Tony, you helped me get in the gate at the Paradise Point RV park in DeTour Village last summer during a torrential rainstorm.. I finally watched the Movie..
Send me an email… bill at cowlesmountain dot com
Heading back home from Tucson
While at the Freightliner Rally we heard there were places in Yuma that would wash and wax your coach for around $120. That sounded too good to be true as in San Diego they want $10 a foot for that.. ($400) I got a couple of names someone had used previously and called Dave’s Auto Detail (aka DAD’s), they were too busy to do it Friday the day we would be passing thru Yuma. I called Benjamin’s. He told me to call him when I was almost in Yuma and he would try to fit me in. I called 15 minutes prior to the turnoff he told us to use. He said he would have someone meet me behind Al’s RV Supply. A few minutes later the tech called me and told me he would be a while as he needed to go back to the shop and fill the water tank. We drove behind the place and the parking lots was fairly sloped so we drove around front to wait. I went inside the store and found a lens cover for a basement light I had broken months before and was not able to find the right replacement anywhere. While I was paying for the lens I got to thinking, it was already after 3pm and figured we would probably need to spend the night as it would probably close to 7pm when they finished. So I called an RV campground that was a few hundred yards away to ask them if they had a spot and whether they would allow a firm to come in and wash the coach. Got an affirmative answer and we headed off. Checked in and parked just as the tech called me back. We were on, they were a few minutes away.
I was a bit apprehensive when they arrived as I had realized I hadn’t asked how much it would cost. I was pleasantly surprised when they said it was $99 for a complete wash with a hand waxing for the sides of the coach but not the roof, they only wash that. But then the sales pitch started, for another $49 they would treat the roof with a Wax & UV inhibitor, similar to 303… I opted in. It took them about 2 hours, with 3 of them working to finish it. They did a great job!
I was glad we decided to stay the night there as I had already driven 4 hours from Tucson is it was almost dark when they finished. I find it kind of uncomfortable driving the coach at night due to the side windows reflecting everything back at you. Going straight is no issue, but practically impossible to see anything to the right or left of you at night. I had noticed that phenomena one very early morning in Muscle Shoals Alabama on a very short drive from a small campground to a shop to have some work done on the coach. Even turning off all the dashboard lights didn’t help that. It’s nothing I’ve seen in any other vehicle before.
Titan II missile silo
I had read there was a Titan II ballistic missile silo about a 30-minute drive southwest of our campground and I just had to go see it early Saturday morning. Kathy begged off and I drove there to see if I could get in a tour at the last minute. I got there just as a tour was getting briefed for the procedures to go in and they allowed me to join it.
Turns out anyone 6′ or over must wear a hard hat while
underground. Thankfully I did as told, I hit a few steel beams when I forgot to duck. I didn’t realize people where that short during the 1960’s, I always thought that we were talking hundreds of years ago. 🙂
This was a really cool tour, and it’s the only Titan II missile silo left. All the others were destroyed after the new generation of missiles were deployed. I was surprised the command center was not very far underground, about 55 steps down, especially when they mentioned the warhead it carried was a 9 Megaton hydrogen bomb. If ground burst, it would make a crater 500+ feet deep. It appears they did not expect them to be directly hit by a similar sized weapon.
The underground site was sealed off by sets of massive heavy and thick doors. Everything in this silo looked to be in perfect condition. No rust to be seen, yeah it was in Tucson so that makes sense.
The control room was mounted on large springs that you could see around the perimeter. They explained that the previous generation of missiles took over 45 minutes to launch once they got the launch order from the President due to not being able to keep them fueled due to the volatility of the liquid oxygen fuel. They 
would probably all have been destroyed by a first strike as we only had about a 15-minute 
advance notice of incoming missiles back then.
These new Titan missiles fixed that issue having a different fuel mixture allowing them to be kept fueled up 24/7. A launch could 
happen within 58 seconds of receiving a launch order with the Titan II. I believe they told us all these sites were decommissioned in the late 1980’s.
The actual silo was accessed thru a very long corridor. There were a couple of large open bay doors to allow a view of the missile 
from a couple vantage points. They also mentioned that the tours on the 3rd Saturdays included a visit down to the bottom of the silo. Unfortunately I was there on the 4th Saturday morning.
I would highly recommend a visit to this museum if you are in the area. It was fascinating.
Lavender Pit, Old Bisby and Tombstone Az
After day two of my class was done, we drove down to the Lavender pit mine near Bisbee Az, about one and a half hours south of our campground. We drove past Old Bisbee on the way to the open pit mine and thought it would be a nice place to eat our lunch on the way back.
We stopped at the Lavender pit scenic overlook. It was a really large open pit copper mine. We had never seen an open pit mine before. The colors of 
the dirt and rock all around us was just spectacular. After gawking for a while we headed further south to Sierra Vista to pick up some bottled water and chips for a picnic lunch, then headed back north toward Old Bisbee.
What a place! We pulled in and onto a very small roadway that went up the side of the canyon. It was basically just a foot or so wider than our car with houses and garages clinging to each side of the steep slope. Reminded us of some of the villages we visited in Europe. When we got to the top, it was what looked like a dead end and started thinking that couldn’t have been a two way road. But just then someone pulled out and went off to our left and down an incredibly steep road that I couldn’t see was there and probably wouldn’t have found without that car going down it. We turned to go down it. Wow, it was probably a 45-50-degree slope to the bottom of the canyon.
Old Bisbee is an odd little place, kind of 60ish feel, maybe an artist colony wrapped into one. We found a parking spot right next to the mining museum and started looking around for a shady spot with a table. It didn’t look like we would find one, so I sat down on a steel bench with Dusty, and Kathy went ahead to see if there were any tables around. That steel bench seat was HOT, really hot out in the full midday sun. Kathy yelled and motioned me to come. She had found a little chess table with two stools in the shade up the hill a bit.
We had found a delightful place for a picnic lunch! Beautiful cool breeze and pretty view. And only a few yards away from a washroom. It was Friday afternoon and there were lots of folks walking around the town on this perfect weather day. After lunch we went for a stroll up and down the streets, found a cool park kind of hidden up a long flight of stairs. It had a nice covered area 
with hilltop views of the town and canyon walls. After admiring the park for a bit we noticed one house that looked much nicer than most of the 
others we could see so we headed further up the hill toward it. Lots of steep narrow roads all around this little canyon town. I was sad to leave as we wanted to see Tombstone and hopefully still have time to see Kartchner cavern on the way back.
We headed north out of town toward Tombstone using the GPS to find Boot Hill. I wasn’t sure we would want to stop there when we drove thru it on the way toward the mine, but I am glad we did. They had one of the roads blocked off to traffic all set up similar to what it would have looked like during Wyatt Earp’s and Doc Holliday’s time, complete with the wooden boardwalks on both sides. There were outlaws dressed up in period gear in the road, 
stage coaches giving rides around the town. Tourist shops and saloons lined the street, which was considerably longer than I expected. One of the stage coaches looked considerably older than the others, after walking past it I was thinking it was from the 1880’s and hadn’t been well maintained. Sort of looked like a deathtrap that might disintegrate while going down the street.
We walked over to the courthouse that was about a block off that road. We found an ice cream store on one of the side streets. I met a couple of Arizona Rangers. They came up to me as I was parked on a bench waiting for Kathy to find a tee shirt. I hadn’t ever heard of Rangers in Az, only the Texas variety. I asked them about the gun laws in Az. He said no permit was needed for open or concealed pistols, and they both said it’s a much safer place because of it. That just seems odd that policeman would think that, as they have to worry that anyone they stop can legally have a gun. But they were older gentlemen and thought differently than I would have guessed.
I was pleasantly surprised we had a good time walking around in Tombstone, which I thought would be too touristy for me. We left and headed toward home base and I wanted to stop at Kartchner Cavern.
When we got there, I asked the attendant at the gate if we could bring the pup into the cave, and he said no, but all the tours were full so we couldn’t go in them either. He mentioned this cave is the only fully wheelchair accessible one in the US. He was responding to my questions about the number of stairs on the tour. I was remembering back to one of the caves we hiked in the Black Hills last summer had about 800 stairs to climb. I asked about the temp in the cave, to see if it was as cold as the caves from last summer. He told us it was hot in this cave, 98% humidity and about 75 degrees. Far cry from the 48 or so degrees of the caves in the Black Hills.
We drove back to the RV after a nice day sightseeing in the Arizona desert.
Heading for Tucson and the FCOC Rally
After we got home last fall, I started researching trips for this year (2018) and thought we might try some of the RV rallies I had been reading about last summer. A week in Quartzite was the first, then two weeks in Tucson. After that, a summer couple-month trip to the Pacific Northwest with a one-week rally in Coos Bay, Oregon. The last of the planned trips is to Albuquerque for the Balloon Fiesta in early October.
The Tucson trip was for a Freightliner Chassis rally. I had signed up to take a class on maintenance for my chassis and was looking forward to spending a couple weeks in Tucson.
After spending six months on the road last summer, a new mattress for the coach was required. Our mattress was a foam type that was way to soft for me, so after reading Consumer Reports, we picked out an innerspring model that was on their recommended list. The closest dealer that sold it was in Yuma, so I purchased the new king mattress over the phone during the Presidents’ day sales in February with the intention of picking it up in Yuma on the way to Tucson in March.
Prior to pulling the trigger, I started asking on some forums if folks with my specific coach model were able to get an innerspring mattress thru the front door. Most folks said no, but a few said they had done it. I started thinking the “no” responses had probably never tried it and just went with another foam or air mattress, and a few mentioned they bought two long twins which equals a king-size bed. So after the few folks said they had gotten one in but that it took two people to get it in there, I pulled the trigger. After that I got to second-guess my decision for a month till we headed toward Yuma.
We arrived in Yuma last Monday afternoon and parked around back next to the loading dock. I put out all the slides to give us room to maneuver both mattresses. I had their warehouse guy help me move the old mattress out of the way, but not out of the coach yet, in case the new one wouldn’t fit in thru the door. After a bit of struggling with the new mattress, me pulling and the young man pushing, we got it in. Hooray! Keeping the plastic on it was very helpful, allowing it to slide a bit on the steps as we manhandled it up and thru the doorway and steps. We offloaded the old mattress. Geez was that thing heavy, probably triple the weight of the innerspring mattress.
We pulled in all the slides and headed for Tucson, another 3 1/2 hours of driving. About 50 miles shy of the campground, we pulled into a Pilot fuel stop and I was able to pump 138 gallons into the tank. [As we were driving the rest of the way, I was smelling a strong odor of fuel. Bill at first said it was because some splashed on him, but then later he he had forgotten to put on the fuel cap and it was still in his pocket, oops!!]
We arrived at the RV park at Pima County Fairgrounds just a bit after dark and luckily a camp host came out and guided us to a site. It had been a long day and we just deployed the coach, hooked up to water and electricity, and called it a day. Perfect time for a bourbon & seven, but as we looked for the bourbon, we realized we hadn’t packed it. 🙁
………………………….Where are we?
Map of the states we visited during our 5 month road trip!
Here are all the places we stayed during the trip.
Here is a link to view the specifics of the places we stayed.
The long drive back to San Diego
In New Orleans my knee started giving me trouble again, probably due to all the running around in Red Bay trying to get things to happen. Kathy really wanted to get home anyway, so we are just driving about 300 miles a day toward SD.
First night was in Beaumont, Texas, then on to San Antonio for Saturday night. Sunday night was spent in Fort Stockton, Texas. Geez, Texas is a big state and El Paso is still about 200 more miles. We spent the the night in Las Cruces, New Mexico on Monday, then on to the Tucson area, actually someplace called Picacho, AZ, about 40 miles north of there Tuesday evening.
We arrived in San Diego yesterday on Wednesday, October 25th!! Kathy was sad to leave all the trees of the East Coast. Western Texas all the way to the steep Mountain Springs Grade to the Jacumba Pass is basically treeless. 1,200 miles of desert with few trees.
I just checked the mileage and we drove 10,375 miles over the last 5 months and 3 days. Holy Cow.. That’s about $4,000 just for diesel fuel!!!! Plus we put about 6,500 miles Kathy’s car driving around sightseeing!!
What a great trip. Once we get the coach fully unloaded and cleaned, I need to start on the modifications for the next trip in January, boondocking near Quartzite for a week on BLM land. That includes adding a couple hundred watts of solar to the roof and replacing the worn-out house batteries, plus the addition of a new TV up front so the news can be watched without bringing up the TV behind the sofa.
(A special thanks to Gloria and Pat for coming over to help unload since Bill couldn’t walk with his knee. I couldn’t have done it by myself!!!)
Starting the Trek West
We left Savannah early on Friday morning so we could be past downtown Atlanta before their afternoon rush hour. Only rest stop I could find for the whole trip was closed for construction, so we used fuel stations to walk the pups and ourselves.
I had never stopped at a Loves truck stop before so it was a learning experience. First thing is you cannot pay at the pump with a credit card, you must go inside the store. They appear to have two pumps for each bay, but I was not sure how you made the other pump work as there wasn’t any controls. I have filler caps on both sides, so I could have used both had I been able to get it to work. As it was, those massive diesel nozzles on the pump filled my tank very quickly just using one of them. [Walking the dogs over to a tiny bit of grass/weeds was scary in between those huge trucks making very loud noises, but the pups did OK, just a little skitterish!]
We camped overnight in a pull -thru at a place called Cane Creek RV campground in Heflin, Al, just over the border from Georgia. Really nice campground a couple miles from the interstate. Real quiet there. We wanted to get to Red Bay early to have a better chance at getting an RV site at the Tiffin Service Center as it’s first come first served. No reservations. We left there before 8am in an attempt to make that happen.
By the way, Hurricane Nate was heading for Alabama that weekend. We were not sure what Sunday was going to bring our way!
Charleston
We drove down from D.C over a couple of days stopping in Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina, for an overnight in a pull-thru. It was a pretty uneventful couple of days till after we drove thru Charleston and onto James Island where we were staying. It got real interesting real fast as we made our way on the smaller roads toward the campground. Lots of very low hanging branches and the trees themselves were leaning into the roadway. I had to drive on both sides of the road in an attempt to miss the thick branches I could see with gouges on them from prior vehicle traffic. The rooftop antennas were doing their Boing Boing Boings as we made our way the last mile or so to the campground entrance. And the Spanish moss hanging on those tree branches gave the drive an eerie overtone while experiencing the sounds coming from the antennas.
Thankfully once on the campground roadway the branches were all cut back 
to a decent height. This campground was a very large county park with all sorts of areas to do things. There appeared to be a water park, an outdoor adventure area including a rock climbing wall, lots of fishing spots. There were even crews installing Christmas lights on specially built structures all along the roadway for their Holiday Festival of the Lights, which looked more impressive and much larger than our Del Mar one. They have two fenced dog parks with beaches and a lake for them to frolic in. Kathy wasn’t about to let our pups in the water as the sign at the gate to the dog parks said alligators may live in this area. Not sure why so many dogs were playing in the water if there might be alligators just under the surface ready for lunch.
We arrived on Saturday afternoon, and on Sunday morning we drove over to the visitor center in town to get a map, then we headed out to procure a parking spot, which we found on the very south end of the city along the water in front of the White Point Garden. It was from there we started our trek into the historic district.
First we strolled up Meeting Street. The houses were incredible. Each one was a little nicer than the last one. All the balconies with 
their signature ceiling fans were fabulous. Some of them seem to have painted their balcony ceiling a very light seafoam green, which was strikingly pretty. We made our way north to Market Street where we made a right to peruse the market buildings with all their shops in the middle of the north and south Market streets. 
We were going to go down Church Street but decided to walk over to the water near the wharfs and another large park I saw on the map. (Charleston is on a peninsula, water on three sides.) When we got there, it was like a gale was blowing off the water (almost blew the pups off their feet!). Just a hundred yards up Market and there was no wind. Not sure why that was. I remember NYC on a windy day, the streets were like wind tunnels.
We walked along the waters edge to the end of that park and cut back inland toward Church Street to head south to the car. Church Street had a lot of folks walking down the middle of the brick paved street and bicycles all around. There was lots of great architecture to gawk at, but the atmosphere was so different than just a block away on Meeting Street which had more cars and people plying it.
In a little while we were back in the park diagonally across from where we parked the car. We drove back to the island for a late lunch at a Mexican place that said they allowed pets on the patio. Surprisingly it was really good Mexican food, it did strike me as odd that on the front door in large letters it said “No pets”. I went inside and asked. They said, “Bring them in,” and he went out to the patio to put a couple of menus on a table for us. After we were seated he brought out a pie tin of ice water for the pups.
Once satiated we headed out toward Folly Beach on the ocean side of the Island we were camping on. James Island is large and it took a while to get there. But once there, we drove up and down the street closest to the ocean and checked out all the beautiful beach front homes. Almost every one of them was raised up about 15 feet from the ground. Must be fun to haul all the groceries up those steps! We drove down as far south as the road could take us. There was another state park. We headed in. The gale was still blowing and there were some pretty large waves coming in. The water was a muddy brown. Had never seen that in the ocean before.
Something I found out when we were at the campsite earlier that morning walking the pups, I was holding my phone and using my elevation app to determine how low this place actually was. It said we were 6 feet above sea level. I was holding the phone about 5 feet off the ground. This island is about a foot above sea level. No wonder lots of the homes even away from the beach were raised up a fair amount. Not long afterward I heard the radio advertisements from many different companies refer to the area as the “low country.” They got that right. Made me think of the Netherlands but without the dikes.
When we got back to the coach, Kathy asked how far we had walked. It hadn’t seemed like we went very far, but I had almost 12,000 steps. No wonder my knee was letting me know it was there!!
Day two we decided to do a driving tour thru more of the historic district. What a cool city. I could live here, although I had not experienced any humidity, which would probably make me rethink that if we came back in the summer. After we drove around for a couple of hours, we made it back to the park/garden at the south end of the city to get the pups out and for us to stretch 
out our legs too. We looked at all the statues from this 
first city of the secession. There were a lot to George Washington, but the most interesting was the one to all the brave confederate soldiers. It was placed in the most prominent spot in white garden park.
After we got back into the car, I started searching for a place to eat that would let us bring in the pooches. To my surprise I found an ad for a website called www.bringfido.com and it listed lots of dog friendly restaurants all over the US. There were many in Charleston, so we picked one and headed that direction. It had 5 bones (rating) and almost that high a rating for the Caribbean food. I really wanted the jerked chicken!
We got there – it was called Fuel – and it was an old gas station that had been slightly modified to make it a happening place. The patio out back was the nicest 
patio I have ever been to. A couple different levels, a high roof above for shade. A perfect place for us and the pups. There weren’t many folks there as it was pretty late for lunch on a Monday afternoon, but the food was amazing. I had a cup of sweet corn bisque and a jerked chicken sandwich. The corn bisque was the best soup I have ever had, hands down. The jerked chicken was pretty good, but not to the scale of the soup. Kathy had the sauteed shrimp salad. She said it was outstanding. And this, from a dog friendly restaurant app. Hard to believe our luck. If only we had found that app 4 months ago. Geez!
Heading to Savannah tomorrow morning.
