice up the link a little bit.

More importantly, it is automatic. We've been writing this blog for over four years and have 1,200 posts. I think there's some good stuff buried in our bloggy past, and I'd been wanting to bring some of back it into the limelight to share with you. New readers, especially, might discover some helpful tidbits. But I'm really lazy organized and searching and re-posting the archives by hand seemed an awful lot like work inefficient.

Then I read this on New Ideas Welcome, and immediately knew my archiving dream had been realized. LinkWithin is free, simple to install, and works quietly in the background. Works for me!

I hope that those of you clicking on those past blog posts are enjoying them. I know that having the widget in place makes the webpages load a little slower. If you find that annoying, please let me know in the comments. If you've figured out how LinkWithin decides something is relevant, let me know that, too. As always, thanks for sharing our journey.

Million-dollar view for free

We are at the boat launch parking area for Shoreline Park, on Shelter Island (map).

We've been here since before lunch, and we just finished dinner. Louise had to teach tonight by teleconference, so we decided to eat in. I had a nice steak in the fridge that we needed to grill before the onslaught of rubber chicken at TrawlerFest, and what better place to grill than a public park.

Shortly after arriving, we had a nice visit from local reader Kevin, who had been kind enough to do some footwork for us, scoping out potential overnight spots before our arrival. He was again helpful in filling in some of the details of the local history in the neighborhood. We always enjoy being able to put a face to some of the folks we encounter regularly on-line.

We had a pleasant afternoon in this great spot. Across the bay, we can see the San Diego skyline to the north (and it's quite glittery right now, at night), and North Island Naval Air Station to the east. Navy patrol boats and helicopters buzz around all day long, and one of the giant carriers (I can't make out the CVN number or name from here) is in port. This afternoon the Carnival Spirit slipped past us on its way to, no doubt, the Mexican Riviera, just as the much smaller Ryndam did yesterday. In the darkness, I saw a destroyer come home, completely blacked out save for the mandatory navigation lights.

As I was walking the dog while Louise was on her call, a car pulled along side me. New readers Tim and Kathy, new full-time RVers visiting San Diego in their car, had noticed all the rigs here on Shelter Island. They whipped out their BlackBerry and Googled "Shelter Island RV Parking" (much as I had done way back when I started looking at TrawlerFest here), and, lo and behold, this very blog is the number 3 result. I honestly do not know what we are doing here that causes Google to index us so high.

In any case, while they were staring at our blog on the BlackBerry, they spotted Odyssey across the parking lot, recognizing it from our header photo. Now, this is getting to be spooky -- I type a few words one day, and random people find both our blog and our actual rig, live and in person, via mobile internet, the next day. They were very nice, and we hope to meet them again on the road.

Now that dinner is over, the dishes are done, and Louise is finished with her call, we are relaxing with a glass of wine and a harbor view. In a little while, we will stow the dish and slip back over the causeway to another stealthy overnight spot (scoped out for us by Kevin) well before the posted 10:30 closing time. I expect we will end up right back here for most of the day tomorrow -- it's a great spot. With our parking anxiety mostly behind us, I expect it to be a relaxing day -- if the weather's nice, we might even put our chairs out.

Photo by jcolman

Testing the waters

Last night found us at the El Cajon Elks Lodge (map), after a pleasant drive from the casino along Old US-80 interspersed with sections of I-8. We made a stop at the state rest area just a few miles west of the casino, intending to dump our tanks -- they were quite full, and we expected a week of boondocking ahead of us. Unfortunately, it being Sunday, the weekend play crowd heading back to the city all had the same idea, and there was a line for the dump five rigs deep, which we figure to be better than an hour wait, so we moved along.

We could easily have made the full distance to San Diego yesterday, but still needing to empty the tanks, as well as top up the fresh water, we opted instead to make an interim stop in El Cajon, which the Elks guide listed as having a dump station as well as 30-amp power and water hookups in addition to dry parking. The stop also gave us a chance to soak the batteries. We had a nice dinner at the Outback Steak House right across the street.

We are now in San Diego, at, ahem, an undisclosed location, not far from where TrawlerFest will begin Thursday morning. There are several rigs here, and, notwithstanding previous research to the contrary, it is past 10:30 by half an hour, and we are all still here. So far, no knock on the door, but I am dressed and ready to move just in case.

This is the rather anticlimactic culmination of weeks of ruminating about where we were going to park for TrawlerFest, and quite literally dozens of hours of research, emails, and phone calls to try to nail something down. By this morning, I was more or less a wreck with nothing, to date, panning out.

We got an early (for us) start from the Elks, since their rules required us to be finished dumping by 11am, and headed for Silver Strand State Beach, where we've stayed before. My plan was to pay for two nights there, take the scooters out, and spend this afternoon and tomorrow scoping out parking options up in the Shelter Island area. It's also a pleasant spot, and we were looking forward to two relaxing days parked on the beach. Alas, it was not to be.

Apparently, since our last visits there, some things have changed. For starters, we arrived at noon, but were sent away until 1pm -- no early check-ins allowed. Fine, we waited an hour in the day use parking area. Then when we rolled back up to the kiosk, and asked for two nights, we were told we could get one night only, unless we had a reservation. OK, can we get one night and then make a reservation for the next night? Of course not -- reservations can only be made 48 hours or more in advance.

Harumph. So, let's see -- for $25 per night we get a parking space (no utilities whatsoever) in what used to be a day-use lot, where the gates are locked in both directions (really) from 7pm to 8am (make sure you get back from dinner on time!), and I still might have to pack everything up and move the bus to a different spot tomorrow morning before I head out on my errands? No thanks. We decided that if we were just going to have to move every day anyway, we'd bring the bus up here for our scouting, and retreat to either the National City Wal-Mart or the Chula Vista Elks for the night. Wish I had asked about two nights at noon, when I first pulled up -- it would have saved us the hour of waiting around.

We drove back up through Coronado, across the bridge, and then along the waterfront and past the airport on Harbor Boulevard, keeping a sharp eye open for parking opportunities. For instance, we noticed a pay lot across from the cruise terminal advertising cruise parking, which, we reasoned, must include overnight parking for several days. We were amused to see Holland America's MS Ryndam in port -- we cruised on that very ship from this same pier on a Mexican Riviera itinerary several years ago.



We went directly to Shelter Island, and, after looping both ends of the island in the bus, took a waterfront space in the large boat ramp parking area in Shoreline Park, where it would be easy to unload and load the scooters. Signs posted throughout the park and all its parking areas confirmed what I already knew from research: the park closes at 10:30 and there is no parking after that hour, enforced by the Harbor Police (the park belongs to the Port District).

Last night I had carefully programmed all of the potential parking spots that I had worked out through Google Earth into my portable GPS, and we set out on the scooters to check them all out. Most were unusable either due to posted signage or other obvious indicators. We did speak with the security departments, with promising results, at two shopping centers with vacant stores and extra parking, and are waiting on call-backs tomorrow from them with a yea or nay. Those are about a ten or twelve minute ride from here, which would work fine.

We also stopped at the closest RV park -- more like a trailer court -- which is a mere seven miles away. That worked out to 22 minutes, however, in normal traffic; not impossible, but it would mean a good hour out of each day's schedule to walk the dog, and coming back to the bus casually, say, between the afternoon seminars and dinner, would be out of the question.

As we were loading the scooters back up, some of the local color wandered by to ask about the bus, and we inquired about parking. They reported that, while the island's parking lots were off limits, city streets were "fair game" -- subject to the city's 72-hour parking limit. A good look at several rigs parked on-street suggested they were not moving nightly -- some were even using boards for leveling (a tactic which we feel removes a good deal of the credibility from the "just parking" argument, as I have ranted here before).

Now, technically, the San Diego Municipal Code prohibits "any person to use a vehicle while it is parked or standing on any street as either temporary or permanent living quarters, abode, or place of habitation either overnight or day by day." However, it appears that this provision is either never enforced, or enforced only very selectively. For example, this particular provision is absent from the city's own official "parking rules" web page, even though most of the other paragraphs from the code appear there verbatim. Everyone we've talked to has said, essentially, that you can park on the street for up to 72 hours. That there might be enforcement in some neighborhoods on a "complaint basis" was the best we could nail down.

With this firmly in mind, and after having done all we could do for the day in scoping out other options, we opted to give it a try. Call it a litmus test; if we spend an undisturbed night here, we will leave tomorrow and return late Wednesday, parking as close to the TrawlerFest host property as we can get. That should cover us for the whole event, through Saturday evening, within the 72-hour limitation, and we can head elsewhere Saturday night.

The backup plan is to follow up with the two shopping centers, followed by some other streets that are in even less conspicuous neighborhoods, with a final fall-back of the 22-minute ride to the trailer park. But we are both much more upbeat about having some parking options for the show.

Back in California

We are at the Golden Acorn casino off I-8, just west of the San Diego/Imperial county line (map). We are at the crest of the Sierra de Juárez range, around 4,100', having climbed here from below sea level in the Imperial Valley. It's mostly downhill from here to San Diego.

Yesterday we ditched off I-8 where it peels away from the All-American Canal, choosing instead to continue west along the canal on California 98. Before making the turn, we passed the Imperial Dunes Recreation Area, which was chock-a-block with rigs. At some point we realized it was the weekend, and most of the rigs belonged to weekenders out with their sand toys, although we encountered sprinklings of snowbirds here and there.

Once on 98, we saw nary a rig, even though the route passes through BLM land, including the Yuha Desert, with many suitable boondocking sites within easy access. We stopped at a familiar Wal-Mart in Calexico for some supplies, and I supposed, freshly stocked, we might have stayed in the desert ourselves last night. It felt too early to stop, though, and we wanted to get the climb out of our way.

The casino here is small, with only a pizza stand and a diner-type restaurant, but we ate there last night nonetheless. There is also a c-store adjacent to the enormous truck parking lot, making the whole place a sort of truck stop as well. We are parked clear across the other side of the property, where it is flat. There were only three other rigs here when we arrived, but it looks like about a dozen spent the night. There were also several tour buses here last night, including a few from Mexico -- apparently, this is a nice day trip for the Mexicans, and I'm pretty sure it falls within the border zone, so those with the limited crossing credentials can come here without a passport.

We should be in the San Diego environs tonight; tomorrow, we will begin scoping out our limited overnight options within scooter distance of TrawlerFest. I have my fingers crossed that we can get at least one business to agree to let us spend three nights.

Photo by MMMMichelle

Diesel lullaby

We are at Barney's Truck Stop, in Yuma, Arizona (map).

Yuma, it turns out, has banned overnight RV parking anywhere within city limits except in developed campgrounds, making our visit here something of a challenge. Normally, we simply do not stop in such places, but our friends Jim and Pat of RV Safety Systems are staying in town, and we wanted to stop and have dinner with them.

We needed to stop here at Barney's anyway -- it is a Flying-J dealer, and currently has the lowest diesel price in the region, at $1.799. I think that may be the least we've paid for diesel since we re-launched Odyssey nearly five years ago, and I topped up the tank with 120 gallons. As long as we were stopping anyway, and dropping a couple hundred bucks, we checked our handy RVers Friend truck stop directory, which indicated "RVs Welcome" and "Overnight Parking." In addition to the house restaurant here, there are a couple of options across the freeway as well, including an Applebees.

We did have two backup options as well -- the Elks Lodge, at $7 for dry camping, and the Paradise Casino, which allows up to three nights in the parking lot. Both of those, however, were further away from where our friends are staying, in the foothills area, and had fewer dining options. So we parked here among the trucks after fueling up, and had our dinner get-together at Applebees across the freeway (Louise rode in their truck, which has only three seats, and I hoofed it across the bridge).

We've stayed in plenty of truck stops, and this one was comfortable enough. With all our windows closed -- and it was cool enough last night to close them up before we turned in -- the idling diesels merely lull us to sleep. But, sheesh, with daytime highs in the 70s and nightime lows in the 60s, why in the world would you need to idle all night? The drivers who don't pay for their own fuel are just plain wasteful in this regard, and we see this constantly throughout the country. Some idiot also idled all night at the Wild Horse Pass in this same weather, prompting us to move out of the truck parking area last week. Frankly, we are looking forward to more aggressive enforcement of anti-idling laws (and enactment of such laws where they don't currently exist).

Our stay at the Ak-Chin was also quite comfortable -- much darker and quieter than here, since we parked again in the dirt lot off the main parking area. We were a bit disappointed that their nice Agave restaurant with patio seating is no longer open for dinner. We weren't in the mood for the pricey steak house, so we just had the buffet ($11 with players' club card), which was perfectly acceptable. Casino buffets are often the best deal in the house, but we tend to shy away from them due to, umm, lack of self-control. I think we were pretty good, though, other than having dessert.

We've been on the Interstate since Gila Bend -- no other options through here. Today we will cross into California and the Pacific time zone, stopping somewhere shy of San Diego county. At least we'll be able to get off the Interstate through the Imperial Valley.

Photo by clatiek

Post-Hawaii Ak-Chin

We are back on the mainland and staying tonight at the Harrah's Ak-Chin Casino (map) in Maricopa, where we've stayed before.

We had a great time in Hawaii. The resort is just as we remembered it, and, this time, we were well-prepared for the nickle-and-dime treatment, wherein they charge for every little thing. At least they gave up on charging for the in-room coffee, which, last visit, prompted us to buy a package of pre-loaded filter packets. Good thing, too, since the new coffee makers are the cup-at-a-time type, and I don't think we'd find the right packets on-island.

This time, though, we managed to buy only a single meal on-property, and that was by calculated choice. Now that our Hilton HHonors status is Gold (vs. Silver on our last visit), they threw in daily coupons for breakfast. It did take us a couple days to figure out that we could get eggs and sausage by going to the cafeteria-style joint at the other end of the property, rather than settling for cold items at the continental buffet (upgrading the buffet to include hot items was a whopping $20 pp).

The wedding, which was the underlying cause of the whole trip, was quite beautiful. A small, casual service at sunset on one of the nicest beaches, with public access through the Four Seasons Resort, one of the island's well-kept secrets. We were the only non-family guests, and we felt privileged to be there.



The happy couple also invited us to many of their other activities throughout the week, including a family visit to a Luau Friday night, the reception dinner Saturday at a sushi restaurant near the hotel, and dinner Monday and Tuesday after the rest of their folks left. So we had a great visit with them, in addition to the lovely wedding.

We also managed to do two things we missed on our last couple of visits to the big island: We drove the saddle road from the Kona side to Hilo (the road was off-limits for most rental cars on our first visit), including a jaunt up to the Mauna Kea visitor center at 9,200' (we skipped the last 5,000' to the observatories, since that involved a dirt road that was forbidden in the rental car). We also drove down to South Point, the southernmost spot in the US, along with the newlyweds, stopping for lunch at the southernmost restaurant as well.



The low point of the trip was the flight back, mostly because it was a red-eye. At least we had an empty seat between us, and could sleep most of the way. While we were at our departure gate at the Kona airport, one of our Red Cross acquaintances wandered by -- he often heads the safety and security department when we work with him, and, in his off time, he is an airport police officer in Kona. It was nice to catch up with him.

Our return flight landed in Phoenix yesterday around 9am, and our friends here picked us up, which was really above and beyond the call. Somewhere on the return flight or just before it, I managed to come down with a head cold, and so yesterday was lost to a fog of jet-lag and illness. We did not want to overstay our welcome in our friends' driveway, so we scraped ourselves together enough around mid-day today to get packed, loaded, and rolling, landing here just 30 miles or so from where we spent last night.

We did manage to squeeze in dinner last night, still in a fog, at the restaurant we co-own in downtown Phoenix. The food is as good as ever, and there was a bit of traffic in the bar, but only two tables of dinner guests the whole time we were there. We are hoping the traffic will increase now that the light rail is running -- we are just across the street from the main station. All you folks in Phoenix, please go visit Sonoma Casual Dining, on Van Buren at First.

Tonight we'll eat here in the casino -- I'm still feeling too crummy to cook. Tomorrow we will head west to Yuma, where we will visit with friends for an evening before heading on towards San Diego and TrawlerFest, where we are still working on a place to park.

Off to Hawaii

We are parked at the house of a friend near Chandler, Arizona. As is our custom when staying with friends, and when we are away from Odyssey for several days, we are not posting a map link.

Our friends here have generously offered not only to let us park the bus on their property, but also to watch over our pets. Opal will likely stay with them, as she has already made her peace with the other three dogs in the house. They'll look in on the cats and the fish every day, and keep an eye on the bus.

Sunday evening we piled onto Chip and hauled ourselves out to a remote residential neighborhood in south Chandler to look at another Yamaha Vino scooter. The owner is actually elsewhere, on deployment with the US military, but he left the scooter and its title in care of some friends, with a signed POA for the bike. This bike also had a few scratches, in this case from, apparently, a failed attempt to steal it, but they were less obtrusive then the damage to the one we looked at in Tucson. More importantly, the title paperwork was in proper order. It was also almost exactly the same color as the Metropolitan (blue), so it already matched Louise's gear -- the one in Tucson was burgundy.

The test ride was a bit disappointing -- the machine felt sluggish compared to the previous specimen -- until I realized the tires were extremely low, from having sat untended-to for quite some time. The battery was also toast for the same reason. But Louise really liked it, and the seller accepted our offer on it -- $400 under his asking price, but $200 more than the offer we made in Tucson. She rode it to the nearest gas station, put air in the tires and fresh premium fuel in the tank, and we rode back to Wild Horse Pass, stopping for dinner at a local joint we passed on the way -- Keegan's.

Having thus acquired a third scooter, with no room for more than two aboard Odyssey, I spent a good deal of yesterday getting the Metropolitan ready to sell. The big project was the damaged side panel from my parking lot mishap, which I needed to replace, and I did that project inside the scooter bay, for protection from the harsh wind and occasional showers. The gymnastics necessary to accomplish that have had me sore all day today. We also emptied out all Louise's personal items, assembled all the original documentation and accessories, and gave the scoot a thorough cleaning and polishing.

In the course of all this, I had resigned myself to having to sell the bike on eBay, with a firm close date of next Wednesday and a firm pick-up date of Thursday, in order to be rid of it before we need to be heading out of town. This morning, however, I made a few phone calls, and we found a dealer who would take it on consignment -- ironically, just a few blocks from where we originally bought it, exactly two years ago today.

That shop, unfortunately, was 30 miles from Wild Horse Pass. No way we could ride the little Metro that far, so we locked up the Kymco in the casino parking lot, loaded Louise's new and old scooters into the bus side-by-side, and drove the 30 miles to the north end of Phoenix. Between having to get titles notarized and everything else in order, we were at the dealer well over an hour, and then it was 30 miles right back to the casino to pick up Chip. The $20 or so and two hours we spent on the round trip was well worth it -- we're back to a manageable two scooters, and the Metro can sit in a showroom for however long it takes to get a serious buyer -- much better than rushing the deal on eBay.

We spent the latter part of the day at a laundromat in Chandler, getting our laundry done pre-trip. I also ran a few errands, including stocking up on pet food, that needed to get done before we left.

This will likely be our last blog post until we return. I'm not bringing a computer to Hawaii -- the Hilton wants too much for Internet access. I will have the BlackBerry, though, so we can keep up with email, and we will both be tweeting periodically through the week, so you can keep up with us on Twitter until we get back.

Our plan from here is still to head to San Diego for TrawlerFest, although I am still coming up empty on overnight parking options while we are there. So far, the resort itself and the association that has taken over the old NTC have both turned us down, and the harbor police chief has not answered my emails. We may have to resort to driving up there a couple days early and knocking on doors.

Pass on the Wild Horses, next time

We are at the Wild Horse Pass casino, near Chandler, Arizona (map).

This is our third stay here. The first time was a rousing success, wherein we received $15 in cash and a wristwatch, and landed two prime rib buffet dinners for $13. The second time, on a holiday weekend, we drove away in disgust after a single night because RV parking had gotten, well, out of hand. This time, we spotted a similar conglomeration of RVs in the north lot, and came over here instead, to the designated large vehicle parking, and stayed with the trucks.

Our night here in the parking lot was pleasant enough, and you can't complain about free (although -- like Joe Walsh -- sometimes I still do, if the blog is any indicator). Inside the casino, it was a different story. Remembering discounts on food for having a players' card, we first stopped at the promotions desk, to see if our cards were still valid -- they were bright yellow, and all of the cards we saw other people carrying were some other color. That's when the trouble began.

Immediately, they told us that, no, the cards had expired, and we'd have to fill the complete application out and start again. That's fine, but, in hindsight, we should simply have walked up as new visitors and started from scratch -- at least we might have gotten the $5 sign-up promotion for our trouble. Since we walked up with old cards, they would not give us the promo. Fine, we were not expecting it anyway.

Next, however, we both got grief because our Washington driver licenses are expired. Now, we have extensions, and we have paper letters from the state of Washington extending our driving privileges for another year (available to you if you happen to be out of state when your license expires, which we were). And, of course, any law enforcement officer who stops us and calls our license numbers in will get a valid license back, since they are valid in the state's database. But these idiots at the promo desk would not accept the licenses as valid identification. "We can't accept it on paper" -- yet we pointed out that the ID portion, with our photos, was not paper, it was a state-issued card. Harumph.

Louise just handed them her passport (why she had that in her purse is a mystery to me), while I argued with them for another three minutes until a supervisor came over and approved it. All this for $2 off at the buffet. Louise had something of a Pyrrhic victory inasmuch as it was much more work for the promo clerk to deal with the passport than a driver license. To top it all off, there were no 2-for-1 buffet coupons this time.

Lastly, the restaurant no longer offers an a-la-carte menu (or, at least, not on Saturday), and so we had no choice other than the buffet. At least that was acceptable, although nothing to write home about. (Home gets spared; you, our blog readers, however, get pummeled with it, apparently.) I suppose, in the end, it is fair for the tribe to sell us dinner for $30 (and another $10 for the wine) since we are in their parking lot, and likely will be for another night.

The reason we came here, actually, is that it is the closest parking option to the next scooter that Louise will be looking at later today, in Chandler. The one we looked at yesterday in Tucson was somewhat less expensive, and, when we saw it, we learned why: it had been dropped during an MSF class and had a good deal of scraping on one side, from some previous owner. Louise had decided she could live with the scrapes, and the seller had accepted our offer on it, but when she produced the title, we learned that she had never titled it to herself -- the title in her possession was from the previous owner and had been signed several months ago.

This was a deal-breaker for us. It's difficult enough for us to deal with titling and registering these scooters in Washington long-distance (we have to find a notary, then overnight the paperwork to Washington along with a check for the sales and use tax) when all the paperwork is in order. We can imagine having all sorts of trouble with a months-old title from someone we've never met, and no matching bill-of-sale from that person. At a bare minimum, there is a penalty for "late registration" back to when the title is dated, plus we'd have to pay the back registration fees.

So we thanked them, but told them we'd have to pass. Although we left the door open, by saying that we can call Washington on Monday to see what could be done. The seller has since emailed, offering to offset the sales price by whatever our penalties would be.

We are keeping that option open as a back-up, but today we will look at a bike that is a year newer, has fewer miles, and, as far as we know, no damage. The asking price is higher, but the market is soft, so we will see if we can make a deal. If the weather is decent (it's been raining on and off all morning), we will ride over there on my scooter, and we'll end up right back here for tonight.

Photo by Jo Naylor

We have a winner...

We are at the Casino Del Sol on the Pascua Yaqui reservation in Tucson, Arizona (map).

It was only 3 o'clock or so by the time we hit Benson yesterday, and so we decided to come all the way to Tucson, making things a bit easier this morning, since we need to be just a few miles north of here at noon. Tucson is something of a winter RV destination, with giant RV resorts such as Beaudry (where we've stayed before) and Voyager, and so low-cost or free overnight boondocking options are very limited. Several Wal-Marts in town, for example, are posted No Overnight Parking.

Arizona is chock-full of native American casinos, and, when it became clear we'd be in Tucson, we looked in our printed guide, and Louise also called up the Casino Camper web site on the BlackBerry. We picked this one based on the reviews stating it was very RV-friendly and had several good restaurants within; we generally ignore the gaming reviews, since we don't gamble much.

Competition among Arizona casinos is fierce, and we've learned that, even though we don't do any gaming, it almost always pays to sign up for the frequent-player club card. In addition to possible discounts at the restaurants, first-time sign-ups often get cash or some amount of free play -- once, we got $15 in cash and a wrist-watch, and then only spent $13 at the two-for-one buffet. So our first stop was to the promotions desk to sign up for cards.

The cards gave us an immediate 5% discount at the restaurants. That's not a lot, especially since we ate in their most expensive restaurant, Italian-themed Bellisimo, where prices are inflated to convince the comp diners (possibly everyone but us) that they are somehow beating the house. The food was quite good, though, and they had an extensive wine list with some very reasonably-priced selections. Interestingly, they also had pizza on the menu (also available by the slice at an adjacent counter facing the gaming floor), which, at $10-$15 depending on toppings, is the bargain of the menu. The 12" pizzas will feed two.

The cards were also pre-loaded with $10 each in free slot play, which we opted to use after dinner -- in hindsight, poor planning, since we ended up carrying our leftovers around the casino. It turns out that you need to actually put some real cash into the machine in order to activate it, but we got away with putting in only $1 each. We sat down at a pair of video poker machines, which generally have the best pay-back, sometimes approaching 99%, intending to convert as much of the $10 funny-money into real cash as we could. I got my cash-out ticket for $10.25, and counted myself very lucky to walk out of the casino with $9.25 of other people's money

Then Louise came bubbling over to me with her cash-out ticket for $211.25. Gulp. Just by the luck of the draw, she hit four-of-a-kind, or something -- she only remembers hitting the cash-out button as fast as she could after the machine started dinging, and vaguely that she had a wild-card deuce at the time. So, to recap, we spent around $65 for dinner in the restaurant, put two $1 bills into machines, and walked away with $221.50, or a net of about $150 after allowing for the extra diesel we burned to drive here from the freeway.

Of course, you only get the sign-up promotion once -- the next time (if any) that we stay here, we'll have to content ourselves with the 5% discount at the restaurant. And we now have a stack of player-club cards at least an inch thick. But hey, you can't beat the parking deal -- there are perhaps a dozen or so rigs here, spread out in the parking lots for the amphitheater, an outdoor music venue which does book some big-name talent. I'm not sure what the parking policy is here when there is an event in the amphitheater.

Yesterday we had a very pleasant drive along NM-9, although we did have to pass several wide loads on the narrow road, one of which led to an exchange on the CB that I will relate in a separate post. And the stretch of I-10 between the state line and Tucson isn't all bad, either -- one of the most beautiful sections of the system, in our opinion.

After our scooter-viewing appointment today, we will continue north to the Flying-J at Eloy, where diesel is $2.059. We've come over 1,400 miles since we last fueled, in Jackson, MS, and the tank level is now low enough that neither the generator nor Webasto dip tubes reach the fuel -- good thing it's pretty warm here in Tucson. I'm pretty sure this is the farthest we've ever driven on a single tank, and our relaxed pace has gotten us some great mileage, close to 7mpg (our average is 6.3, so that's a 10% improvement).

Photo by DetroitDerek

A loose caboose

We are at the Old Depot visitor center parking lot in Columbus, New Mexico (map). This location is right across the street from Pancho Villa State Park, where we stayed when we came through here four years ago.

While the state park is relatively inexpensive, we certainly did not need the hookups last night, and we had already explored the park and its exhibits on our first visit. Our Days End guide said that overnight parking here was free; when we arrived, the visitor center was still open, so we went in to ask.

There is actually a pretty extensive collection of exhibits in the Old Depot, including railroad memorabilia, historic artifacts from the local area, and, of course, exhibits on Pancho Villa and Pershing's punitive raid into Mexico. The volunteer on duty said we could, indeed, park overnight, and even let us put some water in our tank (we were nearly out). She also handed us free drink coupons for the Pink Store restaurant across the border. We made a small donation, and bought a pin for our collection.

After we got squared away, I pulled a scooter out. We rode the three miles to the border crossing around 5ish, parked, and walked across into Puerto Palomas, Mexico. It's a small town, so the gauntlet of hawkers was rather short. We were hungry, so we headed directly to the Pink Store for dinner.

This is a gringo joint -- run by gringos, for gringos, with gringo prices. But the food was good, and we had those free drink coupons, which softened the bill a bit. We got out for around $30, which is high for Mexico, but less than we normally pay for the same food state-side. We both had fajitas, which were authentic. There are really no dinner establishments in Columbus, anyhow.

Today we will continue west on NM-9 to Animas, where we will divert from our route of four years ago by turning north on 338, which will get us to I-10. We should be in Arizona tonight, somewhere around Benson or so.

Mountain Time

We are at a picnic area along US-180/62, south of Dell City, Texas (map). This is the pointy part of west Texas that is in the Mountain Time Zone.

We had a pleasant drive yesterday from La Mesa to Hobbs, New Mexico, where we had to make a choice -- continue northwest on NM-529 to join US-82, which would take us all the way to Las Cruces via Alamogordo and White Sands, or continue on 180 all the way to El Paso. Both routes are familiar to us.

Originally, I had planned on the more northerly route, because I had planned to take US-70 to Phoenix from Lordsburg, and this meant we'd only be on I-10 between Las Cruces and Lordsburg (alternatives to the Interstate in this part of the country are hard to come by). However, Louise has been looking at scooters on the Internet -- she wants to move up to something a bit faster than the 49cc she has now -- and she wants to look at one in Tucson.

I-10 is pretty much our only choice to get to Tucson. So rather than come into Las Cruces on US-82, and be stuck on I-10 all the way to Tucson, we decided to swing down to El Paso, where we will basically just cross I-10 into Santa Teresa, New Mexico, then pick up NM-9, which runs west along the Mexico border and then across the bootheel. At Animas, we will turn north to re-join I-10 at the Arizona border. This route, at least, eliminates most of the dreaded Interstate through New Mexico.

And so it is that we find ourselves here, on a familiar stretch of road. We passed through the tourist mecca of Carlsbad and descended along side the breathtaking Guadalupe mountains. We more or less coasted here after cresting the summit -- we are very nearly at the bottom of the valley, having just passed the dry lake bed. We figured it to be a few degrees warmer here than any of our other picnic-area choices -- they seem to be spaced every 30 miles or so along this stretch.

In order to make our Saturday scooter-viewing appointment in Tucson, we will need to do about four hours each today and tomorrow. I expect tonight we will be in Columbus, New Mexico, at the familiar Pancho Villa State Park.

Website Wednesday: Make your own poster

On Wednesdays I write about websites that I visit often.

I've been having fun with this site that allows you to upload a photo and create your own Obama campaign-inspired poster. Obamicon.Me

The standard captions are Hope, Change, and Progress. You can also type any text in. I changed Hope to Hopal for the dog, and made Change into Changel for the grey cat. George can't be made into anything, so she's just George. But I think her poster came out the best because of her inherent high-contrastedness.

 

Regardless of your politics, I hope you'll agree that it is a pretty neat way to create rather abstract art out of photos. Try it!

Power for nothin'

We are at the free city RV parking in La Mesa, Texas (map).

This is one of the great things about west Texas (and many other high plains states between the Mississippi and the Rockies). Not only do these communities welcome RVers by not passing anti-RV legislation (we could easily have stayed at the Wal-Mart here, if that had been our preference), they actively encourage them to visit by providing these nice parking spots.

This one is part of a large city park complex, with a nice playground and a picnic area. The RV parking consists of nine paved sites, each with 30-amp power and water. There is also a dump station, which we don't need since we just dumped Monday, at yet another free city facility in Breckenridge. One can stay here for up to four nights, absolutely free. After that, the city wants to start collecting $20 per night, which is not unreasonable for 30-amp power. The sites are a generous 20' or so wide, and at least 50' long. Last night, it was just us and a mini class-C.

Yesterday we diverted briefly from US-180 to swing up to Stamford, Texas, at the request of our good friend and Red Cross co-worker, Bob Penick. His great-grandfather was one of the town fathers, and we spent some time scoping out the old Penick Hardware store building, right on the town square, that housed the family business for decades. The building is boarded up, but is clearly slated for some sort of renovation -- there is an architect's print posted in the window, and the building is sporting cleaned-up brickwork, brand new gutters and leaders, and a new electrical service.





We also drove over to the rodeo grounds, home to the Texas Cowboy Reunion, where Colonel Penick's name is first on the engraved list of past presidents of the reunion's Old Timers Association, back in the 30's.



After our brief but interesting visit to Stamford, we continued west on state route 92 to Hamlin, home, naturally, of the Pied Pipers. From there we angled back to US-180 by way of farm-to-market road 57. We often marvel at how these "little" farm roads in Texas are in better maintenance, alignment, and grade than many US highways in other states, and they are often posted at 70mph.

Today we will continue west on 180 into New Mexico.

Finally back in the west

We are at a picnic area west of Albany, Texas on US-180 (map).

Somewhere between here and Dallas we crossed the invisible and sometimes imperceptible dividing line between "the east" and "the west," about which I have written several times. Travel for us is always more comfortable in the west, and, specifically, we usually have many more choices for overnight stops.

This picnic area is one of perhaps three in a span of just 30 miles along this stretch of road, and we chose it because it extended quite a ways off the highway, and is on a knoll with a panoramic view. That view consists primarily of open range, but it is also dotted with myriad modern windmills generating electricity. We were amused after dark to see that all the aircraft lights on the windmills blinked in unison, even though they extend for miles.

We had a pleasant drive yesterday on US-180, part of which was familiar to us from a visit to Fort Worth three years ago. The stretch we are on now is new to us, and we always prefer to cover new ground. We'll be doing so now all the way to New Mexico, mostly on 180 after a brief detour north to Stamford, where a friend's ancestors were early settlers, and we will be hunting for monuments to that effect.

I had been contacted on one of the bus boards by reader Paul in Abilene asking to meet up, after I posted that we'd be following the I-20 corridor to Phoenix. When it became clear we would not be going through Abilene this trip I emailed him, and he actually drove up here last night for a quick visit. We've now left I-20 behind, as it swings further south before joining with I-10, and we will proceed mostly due west from here.

Home cooking, Italian-style

We are parked at a Wal-Mart somewhere in the Dallas/Fort Worth megalopolis. No map link or further details today to respect the privacy of our hosts last night.

When we were within striking distance of Dallas we contacted our friends Neal and Cali to let them know we'd be passing through town, and asked if they might have time to get together. What we had in mind was perhaps dinner at a restaurant someplace convenient to a Wal-Mart, or some such. And, of course, we are so out of touch with popular culture that we did not even realize that it was Super Bowl Sunday.

Much to our surprise and delight, they instead invited us to their house for a home-cooked meal and, nominally, to watch the game. They served up a fantastic homemade lasagna, which we watched them create from scratch, including house-made pasta and cooked-all-day meat sauce, all sights and smells that reminded me of growing up in an Italian household where tomato-based pasta sauce was called "gravy" and nothing came out of a jar.

Between the cooking, the drinking, and the chatting, I don't think any one of us caught even a single play of the game. We were vaguely aware of the score at various times, including after it was over, and were somewhat disappointed because the Cardinals' defeat probably meant fewer revelers coming in to our restaurant in downtown Phoenix, which can use the extra business.

Cali and Neal were superb hosts, and the hours rolled away -- we arrived before kick-off, and didn't get back to the bus until midnight. Thanks, guys! This is also the second time these good folks have fed us dinner, so it is our turn next time for sure, and the pressure is on -- the lasagna set a high bar.

We were still in Shreveport when we started making these arrangements; in hindsight, I should have waited a day, as Shreveport to Dallas on US-80 is a five-hour drive, more than we usually choose to do on a routine basis. Still, it was a beautiful drive, following and criss-crossing the Sabine River. The little downtown business districts were very quiet on a Sunday afternoon, and traffic was also light coming into Dallas, making us glad we chose to come the whole way on Sunday and not a weekday.

Today we will head west out of the big city, well before the afternoon exodus starts, and we'll divert off I-20 near Weatherford onto US-180, which will take us due west all the way to Hobbs, New Mexico.

Night club central

We are at the Eldorado Casino Resort in Shreveport, Louisiana (map). We are basically right across the Red River from where we stayed a year or so ago, at a different casino.

Shreveport/Bossier City is only a couple hours from where we were last night, in Monroe, but we have a club downtown here, and we chose this casino because it was a short walk away. Our plan was to have dinner at the club, and maybe do the champagne brunch buffet this morning at the casino.

Our plans were foiled, however, when we discovered that the club had canceled its normal Saturday dinner seating to host a member wine-pairing seminar with a buffet. That aced us out of our free meal entitlement, and, even though the wine tasting was a bargain at $25 per person, we were in the mood for a quiet dinner for two. We opted instead to eat at the Vintage Steak House here in the casino, which was excellent, if a bit overpriced for the region.

We had a lovely drive yesterday, staying off the freeway the entire day in favor of US-80, at least right up until Bossier City. Our truck atlas informed us that the US-79/80 bridge over the Red has a low clearance, and so we hopped on I-20 just a few miles east of the river, then took the first exit on the west bank.

Our printed casino camping guide directed us to check in with the valet upon arrival here. He told us to park in the back of the otherwise valet-only lot across from the casino. The lot is quite small and full of cars, but we had a relatively easy time getting settled with Odyssey's tight turning radius. Later in the evening, a 45' Prevost entertainer coach came into the lot, and the professional driver had somewhat more of a challenge, which he handled with aplomb. His generator ran the whole time he was here, but they left before 11pm. Good thing he left when he did -- the lot filled completely by midnight, and we could not have moved if we wanted to (although we guess the valets would move some of the cars, if needed).

It was quite comfortable here, and mostly quiet, other than the occasional train on the nearby tracks, and, ahem, the riverfront club district, which was quite busy on a Saturday night. Our first indication was some squid dropping his sport bike in the middle of the street, right outside our window, and that was still in the daylight. By midnight, the entire street was full of cars, with folks walking in from every direction in their clubwear. We could not really see (or hear, thankfully) the clubs from where we are parked, but we could hear the traffic and voices of clubbers well into the wee hours.

In a few minutes we will pick our way out of the valet lot and get back on 80 west. We are headed to the Dallas/Fort Worth area, where will will visit with friends Neal and Cali, of GeekBrief TV fame. They mentioned something about watching some kind of football game this evening.