Blog

Day 2319

Thursday February 8th 2024

Dear Journal:

Departure day from Caliente Springs, we have a six hour trip today to get back to the Arboretum. It has been a busy few day with Mary & Julie, as we explored a number of different areas around the campground. We feel honored to have experienced some of the areas that had been part of their lives a few years ago, a huge THANK YOU for not only sharing these experiences with us, but playing the role of our personal Uber driver and tour guide.

The weather still sucks here in California as there is more rain in the forecast and as we look east into Arizona it is obvious that there will be some driving in rain in our near future, but there does appear to be some dry miles ahead as well. We are not in a huge rush this morning but because we have six hours of driving ahead of us we are planning on hitting the road by nine o’clock Pacific time as we loose an hour at the Arizona border and enter Mountain time. Miss Laurie had prepared much of the coach for travel last evening and I just have to disconnect the power and raise the jacks as we never even pull the slide out this visit.

Coffee, a quick breakfast consisting of some pastry items (from yesterdays bakery visit), a sad “so long” to our glorious hosts and we are firing up Thunder and winding our way out of the campground. We are disappointed that we never got to do some of the items on Miss Laurie’s to-do list but we did some adventures that we didn’t even know about a few days ago. As we start our journey east we have a little reprieve from the rain and as we start the climb out of the Palm Springs valley we even get a little sunshine to go along with some road construction.

There will be no pictures today, this is just a travel eastbound on Interstate I-10, through the desert, so not really a photogenic area. We did discover during this little adventure that the items in our freezer where thawing, not really what I wanted to deal with on a travel day. S0 as we are driving along I’m trying to understand why the freezer compressor would not be operating, as the refrigerator compressor is keeping the fridge cold. So I can eliminate a circuit breaker or a wiring failure, but I just wont be able to diagnose it till we settle for the night, but lets just say nobody is happy right about now. I did have a quick peak in the refrigerator opening when we stopped at a rest stop for some lunch and it appears there has been an electrical melt down near the freezer compressor. This is the new “Dutch Aire” cooling unit that I purchased and installed last July in Ontario.

Lets just say the drive was long with rain off and on for most of the day, as we were entering the Phoenix valley area and we are not looking forward to the heavy traffic, I have planned a fuel stop just off of the 202 bypass that runs south of Phoenix, it will add a few miles to our route but will avoid the worst of the construction on I-10. It is not a route that we have travelled but construction on I-10 plus afternoon rush hour traffic I felt it would be a good option. And other that some stop and go traffic which was expected it worked out to be a good option, we connected with US-60 for the last push to the Arboretum and we made it just after the gates had closed. We tucked back into our site, hooked up the water and electrical, ran the slide out and used the jacks to level the coach.

It is a cold misting evening but I was determined to check out the burnt wire on the freezer compressor, I need to determine if I can get it operating before we loose everything in the freezer. I quickly diagnose that it is the main power wire to the compressor controller that has burnt so I quickly make up a new wire with a spade connector. but when I go to push the connector on to the controller I discover that the connector is an odd size, I carry two sizes but neither one fit, so in a final attempt I use a pair of plyers to reshape the connector to make it work temporarily. At this point I’m cold, wet and tired but I now have the freezer compressor running, I do not have a meter to check the DC amp current draw of the compressor, but the wire seemed to be operating fine, no sign of heating up and as I head to the coach for the night the temperature is again back below the freezing point.

I will deal with the failure in the near future, for now we have a weekend of volunteering to keep us busy until the first of the week. Miss Laurie has went through the freezer and thrown out the items that she is concerned with, it appears to be around a hundred dollars worth of loss. Again we are not happy with the failure of an expensive unit in only seven months of use, and I have already come to my diagnosis of the reason of failure. But Miss Laurie is preparing us a dinner with some freshly thawed items, we will watch some television and be in bed early tonight.

Blog 514

Day 2318

Wednesday February 7th 2024

Dear Journal:

We were up early this morning, as we have moved into a different time zone at the California state line, and while we are still streaming Arizona television we are going to enjoy a cup of perked coffee and a wee Irish blessing, while we wait for the clock. As we closed in on the a lotted time Miss Laurie has gathered up everything required to make more omelets and some blessing for the coffees. We have a plan to explore some areas very close to the resort today, the resort actually sits on or very close to the San Andrea’s fault line which runs almost the total length of California. The line between the North American plate and the Pacific plate and along the actual fault line there are numerous oasis where water comes to the surface and forms small pockets supporting trees and wildlife, but first thing first and we walk across the park for breakfast with Mary & Julie. The clouds have given away to some blue skies this morning and here are the views from our campsite.

We are heading to an oasis just a few miles from the resort, and it is an amazing site to see, a huge cluster of palm trees growing in the middle of the desert, not common as palms need an abundance of moisture to grow and survive. This is a common sight along the San Andreas fault line that runs right through this area of California, it also explains all of the springs in the area both hot and cold. This particular oasis was damaged by the flooding that occurred the year before when California experienced excessive rainfall, so there were areas that were still closed to us, as the clean up is still underway

Next we ventured to “Cabot’s Pueblo Museum” an adventure that is close to impossible to explain, and it is not often that I have said that. In the simplest of descriptions the “museum” is a collection of junk that the “artist” salvaged from all over, and then he built a Pueblo style structure using his findings either to build or furnish the museum.

This is an excerpt from the website:

Cabot Yerxa began building the pueblo in 1941, when he was 58 years old. The pueblo was to be a museum and home for Cabot and his wife, Portia.

The Hopi-inspired building is hand-made and created from reclaimed and found materials from throughout the Coachella Valley. Cabot used recovered lumber from his original homestead. Additionally, he purchased abandoned cabins and dismantled them to use the materials for the pueblo, going so far as to straighten out used nails. Much of the pueblo is made from adobe-style and sun-dried bricks.

Filled with Native American art and artifacts, souvenirs of Cabot’s travels around the world, and Cabot’s own works of art, the museum officially opened to the public in 1950. The Pueblo has four stories, is 5,000 square feet and includes 35 rooms, 150 windows, 30 rooflines, and 65 doors

We took the guided tour, and the docent did a wonderful job of explaining how the museum had been built and pointed out many items that had obviously been salvaged from different sights and areas of the country. He also gave insight into Cabot’s history and family background, even though we walked through the museum which was also his home, it would be easy to understand just how eccentric he had been. The site would qualify for the term “tourist trap” but the quirky nature of it left me is some ah, of what he had created in the last decade of his life.

Well it is now lunch time, well at least a late lunch, after some discussion the decision was made to have some shrimp tacos at Del Taco. This is a restaurant chain in California that offers 2 jumbo shrimp tacos for $6, a special that makes it close to the pricing we experienced in the Baja, very good taste and value, unless you have experienced the Baja. Now whether planned or just coincident the Mexican bakery La Abuelita which just happened to be across the street, safe to say we made a second visit to the bakery before calling it a day and heading back to the campground.

Blog 513