Tag: food

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 2310

Tuesday January 30th 2024

Dear Journal:

Tuesday morning and it was around 60ºF (15.5ºC) in the coach great for sleeping but also maybe requiring a house coat to enjoy a cup of coffee with a wee touch of an Irish blessing. We watched the morning news programs to see how many shooting there were in Phoenix, seriously it is one or two every night along with someone diving the wrong way on I-10, and no I’m not starting a rant just stating facts. Our on board electrical system is working great and our battery level got down to 62% before the solar harvest started to out pace our demand, we will try not to supplement our solar with a generator if we can help it and with nothing but sunshine in the forecast we should be good. Breakfast this morning was fried eggs and toast we are meeting up with Tom & Kathleen at ten this morning, well in reality they are picking us up at ten for a little road trip to see the area around them, as this park is quite a distance to pretty much everything.

We are in a very large cattle farming area, both dairy as well as beef farms, we are going to see a number of areas surrounding the campground, we are also planning lunch stop at a cafe in Casa Grande which has a special story and is very popular with the locals. There may be a drive by of a different campground that Tom & Kathleen have been looking at, with more amenities and would allow Tom to get away from the co-op board which he has been on for a number of years.

We seen acres and acres of livestock, huge dairy operations that make the small family farm seem so insignificant, I grew up on a small dairy farm and this was almost mind boggling in size. And I do understand the benefit to size for being able to drive costs down but it also peaks my imagination on how large the milking parlors must be and how large the milk storage coolers must be compared to our little fifty head herd of cows. We also explored some areas of Casa Grande with shopping and services before heading to our lunch destination.

Creative Cafe: The restaurant is the combined vision of Jim, Tesa and Bill Machelor. The parent company, Creative Labor Services, has provided work and learning opportunities for mentally and physically challenged adults since 1987. Looking to provide something fresh and unusual in casual dining, the family opened the restaurant in Casa Grande in July of 2000. We are now in our 24th year of preparing healthy food, along with excellent service.

A wonderful cafe in the heart of Casa Grande, which offers a great selection of lunch items in an obvious popular and bust destination. What makes this such a unique spot is that many of the staff are mentally or physically handicapped and this provides a nurturing, learning environment to prepare them for other positions in the area. As part of the Creative Labor Services which is in the next building they train people to fill roles in the hospitality industry whether it is laundry, or cleaning of serving is a busy cafe environment. We were greeted and served by trainees, the food was tasty, service was prompt, we were pampered during our stay with multiple visits to our table. Tables were cleared and cleaned promptly to keep up with a large lunchtime rush. the cafe is only open Monday through Friday from 11am till 3pm but worth checking out.

After returning to the campground we gathered at Tom & Kathleen’s site and enjoyed the Arizona sunshine, in fact it was warm enough that we were looking for some shady spots to avoid the sun. Miss Lucy and I renewed our relationship as we spent some time on the loveseat behind Tom & Kathleen’s coach. Tonight Tom is roasting a pork tenderloin on the barbeque and the aroma is almost too much for Miss Lucy and myself to handle, it’s right up there with the smell of bacon in a frying pan. We enjoyed a excellent pork dinner and as the sun set and the evening temperatures drop off, and it will be another early evening as we head back to Thunder for the evening.

Blog 508