50 degrees in two days

We are at the Elks Lodge in Monterey, California (map), overlooking the bay. It was 62° when we pulled in here yesterday afternoon. Considering it was around 114° when we left the desert Tuesday, that's a drop of over fifty degrees in a span of just two days.

The drive up the coast yesterday was similarly cool, with temperatures in the 60s to 70s, but climbing into the 90s as we transited the Salinas valley through Paso Robles and King City. We elected not to take the coast highway the whole way, as we had just done that in February, and it adds several hours (and a lot of work) to the drive. It turned out that 101 was also a lot of work, as ~30mph winds through the Salinas valley had me struggling to stay in my lane.

After we left the Santa Barbara Elks, we stopped immediately in an on-street space to test my repair to the satellite dish, and I am happy to report that replacing the BUC fixed our problem, and we are back on-line. I called to close our trouble ticket with our HughesNet VAR, and they agreed to allow me to ship the bad BUC back to them for recycling. I'll eat the shipping, but at least it won't end up in the landfill -- electronics are full of heavy metals and other environmental pollutants.

We will be here in Monterey tonight as well, visiting family in the area, before heading to Silicon Valley tomorrow. I expect we will be in the bay area about a week, unless we get called to a disaster first. The hurricane map is blank right now, but wildfires in the northwest or even here in California are a distinct possibility.

Photo by djking

Our week for broken stuff

We are at the Santa Barbara Elks Lodge, which is really in Goleta, California (map).

I did not post here yesterday for a good reason: our satellite Internet system crapped out sometime on Tuesday. It was working Monday evening when I deployed it in Quartzsite, however shortly afterwards I stowed it again because the RV park we were in included one day of WiFi access. When I deployed it Tuesday night, however, it found the satellite, but then would not go on-line. Troubleshooting yesterday with a technician at the other end indicates our transmitter is dead.

In any case, we bailed out of the Q first thing Tuesday morning, in order to drive mostly with the sun at our back. Before we hit the road, we turned on the downstairs air conditioner to pre-cool the cockpit while we still had 50 amps of power. When Louise turned it on, the compressor started right up and the discharge started to cool down. However, when I went downstairs a little while later, the discharge was warmer than ambient. Uh oh.

The compressor was still running, but I noticed the absence of the unmistakable scream of the outdoor condenser fan, which ought to have been running at that point. I am hoping that the whole problem with the unit is just that the fan is not running, which ought to be an easy fix. However, this meant that we'd be driving out of Quartzsite, with the temperature already well past the century mark, with no cockpit air conditioning. We also realized that the problem must have developed under way on Monday, which would explain the cockpit temperature eventually creeping up to 105° -- we had just chalked it up to the extreme outside temperature of 115° with full sun on the windshield.

Fortunately, the outside temperature dropped steadily once west of the Salton Sea, and was down into the 90s by the time we hit the outskirts of LA. We made our way to Santa Fe Springs, just a dozen miles or so out of our way, to have PEDCO look at the turbocharger. We've been seeping a teaspoon of oil every day around the mounting base, which tells me that the drain seal gasket got munged somehow during installation -- not surprising, since getting the thing into position involved lots of pushing and pulling and trying to get the exhaust pipe to stop exerting pressure on it. Unfortunately, the only way to deal with the drain seal is to take the whole turbo back off.

We knew the highs in Santa Fe Springs would be in the mid-80s -- plenty comfortable for us and the pets -- and PEDCO agreed to squeeze us in yesterday. So we arrived there Tuesday afternoon and got positioned in our familiar spot in the yard, where we would spend the night so that the engine and turbo would be stone cold in the morning when they started on it. Reader and fellow bus nut Tom noticed we were in town, and took us to dinner over at the Whittier Olive Garden, where we could stop at Home Depot on the way back to pick up some drop cloths -- the mechanic would be working in our bedroom to access the turbo.

PEDCO spent five hours getting the thing off and back on. Jim the mobile guy only spent three, but then again, he munged the gasket. PEDCO took more parts off in the process, and then cleaned everything up and changed the exhaust and blower adapter gaskets as well, this last item being one we had to re-use in Albuquerque because the dealer did not have one. We ended up rolling out of the shop around 1:30 or so (they started in our bedroom at a terribly uncivilized 7am). Sure enough, the drain seal had a big chunk missing.

We had hoped to stay last night at the Rincon Parkway, but the late start from the shop put us there at quarter to four -- way too late to snag a space. In addition to all the spaces being full, there were perhaps three rigs hovering and circling, delusionally hoping for a space to free up. We pressed on northwards, ending up here, where we have 50 amp power that, thankfully, we do not really need, and there are half a dozen restaurants in walking distance. We chose Outback for dinner last night.

After we arrived I immediately set to work on the satellite dish. As I mentioned, our transmitter appears to be dead, which can be either the modem or the Block UpConverter (BUC). I just happen to have a spare BUC from the infamous dish-destroying episode, and so swapping BUCs is the fastest and cheapest thing to try. If that doesn't work, I will have to RMA the modem, which will cost me $50, and however many days it takes to get one here from Virginia. So I spent an hour or so up on the roof changing out the BUC.

Unfortunately, the satellite happens to be behind a stand of trees from this spot, and so we were unable to test the setup once I got it back together. Later this morning, after we roll out of Goleta, we will give it a test. I have my fingers crossed, because I really don't want to go through the hassle of having to have parts sent to me at some random location in California. In the meantime, this post is coming to you courtesy of the Elks' WiFi, and, if my fix did not work, we will be checking email and tweeting from my BlackBerry until I can get a modem.

Tonight, we should be in Monterey.

Photo by mallix

Broiled alive

We are at the 88 Shades RV Park in Quartzsite, Arizona (map).

We had a great time on Saturday, swimming in the nice pool at the Wingate hotel, going to see Ice Age 3 with our nieces, and following up with dinner at Earl's and ice cream at Ben & Jerry's, all in the same neighborhood. We left the hotel after dark, and agreed to meet again Sunday morning after breakfast, since they had an hour or so to kill before their flight.

By the time we got back to the bus Sunday, it was blazing hot. After ruminating for an hour or so about where we needed to be this morning, we finally decided to just extend our stay at Westworld another night, where we had 50 amps of power, the AC's were already humming away, and we had the tub set up as a cool plunge, which, by this time, had dropped to a downright chilly 87°. Mostly, neither of us was in the mood to start loading scooters and breaking down the hot tub in 110° heat and full sunlight.

The other thing that our 110° lethargy told us was that there was no way we were going to want to fiddle around a bus garage today in even hotter (113°) temperatures poking at the turbocharger. I checked the oil seepage and the torn hose, and the former was still in the range of a few drops per day, and the latter was holding steady. We decided instead to clear out of Scottsdale today, and make for the Pacific coast, where temperatures are much more civilized. We have other reasons to want to be in California, and the current forecasts for the Atlantic hurricane belt are so clear that we are, frankly, more likely at this juncture to be called out for a western wildfire, a prospect which grows more likely by the day.

That gave us the opportunity to load scooters and drain the tub in the "cool" of the evening last night, well after sundown. I put that word in quotes, because it was still well into the 90s when we finished with the scooters, and I spent the whole time that the tub was draining sitting in it to keep cool. I saw an item today from NWS Phoenix that today's low of 92°, which would have been sometime around 5am, was a record high low (how's that for an oxymoron). Except for the tub, which I drained and inverted to dry out overnight, I had everything packed and loaded before I turned in.

This morning I called both shops and waved off any work on the bus due to the heat, and then spent well over an hour working on finalizing a route plan. It was 11am by the time we unplugged and rolled away, after which we had to stop at the office to pay for the third night (and wherein I confirmed that they were open to the public for RV parking pretty much all the time, other than major special events, and also found out that they have 400 RV spaces with electricity and water). We then rolled over to the dump station for an electrifying experience.

We did a quick roll-by of the shop where we left the Honda Metropolitan on consignment back in February, just to make sure they were still there, but we knew they would be closed Monday. We had hoped to stop in on this trip, but again the heat nixed any idea of sticking around until they opened on Tuesday. It was only a few blocks out of our way, though, because our next stop was Surprise, due west.

I knew from previous research that we would find some inexpensive diesel in the Phoenix area, and as of last night that looked like $2.19 in the very southwestern part of the city. But this morning's check revealed that two stations in Surprise, across the street from one another, were duking it out, selling diesel for just $1.999 per gallon. One of those was Safeway, where we garnered another $0.03 discount for having a club card, and so I put in 190 gallons at just $1.969, the least we've paid in quite a while. Putting that much fuel in with a single automotive-style dispenser, however, takes the better part of an hour. Thus it was that we did not hit I-10 until well past 1pm.

By this time our indoor/outdoor thermometer in the cockpit was telling us it was 113° outside, and it was rapidly climbing to 100° in the cockpit, as the air conditioner struggled to keep up. As we continued west, the sun moved from slightly behind us, to directly overhead, then to in front of us where it relentlessly pummeled the windshields, turning us into hothouse vegetables. By 3pm it was 114° outside, and 104° and still climbing in the cockpit, and we knew we had to stop before the sun got any lower.

(Added by Louise: The photo at the top shows our indoor/outdoor thermometer. Cockpit temp on the left, outside temp on the right. 115° was the highest we saw, briefly in Surprise, AZ. I was too limp to take a photo of the inside temp going over 104° later in the day...)

There are not a lot of RV parks between Phoenix and Palm Springs, and The Q shaped up to be our best option. We pulled into town around 3:30, just as the mercury hit 105° at the driver seat. For the last hour or so, we had been spritzing a mister bottle full of water at the fans periodically as a sort of redneck swamp cooler, just to keep our bodies from overheating.

There are probably a half dozen RV parks along Main Street here that are still open in the summer (and many others that are closed for the season), and we picked this one pretty much completely at random. The office was closed when we arrived, so we self-registered ($25 with AAA or Good Sam) and picked a 50-amp space facing mostly north, poised for a quick getaway in the morning. I then spent 20 minutes or so with a garden hose getting some evaporative cooling going on all the wheels, the engine bay, the roof, the awnings, and the sunny side of the bus, as well as the gravel around us out to two or three feet.

With all the AC's going full tilt on top of my evaporative cooling efforts, we got the inside temperatures down into the 90s in short order, and in an hour or so down into the high 80s. As I type this, just after midnight, we are down to only one air conditioner still running, and it is maintaining a comfortable temperature in the high 70s. It's still in the mid-90s outside, but the forecast says it will be down to a low of 86° at 5am.

With no packing, loading, or errands for the morning, I expect we can get an early start tomorrow, and do most of our driving with the sun behind us and off the expansive front glass. It will be another record scorcher tomorrow in this region, with a high around 114° again, but we should be through the worst of it by mid-day. We still need to have the turbo looked at, and I have my sights set on PEDCO in Santa Fe Springs, where it will be a balmy 85° tomorrow.

Shocking experience at the dump station

As we left Westworld this morning, we stopped at the dump station on the northwest side of the park (I believe there is also one just south of the big tent, but it was hard to be certain, whereas the one we used was clearly labeled).

As with many things at Westworld, including all 400 RV pedestals, the dump station was surrounded with four bollards, consisting of 4" or so diameter galvanized pipe driven into the ground, then filled with concrete, about 3' in height. A sensible precaution, given RVers' propensity to run into things with their rigs.

As I was wrapping up the dumping procedure, I had my hand on the bus someplace, and my arm brushed up against one of the bollards. I was quite surprised to get a shock. Hmm. After looking at the bollard and noticing some rough patches where the paint was flaking off, I decided that I must have just gotten scraped a little, and it just felt like a shock. I went back to what I was doing.

A minute or two later, it happened again, this time much stronger. In fact, the shock was so strong that I was reluctant to touch both items at the same time again until I knew what was going on. I finished up with the dumping, and, despite it already being 108° in the shade, got out my cheap backup voltmeter to check it out. Even though I knew intellectually that the bus was insulated from the ground, and therefore nothing on the bus could be creating this problem, my gut instinct was to make certain we did not have an on-board electrical problem.

When I connected the meter between the bus chassis and a bare spot on a bollard, at first I read 20 volts AC, but I knew the shock was stronger than that. After poking the probe around to get through the patina of rust on the bollard, the reading jumped to 239 volts AC, then jumped so high my cheapo meter would not read it -- it just flashed "OL" (overload), which meant it was over 400 volts AC. Wow -- that's a lot of voltage, and no wonder I got a shock.

Nothing aboard the bus produces that kind of voltage (well, OK, the HID floodlights do, internally, but they were off), and I was just about to conclude that the bollards were somehow carrying a voltage, when I realized I was hearing a 60-hertz hum coming from someplace nearby, and it was rather loud. Just then, I noticed that we were right under some high-tension lines.

I had noticed the two sets of transmission lines running across the property several times, but it did not really register that the dump station was right underneath them. The bollards, being metal and driven well into the ground, which, at the dump station, was very wet (I was doing cleanup, and so had the water hose running, washing down the dump hose and the ground all around the dump area) were at ground potential.



The bus, on the other hand, being 13' tall and sitting on rubber tires, was at a much higher potential (more than 400 volts above ground, clearly) sitting there in the enormous electric field of the high-tension lines. It was an eye-opening experience, and I will pay much more attention in situations where we find ourselves parked under transmission lines in the future.

This was also a graphic demonstration for me of something that I've known academically for a long time, and also is drilled into us every year when we re-certify on the Red Cross Emergency Communications Response Vehicles, which have 50' aluminum antenna masts that must scrupulously be kept away from power lines. We're even trained on how to hop out of an energized vehicle, then hop away, feet together, until well clear of the hazard. A difference of only a couple of feet in these kinds of fields can represent hundreds of volts -- enough to stop a beating heart.

I survived the experience to blog another day. But I have to wonder how many other people have gotten a shock while dumping there, and wondered where it came from.

Images uploaded by bre pettis. Illustrations from the book Elektroschutz in 132 Bildern.

Where nothing can possibly go wrong go wrong go wrong

We are at Westworld in Scottsdale, Arizona (map). I keep looking over my shoulder for an animatronic Yul Brynner hunting me down with a six gun.

Westworld is an equestrian and event center operated by the City of Scottsdale, on Bureau of Reclamation land that serves as the emergency flood buffer zone for the Central Arizona Project. Because of the nature of the events held here, they have at least ten distinct RV lots with water and electric, with hundreds and hundreds of pedestals. I'm not certain of the total count, but it is immense.

We are the only rig here. For that matter, we are the only vehicle of any kind here. Whereas, clearly, there are at least a handful of RVs in the myriad commercial parks in the area. I think Westworld is just not well-known in the RV community. It is also probably the case that public RV parking here is not available during events, but, again, I have not really checked on this.

In any case, we are enjoying having the whole place to ourselves. It was well past the century mark when we arrived, and we decided to set up the "hot" tub, fill it with water (from the fastest spigot I have ever encountered -- with only one rig here, park pressure is enormous), and use it as a cold splash pool in the heat.



Ha. Even after running fifty gallons or so out of the spigot first, to fill our water tank, the water coming out was still 100°. We put probably 200 gallons in the tub, and still the spa thermometer read 100° when we were done. Fortunately, it had cooled down to around 94° by late evening, and a quick splash felt good at the end of a hot day.

In addition to the high-pressure spigot (bring a regulator if you plan to use city water pressure here), we have a nice modern pedestal with 50-, 30-, and 20-amp service, and we've been able to run all our air conditioners as needed. Absolutely essential here, or we'd have cooked pets, including the fish (well, OK, the cats might actually enjoy it). There is also free WiFi and a dump station.

We picked this spot because we thought it was close to the Alltel Ice Den, where our niece competed. Little did we know just how close -- a mere three blocks away. Walking distance, if not for the sweltering heat. We pulled the scooters out on arrival, and it was a quick ride there and back both yesterday afternoon (short program) and this morning (long program).

Our niece competed in the 2009 Cactus Classic, a US Figure Skating sanctioned competition that, for her, is out-of-region and thus does not affect her points standing. But it was a great opportunity for her to participate in an out-of-state competition that draws skaters from around the country, and try out some new elements to her routine without penalty. She did not place very highly in the standings, but we thought that both of her programs were beautiful and well-skated.

Now that the competition is over, we are looking into ways to spend the rest of the day with our two nieces and their mother. They have a nice pool at their hotel, but in this weather you can't "hang out" at the pool -- you either need to be in the water, or indoors. We're looking into museums, movies, and scenic drives. Their flight is not until mid-day tomorrow, so we will end up spending the rest of the day and then having dinner with them.

We paid for two nights, and I expect we will clear out of Westworld mid-day tomorrow, destination unknown. I made tentative plans to have a couple of minor issues with the turbocharged looked at by either of two shops here in the Phoenix area, but I am now leaning towards having that work done someplace cooler; the forecast for Monday calls for 112°, and that's too hot to want to be standing outside poking at a hot engine.

Photo by robotography

An oasis of cool

We are at a dispersed camp site in the Sitgreaves National Forest, off Arizona 260 (map). We are right on the Mogollon Rim, at about 7,600', and it was a downright chilly 65° when we arrived yesterday around 5:30. We slept with most of the windows closed last night for the first time in weeks.

I had expected that we would stay on US-60 after Show Low, descending rapidly to Globe and spending the night somewhere in the Tonto National Forest. That was the route recommended by Street Atlas on my computer, and since we are now under a little time pressure, I was just going with the "fastest route" recommendation.

When we plugged Westworld into the Garmin GPS, however, it recommended we divert in Show Low onto Arizona 260, which will connect in Payson to Arizona 87 and bring us in from the north. In addition to being some 20 miles shorter, this route keeps us at much higher elevations for more of the distance, and so we were able to spend the night at this wonderfully cool spot.

There are quite a few forest roads off AZ-260, and we might have chosen any of them, but our Days End guide talked about this one specifically. I suppose the fact that it is well-enough known to be in the guide should have told us it is a popular spot -- we can see seven other rigs from our spot here, and a little exploration yesterday evening reveals that there are dozens of rigs, and even numerous tent campers here. We, clearly, are not the only ones escaping the heat. I can only imagine it will get even more crowded this evening, with the onset of the weekend.

We actually selected one of the closest sites to the highway, since we are just passing through. If we were going to spend a week or two (which would be lovely right now), we'd make our way another couple miles deeper into the forest, where I would expect the camper density to be much lower. Where we are sitting right now is much more like a free campground than the true dispersed camping we love so much.

Our niece's first performance is this afternoon, so as pleasant and cool as it is here, we nevertheless must get underway no later than noon, so as to be settled in quarters at Westworld in plenty of time to get the scooters out and head over to the rink. The forecast says it will be 103° when we arrive, climbing to 106° tomorrow, 110° on Sunday, and 112° on Monday should we elect to stay until then -- likely, since we have scheduled some follow-up work on the turbocharger in Mesa. We'll see how we feel on Sunday after our nieces leave -- we might come right back up here to the cooler elevations.

No matter what, we will be at Westworld until at least mid-day on Sunday. If we stay in the Phoenix region beyond that, we will move over to one of the Elks lodges, where power is a bit less expensive. Today I expect we will have a lovely drive down through the forest. Yesterday's drive through the high country was magnificent as well; US-60 is lightly traveled and the landscape is naturally beautiful and mostly devoid of civilization.



Opal, not looking much like an oasis of "cool."



"Yo! Cats are way cooler than dogs."

Westworld ho

We are at a roadside table on US-60, just west of Quemado, NM (map). New Mexico generously allows stays of up to 24 hours at its rest areas, and this one is in a great spot, a good 40' from the roadway and at the top of a hill, with a partial view of the mountains in the distance.

We had a beautiful drive yesterday, down the eastern edge of El Malpais National Monument. We stopped at the BLM visitor center (the Park Service administers the monument, and the BLM administers the surrounding El Malpais National Conservation Area) and also at Ventana Arch, a natural stone arch in the Zuni sandstone on the east side of the monument. At one point we had cliffs of Zuni sandstone on our left, and vast fields of pahoehoe and a'a lava to our right.

The badlands of El Malpais consist primarily of volcanic flows from several calderas spread throughout the area, the most recent of which occurred a mere three millennia ago. Most of the area is inaccessible from state route 117 on the east side, so we had to content ourselves with what we could see from the road -- still pretty spectacular.

We joined up with the now familiar US-60 in the one-horse town of Quemado, where there are no overnight options, and set our sights on one of the handful of rest/picnic areas west of there. This first one was just perfect, and after getting parked, I fired up the grill and started some chicken breasts. Ironically, shortly after I started cooking, a group of Angus cattle stopped by across the street to check us out -- we could have had steak.


George watched the cattle intently for 30 minutes.



"Steak?!? Where?"

Yesterday morning we did one last warm-up/cool-down cycle, during which I plugged in my handy engine/transmission code reader/programmer, an item I bought recently on eBay for $70 -- a steal. With this I was able to verify that all the fuel injectors were working, relieving any concerns that a seriously damaged injector had caused the turbo problem. Full details can be found on the bus boards here or here.

Once we got under way, we had to find water. When we originally set out from Albuquerque on Saturday, we had enough water to get to Phoenix, where we expected to be yesterday or today. Our delay in Rio Puerco, including a lot of extra washing up from working on the bus, meant that we were pretty much out when we left. In fact, I ended up transferring 15 gallons or so from our drinking supply to get us through Wednesday morning.

The Route 66 Casino had no spigots, and when we asked, they said all they would allow is to fill one five-gallon container. That wasn't going to cut it, so we got out on the road, knowing there were two more casino/truck stops on I-40 before we would turn south on 117. We first stopped at Dancing Eagle, where a spin around the truck and car fuel islands revealed no spigots. They have an RV park there ($10 per night with club card), which had plenty of spigots, but the office was closed, so we couldn't ask. A self-registration sign said using the dump would be $6.25, but we did not want to pay that much for $0.25 of water, so we headed back onto the road.

Our next and final stop was the Acoma Sky City casino, where we have stayed previously. We knew they also had a truck stop, and after threading our way through highway construction around the exit, made our way to it. The casino parking area and roadways were a zoo, and there must have been 50 security officers directing traffic, which puzzled us on a Wednesday. In any event, we made it to the truck islands, where we found no spigots. Louise walked over to the car islands on the other side -- no spigots there, either, but she discovered a line for the pumps that ran out onto the street.

We pulled back out of the gas station and headed up to the RV park, and could see the line disappear into the distance, as far as we could see. It took us a good minute to make the left through the line into the RV park. Once again, the office was closed, but there was a spigot right in front of it, and there was no way we were going to fight our way through the horrendous traffic to the hotel front desk, on the other end of the property, where a sign at the RV park said to register. We just put 15 or 20 gallons in and turned around. Now we were stuck in the huge line.

It turns out that the tribe was selling gas for $1.02 per gallon (possibly to promote their location at Exit 102 and maybe sponsored by a radio station near 102 on the dial), and people were coming from far and wide to fill up at less than half the going rate. The line for fuel must have been hours long; I guess there are lots of folks who could give up half (or more) of their Wednesday to save $20 on a tank of gas. We were only stuck for perhaps ten minutes, and eventually security directed us around the line and back to the freeway. Good thing we stopped, though -- we have not passed another spigot since.

We should be somewhere between Show Low and Globe, Arizona tonight, and in Scottsdale tomorrow, where it will be close to 110°. We have reservations there for a 50-amp space at Westworld, an event center (primarily equestrian, but many folks might recognize it as also the home of the Barrett-Jackson collector car auction) that happens to be just a couple of blocks from the skating rink where our niece is competing. Good thing it was there -- the nearest RV parks or Elks lodges with electricity are at least a half hour away.

Back under pressure

Odyssey's turbocharger is replaced, and we are almost ready to roll. We have one more test to do in the morning, and then we will resume our westerly course to Phoenix, where we should arrive in plenty of time to watch our niece skate. We went into the casino for one last dinner, expecting to partake of the $7 buffet (we had opted for the restaurant last night), but apparently Tuesdays are "progressive madness" or some such here, and we couldn't get near the place, so we went to the restaurant yet again.

I know many readers are waiting for the results of the great turbo debacle. The executive summary is that it appears to be completely fixed, and it also appears that it was nothing more than what we originally suspected, a blown turbo.

For all you die-hards, the longer version is as follows. As I wrote here yesterday, we decided to order a remanufactured unit from local Detroit Diesel distributor Stewart & Stevenson, and it came down from their Denver location overnight by bus. I called the Albuquerque office around 11 this morning, figuring I should have already heard something from them, and they informed me that it had just arrived.

We loaded the old turbo on the back seat of my scooter and headed the ~20 miles back to town, avoiding the freeway by staying on old Route 66. Sure enough, S&S had the turbo, and it was the correct item. Unfortunately, the gaskets we also ordered never arrived. No matter, since checking the order revealed they had ordered the wrong gaskets anyway. It soon became apparent why -- it took three different parts clerks and a service manager, plus myself, combing through three different parts books, to find the numbers for the correct parts.

(The issue has to do with our turbo being top mounted, unlike the more common truck installation which is side-mounted. Most of the diagrams in the manuals are for the more common type. The gaskets we needed are listed on some parts manifests, but do not show on the diagrams, nor are their functions listed on the manifests.)

Nearly two hours later, we had tracked down part numbers for the oil drain seal and the blower adapter gasket; the exhaust flange gasket was the easy one, and they had produced one within the first few minutes. They turned out to also have the drain seal in stock. Unfortunately, the blower adapter gasket was not, nor did anyone else in town have one. At least this was the least critical of the three, and it can be replaced later if need be without having to remove the turbo.

We loaded the new turbo, the gaskets, and a gallon of 40-weight oil back onto the scooters and headed back to the casino, where I arranged to meet Jim the mobile truck repair guy. He was so efficient at getting the thing out, I decided to enlist his help putting it back in, too.

As it turned out, he had to wrestle with it for nearly two hours to get it back in. Everything is tight in our engine bay, and getting the exhaust flanges, the exhaust pipe, the intake elbow, and the blower adapter to all line up and cooperate was a challenge. I had to open up the access hatch through the radiator intake so we could tug on the exhaust plumbing, and Jim ended up loosening the turbine and compressor housing clamps on the new unit to tweak the clocking to get it all to fit. eventually we had it all back in place, and then started pouring oil into the bearing through the oil supply hole.

Hmm... the oil does not seem to be going in. Nope -- it's just sitting there in the fitting. Even spinning the compressor wheel is not getting any oil to drain. After probably ten minutes of this, we decided the tiny orifice at the oil supply was clogged, most likely with assembly grease. We threaded an air fitting into the supply hole, and a quick blast of compressed air cleared the obstruction. After pouring a few ounces of oil into the bearing from a squeeze bottle, we re-attached the oil supply line.

From the rear switches, which allow for cranking the engine with the fuel solenoid closed, I bumped the engine around a few times in short pulses -- so many folks have warned me about a blown injector tip, that I was worried a cylinder could be full of fuel and hydraulically locked. But there was no resistance at all. So I cranked it three or four times for close to ten seconds apiece, closely spaced, to get some oil flowing up to the bearings and purge any air from the supply line. Then I set the switch on run and cranked it again, and it immediately lit off.

I noticed two things right away. The first was that I did not get a big puff of white smoke when it started -- we've been seeing such a puff of smoke on start-up for several months now, and it is one of the symptoms I have reported every time we've had anything done on the engine. We've now fired up three or four times today, with no smoke evident on any start. The second was that things sounded smoother than they have in a while, and the exhaust looked and smelled cleaner. All good signs.

After checking for leaks, shutting down, and rechecking clamp tightness, we declared victory and I paid Jim for his time -- two hours, plus travel. We then buttoned the coach up, loaded the scooters, and set out around the parking lot on a low-speed test drive. Kevin, from the bus forums, who has been very generous with his time and expertise over the phone during this project, had strongly recommended getting everything up to operating temperature (and then back down to cold again) three times before putting any real load on the turbo, and so we kept speed and acceleration down, watching the boost gauge to try to keep it under 2 psi (we hit 3 psi occasionally). I stopped occasionally to check for smoke and read the temps with an IR gun, but all was normal at every stop, other than oil spitting out of the exhaust and the muffler drains. I expect to be puking oil for the next fifty miles, until whatever's left in the exhaust and the airbox finally burns off or spits out.

After half an hour or so of "road" time (we made it as far as the historic Rio Puerco bridge on old 66, just half a mile from here), during which I noticed subjectively more power and less black smoke than we've had in quite some time (even at these very low boost levels) we parked for the night in the casino's RV lot, blissfully out of range of the incessantly idling trucks. After dinner, when all had cooled down, I popped the hatch to check all the clamps and look for leaks.

What I found was that Jim had tightened the clamps on the outlet hose with the jackscrews too close to the steel supports for the top of the turbo compartment. We've had problems in this area before, and so I loosened the clamps and rotated them 90° for clearance. When I did this, I noticed two things; one was that there was a ripple in the hose, because the clocking of the compressor housing had the outlet just a tad out of line with the blower adapter inlet. The second was that the hose looked torn in exactly the same spot as shown in the photo I just linked.

With both hose clamps loose, I was able to loosen the compressor housing v-band and inlet duct, then gently tap the volute around a couple degrees with a plastic deadblow, taking care of the first issue. Without removing the adapter, however, I could not remove the hose to see if the tear went all the way through. Moreover, I was afraid that I could worsen the situation by trying to remove the hose.

What I ended up doing was to tighten up all the clamps, fire up the engine, set the high idle to get enough compressor speed to bring the pre-blower boost pressure up above atmospheric (at extremely low compressor levels, the blower can clear the air as fast as the compressor provides it, yielding 0.0 boost, or just atmospheric pressure). Then I sprayed the hole with soap solution, just as one would when looking for air line leaks. No bubbles, so we think the hose is intact, and the tear we can see is just in the outer jacket. We will order a new hose and replace it as a precaution the next time we pass a Detroit shop.

As long as the engine was now already running, I closed up the hatch and we let it come all the way back up to temperature before shutting down for the night. Tomorrow, we will do one more hot/cold cycle before we leave; during that warm-up I will connect my diagnostic reader and test the injectors, just to be certain we are firing on all cylinders, to borrow a phrase. If all seems well, we will clear out of here and resume our previous route west to Phoenix.

At this writing, it seems as though we did not have any deeper problem, such as blown injector tips, or catastrophic destruction of rings or valves becoming "Foreign Object Debris" (FOD) and hitting the turbine. I can't rule out FOD as a cause -- it's possible something such as a rust flake or a clot of coke got knocked off into the exhaust when S&S in Farmington repaired an exhaust clamp, for example. But I am inclined to believe that what really happened here is that the turbine wheel became slightly imbalanced many moons ago, possibly due to FOD but also possibly just due to manufacturing tolerance issues -- it was a rebuilt unit to begin with. Over time that imbalance caused irregular bearing wear, and the turbine has been wobbling in the bearing for several months. Eventually, the edge of the journal scored the shaft, creating a weak spot right where the turbine wheel attaches. It was then only a matter of time before some combination of heat, load, and speed caused the shaft to shear along the score line. The extensive damage to the turbine blades then occurred almost immediately as the now loose turbine wheel ricocheted around the housing.

We'll know for certain that all is well once we've brought the engine into the powerband and the boost levels up into the high teens on the road tomorrow. But based on testing so far, I believe we will be back to 100% normal operation.

Another hot, hectic day at the Laguna Nation

We are, of course, still at the Route 66 Casino west of Albuquerque. Actually, more accurately, we are at the truck plaza; between blowing smoke, nursing the engine, and having a cop right on my tail, I had pulled Odyssey into the very first space I saw, which is in one of the truck lots.

The casino also has a dedicated RV lot, which is closer to the casino and also a bit away from the incessantly idling trucks as well as the busy gas station. After two nights and more than two full days here, I am now wishing we had driven the extra 500 feet before we yanked the turbo. Last night the truck next to us sounded like a Harrier getting ready for takeoff.

I spent all morning on the phone, trying to nail down either a whole turbo or parts to fix the one we have, and getting more information about potential causes and what other problems might exist. I spent a good part of the afternoon disassembling the bad turbo, both as preparation for possibly installing a new "cartridge" into it, and to have a look at the business end of the turbine, to see if maybe it had ingested a valve or a piston ring, which would be cause for towing to a shop for more extensive work.

As part of the long-distance diagnostic process, we put some photos of the turbo, before and after I tore into it, on-line.

Get the flash player here: http://www.adobe.com/flashplayer

If the photos don't show above this sentence, they can be found here. And a more complete discussion of the whole process is posted as a follow-up to the bus bulletin board threads I already referenced, here and here.

Ultimately, we ended up ordering a remanufactured turbocharger from Stewart & Stevenson, who had one in their Denver location. It should be heading this way by bus, appropriately enough, tonight, and with luck will be in the Albuquerque office tomorrow morning. (UPS red label for the 62-lb turbo would have been $224, by bus it will be closer to $80.)

So we are here at least one more night, and maybe two. At least the buffet drops to $7 tonight with player's card. We did sample it last night for $12, and it was actually a pretty nice buffet. Also, it is supposed to be a couple degrees cooler tomorrow, which ought to make my scooter ride back to town a little more pleasant, and perhaps cost us a tad less generator time. We've been running right around 6 hours of run time per day since we landed here.

I will try to post another update here when we get the turbo back into place. With this multi-day kink in the schedule, I now have no idea where we will head from here when we get under way.

Getting kicked at Route 66

Before anyone gets too concerned, I have an update on our situation here at the Route 66 Casino.

First, the good news -- this is not a dry reservation, so we were able to have wine with our dinner. We ate at the Main Street restaurant, the table-service full-menu restaurant in the main casino, where we each got an enormous carne asada burrito, complete with soup and salad bar, for $8.50 on chef's special. We spent more on the wine than we did on food. Later in the evening, we strolled over to the (much closer to where we're parked) 24-hour RoadRunner Diner at the truck plaza for dessert, having just missed the Dairy Queen, also in the truck plaza, by ten minutes.

The bad news, at least at the moment, is that it is so hot here we are having touble keeping the generator running. Today I took the cover off the radiator compartment to see if it was caked with dirt, but it was not. Running with the cover off seems to be helping; we are going to need to have the cooling system looked at when we get a chance. Fortunately, we have enough battery to keep one of the air conditioners running even when the genny quits.

On the engine front, I started tearing into the turbo this morning, having spent nearly an hour last night just getting the hatch open (the 3M firestop caulk I used to seal it last time had it glued in pretty good). I had just wrestled the exhaust blankets off the turbo (showing evidence of gas leakage -- soot -- around the inside edge, as well as a spot of fresh oil), had soaked the exhaust flange studs in WD-40, and was loosening the intake duct to check the impeller, when Louise, on her way to the laundromat here, spotted a "mobile mechanic" truck in the parking lot.

We called the number on the truck, and Jim the mobile truck repair guy agreed to come over and have a look. I took it as a good sign that, when I told him it was an 8V92, he said "oh, you must be in a bus." Since he was already here, he agreed to work for just his hourly rate of $75, without the mileage charge. Pretty, good, I thought, for a Sunday morning.

Jim had two things that I did not:

• 30+ years of experience working on diesels full-time as a mechanic.
• A whizzy cordless 1/2" impact wrench.

We chatted for a few moments, and he picked up basically right where I left off. The good news was that the impeller looked to be in good shape; so much so that, at first, Jim thought the turbo was fine (for just a heart-stopping moment). A few seconds later, though, he realized he could wiggle the impeller in the housing, and he predicted that the shaft was broken in two. Whew... that meant it was very likely a bad turbo and nothing else.

He had the turbo out in less than half an hour. I figured it would have taken me two hours to do the same work, between going very slowly and methodically because I've not done it before, and having to work the bolts loose in cramped quarters with just hand tools. As it was, two of the exhaust flange studs came clean out, nut and all (the nuts came off the other two as normal).

Sure enough, he was spot-on about the problem. The turbine/impeller shaft was broken in two, and the exhaust turbine was seized in the housing. This accounts for all the symptoms: high exhaust back-pressure preventing the blower from completely clearing the cylinders, unburned fuel likely continuing to burn inside the exhaust system, and oil flowing past the bearings and into both the intake and exhaust systems.

Careful inspection of the impeller (compressor wheel) showed no significant damage, and so we agreed that it was unlikely any debris was sent into the blower. He was willing to hunt around to find a turbo today, but we also agreed that I would have to pay a considerable premium to get one on a Sunday.

Later today I will get all the numbers I can find off the turbo (it's outside now, and just too bloody hot here in the sun -- I'll do it after sundown), and tomorrow morning I will start calling around. I can load the turbo on my scooter and run it into Albuquerque for an exchange.

I'm pretty sure I can get the turbo back into place on my own, but I may well call Jim back, just to have a higher confidence that it's been done right. We were very fortunate to luck into someone with plenty of Detroit 2-stroke experience. In addition to his rate, the round trip mileage charge will be an additional $60. At least he is willing to come back and put in parts that I supply -- if he supplied them, there would be a 30% mark-up.

So that's the status. All things considered, not too bad. With any luck, we will have a turbocharger by Tuesday at the latest, and be back on the road. Tonight, we will give the casino buffet a try.

Broken down west of Albuquerque

We are at the Route 66 Casino and Truck Plaza off I-40, just west of Albuquerque (map). As you can see, we did not make it far today.

There's a good reason for that: we blew our turbocharger climbing the grade just west of here. That's the middle of nowhere, of course, so after consulting some expert advice by phone and checking oil levels, we nursed the bus along on the shoulder, at 20 mph, another 2.5 miles to an exit where we could turn around, and then about 7 miles back here to the casino.

We were blowing enough white smoke that several folks called it in as a fire, and we got pulled over twice; once by the Laguna tribal police rolling westbound (while we were on the Navajo nation) and once by the Navajo police rolling eastbound (while on the Laguna nation). At least the Laguna officer was able to alert the state patrol, so they just waved when we passed them at the U-turn.

We had to keep a careful eye on the gauges and the oil level, but we still heated the exhaust up enough that we melted our trailer wiring. We were able to roll into a truck stall here with plenty of oil still in the crankcase, and the coolant temperature under 190, but we have no idea what else might be damaged besides the turbo.

I won't bore you will all the gory details or what our options are from here (few, it turns out, until Monday when places are open), other than to say that I have posted identical write-ups on the two bus conversion bulletin boards, here:
http://www.busconversions.com/bbs/index.php?topic=12676.0
http://www.busnut.com/bbs/messages/11/29969.html?1247961007

So we are stuck here at the Route 66 Casino on the Laguna Nation until at least Monday. At least they have a couple of restaurants and a c-store here, and I can ride back to Albuquerque on a lower-speed frontage road, if need be, on the scooter.

Into the furnace

We are at the Elks lodge in Albuquerque (map). It was right around 100° when we rolled in around 3ish yesterday afternoon. We have a view out over the city and the Rio Grande valley out our windows, as the lodge is located on a hillside, and it was a short walk to Applebees for dinner last night.

The descent out of the Santa Fe forest along the Jemez River was lovely, and we made a lunch stop at a riverside turn out. We stayed at the Jemez Falls campground until the 1pm checkout, and it was still in the low 80s there when we pulled out.

The lodge here has five or six 30-amp hookups for $10. There were five rigs here last night, and, due to the way they've arranged the pedestals, that's a tight squeeze. We selected an end space with some extra room between a light stanchion on our left and the power pedestal on the right; however the two rigs to our right, both slide-equipped models, used three spaces between the two of them. When the fifth rig showed up in the evening, he grumbled around the lot until he finally decided to squeeze in between those two rigs and an immense fiver who chose to park, umm, "outside the lines," running over that rig's power cord in the process, and then having to stretch his own cord across one of the other two rigs to reach a pedestal.

Our guide very clearly states that there is no room to extend slides at this lodge, and that the spaces are very narrow and close together. That's the price you pay for $10 hookups in Albuquerque. But three other rigs here thought that that simply did not apply to them, and in yet another case of "I got mine; you can pound sand" just blithely set up as if they were in a regular campground. Not a single person came out to offer to reposition their rig or anything else to accommodate the newcomer. On top of all that, two of the rigs did not unhook their toads, thus unnecessarily blocking off several parking spaces on a night when the lodge was serving dinner -- the RV spaces here are about 40' in total length. We counted ourselves lucky to have snagged the end space, where we were not involved in the power-cord brouhaha.

This morning, before the day gets too hot, we will get some shopping done at Wal-Mart and Camping World before heading west on I-40 to NM-117, which will take us south into El Malpais National Monument.

Fuzzy Friday: In the Wild

On Fridays I write about our pets

Another silly cat video.

One more night in the cooler elevations

We are at the Jemez Falls Forest Service campground (map), just off NM-4 on Jemez Falls Road in the mountains west of Los Alamos. We are at 8,000' elevation here -- it was in the 80s when we arrived, as it is now, and was refreshingly cool overnight. There are few mosquitoes here in the ponderosa forest, so we dined al fresco and I am sitting outside while typing this.

Wednesday morning we decided to visit Bandelier National Monument on the scooters, leaving the bus at the Los Alamos Elks lodge, with the A/C on to keep the pets comfortable. It was a beautiful ride, through coniferous forest with occasional glimpses of nearby mesas, and the Rio Grande valley off in the distance. We came into the park from the West, so we had the labs on our left ("warning: unexploded ordnance") and Bandelier on the right.

We took a quick loop through the Juniper campground, just to check it out, and we found quite a number of sites that would easily fit Odyssey. It was pleasant enough, but at a lower elevation than Los Alamos, and, with temperatures well into the 90's, we made the right decision to leave the bus behind. Dry camping here is $12.

The entrance road descends further into Frijoles Canyon, where the only "developed" section of the park resides. The CCC-built 30's-era visitor center sits next to what used to be a rustic lodge, both done in adobe style. The lodge closed in 1976 and is now staff housing, administration, and a concessionaire-run gift shop and snack bar. We had packed a lunch, and so ate at the picnic area across the creek. The visitor center is scheduled to close next month for restoration and renovation, so we counted ourselves lucky to have seen the historic building.

We both walked out to the main ruins, the Tyuonyi pueblo, a roughly circular structure on the valley floor. I continued along the 1.2-mile "main loop" trail and was able to ascend by ladder into a number of the "cavate" cliff dwellings, consisting of natural caves in the volcanic tuff enlarged by the ancient puebloans. Some of these can be found on the DoE grounds as well, and were pointed out to us on our tour.


Tyuonyi, as seen from a cavate.

We returned to Los Alamos via the eastern half of the loop, which meant we had to climb the grade (on the truck route) on our scooters, which did so just about as fast as the bus would. We pulled onto the shoulder a number of times to let traffic pass. It was late enough in the afternoon when we returned that we decided to just spend another night, and I went into the lodge to pay.

We decided to try the Japanese restaurant, Origami, that Georgia had recommended on the tour, just a couple of blocks from the lodge. Louise again had sushi, which was fresh and beautifully presented. I mostly pondered the irony of sushi and a good-sized Japanese-American population in Los Alamos.

Yesterday we packed up and decided to head towards Albuquerque on the western route -- west on 4 through Jemez Springs to San Ysidro, joining US-550 south to Bernalillo -- mostly because we've never been this way, whereas we'd been to Santa Fe. The two routes involved the same distance, to within a mile.

This route, however, did involve another considerable grade, which we would have avoided going the other way. After clearing through the Los Alamos National Laboratories gate, where we had a pretty thorough inspection (by contrast, on the scooters we had just been waved through), which allowed us to drive through the labs without heading down and back up the mesas, we turned west on NM-4 and immediately onto a 9%-10% grade, with several switchbacks, to ascend to the rim of the ancient volcano.

After cresting the volcano we found ourselves driving along the Valles Caldera, once a private ranch and now operated as a National Preserve. The preserve is essentially surrounded by a combination of the Santa Fe National Forest and Bandelier National Monument, and the superintendents of those entities sit on the preserve's managing board. I was amused to then find the caldera featured last night on a National Geographic program I watched on geology in the west.

While I had calculated only three hours to Bernalillo, ascending the grade was a lengthy affair. 10% at altitude and in 95° heat is very hard on the cooling system, and I found we had to slow down so much that the transmission came out of lock-up. That's a catch-22: with the torque converter operating, it's dumping even more heat into the cooling system, and the best we could manage was 15-20 mph, with three stops to cool down from ~212 to ~190 -- one of those stops was right smack in the traffic lane when the Check Engine light came on.

So it was that barely 20 miles of progress had taken nearly two hours, including the cool down stops and a brief stop at the Caldera to take in the panorama and read the information signs. Plus, we were now above 8,000', where the temperature had come down into the upper 80s. Remembering that it was pushing the century mark down in Albuquerque, we decided to stop for the night up here in the cooler elevations, and we turned off at what our map said was a dirt road.

The road turned out to be paved all the way to the campground, and beyond to a parking area for a ¼ mile trail to Jemez Falls. The campground is large -- four loops -- and popular; I am guessing this is about the coolest place to come for the weekend from Albuquerque and Santa Fe. Nevertheless we found a nice site in enough of a clearing to get the dish on-line.

I hiked down to the falls in the afternoon, which were lovely from the overlook, and refreshing when I waded out into the upper pool. Unfortunately, we had gotten some bad trail directions from the campground, and I ended up on pretty much a 4-5 mile hike, in my river shoes, after two wrong turns. Should have just stuck to the road, which was a direct shot. Today my feet are a little sore.

From here we will continue south through Jemez Springs and into Albuquerque, where we will be tonight. Most likely at the Elks lodge, since I expect we will need air conditoning full time, and our guide says they have 30-amp power. While in town we will make some much-needed stops at Wal-Mart, Lowe's, and Camping World. We are watching Investigation Area 97; if it appears that will develop into a tropical cyclone, we may turn east onto I-40 from Albuquerque, otherwise, we are thinking about heading southwest to Phoenix where our niece has a skating competition in a week. In either case, we will be in the heat from here on out.

Atomic City

We are at the Elks lodge in Los Alamos, New Mexico (map). We are parked perhaps a hundred yards from the original "technical area" where the first atomic bombs were developed, now part of downtown Los Alamos -- the lab has since been moved to the next mesa south, called, appropriately, "South Mesa."

Due to a routing faux pas, we came in via the old main road, a ridiculously steep grade that forced us to stop twice to let the engine cool down, and allowed us only 20 mph of progress when we were rolling. We later learned there is a truck route which ascends a gentler grade with passing lanes up the South Mesa side. The views, however, were stunning.

At least it is a bit cooler at this elevation, but still not cool enough. Thus we skipped the city park at the east end of town (currently $10 per night for dry camping; pay at the city aquatic center at the west end of town) in favor of the Elks Lodge, which our directory claimed to have three 15-amp power sites for $8 per night. When we arrived, we discovered three 30-amp receptacles along with two 15-amp ones, and, being the only ones here, we of course snagged a 30. Two are on the same post, so three rigs here would be pretty cozy. Since we are all alone, we're using one of the 15's to run our air compressor, which otherwise tends to knock the inverter off-line for half a minute when it starts, about every half hour or so. The rate is now $10, which is more than fair for a power outlet (and a water spigot, of which we have no need).

Last night we walked two short blocks to the Central Avenue Grill, which we figured to be about the nicest place in town. Oddly, they have a sushi bar in addition to serving standard American fare, and Louise and I split our ordering along those lines. The food was fine, and prices were reasonable. In the middle of dinner, we both had engineering-career flashbacks as twenty or so young engineering types filed in and took their places at a long table that had been arranged for them in advance -- we surmised a department dinner of some sort, such as someone's last day at the lab, a scene hauntingly familiar to us from our stints at megalithic engineering laboratories (Varian Associates for Louise, Bell Telephone Laboratories for both of us, and Stanford University for myself).

We managed to stick to healthy dining options, but our undoing came later -- there is a Sonic drive-in right next to the Elks, and we wandered over there to share a banana split later in the evening. They turned out to have a good breakfast burrito, too -- after having to put up with the smell of various carbs cooking there all night long, we could not resist this morning.

Today we took an hour and a half city tour given by Los Alamos native Georgia Strickfaden, owner and operator of Buffalo Tours, whose bright yellow Sprinter van is an unmistakable fixture about town (as is Georgia herself -- many people shouted their greetings as we passed). This tour came highly recommended by several folks at the Elks lodge when I was checking in, and they were right -- Georgia really knows the town and the labs inside and out. She also seems to know everyone here, and that turned out to extend to Louise's cousin (now living in Oregon) who lived here years ago -- small world.

After the excellent tour, we spent a couple of hours in the Bradbury Museum (named after post-Oppenheimer lab director Norris, not author Ray), just a block from our digs here, which is the official museum and visitor center of the Los Alamos National Laboratory. The exhibits and films were both fascinating and sobering.

Tonight we rode the scooters over to De Colores, serving traditional New Mexican cuisine -- it was quite good. De Colores happens to be directly adjacent to the aforementioned free city park, and we noted three rigs there, two of which were pop-up campers. No hookups, but the park does have a dump station.

Tomorrow we plan to take in Bandelier National Monument. What we have yet to decide, however, is whether we will ride the scooters for a day trip, or take Odyssey down there and spend the night in the Juniper campground. We'll see what the temperature forecast looks like before we decide.

Photo by distopiandreamgirl. Atomic cookies!

Land of O'Keefe

We are at the Corps of Engineers campground at Abiquiu Lake (map), off US-84.

While we were really enjoying our stay in the Carson forest at higher elevations, we'd pretty much run out of fresh food. We wanted to spend at least a night in the red rock country, and so we thought we'd use our last day's rations somewhere around here. We broke camp in the early afternoon, and headed south.

US-84 heads downgrade rather rapidly along this section, and while that was easy on our diesel supply, the temperatures increased with every mile we drove. By the time we reached Echo Amphitheater it was well into the 90s. There is a small Forest Service campground there, with tables, fire rings, trash barrels, and rest rooms for $10 per night. A lovely spot in the red rock, but with temperatures still rising, we wanted power to run the air conditioners. As a side note, the folks at the Chama visitor center had told us camping was no longer allowed here -- wrong.

We did walk the paved trail to the "amphitheater" itself, a concave formation in the sandstone that lives up to its name. While the day use area was quite busy, with perhaps half a dozen vehicles coming through in the fifteen minutes or so that we were there, the camping area was empty. I should note that the Forest Service charges a day use fee to see the formation (our annual pass waives this), although stopping just to use the rest room is free.

A few miles further south is the turnoff for Ghost Ranch, which we skipped principally on account of their pet policy. This is where readers Kate and Terry are hosting, and the red rock formations form a magnificent backdrop to the area. We continued south to the lake, where we knew we would find power.

As it turns out, only two electric sites were available when we arrived; the camp hosts told us the place had been jam-packed over the weekend, making our decision Saturday to wait it out a good one. $14 bought us 50 amps of power and a water spigot, along with the usual CoE amenities (picnic table, ramada, fire ring, BBQ grill, and the trademark CoE lantern hanger). They also have restrooms with hot showers. With 50-amps were were able to put a good soak onto the batteries even while running our full complement of air conditioners, which were needed right up until bed time, when we were able to open up the windows.

With temperatures in the high 90s, I was looking forward to perhaps jumping in the lake, but it is not really accessible here from the campground (although there is something of a trail from the tent-only loop, a scramble down the bluff to the lake some 100' below). I rode the scooter over to the day use area, which is quite some distance, and there is easy access to the water there. Unfortunately, on a hot Sunday afternoon, it seemed like half the population of the Santa Fe region is here at the lake cooling off -- there were several dozen boat trailers, and well over a hundred cars scattered around the day use area. It did not seem like a pleasant way to swim.

I also rode over the dam and back, then down the downstream face on a series of switchbacks to access the Chama river downstream. Here, too, was a day use picnic area with river access, but, again, it was chock full of families on their Sunday outing, including one family gathering that looked to be well over fifty people. I gave up on swimming yesterday, and decided that, if I still felt like it today, we'd take Odyssey over to the day use area after checking out of the campground at noon.

We had figured to have canned rations or maybe pasta for dinner, but after we got the dish up I discovered that there is a small hotel with a café another seven miles down the road in Abiquiu, and so we rode down there two-up for a nice dinner. No liquor license, though, so we had to suffer without our customary glass of red wine. Part of the inn is given to an art gallery and gift shop -- you can't spend any time in this area at all without tripping over art, and particularly Georgia O'Keefe tributes.

Today we will continue south along the Chama, right back through Abiquiu, and then west a bit to Los Alamos, where we will likely stay at the Elks lodge, with the Juniper campground in Bandelier National Monument as a backup option.

While we were in the cooler elevations of the forest, I spent a good part of our three days there getting projects knocked off my list. On Saturday I decided to tackle the rear leveler actuator, which crapped out nearly a year ago, reducing our front-to-back leveling travel by half and thus limiting us to less tilty sites for that time. Fixing the actuator is a fairly large project that I always dread (I've repaired this particular leveler four times now), and I've been waiting for the combination of relative privacy, temperate weather, and a whole day with no agenda to tackle it.

What is involved is to chock the wheels, fold up the mud flap, then shinny in between the drive wheels and the tag wheel on the curb side. Any time I am under the bus with my legs sticking out between the wheels I am nervous, with my heart and breathing rates up; the need for relative privacy has to do with a somewhat (but only a little bit) irrational fear that someone is going to run over my legs driving past us.

Once underneath, I then need to reach a bolt that is three feet above the ground, with not one but two wrenches. So I end up doing abdominal crunches for part of the work, and propping myself up by my head against the brake cylinder for the rest. During part of the process, air starts coming out of the suspension bags, adding to the anxiety. And, of course, this area is one of the dirtiest parts of the bus, with grease and oil slung off the propeller shaft combined with road grime kicked up by the drive wheels.

At some point I slithered back out from under the wheels with the cantankerous linear actuator in my hands, and brought it inside to work on the single broken wire that occasioned this whole repair. Louise remarked that the grime speckling my face and sprinkled in my hair made me look vaguely like a Māori warrior, and she insisted on snapping a photo.



Somewhere in the middle of this I conked the middle of my back on a sharp part of the bus, and between being sore from that, and having done more abdominal crunches in the span of an hour than I normally do all year, I am one sore puppy today -- more so even than yesterday. It hurts when I stand up, and when I sit down. I am hoping that, by tomorrow, I will be in good enough shape to actually walk around Los Alamos a bit.

Ahhh... boondocking in the cool forest

We are parked in a clearing off a dirt road in the Carson National Forest (map), half a mile or so from US-84, just south of Cebolla. Again, we are at the green arrow, not the red balloon -- I'm still annoyed with Google for changing their map format. Darned free services -- you can't complain to anyone about them.

Yesterday we had a nice scenic drive through the northwestern strip of the Carson, followed by the Jicarilla Apache Nation (at whose casino, down on 550 east of Counselors, we once stayed), across the continental divide, and into Chama, where we stopped at the visitor center.

Chama is the western terminus of the Cumbres & Toltec narrow-gauge, steam-powered scenic railroad, and we got some information about it at the visitor center. I'd heard about this trip before, and we decided to make the drive a mile north into town to check it out. We inquired about parlor car seats for today's trip, and, had they been available, we would likely have spent two nights at the RV park in town so we could enjoy a ride over to Antonito, Colorado (with return by bus). Unfortunately, the parlor car was sold out, and we did not relish a four hour ride in an open coach, so we decided to skip it. The train from Antonito pulled in just as we walked out of the historic station, so we at least got to see it. We high-tailed it out of the parking lot before the train unloaded -- the train was full, and we could see getting stuck there until the lot emptied out.

After driving through the touristy little downtown (the train is the only thing keeping Chama alive -- all the businesses we saw on the outskirts were boarded up), and stopping for supplies at the lone grocery store, we continued south through Tierra Amarilla to here. Our guides showed several stopping options further south, but this seemed to be our highest elevation opportunity, at 7,700'. Between the elevation and the partial tree cover, it has been relatively cool since we arrived, topping out in the mid-80s.

This is a great spot. Clearly well used, with three or four fire rings scattered around, and someone even built a privy of sorts a couple hundred feet from here. Yet there is only a modest amount of trash, and only a dozen or so vehicles have passed on the dirt road since we arrived. We are well back from the road, obscured by trees, so we have a great deal of privacy. It would make a great group site, as well, with room for maybe half a dozen rigs scattered around. To our north is a view out over the agricultural valley below.

There is an abundance of firewood here, and I grilled lamb last night and steak tonight over an open fire. Other than some lingering projects around the bus, we've had a relaxing day, and we will be here at least two nights. Tomorrow we will decide if we want to move on, or spend a third night in this lovely spot.

This morning we had a visit from reader Kate of Cholula Red fame. They are camp hosting at Ghost Ranch, about 20 miles south of here, and when she saw we were in the neighborhood, inquired about getting together. No pets allowed at Ghost Ranch, though, so I suggested she come up here. We had a nice visit.

From here, whenever we decide to leave, we will continue south toward Santa Fe. We might stop somewhere in between -- there is a Corps of Engineers site at Abiquiu Lake, and several more Forest Service opportunities on either side of it.

Passing gas on BLM land

We are parked on a large turn-out for a natural gas wellhead, off a dirt road on BLM land just west of the Carson National Forest (map). This spot has been used by campers before -- there is a stone fire ring about 150' from the wellhead.

While having a wellhead, condensate separator and tanks, and containment berm more or less in our campsite (where we catch the occasional whiff of sweet condensate vapor) is less than ideal, this is otherwise a perfect spot. We are on a hilltop with a 270° panoramic view of the forest and the valley below for Gobernador Wash. 100' from camp is a rock outcropping from which we can see the whole valley, with US-64 running through it. Other than the road, and half a dozen distant wellheads painted forest green, there are no visible signs of civilization. It was incredibly quiet last night, with only bright moonlight dispelling complete darkness, and the occasional sound of gas from, I think, a relief valve someplace.

The only traffic on this road has been a handful of trucks belonging to the pipeline and wellhead service folks, and this morning a tanker came by this very site to collect the separated water. We've seen fleets of these trucks all through the valley -- I'm guessing this is a very wet reservoir, and they need to collect condensate and water frequently. The entire region is rich in gas -- we remember seeing wellheads and condensate tanks from Angel Peak, and the only thing Stewart & Stevenson in Farmington was working on, besides our bus, was a selection of giant Waukesha natural-gas engines used to run field compressors (the engines run off their own well or pipeline gas).

Notwithstanding the giant tank of inflammable hydrocarbons 50 yards away, we made a small campfire last night, and cooked our steak on some of the juniper that is in abundance here. We mostly sat outside during the daylight -- here at 6,500' the outside temperature was very pleasant, perhaps 80° or so, while the relentless sun on the bus made it somewhat uncomfortable to be inside. After the sun went down, and outside temperatures dropped into the 60's, it was easy to keep things cool just with the fans.

It has been a pleasant stay, but we are ready to move on. We are grateful to ConocoPhillips and their service companies for putting a road here, without which we would have no access to this beautiful spot. Natural gas extraction, at least, is a resource usage with minimal impact on either the scenery or the recreational opportunities on public land.

Yesterday was an early morning for us, rolling back into the shop at 7am. At least we had turned in rather early Tuesday night, after a tasty dinner at Bernardone's Italian restaurant a short walk from Wal-Mart -- an order-at-the-counter affair with a nice dining room, a selection of wines, and attentive service from owner Mario Bernardone and his staff. A great recommendation from our mechanic, Micky, at S&S.

Speaking of whom, once on the lifts he quickly found our transmission fluid to be leaking from the speedometer sensor, and only a few minutes and a new O-ring was required. He then spent the next hour or so sitting on that very transmission, through the hatch under the bed, to fit a new gasket behind the air compressor. We found nary a drop of oil in the wet tank, and so decided to simply replace the gasket without changing compressors.

S&S billed us for a little over three hours, plus the gaskets. The exhaust clamp was a take-off from a used engine they had in the shop, so they didn't bill us for it. We were out of there by 10:30 or so, only $350 poorer, which is, I think, the least I have ever spent at a Detroit distributor. It was a much more causal and relaxed place than their cousins down in Albuquerque, and next time we need service in New Mexico, we will keep them in mind.

Thus obviating the need to continue to Albuquerque, we opted to continue east on US-64 rather than turn south on US-550. We will take this all the way to Tierra Amarilla, where US-84 will take us into Santa Fe.

Repairs in Farmington

Quick update tonight -- we have a very early morning tomorrow. We are at the Wal-Mart in Farmington, NM (map).

Let me start by saying that when we were in Salt Lake, I had planned out a route that would take us in to Santa Fe, staying in the higher elevations to keep cool, yet moving us ever closer to I-40 in the event we get called to a disaster by the Red Cross. However, we've had an oil leak for the last few weeks that has been getting progressively worse, leaving perhaps a teaspoon of oil every place we park. Additionally, I have been feeling like we are lower on power, making more black smoke, and running hotter than normal on the grades, all symptoms we have seen before, and they've never led to anything good.

We remembered that the last low-power, black-smoke, high-temperature incident got resolved at Stewart & Stevenson in Albuquerque, and, though it meant staying in hotter weather at relatively lower elevations, we have been making our way to Albuquerque instead of Santa Fe. That also keeps us off some of the really big Rocky Mountain grades until we have this figured out.

When we left Sleeping Ute RV Park this morning, we had our sights set on a nice boondocking spot we remembered from our last trek through the New Mexico badlands, at a high enough elevation to escape some of the heat. The route brought us south out of Colorado and the Ute reservation on US-491 (formerly 666), making a left at Shiprock in the Navajo Nation onto US-64, which brought us here to Farmington. We intended to continue east to Bloomfield, where we would have turned south onto familiar US-550.

When we arrived here in Farmington, signs directed trucks off US-64 onto a bypass, which we elected to take, and no sooner had we turned then we saw a familiar sign -- Stewart & Stevenson. I had forgotten they had a Farmington branch, but we remembered that Albuquerque was incredibly busy (they had first refused to see us any sooner than a week the last time we were there, and we had to pull strings to get in) and rather impersonal -- this much smaller branch looked more inviting, and so we pulled in.

After explaining the situation to the lead mechanic, they were able to pull us right in to a bay. I pointed out some soot that I had been noticing on the exhaust blankets, and it did not take them long to track down an exhaust leak between the manifold and the turbo -- this would certainly account for low power, black smoke, and higher temperatures. An hour and one clamp later, that was taken care of. The oil leak was another matter.

As I feared, it was coming from someplace above the right front of the engine, which is where the air compressor and power steering pump live. To access those, I had to open the hatch under the bed. Once in there, they determined that oil was seeping out around a shared gasket for those two items. A discussion ensued about possibly replacing the air compressor with a rebuilt, as long as we had to pull it to change the gasket, and we will make a decision on this tomorrow.

Unfortunately, we also discovered that some of what we are leaking, actually more so than engine oil, is transmission fluid. To track that down, we will have to be up on the lifts, and we ran out of day (seeing as we rolled in close to 3:00 to begin with).

So tomorrow we are due back at the shop, just a quarter mile from here, at 0700, whereupon we will go up on the lifts to have a look at the tranny, as well as draining the wet tank to see if there is any oil blowing in there from the compressor. I'm figuring to be there all day, and we'll be there again Thursday if we decide to replace the compressor, or if parts are needed for the transmission.