A View of the Old West

Last night we went to the Prescott Rodeo, billed as the Worlds Oldest Rodeo. I can't remember the last time I went to a live rodeo performance. It was loads of fun. This whole week is Frontier Days in Prescott and the rodeo runs all week. The contestents enter their events on each day during the week accumulating points to detemine the winner on the last day. This is one of the qualifying rodeos on the way to the championship held in Las Vegas each year. Then on Saturday is a huge parade and the town square hosts music performances and renactors demonstrate old time gunfights in the main street. It's all great fun and very colorful. The parade is interesting to me in that the high school kids who would normally be in a marching band are instead members of horse clubs and they all ride in the parade.

The rodeo starts with a grand en-trance parade with 50 riders each holding flag. There's one flag for each of the sponsors of the rodeo. All but three of the riders were women. The theme of the night was "Tough enough to wear pink" in support of breast cancer awareness.

The first event was something called "the wild horse race" in which several unbroken horses were released at once into the arena and teams of cowboys tried to be first to saddle one and ride it across a finish line. The horses truly went wild when they were released and I think only one team wound up getting a saddle on one. And one unfortunate cowboy wound up with a broken leg.

That was followed by bareback bronc riding and then steer wrestling, saddle bronc riding, calf roping and whole host of other events. The program moved right along lasting about two hours with no intermission. It was a perfect night because heavy cloud cover and rain in the area had brought down the 101 daytime temperature to a much more comfortable temp in the 80's.

As we left the stands to make our way to the car, I spotted this spectacular cecropia moth.

She was resting one the sidewalk and had a wingspan of a little over 4 inches. Because the antennae on this one are smaller, it can be identified as a female. They have no mouthparts or digestive system and only live about two weeks after emerging.

Since the location of the bus is about two miles from where I am staying and we didn't stop by yesterday or today, I don't know exactly how far along it is. I know that yesterday there were at least three men working on it and some of the framing had been done.

This a view at the rear of the living area with the existing bathroom at the far left. On the near left, leaning against the wall is the platform for the full size bed and to the right is the base of the twin bunks. The wall being framed in will form the rear wall of the tub/shower area. You can just make out the rear bench seat which is being left in place. It will function as seating and perhaps as a bunk for one of the kids.

John, the owner of the bus, had asked me to see if I could put together a solar array to help charge the batteries so I spent today working on that. We had some surplus solar panels that had formerly been used to power a couple of well pumps. The pumps went bad and the wells were converted to conventional power leaving the solar arrays as surplus. I took the various parts and built up a two hundred watt array by using two 55 watt panel and two 45 watt panels. Each pair was connected in series and then the pairs were connected in parallel. This let us use the most number of panels that we could while staying within the limits of the MPPT controller that was donated to us. It has yet to be mounted to the bus but I tested it after assembly and was pleased to see a steady 38 volt ouput.

The pile to the left in the photo are the seats that were stripped out of the bus awaiting dismantling prior to being carted to the metal recycling center.

Tomorrow it's another trip to Phoenix, this time for a load of hay. I should have a chance to review the current state of the bus so I can update that.

Our present anticipated date to leave is July 8th. We hope to get to Salmon, Utah by the weekend so that we can attend a Bluegrass music festival. We need to be in Anchorage by July 28th. It's about 3600 miles away.

We had originally planned to cruise back to Vancouver, leaving on August 25th., ferry to Seattle and take the train down the West coast. That has now been changed to cruise, then ferry to Seattle on September 1 where we will pick up a 25' class C motorhome from Cruise America. This will allow us the greatest degree of flexibility in our stateside return. In order to enable this, I've extended my stay in the West by a week.

Great Expectations

I don't know what kind of flower this is but it's a bush that is used for landscaping all over Phoenix.

We went to Phoenix this morning to get horse feed. While we were there we went over to Cabela's and I got a pair of slippers and a shirt, both out of the discount room. With coupons and promotions, I got the slippers for nothing. Then we went back to Gordon Biersch for lunch, and beer for me. Great place. It was 109 degrees when we left Phoenix. Back here it was 95.

This is the bus that we are getting ready for the trip. It is a 1997 MCI bus with a Cummins M11 engine. It has air ride suspension and lots of power, or so I'm told. Right now it is a shell. Nearly all of the seats have been stripped out of it as well as the overhead compartments. At this point we are gathering the components to upfit for the journey. We have a very nice Dometic two fridge that runs on propane. The fridge will be hoisted up and slid through one of the windows to get it inside the bus. All of the windows are also escape hatches and they each can open and swing up like the one in the picture.

 

You can also see some of a couch that is going in. Here is another shot. It folds out to make a bed.

Then we have three bowl stainless steel sink. We're all set for cleaning salmon.

In what I thought was a clever move, we have this Husky roll around tool cabinet to serve as kitchen storage. I assume it will be modified somewhat. There may wind up being two of them.

The bus came with a toilet built in that looks something like the ones in an airplane but it has no valve on the bottom so it's basicly a stainless steel outhouse. We've got a low profile RV toilet to mount over the hole where the seat would go to convert it into something more reasonable. It works better than it sounds. There is also another full size RV toilet that will located in the bath/shower area to be built amidships. We will also have a tub and shower.

The bus has been modified with a combination tank that holds 100 gallons of fresh water, 100 gallons of gray water and 35 gallons of black water. It rests in one of the bottom storage compartments and is currently being plumbed in.

Another modification has been the installation of a cabinet in another underneath compartment that will hold 2 30 lb. propane cylinders, much like you would find on a travel trailer. The fridge actually uses very little propane so we can expect to run it continuously on propane for the whole trip on just one tank.

Since the main AC is driven from the engine, we needed a source of cool for the times when the engine was not running. We have a Coleman Duotherm 15,000 btu unit to be installed in the roof.

A lot of the design is being done on the fly so I don't have details about the whole layout. There will probably be two couches because we need to seat eight people. We also need a place to sleep and one full size bed platform will be built and at least one set of bunks but after that more sleeping room has to be developed. I think I'm getting the couch but if that has to serve as seating during the day, it looks like napping will be tough.

Of course we will also need a way to cook but that riddle is yet to be solved. Plywood has been bought for walls and platforms but no sawdust yet. I'll report on other aspects of the build in a future post.

Settling In

                 This is yesterday's sunset. It gets real pretty if there some clouds to catch the setting sun.

I had thought we might be working on the bus by now but that has yet to commence. Instead, I’m trying to get my body to acclimate to the time and the climate.

The weather has been pretty comfortable so far but it’s going to get warmer. It’s been in the low 90’s but by Tuesday it’s supposed to go to 100. I get up each day between 5:30 and 6 local time. My watch is one of those atomic watch things that’s supposed to reset itself each day from a low frequency time signal in Colorado but so far it has refused to do so. So each time I look at my watch I see Eastern Time. I just subtract the 3 hours and don’t fret about it.

                                                This is the view off the porch in the morning.

The coffee pot is on a timer and the coffee is ready to go when I get up. I get a cup and go out to the entry porch that’s in the shade and sit in a chair and watch and listen to the day opening up. There’s a rooster down the valley that greets the dawn and I can hear the quail in the bush calling out their territory. Sometimes there’s a cottontail or two getting a last bite before heading back into the shade of a bush for the day.

We have three cats out here and they don’t want to be petted. They’re “barn cats”. But they always come around in the morning and they’ll follow us around the yard as we go to feed the horses.

There’s usually not any breeze in the morning and it seems so still. There are few trees and the hills just sit there covered with rocks and brush. There’s no traffic in sight and almost none in earshot so it is very quiet and peaceful.

                                                     This the view I watch in the evening.

We all go to bed at night at 9:00 and by then I’m good and ready. So basically, we follow the sun. We have Dish, but I’m not a TV person so I go out on the back deck at night and watch the shadows overtake the land. The deck looks out over the valley and the tank (pond). I’m staring at perhaps 40 acres of brush and hill with neighbors a quarter mile away or so.

I like watching the wildlife come out at the close of the day. There’re lots of rabbits, both jackrabbits and cottontails. I probably see about a dozen per night. This time I’ve seen quite a few roadrunners. They don’t go Beep-Beep but they do run like the wind. I’ve seen coyotes every night so far. The first night three of them came down the hill through the yard and on to the tank for a drink. There’s only just a puddle left and it will be gone in a couple of days. The other night there were two mule deer does that ventured out very nervously. I think they knew the coyotes were around.

We’re several miles from town and none of the neighbors have those large outside lights right now so it is very dark after the sun goes down. The night sky is brilliant through the dry air. We keep binoculars handy for the wildlife and I can look up and see limitless stars. I ought to see if I can find the schedule for the passing of the space station. I hear about it at home but can never see it there, but here it should be easy.

Under Way Again

Well, it's time to fire up this blog again as another trip is starting. This time will be a little different, though. As most followers of this blog already know, I lost my dear wife, Diane, last November. This past May I journeyed North to hold a memorial service for her. After that, I visited my sister and she and Curley really hit it off. She volunteered to have Curley for the summer and I decided to take her up on the offer. So, Curley is vacationing in upstate New York and I'm traveling solo.

The short version of this trip outline is that I've traveled back to Arizona to join my cousin and her husband and five others of the family in driving a converted bus up to Alaska. We will tour some of the sights in Alaska, headquartered in Anchorage, and then head back via cruise ship and train and whatever else it takes.

I'll try to describe the bus preparation and the trip as it unfolds.

I spent yesterday traveling to Arizona via Delta airways. It's been 10 or 12 years since I've flown and I've learned to view air travel as a giant uncomfortable hassle and I don't look forwrd to it. That being said, yesterday's version was not too bad but still did have its' moments.

I should have anticipated the extent to which technology has invaded travel but I was surprised to receive an email from Delta 24 hours in advance of my departure inviting me to check in on-line. OK, I can do without standing in along line at the airport, so off I went to check in. Then I was surprised to see that I could have my boarding pass in electronic form to be accessed from my cell phone. Good thing, as my printer chose that exact time to run out of black ink. So electronic it is. I had misgivings about the process but it worked like a charm. I used my phone to get to my e-mail pass which had an embedded Q-code that was scanned at security and the gate. Easy-peasy.

I had allowed plenty of time to work things out at the airport so I was left with lots of people watching time. At my gate there was a young family with 3 very young boys. The youngest looked to be maybe 18 months or so. His mother had him in a stroller or in her arms but every time he wanted something he started screaming at the top of his lungs. He wanted something a lot. I figure that my luck would have him seated next to me but then I saw that only he and his mother and the next older boy acutally boarded and they were seated at the extreme rear of the plane, while I sat at about the midsection, next to the engine. Between the engine's roar and the cabin noise and the fact that I removed my hearing aids, he really didn't bother me at all. Even though he screamed all the way to Atlanta.

Those of us who have reduced hearing know that background noise severly reduces our capacity to effectively hear with any discernment. Thus my hearing aids were pretty much of no real use for the whole trip and they rested in my pocket most of the time.

I had a three hour layover in Atlanta so I got some lunch and then settled in for the wait. The noise level in a busy airport like Atlanta is so overwheming. It's kind of ironic that there are so many systems that are trying at the same time to convey some piece of information that nearly none of it gets through. Multiple topics and monitors and languages and volumes and constant paging just present a wall of sound. It reminds me of viewing a Jackson Pollack painting with its' mix of colors. I relied on watching the actions of the people at the gate to get a sense of what to do.

The flight West was pretty good. I was reminded of the downfall of scheduling a flight that departs on a summer afternoon. The high temperatures and building cumulous clouds mean turbulence when climbing or descending and sometimes along the way. We flew at 36,000 feet and still passed some storm cells that were higher yet. I had the window seat just inside the entrance door so I lots of legroom and a view of the passing landscape down below. Although I have been across the nation several times by plane, car, motorhome or motorcycle, I'm always amazed at the variety of landscape as we move West. The lush green of the East gives way to the spare landscape of the West over the miles. The vast areas where there just seems to nothing or next to it. Not roads nor trees nor people. Don't bother to put in cell towers when there's no one to use them. Finally we break over a strip of mountains and there is greater Phoenix laid out below enveloped in a cloud of brown smog.

My cousin and her husband were there to meet me. After a quick potty stop we were off to find dinner. It was 5:30 in Arizona but my body was telling me it was 8:30 so I was ready to eat. A cold beer sounded like a good idea so I suggested a local brewery that I had remembered from being there before. It's called Gordon Biersch and they have several locations around the country. They have great German style beer and great food to boot. So we had a good dinner and then headed back to home base. The trip had a combination purpose for them. They had come to Phoenix to buy horse feed so they had brought their pickup. On the way, they got a call to postpone the feed and transport RV supplies instead. So we wound up bringing back a two door refrigerator, a tub, a toilet and a generator. With all the delays we didn't get home until 12:30 NC time and I was beat. Off to bed.

Now the project is to equip a 1997 MCI bus to serve as an RV for the trip North. Right now it is a virtual shell, waiting for the modifications to make it a livable unit for the duration. That will be the next part of the story. And that will mean pictures.

Sundown

That's the sun setting behind our daughter's house in West Virginia. The sun has set on our trip as well. We left WV Tuesday morning and headed for Virginia. We took route 50 from central WV over to Winchester, Va. and then route 17 down to Fredericksburg, Va. What a terrific route it turned out to be. It took us right up over the Allegheny mountains with stunning views and fall colors at their peak. It also took us up and over quite a few 9% grades with tight twisty curves. But we went up and down just fine, if slow.

We got to Fredericksburg about 3:00 and set about finding the military visitor center. Signs directed us West to the Chancellorsville site but there didn't seem to be much there so we returned to Fredericksburg and found a different set of signs that led us to the National Military Cemetery visitors center.

By then it was 4:00 and they close at 5:00. We inquired about Diane's ancestor and were shown where his grave was located. Then I pushed her up the hill and over the grass until we found it. There are 15,243 sets of remains interred there but the identities are known for only 2,473 of them. Luckily, one of those is Diane's Great Grand Uncle, that is, her Great Grandfather's brother. He was a member of B Company of the 2nd Michigan Infantry and was killed at the Battle of the Wilderness. When we visited the family plot in NY last fall, we saw that his name was carved on the family monument but there was no headstone for him. I did a bunch of research and found his military record and his burial spot. This was our chance to check it out. No one else in the family has ever been to the grave site.

By the time we returned to the visitors center it was almost 5:00 and I just had time to get some names of references to pursue for further research. Then we headed South out of town to a huge shopping complex. After snagging some snacks for dinner, we settled in for the night in the parking lot of a Walmart. The temperature remained mild over night and the site was well removed from the highway so it turned out to be a good choice. In the morning we headed right down I95 and then I85 to home. We got home just at noon. I filled up at the Flying J near home and was pleased to see that for the last tank of fuel I got 11.8 mpg, the best I've recorded so far.

Altogether, we've been gone about 6 months and have traveled about 7,000 miles. It has been a good trip. There have been highs and lows but we're both glad we went and did what we did. We'll never do a trip West like that again but we'll certainly plan more trips. The motor home has proven trouble free on the return trip and I feel confident taking it anywhere this side of the Rockies. For us, this is the ideal way to see the country and visit family. Thank you all for following along with us.

Local Color

We pulled out of our Ohio campground Tuesday morning in the face of what was predicted to be heavy rain and wind. I had been watching the radar over the past several hours and it looked like a reasonable chance to move so we decided to take off and see what happens. Well, the storm turned out to be a non-event. We ran into light rain a couple of times but nothing dramatic at all. It was only 182 miles so we arrived here in mid afternoon and set up in the driveway.

We have been fortunate that we have enjoyed really great weather on the whole trip back. The last couple of days have been overcast but the sun is just starting to appear today and it promises to be beautiful. Ever since we crossed over into Wisconsin and then into Michigan we have been able to observe the changing fall colors. While nowhere near peak, there are some stunning views none the less. We're really enjoying it.

While we were in Arizona I had the constant feeling of being out of place, like being in a foreign country without knowing the language. Now that we're back in the East the weather patterns and the plant species and the flow of the land is familiar and comfortable. It's a more peaceful feeling.

Archery season for deer has started this year around here. A customer brought in an eleven point buck yesterday to our daughter's husband's butcher shop. Our daughter's family has gotten three deer so far this year, two bucks and a doe. State law allows them to get as many as six apiece between gun and bow seasons but that's way more than they've got room for in the freezer. Each fall they clean out their freezer and give away whatever meat they have left over from the season before so we're bringing some back with us.

We'll hang out here until after the Columbus holiday and then start home but not in a straight line. We're going to take some country roads across the hills and into Virginia and wind up at Fredericksburg. Diane's great grand uncle is buried in the national cemetery there, a victim in the Battle of the Wilderness in the Civil War. We're going to visit his grave and get information on his unit and their campaign. Then it's home from there about mid week next week.

Old Timey Time

We left our son's place in MI yesterday 's and, after fighting with Michigan traffic and lousy roads, we made our way into East central Ohio. We are camped at the Amish Country Campsites in Winesburg, Ohio in what seems like the center of the Amish settlement area. We hear the horse drawn buggies going by frequently.

After settling in yesterday we took today to roam the area to see favorite spots and find new ones. Probably our favorite spot is Lehman's Store. We started there this morning. In case you've never heard of Lehman's, it's a store which got its start providing hard to find items to the Amish who settled in the area. They sell all those old time products that we used to rely on before there was electricity and indoor plumbing. Pretty soon the survivalist crowd was looking for the same type of products. And since a lot of the stuff was either antique or retro, Hollywood came calling to equip movie sets. The store today is a blending of five barns which have been moved and attached to each other making a maze of rooms inside. They have a lot of everything from kitchen appliances to wood stoves to kitchen ware to books to toys and hardware.

Diane had to check out the cookbooks.

If you've ever been to an old time field days, you may have seen the setups with the hit and miss engine turning an old fashioned ice cream maker. Lehman's has 'em for sale, complete and ready to go.

They have one entire room dedicated to lamps. Kerosene, gas, and electric. Lamps and lamp parts are there to build or repair just about any type of lamp you've ever seen.

They have the most complete stock of kitchen tools, equipment and accessories that I've seen anywhere. My eye was attracted to these turned rolling pins.

It goes on and on. It's really worth a stop when you're in the area.

Leaving Lehman's, we travel Southwest to Millersburg, a town with a designated historical district with a glass museum. Then it was on to Berlin, the closest that his area gets to the commercialism of the Lancaster,Pa. area. But it's still fun and they sure have some terrific items from the local woodworkers. Wood furniture built from solid oak or cherry seems to be the area specialty and there are lots of makers to choose from.

Just North of Berlin on route 62 is Heini's Cheese Store with over 100 kinds of cheese and many other goodies. We bought some Lacy Baby Swiss and some Farmer Cheese. then we went across the street to Kaufman's Bakery. They have the biggest selection of breads and rolls and pies and cookies to be found. I got a blackberry pie and Diane got some peanut butter cookies, among other things. Then we went up the road to Wendell August Forge a rather unique place that has  various plates and bowls made from aluminum or pewter or brass sheet which is pounded into engraved molds.

All that shopping and looking had us tired out by that time so we went on up the road to the Amish Door Restaurant for dinner. Reminiscent of the big restaurants like Good N Plenty in the Lancaster area, this new operation offers family style, buffet and menu ways to order your meal. They have an attached bakery and also a gift shop and an inn. The food was very good and the service was outstanding. The prices were very reasonable. We were too stuffed to be tempted by the bakery but we did find some black raspberry jam in the gift shop.

One last stop one the way back to the campsite lead us to the Gateway Place, a shop which specializes in Ohio wines. We had a delightful time chatting with the hosts while tasting some of the local wines. And of course, a few bottles managed to accompany us out the door. Then it was back to camp. Tomorrow, we'll head out of Ohio and on to West Virginia to our daughter's place. The forecast is for thunderstorms and wind but we're going to head out and  see how it goes.