Sunday February 4th 2024

Dear Journal:

It is a warm Sunday in February and we are busy in the admission booth, like real busy as both Laurie and I are pumping people through the line as quickly as possible, this would not normally be anything but great news, but we have another adventure planned for this week and it starts this afternoon. I’m hopping to be able to close out my ticket booth drawer by 3:00, then I will head back to Thunder, disconnect, and prepare to head out for our next adventure. If everything goes well I will pull Thunder into the Arboretum main parking lot and pick up Miss Laurie a few moments after 4:00 and we will be heading west.

Now you may be wondering where would we are going at four o’clock in the afternoon, as we have always avoided driving in the evening and especially after dark. In fact we have only driven Thunder three times in the dark and every time I have regretted that decision so what the hell was I thinking this time?

Well to be very honest this seemed like the best option to avoid stressing over a six hour drive. We are heading west into California, to Calente Springs RV resort, we have a three night reservation there to enjoy some of the California sights just north of Palm Springs. To get up early Monday morning and battle through Phoenix rush hour traffic did not sound like any fun. So we decided to try the Sunday afternoon traffic instead and our plan is to drive west on Interstate I-10 to the Quartzsite area and then just boondock over night and continue our drive into California on Monday morning. The Quartzsite area will be close to the halfway point of our journey, and we can have a nice leisurely morning and be at our reservation by noon for check in.

So lets talk about night driving. I have not enjoyed the last two night driving experiences in Thunder, in fact all our night time experiences have been unplanned and a result of some sort of circumstance that was beyond our control. November 2017 in Texas we had lost a hydraulic line and were getting a repair done that would make us late for a campground reservation in New Mexico, so I drove on Interstate I-10 in the dark to make up some lost time, at that time I was concerned how poor Thunder’s headlamps were, and said we would just avoid any night time driving. And we did avoid any night driving until September 2022 on Vancouver Island when we had been held up again at a repair shop making us late for a campground reservation two hours north of us on the Trans Canada Highway, we decided to drive at night to get to our campsite but Thunder’s headlamps were even worse than I had remembered, making this an hour long scary drive, again I said never again. But then just a couple of months later in Mexico our caravan ended up driving in the dark to get to a camping area after our original planned stop was full, it was now that I decided that I had to fix this headlamp issue once and for all.

When we made it back to Arizona in early 2023 I did the research needed to find the cause of the bad headlamps, and I discovered it was not a quick easy solution, but it was one that I could fix. First issue was that the tungsten head lamp bulbs were not getting high enough voltage, a common Beaver Motor Coach issue, the length of the power feed, the size of the cable, and a low voltage output alternator located about forty feet away from the bulb. Solutions were a new larger gauge power line, or a power relay on the existing wire, or replace the tungsten bulbs with high output LED headlight bulbs. I picked the LED bulbs as the lower voltage would not have any visual effect on them, so an Amazon order was placed and I moved on to the next part of the issue.

The second issue was that the plastic headlamp lenses were turning yellow, caused by oxidation from time and the sun, the headlamps were from a 1997 Ford product and replacement headlamps were going to be hard to locate and would be expensive and looked like a real bugger to change, so I decided to try sanding the surface of plastic lenses on the old headlamps. This process is inexpensive and other than some time and elbow grease should produce nice clear lenses again, so another Amazon order was placed for a sanding kit that will work with my power drill even saving me some elbow grease. The kit arrives and I sanded and polished the lenses till they were crystal clear, when the new LED bulbs land and I install them after having to order a couple of new lock rings, one of the old ones broke and the extra few bucks to make sure the LED bulbs were secure seemed a minor expense.

So now I have done all this work and while I’m sure they will be better, I had not driven at night with the new bulbs and newly polished lenses so tonight will be the deciding factor, I will either have an enjoyable drive west on Interstate I-10 or I will have over an hour of driving through hell, as we find also have to find our way out into the desert at Quartzsite. And the answer is the new bulbs and the polished headlamp lenses were a wonderful improvement. the visibility was sooooo much better, the light was white instead of yellow and as much as we are not planning to drive an night again, at least we know we can.

We took the ramp off of I-10 into Quartzsite, then turned north on AZ-95 and drove to Plamosa Road where we just took the first open boondocking spot just a few feet from the road, it is just an overnight spot and we will be gone in the morning. We found a level spot, closed the front curtain, Miss Laurie made us some dinner and we watched television until turning into bed just before ten o’clock.

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