We got an early start (for us) and set the GPS to that $3.99 Maverick gas station in North Las Vegas. Of course it was $4.09 when we got there, but it was still much cheaper than anything around it. But that was where the fun began.
We pulled into the truck bays and their always problematic large nozzles. The first thing that happened when I started pumping was a big fuel burp splashing out about a pint of diesel on the ground. (and side of the coach) I should have known that was just the beginning of a shitty fueling experience. I filled up the first $175 and the pump shut off, so I had to put the credit card in again and restart the pump. Once I got it going again, I noticed fuel dripping off the hose at the bottom of the U (between the pump & coach nozzle) and as I looked at that to see where it was coming from, it started to get worse. I mean a lot of fuel was dripping; and with the wind that day, it was spraying the side of the coach. It was coming from the fitting at the top where the hose meets the physical gas pump. I started thinking that it might just break off up there and spray fuel everywhere and that might be a real disaster, so I shut off the pump and we drove over to a different one to get the last 60 gallons pumped in.
Here are two short videos to give you an idea how much fuel was spraying out of that pump.
IMG_0686_1683232750000 IMG_0685_1683232741000
I had never seen anything quite like that, and this station was VERY new. Based on the Google Satellite and street views, it wasn’t there 2 years prior.
I started the new pump and made sure all was working as it should, then I walked back over to the original bay and moved a cone into the driveway so others wouldn’t use that lane. Just then an employee was walking around and I showed him what was happening. There was a LOT of fuel on the ground now.
He called in and had them shut down that pump and made sure I had placed the cone in the right spot.
So far this has been an eventful start to our trip..
We drove the rest of the way (~2hours) to our campground and it turned out to be a very nice place. There is a huge canyon you must drive thru on the I-15 just south of St. George, Utah. The campground I picked turned out to be in the canyon and it was a beautiful place. It was a BLM campground, no hookups for our 2-night stay. I had picked site 25 to reserve thru recreation.gov as the sat view had it as far from the highway as you could be in that campground. And it was right on the Virgin River and even had a large pavilion with a picnic bench. After looking at all the other sites, this was clearly the best site in the place.
