Ka-Pow!!

This is/was the spare tire on the Beast.  It’s been sitting at the RV service place for a couple of days, waiting to get a short list of relatively minor stuff done.  Yesterday afternoon, the folks there tell me, they heard a very loud explosion which shook the building they were sitting in.  It wasn’t clear what it was.  This morning, a couple of them went out to look at a hawk in a tree and noticed this.  They called me.  Yep: the tire looks like it just plain blew up.  The service writer there calls it “freaky.” I say, “huh???"

There was no damage to their property or to the trailer parked next to it.  No one was hurt.  There seems to be no damage to the motorhome other than the black scuff marks on the rear wall just above the tire. 

The tire’s age is unknown.  It was the spare tire when I bought the rig over two years ago.   Last week I replaced the old ratty-looking white-ish cover on the spare with a new, spiffier black cover. The easiest, although still puzzling, explanation is that the black cover concentrated the heat from the sun, and Pow!!! 

I’ll get the RV back from these guys on Monday and schedule an oil change etc with Buck’s next week.  And ask Buck’s if they have any ideas about what might have caused this.  

A new tire will be on the order of $150-200.  A new cover (NOT black!) will be about $30.

Sigh.

Yep. It's been a while!

Last time I posted was right after my long trip up through Idaho and Montana.  I've been hunkered down in the heat of southern Arizona, catching up on house maintenance and with friends hereabouts. It's been a remarkable monsoon season, with heavy rains producing local flooding sufficiently dramatic to make the national TV news. And muggy!  Not by the standards of the Southeast or even my New England home, but still humid enough to make it really nasty a lot of the time.  When the dew point gets over 60, most people begin to be uncomfortable.  That would be me!

The next venture:  I definitely have itchy feet again.  I have a trip outlined in my head which centers on meandering along Highway 101 in northern California and Oregon.  I started scoping it out, and discovered that the whole dang world thinks September would be a great time to do just that!  State parks and commercial campgrounds alike were pretty much full -- this for a trip a month out!  But more than that, I found that I just wasn't ready for a month or more on the road.  Planning it felt like work, not play, and that is NOT the idea here.  So ...

I have a trip outlined in the Arizona high country.  It's much cooler up there, it's scenic, and it's close enough that I don't have to drive for days and days to get there.  There are lots and lots of National Forest campgrounds and dispersed camping areas... it'll be mostly boondocking, but likely with enough sun that the solar panel can keep me in business.  And a week-long trip seems a lot more manageable than a month.  There are some maintenance tasks on the rig which I've been postponing, so I've scheduled them with my new favorite RV repair place... which has conveniently relocated to a spot about a mile down the road from me, right next to "my" Albertson's supermarket.  And the fact that I'm not putting on that many miles, and I'm mostly boondocking, means that the cost will be way low.

Timing looks like about a week out, spanning the weekend after Labor Day.  The closer we get to October, the closer we get to the kind of weather we brag about down here in the desert.

So that's the word.

By the numbers

I'm home, putting things away, doing laundry, reacquainting myself with the dog.  Almost ready to put the rig back in the storage lot. I'll have some reflections on this, the longest trip I've taken with the Beast, in a day or so.

But the numbers are easy to summarize: the indispensable Road Trip app records all the vehicle-related costs, and some spreadsheets I've put together track where I've been and how long.

So here's it is:

I was away for 33 nights.  Three of those were spent with family, so for expense purposes I was on the road for 30 days.

I covered 3,476 miles, consuming 395 gallons of gas at an average price of $2.33 per gallon.  Gas cost ranged from $1.979 to $2.659. Total gas cost was $919.58  The Gas Buddy app and web site were invaluable in finding the best gas prices. Over the trip, which included some challenging mountain grades and some gentle rolling country, I got about 8.8 miles per gallon.  Wind and whether or not I was using a/c as I drove seemed to be the biggest determinants of fuel efficiency.

I spent a total of $485 on overnight stays; the cost per night of these ranged from zero for Walmart parking lots to $36.42 at a commercial RV park in Idaho.  Nightly cost averaged about $16.

Total road trip cost, then, was about $1400, or $46 per day.  I don't keep separate track of food costs, since I eat about the same stuff as I would at home and buy it at supermarkets along the way.

I released 7,663 pounds of CO2 into the atmosphere.

There were no notable repair costs this trip.

These are, of course, only the direct costs of this trip.  The indirect costs of repairs and maintenance to the rig are a whole 'nother story.

Almost home

I have two more days on the road.  It's been a long trip, and a good one.  Right now I'm at an old favorite placeL BLM's Valley of Fires campground near Carrizozo, NM.  Tonight I'll be at Rockhound state park near Deming, NM, and then home to the furnace heat of Tucson.  Heat or not, it's time to be home.  I don't know when or where the next trip will be.

The activity on this blog will be pretty minimal for a while.  There'll almost certainly be a summary post with some stats and some thoughts.  But after that the blog, like the Beast, will go into storage for a while.

I got up early this morning before there was even a hint of light on the eastern horizon.  The stars! Dry desert air and almost no man-made lights ... the Milky Way stretched across the sky.  And as I stood, probably with my mouth hanging open, a meteor streaked across the eastern sky.  It was a moment.  I'm grateful.

Hunkered down …

For a few days with family in Boulder. When I leave here I'll probably head home, but not sure what route. 

Some photos from the last couple of days

Catching up with some images 

Trapper Peak near Darby, MT

Like I said ... 

The Salmon river from Rte 93

A few miles north of Arco, ID, on Rte 93

At Spring Gulch NFS campground, south of Darby, MT.  Written on Sunday, July 3

Fourth of July in Conner, MT

The while 5 days I’ve been here, it’s been quiet and the other folks have been pretty mellow: even a bunch of bikers. The people across the way were a nice couple from California in a pickup camper, who went off most days to go fishing somewhere.  The woman of that pair fell on a river rock and broke her arm (above the elbow: that’ll be a nuisance to immobilize and set!) and their spot was claimed by a family group with Idaho plates on a very large 5th-wheel trailer.  They had three kids ranging in age from something like 8 or 9 to very early teens.  Each kid had a little quad (motorized 4-wheel toy) and Dad had a full-size quad.  And they spent hours buzzing up and down the campground road, squealing and towing each other on skateboards.  Squealing, I tell you!

They did quiet down when dinner called (the smell of burning chicken filled the air,) which was just about when I was heading for bed.  I did resist the urge to go shake my cane at them and yell “Get off my lawn!”  It was a holiday weekend, and they were out camping, and I’m sure it will be one of the good childhood memories.  No harm, no foul.  But I found myself thinking that no WAY would we have let son Mike do something like that when we were camping with him.  If they’d had quads back in the day, I’m sure he’d have loved it.  But it was SO intrusive: their noise filled the whole campground.  I liked it better when the loudest noise was either the Bitterroot River across the way or the mosquitos trying to get through the screens. 

From here I’m headed south and east.  I haven’t decided yet — I’ll probably need to make the call tonight — but I’m still thinking I’ll head across Wyoming and south to Boulder.  We’ll see once I get on the road.

Continuing issue: solitude. 

Before I forget: forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.  I think it was the second night I was here.  It was late afternoon, it was hot and humid, the mosquitos were in full cry. As I walked down to the toilet, I heard — generators.  Yes!!!  So I went back to the rig, fired up the generator and the a/c.  And for a blissful hour or so I was cool and not sweaty and only a little guilty.  On that subject (generators, not guilt) I was again impressed by how quiet the current Honda generators are.  Trailers, even big ones, generally don’t have generators built in the way motorhomes do.  You haul the generator out, put it somewhere, fire it up, and plug the RV into it. They’re really quiet.  Mine makes the sound of a well-mannered lawn mower; the Honda units just purr.  

One of the features of this time at Spring Gulch was trips into town.  “Town” is Darby, MT.  Home of supermarkets, gas stations, laundromats, cell phone service and cheeseburgers.  And cowboys. About 15 minutes up the road.