Mail call

We are at the Wal-Mart in Delta, Colorado (map).

After leaving Ridgway State park just a bit past the noon checkout, we found ourselves in Montrose at only 1:00 in the afternoon. We stopped at the Wal-Mart there for much-needed cat litter, and decided to call the post office in Olathe, one town north, to see if all four parts of our mail had arrived. A bit to our surprise, they had, and we decided to continue north to pick it up.

We put the dish up to scope out stay options in Olathe or Delta, and determined that Delta had a friendly Wal-Mart as well as a couple of RV parks and some public lands just a few miles out of town. We figured we'd find a place to stay within cell coverage for our conference call without too much trouble, and so we stowed the dish and continued to Olathe.

Olathe is a very small town, which is why we chose it to get our mail. (Small town post offices are, in our opinion, less likely to misplace your General Delivery items, and they usually know instantly whether or not they've been received when you call them.) That meant a small post office, in this case with no bus parking. We circled the block and parked on a pea-gravel shoulder across the street.

We went in, got the mail (two giant boxes and two smaller packages), and came back out to leave. By the time I had started the engine, the local constabulary had shown up to find out what we were up to. The officer asked if we needed any "help," but I got the distinct impression that what was really going on was they did not want RV's parked anywhere in town other than the lone, expensive RV park. We explained that we were picking up our mail, to which he retorted that this was an awfully big vehicle in which to be picking up mail. Give it a rest, buddy -- it's not unlawful to drive to the post office to pick up mail in whatever size vehicle you'd like, so long as it's licensed and registered. After that little episode, you can be sure we will not spend a single dime in Olathe.

We continued here to Delta and settled in at the Wal-Mart. Our plan was to go in to the store after our teleconference and pick up one of those hot roasted chickens, but there was none left by the time we were off the call. We settled for a frozen lasagna instead, which was passable. A much bigger problem, that we had not foreseen, is that grocery stores in this state can't sell wine, and our last box ran out. We had to uncork a bottle from our stash last night, and today we'll need to hunt down a liquor store to restock. Harumph. Consumer-unfriendly protectionist legislation at work. They have blue laws here, too -- you can't buy wine at all on Sunday.

As long as I'm ranting, I need to clarify some of yesterday's rant. It has been pointed out to me that the paragraph on Durango was very negative and that we had overlooked its finer points, such as some nice restaurants. I had not actually intended for it to come across that way.

We would have loved to have spent a night in Durango, and had intended to do so before the weather intervened in our plans. I am certain they have some great restaurants, and we'd even enjoy taking in some of the sights, even if the tourist-trap nature of such places is something of a turn-off for us. (Yesterday I wrote that we had "little use" for such places -- true, but distinctly different from "no use.")

A big problem with Durango specifically (and many tourist attractions in general) is that they are RV-unfriendly: they have not provided any RV parking convenient to anything like restaurants, they've outright banned RV's from parking overnight anywhere but licensed RV parks, and they've even made it difficult to park at big-box stores and the like just to shop. So they are not exactly facilitating my ability to leave any money in the town coffers.

Nevertheless we will return someday to Durango, and probably even take the very touristy train to Silverton. Preferably in weather a tad warmer than Monday's jaunt, where it was in the 40's there.

Tonight we are eying a swath of BLM land between here and Hotchkiss. We have two more nights before our visit there, so perhaps we will just settle in. In the meantime, we need to find a liquor store, possibly on our way across town to the coin laundry here in Delta.

Free ocean-front camping

We are at the Quinault Beach Resort and Casino, in Ocean Shores, Washington (map). The casino has a dedicated gravel RV lot overlooking the Pacific Ocean. One merely needs to check in at the front desk in order to stay. We are the only ones in the lot (although there is another rig that apparently spent the night in the casino's paved parking lot).

What a delight. It was dark and quiet last night, with only the sounds of the crickets and the surf to lull us to sleep. We had an excellent dinner at Emily's restaurant inside the resort, and to top it all off, the casino gave us $10 apiece for signing up in their player reward program. Oddly, this excellent spot was not listed in our casino camping directory -- we found it in our Day's End directory, and it is also listed on a couple of our on-line resource guides.

Speaking of the Day's End directory, this resource, available to Escapees members, consists of member-contributed overnight stay suggestions, and has rarely steered us wrong. Things do change, though, and so the member contributions are marked with the date of submission. Monday afternoon, we followed one such suggestion for a stop in the town of Astoria, Oregon, at the mouth of the Columbia.

It was a great spot -- an undeveloped lot next to a drive-up espresso stand (anyone who has been to the Pacific Northwest knows that drive-up espresso stands are more common here than phone booths or mailboxes). The lot was right on the Columbia, across from the fishing-boat harbor and next to both the tourist trolley line (only running on weekends this month) and the shoreline walking/bicycle trail (map). Our guide said that other Escapees had overnighted in this spot as recently as 2004 without a problem.

We had a very pleasant afternoon there, watching the ships coming and going down the Columbia (the deep-water port of Portland is upriver from this spot), and fixed ourselves some dinner. We were undisturbed until around 8pm, when the local constabulary dropped by to very politely inform us that remaining in a vehicle overnight is prohibited by ordinance throughout the town (on public OR private property), handing us a copy of said ordinance. We thanked him, and then scrambled to get Odyssey road-ready in the little bit of daylight remaining.

We try to always have a backup plan, and our backup for this night was Fort Stevens State Park, about ten miles away, with its enormous campground of nearly 500 sites. We rolled into the park in the last vestiges of twilight, and selected an easy-in/easy-out spot at the very beginning of "G"-loop. The entire park was forested, so no satellite access, but we did get 50 amps of electric power for our $22 fee. The campground was mostly empty on a Monday night, and we hardly saw another soul until we left yesterday morning.

While our other Oregon State Park stays have been exceptionally pleasant and easy, this park needs to get its act together. Perhaps they are suffering from the logistical difficulties of running such a huge campground. In any case, we arrived shortly after the check-in office closed, although the ranger did come out while we were standing there to post the site-reservation list (so that walk-in arrivals don't accidentally occupy sites that have incoming reservations). We were looking for payment envelopes and a drop-box, thus far ubiquitous features of state park campgrounds for after-hours check-in. The ranger told us there was no drop box, and, not to worry, someone would come by around about 8am to collect fees.

Fine by us, we've done it that way before. BUT, even though we were expecting it (and had our check already made out), the ranger-aide that came around at 7:45 did not bother knocking, instead leaving a very snippy "Request for Compliance with Park Rules" notice on our door. A notice which said to go to the office to pay the fees by 9am, which, of course, I did not even find until I walked the dog around 9:30.

Now the office was a good half mile or so from where we were parked, so we decided to pay on our way out -- neither one of us wanted to hoof it a mile just to drop off a check, and we weren't going to unload a vehicle just to do it either. So I was happy to see a ranger drive up around 10ish, and I went outside with the check in my hand. Apparently, though, the roving rangers are not equipped to accept payments, a fact which, I pointed out, conflicted with what the office ranger told us on the way in. She seemed satisfied when I told her that we would pay on our way out in about an hour, but, still, our whole experience was colored by this vague implication that we were breaking some kind of rule. Sheesh, people, put out some envelopes and stick an iron ranger in every camping loop -- every other park in the system seems to have gotten this right.

We are now just three hours from where we need to be on Thursday, so we are debating whether to remain here another night, enjoying the serenity and the ocean views, or head inland and overnight someplace in the vicinity of Olympia.

Down in the salt mines

Today we had our final bus tour of the trip, a 90-minute excursion to the salt works. Having lived in the San Francisco bay area for 20 years, salt evaporators are nothing new to us, but the tour was interesting nonetheless. For one thing, the salt evaporation and harvesting operation here is on a much grander scale -- I am told the largest such operation in the world. We also got to drive right out onto the dried salt flats and watch as scrapers (essentially slightly modified road graders) dug up the salt and raked it into furrows and giant conveyor loaders scooped it up and filled immense three-hopper transporters with 360 tons of salt in less than 15 minutes.

I found out today that our final stop will be in Colonia Vicente Guerrero, not San Vicente as I speculated yesterday. The good news is that the colonia is at least near the coast -- I am told there is a beach within a mile of the campground. The bad news is it will be even further from Tecate on our way out.

I am disappointed that we will not spend any time in Ensenada. The wagonmasters pointed out that we were welcome to stay beyond the end of the caravan, but we need to be getting up to the bay area, and, besides, our experience going through inspections and checkpoints on our own now leads us to want to process out of the country with the whole group, as we suspect there will be fewer issues that way.

Which reminds me that I neglected, yesterday, to report our experience with the military checkpoint near San Ignacio. You may recall we proceeded from Santa Rosalia to Guerrero Negro apart from and a good bit behind the caravan, due to our visit with Tioga and George. That meant going through the military checkpoint alone. Not that this is generally a problem, just that we were usually simply waved through when in caravan. So naturally we were boarded for inspection, which is not unusual. What was unusual, though, was that one of the two barely-old-enough-to-shave soldiers took an interest in my laptop computer. To the extent that he powered it up, then wanted me to enter my login password. I'm still not certain what it was he was looking for -- he launched several desktop icons, and called up the properties for my hard drive. I can only guess that drug dealers or weapons smugglers tend to have icons on their desktops named "List of Mexican AK-47 buyers" or some such.

I'm pretty sure that the only thing that deflected further scrutiny was my desktop background:


They had already seen the two cats, of course, and this image, I think, pretty clearly identified the computer as being for personal use (and belonging to crazy-cat-guy). I helpfully identified the two cats by pointing to the image and speaking their names in Spanish: Jorgé y Angel. Now here's the weird part: the two soldiers were, you guessed it, Jorgé and Angel. Jorgé, who was not the guy intently interested in the computer, was greatly amused. Angel, on the other hand, did not lose focus on the screen for even an instant. Eventually, he satisfied himself about who-knows-what, and shut the computer down, leaving the coach and sending us on our way. I have to say I had a tense few moments, as I have heard tales of items being "confiscated" at checkpoints, and my whole life is in this computer. In hindsight, I am sorry we could not capture a photo of Jorgé and Angel looking at George and Angel (photos are strictly forbidden at military installations), which was actually quite amusing.

Next time, we will not have the laptops out and lying around at inspection points. They didn't bother looking in any drawers (although the refrigerator received intense scrutiny).

South Llano River State Park

We are south of I-10 and the town of Junction, Texas, at the South Llano River State Park (map*).  It is a lovely location, with wooded and widely spaced sites with water and 30-amp electric service.  We did not really need the hookups (although it looked, for a while, like we might -- more on this in a moment), but it was a good stopping point, and only $7.50 with one of the handful of half-off-camping coupons that came with our Texas State Park pass.

* Before I go further, a word about the map links.  MapQuest has, once again, changed its site.  I'm guessing that it works OK in Internet Explorer (I'm not bothering to check), but all my map links are now completely broken in FireFox.  So I'm changing back to Google Maps, with whom I flirted briefly earlier this year.  Of course, the last time I changed to Google, it was also because MapQuest stopped working right, just as changes at Google sent me back to MapQuest.  I expect I will have to fiddle with the link format some more to get these new Google links to display as they should, so bear with me.  And, of course, as long as these mapping sites keep "improving," there will always be the risk that, one day, all the links will again stop working.  You can always pluck the coordinates from them and plug them into whatever map system floats your boat.

We had an uneventful and very safe night in Austin.  Apparently, the Austin police have discovered my secret spot, and patrol cars came and went all night, parking for half an hour or so at a stretch while, I assume, reports were being written, etc.  It was just one car for a long time, but, at one point, there were a half dozen of them, parked together.  Sometimes an officer or two would get out and start chatting.  None bothered us, or even came over for a closer look.

Not so with the private security guy, who knocked on the door at 11 this morning (while I was taking advantage of the proximity to Lowe's to get some projects done) to tell us to move along.  Both of these developments (police congregation and private security patrols) are new since my last visit, where I spent a full week in the same spot without seeing a uniform of any sort.  Possibly, the departure of the 24-hour Albertson's has prompted the landlord to step up security.

One of the projects I was working on this morning was the recent death (again) of the generator.  It appeared to be overheating, even when it was cool to the touch.  Of course, by the time I was done fiddling with it, it was too hot to make further diagnosis -- but the big jet of steam coming from the radiator relief was a big clue.  We decided to get on the road, and deal with it in a few hours, when it cooled down.

It turned out, thankfully, to just be low on coolant.  I've been planning on adding an overflow tank to it for over two years -- one of those projects we never seem to get around to finishing.  In any case, a stop at the Wal-Mart in Fredricksburg for coolant got the big diesel back in operation, and we were once again able to run the air conditioning while we drove.  In the meantime, we had already planned our stop for the state park, where we knew we could charge the batteries back up even if the generator problem was more serious.

The generator also needs an oil change, and we want to get that done before Mexico.  Calls yesterday to every Kubota dealer in West Texas came up empty -- no one could squeeze us in for same-day service, so I will be doing it myself.  Not hard, just messy (the drain plug is in a particularly inaccessible spot, and oil will invariably get all over the bottom pan of the hush box).  I picked up three gallons of Rotella oil at Wal-Mart, and we found a NAPA in Junction that had a compatible filter.  Sometime in the next few days I will have to bite the bullet, put some grubby clothes on, and get it done.

Knock, knock...

We are still in the gravel lot outside the Red Cross JP office building. After looking carefully at the limited campground options, we decided that our best strategy was to simply remain here, and bite the bullet on diesel fuel. That would, at any rate, be easier on the donated dollars than the campgrounds, not only with respect to the daily fees, but also the commute expense. At least here at JP, we have access to the Red Cross shuttle to the Metro to get to the downtown office, and the JP office requires no commute at all.

The Metro issue may be moot, since we ended up with our friends' rental car, after dropping them off at the airport. If we can get approved for a parking space downtown, we'll likely drive in each day, which halves the commute time. The diesel may not be much of an issue either -- We haven't had to run the A/C yet today, and we can live on four hours of generator run time every other day if we don't run the A/C (by contrast, full-time A/C requires at least 12 hours of generator use each day).

All these plans were cast into serious question first thing this morning, while we were still in bed (we ended up getting the weekend off), when a uniformed officer knocked on the door. We're always prepared for this possibility, even though, in two full years of living aboard, this is only the second such knock (the first being at a rest area overlooking El Paso, TX). As it turns out, the information we had about the ownership status of this lot was incorrect, and the lot actually belongs to Fairfax County, having been acquired as part of a project to consolidate facilities for the school board. The school board occupies a brand-new building adjacent to this lot and to the Red Cross building, and intends, at some point, to expand further onto this lot.

In any case, after seeing us parked here for three nights, the manager of the building had someone from their security force stop by to check us out and ask us to move along. Officer Davis was extremely pleasant, and took the time to ask us what we were doing here. When we explained that we were Red Cross volunteers, he suggested that he could inquire if we could stay. He left, and was back within ten minutes to tell us that we could indeed -- our Red Cross credentials came through for us. We will have to remember to send the school district a thank-you card.

After dropping our friends at Reagan, we visited Arlington National Cemetery, taking the tram tour and stopping to see the changing of the guard at the tomb of the unknowns. We then drove around downtown DC briefly before returning home. While it was nice to have a day off to sightsee, we're always on duty when volunteering -- my phone rang twice with calls from the field. Specifically, one of the guys we worked with in Baton Rouge is back there again, setting up a relief HQ in, almost unbelievably, the very same ex-big-box-store we were in for Katrina.

That landlord, you may recall, booted us out because they had a real tenant for the building -- some unnamed big-box hardware store. Apparently, the deal fell through, because the store is still empty. Even though Chris has all but fizzled out (though regeneration is always possible when the depression moves back over the warm waters of the Gulf), the Red Cross still wants to have a relief headquarters "ready-to-go" in Baton Rouge -- we're only up to "C" and, you may remember, we ran out of alphabet last hurricane season.

So our friend Rob and a small band of other volunteers will be pulling wire and putting together a headquarters facility, even if no other staff gets deployed to Baton Rouge for this event. Similar activities are occurring in MS and FL, and we're supporting all of these teams from here in DC. That's the work we have cut out for us next week, although I'm glad that Chris is looking to be a non-event. It means we will be able to leave here on Friday, as planned, to head down to NC for the FMCA rally.

Speaking of which, our plans are to spend a few days at FMCA, which is in Charlotte, then mosey over to Atlanta. Our friends Jimmy and Carolyn, from San Jose, are getting married later this month, and we'll be flying round trip from Atlanta to San Francisco for the wedding, and to catch up with our other bay area friends. So, once again, we will need to find (1) a safe place to park Odyssey, and (2) a kennel for the pets. If you have any suggestions for either of these in the Atlanta area, please feel free to email us. Our trip dates are August 22-29. With a bit of luck, the next Atlantic hurricane will hold off until we get back.

Picnic area overlooking El Paso and the Rio Grande. Too bad it was illegal to spend the night here.

Lovers' Lane

We are just north of El Paso, at what must be the only roadside picnic area in all of Texas that does not permit overnight stays (map).  Actually, that's an exaggeration -- we've seen other picnic areas clearly marked as disallowing them.  The sign which was supposed to inform us of this fact here is gone -- only the signpost remains.

I know all of this because we had a visit from the sheriff's department last night around midnight.  Now my first clue should have been that, shortly after dark, an inordinate number of cars began showing up.  Apparently, due to the relative seclusion and the spectacular view of the city lights far below, this parking area is popular with El Paso youths looking for a place to, ahem, hang out.  They were relatively quiet (other than one couple who had their stereo turned up a bit) and did not disturb us.  All of the cars left right around 11:30ish -- clearly already familiar with the protocol.

A while later, while I sat here surfing the net, the spotlight of a patrol car was unceremoniously aimed at our penthouse window.  I went outside and had a nice chat with Deputy Becerra (sp?) of the Sheriff's department.  Apparently, the area "closes" at 11:30, presumably to deter criminal activity.  The entire area was recently cleaned up and painted, but the highway department has not gotten around to replacing the sign stipulating the closed hours.  She did show me the empty signpost.

After determining our intentions, the deputy decided it was probably not in anyone's best interest to make us "move along" at such a late hour, and, since she was just coming on shift and would be on this beat all night, she decided to let us stay, and that she would keep an eye out to ensure that no one else took our presence here to mean that the rules had changed.

After picking up our mail yesterday, we followed I-10 to just west of Las Cruces, then turned south onto NM292 and NM28, which follow the Rio Grande.  We were hoping to find a nice spot along the river to stop for the night, but the entire valley is private land, mostly (somewhat to our pleasant surprise) pecan orchards.  We crossed the river onto TX375, which skirts around El Paso to the north, at the penalty of crossing a pretty hefty grade.  This rest area, which is not marked on our maps, was in a handy spot (or so we thought) right at the mile-high summit, and the immaculate cleanliness along with the view persuaded us to stop here.

Today we will head downgrade to the east, curve back around to the south and connect again with I-10 east of El Paso, just in time to hit the FlyingJ for a much-needed fuel stop.

Florida Caverns

We are at Florida Caverns State Park (map), near Marianna. We are under heavy tree cover here, so we are off-line and I am posting to a text file until we can deploy the dish.

Today's drive took us out of the music park and due west on county road 132, which intersects with US90 at the Suwannee River State Park. We crossed the river on US90 and left the Suwannee behind. 90 took us all the way to Tallahassee, which we skirted around on I-10 to avoid the downtown slog, picking 90 back up west of the city. From there, 90 swings up to just about touch the Georgia state line in Chattahoochee, where we passed just south of the Corps of Engineers dam impounding Lake Seminole. Another 20 minutes or so brought us here at the end of the day, though we have crossed the time zone boundary and we were off the road by 4:00 Central.

Somewhere during the drive along the Suwannee valley, Louise mentioned that my last post, wherein I said the Suwannee was "otherwise unremarkable" may have come across as somehow disrespectful. Lest we offend anyone, especially our good friends whose hospitality we enjoyed along the river, let me just say that we love the river (and blackwater rivers in general) and that we thoroughly enjoyed it both times we visited. Also, we feel the Suwannee is a beautiful river and an important resource. My statement was, of course, just plain wrong, since I myself have now "remarked" about the river several times. I only meant to point out that it was the song that brought the river some fame and notoriety, all for want of a nicely flowing lyric, rather than that the river itself was previously well-known and therefore inspired the song. Also, I was looking for an opportunity to point out the irony in Florida's honoring an individual who had never even visited the state.

It is, of course, very easy to trip up in this kind of forum and type something that makes perfect sense to oneself at the time, but is open to misinterpretation in a wide variety of ways by people who were not inside your head while you were typing. While we were in Key West, I wrote here that most of the other campers at Boyd's were "not our demographic." What I was thinking, and what I meant, was that they were not our "age group." Why I did not just type that, I don't know (perhaps I did not want to sound ageist). In any case, that remark was, apparently, widely misinterpreted, and, between that and my rant about getting no privacy in Odyssey, a discussion went back and forth in another forum about how snooty we must be.

Fortunately, a couple of folks who actually know us stepped in to calm things down, and I tracked the discussion down and posted some, ahem, "clarifications." I am trying, now, to strike a balance between being somewhat careful in choosing my words when I post, and just getting the post out in any kind of timely way. I suspect that whenever it starts seeming like an impossible burden to triple-check every post for possible misinterpretations, political incorrectness, or the remote possibility of offending someone I have not even met, I will lose the motivation to post at all.

Something I forgot to mention in yesterday's post is that, on our way from Hernando to Live Oak, we passed through the city of Williston. There, heading east through town on 41-north/27A-south, we had to pull over for a Florida Highway Patrol car with lights flashing and siren blaring heading the other way. The car was moving very slowly, and, at first, I thought it may be a funeral procession. On second glance, though, the car was escorting a convoy of three chartered MCI buses, with another lit-up patrol car bringing up the rear. The coaches were full of soldiers in camo fatigues, many of them snoozing with their heads against the windows. We never did figure out what it was all about.

Tomorrow we will head west through Pensacola and over toward the Mobile Bay Ferry, part of the gulf coast route that we had to bypass last January because the ferry fell victim to hurricane Ivan. Even though the gulf coast was hit hard by Katrina, which, you may recall, sent a drilling platform into the US90 bridge at Mobile, the ferry is again operational, and we are eager to see Mobile Bay and how the recovery is progressing along the coast. Tomorrow is also Mardi Gras, and we are hoping to see some celebrating along the coast.

A little excitement at the Fishkill WalMart. As far as we could figure out, the automatic fire alarm system detected a problem, and the entire Rombout Fire Department (all volunteer) was dispatched. It must have been a false alarm, because no one was in any particular hurry. The ladder truck was deployed to shine a spotlight on the roof, while most of the fire fighters, one Fishkill police officer, and a state trooper stood around in the night chill. Odyssey is parked about 150 feet to the right of this photo. We noted that the generator on the ladder truck was much louder than ours.

Music City

We are in Nashville, TN (map), visiting friends. We are parked at a Wal-Mart here which, from the looks of it, is brand new. Handy, because I needed to buy coolant this morning. It dropped into the 20's last night, and our usual cold-weather coolant leaks have returned. These are mostly hose-to-pipe connections, where silicone rubber hoses have been clamped over brass pipes with steel clamps. The brass shrinks more than the steel, and coolant begins leaking between the pipe and the hose. We are still searching for a solution to this issue.

We had a nice drive through Oklahoma on Thursday, stopping for the night in a Lowe's parking lot in Van Buren, AR (map). Somewhere in the last hundred miles or so of Oklahoma, we passed a pair of marked state trooper Expeditions parked in the median, doing speed enforcement. We thought nothing of them, because we are never speeding in Odyssey. Nevertheless, a minute or two later, one of them comes roaring up alongside us, paces us for a few seconds, clearly looking us over, then drops behind us, and disappears. We had fun imagining the dialog in the median:

Trooper 1: "Did you see that? Them guys was drivin' right down there on the ground!"
Trooper 2: "No way. They was up top."
Trooper 1: "I'm tellin' ya, they was down by the ground. Go look."
Trooper 2 (pealing out as if in pursuit): "OK, but you owe me a beer if you're wrong."

We'll never know how it actually went down. But if some of the dialog we hear the truckers engage in on the CB is any indication, this is a good guess.

We are en route to PEDCO, in Santa Fe Springs, California.

I received quite a few suggestions and recommendations for where to have our engine rebuilt, and I would like to thank everyone who wrote in or posted on the subject. From the dozen or so shops that we identified either ourselves or from the suggestions we received, we distilled the choices down to three or four places that could do the work, would agree to do the work, could start right away, and were within reasonable driving distance from where we were.

Of these few shops, PEDCO was the most willing to commit to the project, and had quite a few proponents. They quoted us a good price, and can start right away. Also, they are willing to allow us to stay aboard during the project.

We left Scottsdale early this afternoon, and have been staying on I-10 for the duration. We normally eschew the interstates in favor of less traveled routes, but we wanted to minimize the miles, and keep the engine at a steady hum. We've had the cruise control dialed in at 55-60mph, which made us nearly the slowest thing on the highway.

Nevertheless, we were pulled over by the CHP, much to our amazement. Turns out he saw us passing and thought we were not wearing seat belts, which is a primary citable offense in California. Of course, we did have our belts on, but Odyssey lacks shoulder belts, so he couldn't see that from his vantage point. We'd love to have shoulder belts, and when we had the drivers' seats reupholstered, we researched them. Due to the design of these spring-ride seats, they can not be retrofitted with shoulder belts. So we have only the retractable lap belts that were on the seats when we got the bus.

He thanked us for stopping, bid us a good day, and took off. Of course, he had stopped us in the middle of a very long 7% up grade, so I spent the next few minutes in the slow lane with my four-ways on, pedaling as hard as I could to get back up to 55 without over-stressing our poor worn-out motor. Harumph.

As long as we were going right by it on I-10, something we rarely expect to do, we decided to stop for the night at the very tony Outdoor Resorts Motorcoach Resort in Indio (map). As I have written many times here, commercial campgrounds, of any description, are not really our thing. But we've seen this place on one of those Travel Channel specials, sort of the "Campgrounds of the Rich and Famous." It has been featured on a number of shows and in several magazine articles as the epitome of high-end campgrounds, and it is the sort of place where folks own their lots, condominium style. Owners can then enter their lots into a pool of lots to be rented to overnight visitors such as ourselves when they are not in residence.

In any case, we've had a hankering to see the place, and marvel at how the high-end motorhome community travels, and we thought this might be our only opportunity in the foreseeable future. The grounds are actually quite pleasant, with many ammenities. We've also seen quite a few lots that owners have developed extensively, adding outdoor barbecues, shade ramadas, fountains, gas fireplaces, and the like, up to and including entire outdoor kitchens. The extensive lot improvements and the money spent on them is what has garnered all the national attention for this property.

So we've come, and we've seen for ourselves, and we still have to say: it's not for us. I will say, though, that I've seen more bus conversions here than any place other than a rally -- Odyssey fits right in. And even in this land of many high-zoot Prevost conversions, our coach still turns heads.