MA to AZ and beyond
- Thread starter rob cote
- Start date
So, we hung out with our friends in their house for a day and a half before they left to go on a cruise. We spent the time mostly just hanging out and trying to learn their dogs' routine. And making sure they all got along. Loki took a bit to get acclimated to the house from the van, but they mostly all get along which is great. Shaun and Jenny left and about a half hour later, we started taking apart their kitchen.
They had this awful tile backsplash that they wanted to replace. It was well-made, but very dated. It was a very early-90s vibe. They'd also replaced the countertops, so the backsplash no longer came all the way down to meet them, and so was basically pointless. They ordered replacement material to install in place of the tiles before they left, so I got to work straight away. As expected, it did some damage to the drywall behind the tiles, but it wasn't terrible.
With all the tile off, I stripped the drywall down to a uniform layer of the remaining paper, so there was a somewhat smooth surface to work off. Mandy painted the walls to help hold the drywall paper together, as well as change the color from green to blue which matches the rest of the room. Once the paint was dry, I began cutting out the new "tin" backsplash pieces (they're from American Tin or something like that, but I'm pretty sure they're actually aluminum) and gluing them into place. It was instantly better! And by a lot, too.
Once I made it all the way around the kitchen, it was just a matter of caulking all the seams and cleaning up the mess of working. Ever since we built the shower in our van, I've been using painter's tape to edge caulking joints, and it gives such a good result. I did that for the backsplash as well, so the joints came out real nice and nice.
It wasn't ALL work, though. We did a lot of chilling throughout the week. And walking dogs. Some days we only chipped away at the kitchen project for an hour or so. We spent ample time in the hot tub, relaxing nights before bed. We even got to go to the store together because Loki had a place to hang out inside!
And, since their house is in Tavares, it's possible to see spacecraft launch from Cape Canaveral if the weather permits. There were two launches scheduled for this week. The first, we watched from the front door of the house. This viewing location was super convenient, obviously. But it wasn't good. We could see it, but it was hardly more than flashes of light in between clouds. If we hadn't been watching for it, it would have been very easy to miss entirely. So, for the second launch, we drove to Titusville and watched from Spaceview Park. The view here was SO MUCH better! And we could actually hear it, too! The light from the launch takes less than a second to travel the 6 miles from the launchpad to the spot where we were watching, but the sound takes about 30 seconds. The rocket was completely above the cloud ceiling and gone from view before we could hear anything at all. I knew that was going to be the case, but it was still crazy to witness it firsthand.
This video is not very van-lifey and has basically nothing to do with our van. But if you're still following along, then maybe you don't care about that. If so, here you go:
They had this awful tile backsplash that they wanted to replace. It was well-made, but very dated. It was a very early-90s vibe. They'd also replaced the countertops, so the backsplash no longer came all the way down to meet them, and so was basically pointless. They ordered replacement material to install in place of the tiles before they left, so I got to work straight away. As expected, it did some damage to the drywall behind the tiles, but it wasn't terrible.
With all the tile off, I stripped the drywall down to a uniform layer of the remaining paper, so there was a somewhat smooth surface to work off. Mandy painted the walls to help hold the drywall paper together, as well as change the color from green to blue which matches the rest of the room. Once the paint was dry, I began cutting out the new "tin" backsplash pieces (they're from American Tin or something like that, but I'm pretty sure they're actually aluminum) and gluing them into place. It was instantly better! And by a lot, too.
Once I made it all the way around the kitchen, it was just a matter of caulking all the seams and cleaning up the mess of working. Ever since we built the shower in our van, I've been using painter's tape to edge caulking joints, and it gives such a good result. I did that for the backsplash as well, so the joints came out real nice and nice.
It wasn't ALL work, though. We did a lot of chilling throughout the week. And walking dogs. Some days we only chipped away at the kitchen project for an hour or so. We spent ample time in the hot tub, relaxing nights before bed. We even got to go to the store together because Loki had a place to hang out inside!
And, since their house is in Tavares, it's possible to see spacecraft launch from Cape Canaveral if the weather permits. There were two launches scheduled for this week. The first, we watched from the front door of the house. This viewing location was super convenient, obviously. But it wasn't good. We could see it, but it was hardly more than flashes of light in between clouds. If we hadn't been watching for it, it would have been very easy to miss entirely. So, for the second launch, we drove to Titusville and watched from Spaceview Park. The view here was SO MUCH better! And we could actually hear it, too! The light from the launch takes less than a second to travel the 6 miles from the launchpad to the spot where we were watching, but the sound takes about 30 seconds. The rocket was completely above the cloud ceiling and gone from view before we could hear anything at all. I knew that was going to be the case, but it was still crazy to witness it firsthand.
This video is not very van-lifey and has basically nothing to do with our van. But if you're still following along, then maybe you don't care about that. If so, here you go:
Shaun and Jenny got back from their cruise a day later than we had planned for. That didn't really impact anything, except that we kind of scrambled to finish up the backsplash project a day earlier than we needed to. So, we had a day to fully relax with nothing to do. It was quite nice. When they got home, we recorded video of their reaction to the little makeover in their kitchen because that would have been nice to have in the previous video. GoPro decided to eat the file afterwards, so it was unusable. Oh well. Friggin classic, honestly. Someday maybe we'll work with a different camera and be YouTube famous. I doubt it.
Anyways, we had kind of kicked around ideas of what to do once they got back, but we hadn't really decided anything. And this is our constant struggle. When you can go ANYwhere, how do you decide what to do and where to go? Ultimately, through talking with others, we decided it'd be worth it to check out the Keys. We'd been kind of on the fence; would it be worth the fuel and time to get there and back? would it be too hot? would it be okay for the dog? etc.
Our homestay hosts graciously offered to look after Loki as we'd done for their dogs while we went to do our own thing, so that's what we did. We said goodbye to Loki and snuck out the back door before he noticed us leaving. He was preoccupied with treats. We cruised to get coffees and then worked on figuring out how to get there. We (aka Mandy) decided we should make a loop of it and go south along the Gulf Coast and then after checking out the Keys, head north along the east coast. So that's what we did.
We drove nonstop to Siesta Key along the west coast and checked out the beach there. What a gorgeous beach!! The sands were the softest of any beach either of us has ever been to. It was very near the texture of powdered sugar. The water was a bit chilly, but fine after just a few seconds in it. If we'd arrived earlier in the day, it would have been the perfect temperature. As we were relaxing there, though, we decided it might be fun to go out to dinner and watch the sun set. So, we didn't end up staying very long at the beach. Instead, we went to Nokomo's and sat on the 2nd floor deck facing west. It was beautiful, and we got a delicious dinner and enjoyed some okayish live music. I thought it was good - certainly far better than I could perform - but Mandy was a bit more critical. Either way, we were having fun, and so was the artist, so it was all good.
We hit the road in the morning and headed to Big Cypress. We stopped at a ranger station and saw dozens of gators in a small pond right on the side of the highway. We were within easy killing range of the gators which was a little unnerving. There were several other people checking them out, too. No one was pestering them in any way, the whole thing was very respectful which was so nice. It's so disappointing when people bother the wildlife or litter or whatever. Everyone we saw was just looking in awe and taking a few pictures. Even the talking was very quiet. These were the largest and closest gators we'd ever seen. Most of them were just chilling in the sun. Warming in the sun, actually. You knew what I meant.
We drove a bit further down the highway to enter the Everglades National Park. There was a line of cars to get in, and they were only admitting one car whenever one would leave, because the parking lot was full. So, rather than wait and burn fuel and waste time, we left, parked just down the street in a vacant lot, and rode our bikes in. Bikes don't have to wait in the car line. You are allowed to bicycle at the Shark Valley visitor's center, so that's what we did. It's a 15-mile paved loop. If you don't want to bike, you can walk or take a ride on their trams. Halfway around the loop, there's a tower you can climb for fantastic views of the Everglades. We checked it out, but we didn't dilly-dally for long, because there was a storm rolling in and we weren't trying to get struck by lightning. The bike ride was gorgeous and easy, but around mile 9 we were both feeling the effects of not having ridden in a long while. But we couldn't stop, because of the storm. So, we just put our heads down and ground out the remaining miles back to the van. We made it mostly dry, although we did get rained on a tad. Once we started driving again, the rains came down heavy.
We drove towards Homestead and once it got dark, we found a spot to park for the night. We stayed at the Barrel. There're some reports of theft at this particular Barrel online, so we parked with our bikes backed up to nearly inside a bush, basically. There were several other RVs there with us, and we had no issues. In the morning, we started driving and watched a beautiful sunrise along the way down Route 1 heading out to the Keys. It was shaping up to be a beautiful day! Once we got officially onto the Keys, we found a spot to park on the side of the highway. Not ON the highway; we were in a parking lot. And we were the only ones! Just off the parking lot was a tiny beach, and we had the whole place to ourselves. Mandy made us some breakfast and I checked out the water and then did some yoga in front of the water. It was perfect! The beach wasn't great for swimming because there was a lot of coral and it wasn't very deep, but we waded in it anyways. Just 'cause.
Later, we moved on. We continued driving all the way down to Key West and found the end of the road. We parked the van and wandered all around downtown area on foot. Such a cool little town, but definitely very touristy. We texted our old neighbor who used to live in Key West and he gave us some spots to check out. Eventually, we got hungry, so we started looking for somewhere to eat. It was too hot for cooking inside the van, and we just weren't feeling it. I legitimately forget the name of the place we ate, but it was decent. After we ate, we figured we should just go all out on our little splurge and take a sunset cruise. Near the docks, we asked at a booth "Is it too late to catch a sunset cruise?" "Nope, follow me!" And the dude basically ran like 7 blocks to check us in just in time. We actually took a shortcut through a restaurant on our way. He could have just said "yeah you missed the boat". But it was totally worth the hustle! We had so much fun watching the sun set over the water listening to live steel drums out on the water on our catamaran cruise.
After the cruise, it wasn't super late, but we were feeling pretty exhausted, mainly from so much walking and sunlight all day. We got a slice of key lime pie and headed back to the van. We just paid for 24-hour parking in a lot downtown. It was a little steep, but overnight parking is very limited in the Keys. It was honestly on par with a campsite, so not crazy expensive, and not very different. Just a little louder and we couldn't build a fire. Not a big deal, really. The parking spaces were small, though, so we'd taken the bikes off the rack to fold it down and stowed them inside. It was a little difficult moving around in there, but not impossible. It was a good test for when we eventually will need to store them inside while the van gets ferried to South America.
When we woke up, we wandered around the docks checking out the boats and sipping our morning coffees. Once we were actually awake, we started driving back north towards the mainland. We found a different beach to stop at, just south of 7-mile bridge. We worked on some video editing and tanning. Again, the beach was not great for swimming because of the depth and coral, but we waded. The sun was HOT this morning, especially because we were on the east side of the highway. There was just no reprieve. The water helped some, but eventually we had to crank up the air conditioning in the van and keep driving. We weren't really sure what to do from there so we spent the drive discussing it. Ultimately, we decided to head to St. Augustine to visit our friends Steven and Chloe again (we'd seen them back in June or July).
We weren't going to make it in one day, so we headed into Miami first to visit the beach at Haulover Park again. This beach is actually good for swimming, but we arrived pretty late in the day, unfortunately. It was nice to just lay out in the clothing-optional area and soak up the last couple hours of sunlight, though. By then we were utterly beached-out, I think. We went back to the van and Mandy reheated us some leftover tacos we had, while I checked suspension hardware. I thought I'd heard a noise when I was driving, but everything checked out so who knows. After we ate, I drove towards St. A until I didn't feel like it anymore. We found a spot to park for the night, I think at a Walmart.
In my mind, we were like halfway between Miami and St. Augustine. When I looked at the map, I was so disappointed. We'd gotten stuck in so much traffic leaving the city, I only had enough left in me to barely reach the suburbs. Oh well. We finished the drive the next day and had time to kill before Steven and Chloe were free, anyways. We met them at their rock-climbing gym and used their guest passes to climb for free. This was a lot of fun; it's been a minute since I've done some bouldering in a gym. We beat ourselves up for a few hours scaling various 0s and 1s. I think I completed one 2? But probably not. Afterwards, we regrouped at their house, parked the van, and went out for a beer with them. It was extremely loud at Slugs, but we had a blast playing Silver Falls. We went someplace quieter, which had a live band playing and ended up being just as loud. Ultimately, we just went back to their house and hung out there til the wee hours of the morning. Exhausted, we all went to bed.
Anyways, we had kind of kicked around ideas of what to do once they got back, but we hadn't really decided anything. And this is our constant struggle. When you can go ANYwhere, how do you decide what to do and where to go? Ultimately, through talking with others, we decided it'd be worth it to check out the Keys. We'd been kind of on the fence; would it be worth the fuel and time to get there and back? would it be too hot? would it be okay for the dog? etc.
Our homestay hosts graciously offered to look after Loki as we'd done for their dogs while we went to do our own thing, so that's what we did. We said goodbye to Loki and snuck out the back door before he noticed us leaving. He was preoccupied with treats. We cruised to get coffees and then worked on figuring out how to get there. We (aka Mandy) decided we should make a loop of it and go south along the Gulf Coast and then after checking out the Keys, head north along the east coast. So that's what we did.
We drove nonstop to Siesta Key along the west coast and checked out the beach there. What a gorgeous beach!! The sands were the softest of any beach either of us has ever been to. It was very near the texture of powdered sugar. The water was a bit chilly, but fine after just a few seconds in it. If we'd arrived earlier in the day, it would have been the perfect temperature. As we were relaxing there, though, we decided it might be fun to go out to dinner and watch the sun set. So, we didn't end up staying very long at the beach. Instead, we went to Nokomo's and sat on the 2nd floor deck facing west. It was beautiful, and we got a delicious dinner and enjoyed some okayish live music. I thought it was good - certainly far better than I could perform - but Mandy was a bit more critical. Either way, we were having fun, and so was the artist, so it was all good.
We hit the road in the morning and headed to Big Cypress. We stopped at a ranger station and saw dozens of gators in a small pond right on the side of the highway. We were within easy killing range of the gators which was a little unnerving. There were several other people checking them out, too. No one was pestering them in any way, the whole thing was very respectful which was so nice. It's so disappointing when people bother the wildlife or litter or whatever. Everyone we saw was just looking in awe and taking a few pictures. Even the talking was very quiet. These were the largest and closest gators we'd ever seen. Most of them were just chilling in the sun. Warming in the sun, actually. You knew what I meant.
We drove a bit further down the highway to enter the Everglades National Park. There was a line of cars to get in, and they were only admitting one car whenever one would leave, because the parking lot was full. So, rather than wait and burn fuel and waste time, we left, parked just down the street in a vacant lot, and rode our bikes in. Bikes don't have to wait in the car line. You are allowed to bicycle at the Shark Valley visitor's center, so that's what we did. It's a 15-mile paved loop. If you don't want to bike, you can walk or take a ride on their trams. Halfway around the loop, there's a tower you can climb for fantastic views of the Everglades. We checked it out, but we didn't dilly-dally for long, because there was a storm rolling in and we weren't trying to get struck by lightning. The bike ride was gorgeous and easy, but around mile 9 we were both feeling the effects of not having ridden in a long while. But we couldn't stop, because of the storm. So, we just put our heads down and ground out the remaining miles back to the van. We made it mostly dry, although we did get rained on a tad. Once we started driving again, the rains came down heavy.
We drove towards Homestead and once it got dark, we found a spot to park for the night. We stayed at the Barrel. There're some reports of theft at this particular Barrel online, so we parked with our bikes backed up to nearly inside a bush, basically. There were several other RVs there with us, and we had no issues. In the morning, we started driving and watched a beautiful sunrise along the way down Route 1 heading out to the Keys. It was shaping up to be a beautiful day! Once we got officially onto the Keys, we found a spot to park on the side of the highway. Not ON the highway; we were in a parking lot. And we were the only ones! Just off the parking lot was a tiny beach, and we had the whole place to ourselves. Mandy made us some breakfast and I checked out the water and then did some yoga in front of the water. It was perfect! The beach wasn't great for swimming because there was a lot of coral and it wasn't very deep, but we waded in it anyways. Just 'cause.
Later, we moved on. We continued driving all the way down to Key West and found the end of the road. We parked the van and wandered all around downtown area on foot. Such a cool little town, but definitely very touristy. We texted our old neighbor who used to live in Key West and he gave us some spots to check out. Eventually, we got hungry, so we started looking for somewhere to eat. It was too hot for cooking inside the van, and we just weren't feeling it. I legitimately forget the name of the place we ate, but it was decent. After we ate, we figured we should just go all out on our little splurge and take a sunset cruise. Near the docks, we asked at a booth "Is it too late to catch a sunset cruise?" "Nope, follow me!" And the dude basically ran like 7 blocks to check us in just in time. We actually took a shortcut through a restaurant on our way. He could have just said "yeah you missed the boat". But it was totally worth the hustle! We had so much fun watching the sun set over the water listening to live steel drums out on the water on our catamaran cruise.
After the cruise, it wasn't super late, but we were feeling pretty exhausted, mainly from so much walking and sunlight all day. We got a slice of key lime pie and headed back to the van. We just paid for 24-hour parking in a lot downtown. It was a little steep, but overnight parking is very limited in the Keys. It was honestly on par with a campsite, so not crazy expensive, and not very different. Just a little louder and we couldn't build a fire. Not a big deal, really. The parking spaces were small, though, so we'd taken the bikes off the rack to fold it down and stowed them inside. It was a little difficult moving around in there, but not impossible. It was a good test for when we eventually will need to store them inside while the van gets ferried to South America.
When we woke up, we wandered around the docks checking out the boats and sipping our morning coffees. Once we were actually awake, we started driving back north towards the mainland. We found a different beach to stop at, just south of 7-mile bridge. We worked on some video editing and tanning. Again, the beach was not great for swimming because of the depth and coral, but we waded. The sun was HOT this morning, especially because we were on the east side of the highway. There was just no reprieve. The water helped some, but eventually we had to crank up the air conditioning in the van and keep driving. We weren't really sure what to do from there so we spent the drive discussing it. Ultimately, we decided to head to St. Augustine to visit our friends Steven and Chloe again (we'd seen them back in June or July).
We weren't going to make it in one day, so we headed into Miami first to visit the beach at Haulover Park again. This beach is actually good for swimming, but we arrived pretty late in the day, unfortunately. It was nice to just lay out in the clothing-optional area and soak up the last couple hours of sunlight, though. By then we were utterly beached-out, I think. We went back to the van and Mandy reheated us some leftover tacos we had, while I checked suspension hardware. I thought I'd heard a noise when I was driving, but everything checked out so who knows. After we ate, I drove towards St. A until I didn't feel like it anymore. We found a spot to park for the night, I think at a Walmart.
In my mind, we were like halfway between Miami and St. Augustine. When I looked at the map, I was so disappointed. We'd gotten stuck in so much traffic leaving the city, I only had enough left in me to barely reach the suburbs. Oh well. We finished the drive the next day and had time to kill before Steven and Chloe were free, anyways. We met them at their rock-climbing gym and used their guest passes to climb for free. This was a lot of fun; it's been a minute since I've done some bouldering in a gym. We beat ourselves up for a few hours scaling various 0s and 1s. I think I completed one 2? But probably not. Afterwards, we regrouped at their house, parked the van, and went out for a beer with them. It was extremely loud at Slugs, but we had a blast playing Silver Falls. We went someplace quieter, which had a live band playing and ended up being just as loud. Ultimately, we just went back to their house and hung out there til the wee hours of the morning. Exhausted, we all went to bed.
So, Mandy went to Tanzania. Loki and I stayed in Florida with our friends. She went for two weeks to provide healthcare near Mt. Kilimanjaro to people without access. She had an awesome time and I'm very proud of her accomplishments. There was a group of 20 nurses and nursing students, plus her, the lone pharmacist. They saw over 800 patients in 5 days of clinics, and it seems everyone who received care was extremely grateful. They treated mainly acute conditions due to the nature of their trip. Treating chronic conditions was outside the scope of a two-week trip, obviously. They also delivered a baby. After working, they got to go on a safari and do some swimming in a local hot spring. The safari was her highlight, Mandy reports. They saw elephants, giraffes, lions, hyenas, and a whole bunch of other wildlife.
Meanwhile, Loki did what he does best. Which is to say mostly nothing. He was living large in the house life, napping on the furniture all day. For the most part, he got along well with Shaun and Jenny's two dogs. Luna even got him to play in the yard a few times which was awesome to see. Jax is a little bit older than Loki, so they mostly prefer to just chill. A couple times they got mad at each other, but we quickly learned to catch it early and deescalate before it got out of hand.
I did a bunch of work and a bunch of relaxing. Generally, in that order. The outside of their house was starting to get green because Florida is always wet, so I pressure washed the whole exterior for them. They also had a wooden exterior door frame that was getting pretty soggy, so I replaced that with PVC. That was kind of a challenge, actually. Typically, I just install a whole door + frame. Swapping out the frame only was more work, but less cost, so that's what we did. If you watched the video, you guys already saw the backsplash I installed in their kitchen - that was one of the first jobs I tackled there. Other than that, it was all car-related work. Shaun's restoring/modifying a '98-ish? Trans Am. I'm pretty sure it's a 98. Anyway. The engine is out, all the suspension is out, the transmission is out, all the wiring is out, fuel tank is out. It's an empty shell with an interior, basically. It's in really good shape already. But in an effort to maintain that good condition, he wanted to put a topcoat on everything. He already did the engine bay previously, but he did it poorly. So, I hung out while he sanded away all his mistakes, and then I resprayed the engine bay and it came out much better. No runs. Then, we continued the fresh paint down the firewall underneath the car all the way back to the rear bumper. This was really just to get a uniform black like the rest of the car, and also add another line of defense against rock chips which inevitably lead to rust. I helped through most of it, but as he was finishing up, I sprayed the gas tank and started putting a fresh coat on the rear axle. Once everything had a decent coat of paint on, we began reassembly. After we finished up, the gas tank was back in and plumbed with all the EVAP lines and fuel lines, the rear axle was in with all the brake lines and cables connected, all the suspension links connected and springs and shocks installed. The driveshaft is in and the transmission is on the crossmember and jack stands. It won't stay in without the engine, but the engine is completely disassembled waiting machine work. From there, we unwrapped the entire wiring harness and inspected for damage. Shaun cleaned all the connections and I repaired all the broken wires. It'll get re-wrapped with a more modern harness wrap than GM was using back then. But that's where we left it. He basically needs to get the engine cleaned up then he can reassemble and reinstall it, along with things like the steering rack, front suspension, air conditioning, etc. We got a lot done, there's a lot left. But it's going to be a stout build, and I'm hoping it pans out for Hot Rod Drag Week next year or the one after. I've been really pushing for a turbo installation on it, but we'll see. He's very erratic. The car could be gone entirely by then.
Anyway, we did a lot of hanging out, hot tubbing, dog-walking, cooking, and relaxing in the living room. I think since living in the van - or not having our own house - the thing I miss the most is a living room. Our benches are fine, but they obviously can't compare to a reclining couch. It's nice to wind down in a comfy seat before bed. It's just a minor thing - we're not looking to be done with the van any time soon. But someday it'll be nice to have a couch again. It was nice to have housemates for a while, too. It seems like things got done a lot faster. I could work on a home improvement project while Loki was getting walked and dinner was being cooked. All at the same time! Plus, there was just more conversation all the time. Mandy and I are generally on the same page about pretty much everything, and as such, we just don't need to talk all the time. A lot of our time is actually silent. Maybe we're weird. I dunno. We play music to fill the blanks, but we're both fine with not talking just for the sake of hearing ourselves.
Eventually, finally, it was time for Mandy to come home. I picked her up at Orlando airport and was so excited to do so. She was happy to be home, too. We spent a few days catching up and getting her adjusted to the proper time zone again. She got to work straight away making a video of her clinic days in Tanzania which you guys can watch here if you'd like:
While she was overseas - well, actually just overocean - I'd gotten a message from our friends Abe and Mel about repairing their brakes. They live in a Ford Transit, and were in Panama City Beach, just up the panhandle. A casual 6 hours drive or so. Ford got real creative designing the brakes and axles in that vehicle, which is a whole long story in itself that I'm not going to dive into. Watch some videos on how to replace the brakes if you want to question their sanity. The short of it is you need a rotating caliper piston compressor tool for each side, so we waited until they had that in hand to head out from Tavares to go help them out. We left on the 18th after about a month and a half of occupying our friends' place. We were sad to leave them, but also excited to be in the van and on the road again. We were going to split up the drive to Panama City Beach, but then as I was driving us there, I thought I'm not going to want to get under a van to replace brakes after driving for x hours in the morning. So, we made a long day of it and drove the whole way with a few stops. We arrived around 7pm and we were exhausted. We crashed pretty early, but not before chatting with Abe and Mel for a while first.
Meanwhile, Loki did what he does best. Which is to say mostly nothing. He was living large in the house life, napping on the furniture all day. For the most part, he got along well with Shaun and Jenny's two dogs. Luna even got him to play in the yard a few times which was awesome to see. Jax is a little bit older than Loki, so they mostly prefer to just chill. A couple times they got mad at each other, but we quickly learned to catch it early and deescalate before it got out of hand.
I did a bunch of work and a bunch of relaxing. Generally, in that order. The outside of their house was starting to get green because Florida is always wet, so I pressure washed the whole exterior for them. They also had a wooden exterior door frame that was getting pretty soggy, so I replaced that with PVC. That was kind of a challenge, actually. Typically, I just install a whole door + frame. Swapping out the frame only was more work, but less cost, so that's what we did. If you watched the video, you guys already saw the backsplash I installed in their kitchen - that was one of the first jobs I tackled there. Other than that, it was all car-related work. Shaun's restoring/modifying a '98-ish? Trans Am. I'm pretty sure it's a 98. Anyway. The engine is out, all the suspension is out, the transmission is out, all the wiring is out, fuel tank is out. It's an empty shell with an interior, basically. It's in really good shape already. But in an effort to maintain that good condition, he wanted to put a topcoat on everything. He already did the engine bay previously, but he did it poorly. So, I hung out while he sanded away all his mistakes, and then I resprayed the engine bay and it came out much better. No runs. Then, we continued the fresh paint down the firewall underneath the car all the way back to the rear bumper. This was really just to get a uniform black like the rest of the car, and also add another line of defense against rock chips which inevitably lead to rust. I helped through most of it, but as he was finishing up, I sprayed the gas tank and started putting a fresh coat on the rear axle. Once everything had a decent coat of paint on, we began reassembly. After we finished up, the gas tank was back in and plumbed with all the EVAP lines and fuel lines, the rear axle was in with all the brake lines and cables connected, all the suspension links connected and springs and shocks installed. The driveshaft is in and the transmission is on the crossmember and jack stands. It won't stay in without the engine, but the engine is completely disassembled waiting machine work. From there, we unwrapped the entire wiring harness and inspected for damage. Shaun cleaned all the connections and I repaired all the broken wires. It'll get re-wrapped with a more modern harness wrap than GM was using back then. But that's where we left it. He basically needs to get the engine cleaned up then he can reassemble and reinstall it, along with things like the steering rack, front suspension, air conditioning, etc. We got a lot done, there's a lot left. But it's going to be a stout build, and I'm hoping it pans out for Hot Rod Drag Week next year or the one after. I've been really pushing for a turbo installation on it, but we'll see. He's very erratic. The car could be gone entirely by then.
Anyway, we did a lot of hanging out, hot tubbing, dog-walking, cooking, and relaxing in the living room. I think since living in the van - or not having our own house - the thing I miss the most is a living room. Our benches are fine, but they obviously can't compare to a reclining couch. It's nice to wind down in a comfy seat before bed. It's just a minor thing - we're not looking to be done with the van any time soon. But someday it'll be nice to have a couch again. It was nice to have housemates for a while, too. It seems like things got done a lot faster. I could work on a home improvement project while Loki was getting walked and dinner was being cooked. All at the same time! Plus, there was just more conversation all the time. Mandy and I are generally on the same page about pretty much everything, and as such, we just don't need to talk all the time. A lot of our time is actually silent. Maybe we're weird. I dunno. We play music to fill the blanks, but we're both fine with not talking just for the sake of hearing ourselves.
Eventually, finally, it was time for Mandy to come home. I picked her up at Orlando airport and was so excited to do so. She was happy to be home, too. We spent a few days catching up and getting her adjusted to the proper time zone again. She got to work straight away making a video of her clinic days in Tanzania which you guys can watch here if you'd like:
While she was overseas - well, actually just overocean - I'd gotten a message from our friends Abe and Mel about repairing their brakes. They live in a Ford Transit, and were in Panama City Beach, just up the panhandle. A casual 6 hours drive or so. Ford got real creative designing the brakes and axles in that vehicle, which is a whole long story in itself that I'm not going to dive into. Watch some videos on how to replace the brakes if you want to question their sanity. The short of it is you need a rotating caliper piston compressor tool for each side, so we waited until they had that in hand to head out from Tavares to go help them out. We left on the 18th after about a month and a half of occupying our friends' place. We were sad to leave them, but also excited to be in the van and on the road again. We were going to split up the drive to Panama City Beach, but then as I was driving us there, I thought I'm not going to want to get under a van to replace brakes after driving for x hours in the morning. So, we made a long day of it and drove the whole way with a few stops. We arrived around 7pm and we were exhausted. We crashed pretty early, but not before chatting with Abe and Mel for a while first.
We got up Thursday morning and the edge of the mattress was wet. So that was neat. Somehow, I avoided it completely, even though it was on my side. No, I didn't pee the bed. We did some digging - is it still digging if it's overhead? - and followed the wet up into the ceiling. I discovered the source of the leak was a factory-installed plastic plug in the roof of the van, right near the reverse camera. It seems Mercedes used a sealer which dries hard and shrinks, so it cracked along with the paint, and allowed water a pathway to get into bed with us. Not ideal. But, the rain was over for now, so we just dried off the roof and let everything air out inside to dry, and I got to work.
Abe and Mel wanted only their brake pads replaced, not the rotors. Thankfully! The pads are easy on those vans, but the rotors are a whole bunch of additional work to get out. It's a stupid design with no real advantage that I see, but whatever. It's moot here. I tackled the rears first, since those were the only ones with a bit of a trick, because the pistons have to be rotated opposite directions to retract. It was pretty easy once I figured out which one wanted to spin which direction. The fronts were straightforward, with the exception of the slide pins which are supposed to be replaced. They ordered one new set, but apparently a whole vehicle takes 2 sets. So, I installed the new ones, and cleaned up the others and reused them. Not ideal, but I had to, so it's what it's. All in, the job only took 2 hours, and I made some cash which always feels nice. They were thankful, as it cost them less than any shop would charge, and they got to learn a bit about how to do it themselves next time. We took the van for a quick beat run to make sure everything was good, and it was.
After that, we took a walk around the main street along the beach in Panama City Beach. It was mostly just residences and small hotels, but it was nice to stretch the legs and get some of dog's energy out. They had invited a friend of theirs to stop by. Jesse lives in a teardrop trailer with her massive Great Dane. Loki and Duke (I think that was his name?) got along fairly well when we were out. Once we got back to the vans, Loki was pretty defensive, which was frustrating. But Jesse was moving on anyways, and they didn't stick around long. It was nice to meet them, anyway! We made plans to collaborate on dinner with Abe and Mel, so I hopped on the bike to ride over to the store to pick up some food items for that. We put together orange chicken, veggie stir fry, and rice. It was all really good, and we hung out between the vans until we all got sleepy then headed to bed. HOWEVER, while Mandy was cooking our contribution in the van's oven, the fuse blew. I chalked it up to maybe a fluke but keep an eye on it. Mandy said the oven was on air roast, which was a new, or very infrequently used, setting. The fuse was sized such that that shouldn't have been an issue, but who knows. I put a replacement fuse in, and it seemed to work.
Friday, we took a walk with our friends and Loki in the morning, checking out more of the coastline before heading out of Florida. Eventually, we said our "see you on the internet"s and hit the road. We got to Pensacola and stopped to check out a sunglasses shop. Mine are wrecked since pressure washing our friends' house. They were all obscenely expensive, so I left, unsurprised. When we went to get back on the road, there was a major traffic jam due to an accident, so we stayed in the parking lot and cooked some lunch. Meanwhile Mandy was cooking, I grabbed some decent quality skateboard bearings at Zumiez and installed them in our fan to hopefully stop the squeak. I'm getting pretty fast at rebuilding the fan motor, so by the time the leftovers were warmed, I had everything back together.
Eventually, we got back on the road and headed to Fort Pickens. There's a decent campground there out on the island which we checked into for the night and took Loki for a walk. We walked all the way to the fort and saw as much of that as we could with the dog, which is to say just the outsides. We circled back to the van and made some dinner and met our neighbor, Uriah. He's in a box truck. Super nice dude. He invited us to his fire, which was awesome, since we weren't going to have one. We hung with him chatting around the fire into the night until we were all exhausted and then we went to bed.
HOWEVER, while Mandy was cooking dinner, the oven's fuse blew again. This time it was kind of weird - the end blew completely off the fuse, while the filament appeared intact. This was clearly indicative of an actual problem. So, Saturday morning, I spent the time until checkout trying to resolve it. Probably none of you remember, but when we built our van, I installed a spare AC fuse holder. What I suspect is going on is that the spring inside the oven fuse holder has failed (this much is confirmed by depressing it with a small screwdriver), and thus the contact with the fuse is intermittent. This caused the fuse to get hot and melted the end off. That's as far as my root cause analysis got; I'm not sure why the spring failed. Maybe just a low-quality component? So, I swapped the wiring over to the spare fuse holder, and we put another new fuse into that holder, and everything has been fine since. Of course, I inspected as much of the wiring as possible while I was in there, and everything looked to be safe and sound.
We were a few minutes late checking out, but no one seemed to notice. We said goodbye to our new friend Uriah and wished him luck in his journey. We headed towards Mobile, AL. When we stopped for lunch, Mandy accidentally broke the soap pump off. The cutting board fell on it, and the plastic pump inside sheared off inside the pump handle. And I noticed a small crack in our windshield. So yeah, it was a whole week of issues. In like 3 days. FUN! At least where we stopped in Spanish Fork was only forecast to get like a foot of rain overnight. All we had on-hand was medical tape, so I covered the plugs in the roof before we settled in for the night with that and hoped for the best.
Abe and Mel wanted only their brake pads replaced, not the rotors. Thankfully! The pads are easy on those vans, but the rotors are a whole bunch of additional work to get out. It's a stupid design with no real advantage that I see, but whatever. It's moot here. I tackled the rears first, since those were the only ones with a bit of a trick, because the pistons have to be rotated opposite directions to retract. It was pretty easy once I figured out which one wanted to spin which direction. The fronts were straightforward, with the exception of the slide pins which are supposed to be replaced. They ordered one new set, but apparently a whole vehicle takes 2 sets. So, I installed the new ones, and cleaned up the others and reused them. Not ideal, but I had to, so it's what it's. All in, the job only took 2 hours, and I made some cash which always feels nice. They were thankful, as it cost them less than any shop would charge, and they got to learn a bit about how to do it themselves next time. We took the van for a quick beat run to make sure everything was good, and it was.
After that, we took a walk around the main street along the beach in Panama City Beach. It was mostly just residences and small hotels, but it was nice to stretch the legs and get some of dog's energy out. They had invited a friend of theirs to stop by. Jesse lives in a teardrop trailer with her massive Great Dane. Loki and Duke (I think that was his name?) got along fairly well when we were out. Once we got back to the vans, Loki was pretty defensive, which was frustrating. But Jesse was moving on anyways, and they didn't stick around long. It was nice to meet them, anyway! We made plans to collaborate on dinner with Abe and Mel, so I hopped on the bike to ride over to the store to pick up some food items for that. We put together orange chicken, veggie stir fry, and rice. It was all really good, and we hung out between the vans until we all got sleepy then headed to bed. HOWEVER, while Mandy was cooking our contribution in the van's oven, the fuse blew. I chalked it up to maybe a fluke but keep an eye on it. Mandy said the oven was on air roast, which was a new, or very infrequently used, setting. The fuse was sized such that that shouldn't have been an issue, but who knows. I put a replacement fuse in, and it seemed to work.
Friday, we took a walk with our friends and Loki in the morning, checking out more of the coastline before heading out of Florida. Eventually, we said our "see you on the internet"s and hit the road. We got to Pensacola and stopped to check out a sunglasses shop. Mine are wrecked since pressure washing our friends' house. They were all obscenely expensive, so I left, unsurprised. When we went to get back on the road, there was a major traffic jam due to an accident, so we stayed in the parking lot and cooked some lunch. Meanwhile Mandy was cooking, I grabbed some decent quality skateboard bearings at Zumiez and installed them in our fan to hopefully stop the squeak. I'm getting pretty fast at rebuilding the fan motor, so by the time the leftovers were warmed, I had everything back together.
Eventually, we got back on the road and headed to Fort Pickens. There's a decent campground there out on the island which we checked into for the night and took Loki for a walk. We walked all the way to the fort and saw as much of that as we could with the dog, which is to say just the outsides. We circled back to the van and made some dinner and met our neighbor, Uriah. He's in a box truck. Super nice dude. He invited us to his fire, which was awesome, since we weren't going to have one. We hung with him chatting around the fire into the night until we were all exhausted and then we went to bed.
HOWEVER, while Mandy was cooking dinner, the oven's fuse blew again. This time it was kind of weird - the end blew completely off the fuse, while the filament appeared intact. This was clearly indicative of an actual problem. So, Saturday morning, I spent the time until checkout trying to resolve it. Probably none of you remember, but when we built our van, I installed a spare AC fuse holder. What I suspect is going on is that the spring inside the oven fuse holder has failed (this much is confirmed by depressing it with a small screwdriver), and thus the contact with the fuse is intermittent. This caused the fuse to get hot and melted the end off. That's as far as my root cause analysis got; I'm not sure why the spring failed. Maybe just a low-quality component? So, I swapped the wiring over to the spare fuse holder, and we put another new fuse into that holder, and everything has been fine since. Of course, I inspected as much of the wiring as possible while I was in there, and everything looked to be safe and sound.
We were a few minutes late checking out, but no one seemed to notice. We said goodbye to our new friend Uriah and wished him luck in his journey. We headed towards Mobile, AL. When we stopped for lunch, Mandy accidentally broke the soap pump off. The cutting board fell on it, and the plastic pump inside sheared off inside the pump handle. And I noticed a small crack in our windshield. So yeah, it was a whole week of issues. In like 3 days. FUN! At least where we stopped in Spanish Fork was only forecast to get like a foot of rain overnight. All we had on-hand was medical tape, so I covered the plugs in the roof before we settled in for the night with that and hoped for the best.
Somehow, we stayed dry overnight. It was probably the heaviest rain we've ever been in in the van. One thing that was interesting requires a bit of backstory for you guys. I don't think I've written it here yet, because I didn't have the whole story, but now I think I might. I've been chasing a leak for ages that drips down our rear door screen. I have been certain it's because of the way the screen installs around the pinch weld inside the door gasket. But I had no answer as to why the slider screen doesn't leak. I adjusted the rear doors several times to get the optimum close position. I even applied RTV in the area of the leak, inside the door gasket. But now I believe it was leaking through the rear roof plug then running across to both D-pillars and coming out of a panel gap that's hidden inside the door gasket where 3 panels all come together at the corners. With the tape over both plugs, this leak stopped too. More to come on that, but if that's resolved I'll be PUMPED!
So, we went to the USS Alabama Battleship Memorial Park in Mobile. At first, we just checked the aircraft outside, but ultimately decided I should get a ticket to tour the museum and the battleship while Mandy stayed in the van with Loki and got some work done editing video and photos. So I spent a few hours checking out the boat, all the cool stuff inside, and the submarine. I'm an idiot - I don't even remember the name of the submarine. You'll forgive me. But it's clear even the staff put more effort into the battleship than the U-boat. It was pretty fascinating to check out the ol' boat, though. If you're ever around, I'd recommend it. It was an overcast Sunday and we got there pretty shortly after they opened. It started to get a bit busier as I was finishing up, but for the most part I was on a tour by myself. It was great.
Once I got back to the van, we ate some, and then decided to head to Biloxi, MS. There was a hotel on the coast, years ago. They looked the other way as people gambled in their facility, so that garnered them some popularity back in the day. Eventually, though, they got shut down, and for whatever reason, the building was demolished. I don't know the exact status today, but the former building site is used by the public. Mostly, it's just people fishing, since the structure was on what appears to be dredged earth that juts into the Gulf. It sticks out farther than anything else on the coast nearby, so I assume it's manmade. But the point is, people park overnight there without issue. So, we did the same. It was cold and windy when we parked, so we didn't spend much time outside. We stayed cozy inside and made some dinner and laid down early to watch some shows.
Monday we took Loki for a walk and picked up trash. We filled up a bag pretty easily and threw it in the dumpster which is conveniently located onsite. It's disappointing that most people can't get their trash into the dumpster on their own, but we help when we can. By the time the bag was full, our hands were numb. We washed them with hot water and got on the road again. We got dieself for $3.80/gal, so I filled it all the way to the cap because we'll probably never see a price that low again.
We drove over to New Orleans and found a spot to park for free. We walked around the French Market a bit and along the river. Mandy got us some bagnets or however it's spelled. Beignet? I think? Anyway. They're fried dough. They're pretty good, but one order was more than enough for us both. The whole street is covered with powdered sugar from people eating them as they walk. We wandered a while checking out the architecture, but we weren't really feeling the city with the dog on this particular day. It was a lot going on to watch out for, and just not really relaxing, so we found a park instead to park at, have a bit of breathing room, and figure out our next move.
I had made an appointment with Mercedes-Benz of Beaumont for Tuesday afternoon, so we drove some of the way there. We stopped for the night in Lafayette, Louisiana. We popped into a Home Depot to get a replacement soap pump, but realized they were $50 so decided not to. Instead, I looked for alternative solutions. There was just a small-diameter plastic tube that broke. I found some hose in the right size that I figured I could probably make work. I couldn't really make it much worse, so what the hell? I had to drill out a portion of the pump and super glue in a short piece of the tubing. It kind of worked, but it wasn't ideal. Cheap pumps were available, but they didn't match the theme of our kitchen at all, so that wasn't ideal, but could work. I tried to find a matching one on Amazon, and they were still a bit pricey. But then I realized we only needed the pump portion. I found the correct part number for $2 and change, delivered to a locker in San Antonio in two days. Done. Mandy did a pharmacy CE and then we went to sleep.
The weather was forecast to be pretty crappy, so we decided to start driving towards Beaumont early rather than wait until our appointment. Perhaps they'd take us in early. But at the very least, we could get close by ahead of the weather and not have to drive the highway in the storm. We made some breakfast just down the street, and fueled up. Then, we headed over to the Mercedes dealer. They were very welcoming, and got started with our intake straightaway. They didn't even care that Loki hung out in the waiting area with us. Not long after, a tech came out to inspect the leak we were trying to have resolved. I showed him the details and he had to do some researching afterwards. Ultimately, what they found was that water leaks are not covered by the Mercedes-Benz extended warranty. They said we could find a Mercedes-authorized body shop (theirs was not) to do the work, and then try and convince the warranty department to reimburse us. No thanks. That was never going to be an option for us, but we had to try anyways. To get us through the storm, they put a piece of crash tape over the plugs to double-up our tape job which was by now saturated.
Then, we spent a while trying to decided the best course of action. The forecast called for 3-5" of rain, hail, tornado(s), and wind gusts up to 50 or 60mph. Pretty much directly where we were, and where we were headed. So, we could stay put and hope for the best. We could possibly drive north - pretty much immediately - and hope to get out of the path of the storm. We could drive back east the way we'd come, and hope to outrun the storm? Or west and hit it head-on. Both of those seemed silly. South was out of the way we wanted to go, and into more of the storm, so that was not an option. Ultimately, we decided to stay put. We found a parking lot a shopping plaza that was oriented such that we were somewhat sheltered from the winds, and we just waited. And watched. It's hard to tell as it's happening, but the sky slowly turns green which is so strange. I don't know why that's a thing. Eventually, we got an alert on our phones to seek shelter immediately, so we kindly asked if Loki could come inside the Barnes & Noble with us. They were delighted to have him in the store and he was perfectly well behaved. We walked a few laps around the store slowly, and watched the storm out the window.
After a couple hours, it died down and the skies opened up in very dramatic fashion. It was just before sunset, so it was quite gorgeous, actually. We set the sun in front of us, and the storm in our rear view, and put down a few more miles. We made it to Houston where we parked for the night and went to bed.
So, we went to the USS Alabama Battleship Memorial Park in Mobile. At first, we just checked the aircraft outside, but ultimately decided I should get a ticket to tour the museum and the battleship while Mandy stayed in the van with Loki and got some work done editing video and photos. So I spent a few hours checking out the boat, all the cool stuff inside, and the submarine. I'm an idiot - I don't even remember the name of the submarine. You'll forgive me. But it's clear even the staff put more effort into the battleship than the U-boat. It was pretty fascinating to check out the ol' boat, though. If you're ever around, I'd recommend it. It was an overcast Sunday and we got there pretty shortly after they opened. It started to get a bit busier as I was finishing up, but for the most part I was on a tour by myself. It was great.
Once I got back to the van, we ate some, and then decided to head to Biloxi, MS. There was a hotel on the coast, years ago. They looked the other way as people gambled in their facility, so that garnered them some popularity back in the day. Eventually, though, they got shut down, and for whatever reason, the building was demolished. I don't know the exact status today, but the former building site is used by the public. Mostly, it's just people fishing, since the structure was on what appears to be dredged earth that juts into the Gulf. It sticks out farther than anything else on the coast nearby, so I assume it's manmade. But the point is, people park overnight there without issue. So, we did the same. It was cold and windy when we parked, so we didn't spend much time outside. We stayed cozy inside and made some dinner and laid down early to watch some shows.
Monday we took Loki for a walk and picked up trash. We filled up a bag pretty easily and threw it in the dumpster which is conveniently located onsite. It's disappointing that most people can't get their trash into the dumpster on their own, but we help when we can. By the time the bag was full, our hands were numb. We washed them with hot water and got on the road again. We got dieself for $3.80/gal, so I filled it all the way to the cap because we'll probably never see a price that low again.
We drove over to New Orleans and found a spot to park for free. We walked around the French Market a bit and along the river. Mandy got us some bagnets or however it's spelled. Beignet? I think? Anyway. They're fried dough. They're pretty good, but one order was more than enough for us both. The whole street is covered with powdered sugar from people eating them as they walk. We wandered a while checking out the architecture, but we weren't really feeling the city with the dog on this particular day. It was a lot going on to watch out for, and just not really relaxing, so we found a park instead to park at, have a bit of breathing room, and figure out our next move.
I had made an appointment with Mercedes-Benz of Beaumont for Tuesday afternoon, so we drove some of the way there. We stopped for the night in Lafayette, Louisiana. We popped into a Home Depot to get a replacement soap pump, but realized they were $50 so decided not to. Instead, I looked for alternative solutions. There was just a small-diameter plastic tube that broke. I found some hose in the right size that I figured I could probably make work. I couldn't really make it much worse, so what the hell? I had to drill out a portion of the pump and super glue in a short piece of the tubing. It kind of worked, but it wasn't ideal. Cheap pumps were available, but they didn't match the theme of our kitchen at all, so that wasn't ideal, but could work. I tried to find a matching one on Amazon, and they were still a bit pricey. But then I realized we only needed the pump portion. I found the correct part number for $2 and change, delivered to a locker in San Antonio in two days. Done. Mandy did a pharmacy CE and then we went to sleep.
The weather was forecast to be pretty crappy, so we decided to start driving towards Beaumont early rather than wait until our appointment. Perhaps they'd take us in early. But at the very least, we could get close by ahead of the weather and not have to drive the highway in the storm. We made some breakfast just down the street, and fueled up. Then, we headed over to the Mercedes dealer. They were very welcoming, and got started with our intake straightaway. They didn't even care that Loki hung out in the waiting area with us. Not long after, a tech came out to inspect the leak we were trying to have resolved. I showed him the details and he had to do some researching afterwards. Ultimately, what they found was that water leaks are not covered by the Mercedes-Benz extended warranty. They said we could find a Mercedes-authorized body shop (theirs was not) to do the work, and then try and convince the warranty department to reimburse us. No thanks. That was never going to be an option for us, but we had to try anyways. To get us through the storm, they put a piece of crash tape over the plugs to double-up our tape job which was by now saturated.
Then, we spent a while trying to decided the best course of action. The forecast called for 3-5" of rain, hail, tornado(s), and wind gusts up to 50 or 60mph. Pretty much directly where we were, and where we were headed. So, we could stay put and hope for the best. We could possibly drive north - pretty much immediately - and hope to get out of the path of the storm. We could drive back east the way we'd come, and hope to outrun the storm? Or west and hit it head-on. Both of those seemed silly. South was out of the way we wanted to go, and into more of the storm, so that was not an option. Ultimately, we decided to stay put. We found a parking lot a shopping plaza that was oriented such that we were somewhat sheltered from the winds, and we just waited. And watched. It's hard to tell as it's happening, but the sky slowly turns green which is so strange. I don't know why that's a thing. Eventually, we got an alert on our phones to seek shelter immediately, so we kindly asked if Loki could come inside the Barnes & Noble with us. They were delighted to have him in the store and he was perfectly well behaved. We walked a few laps around the store slowly, and watched the storm out the window.
After a couple hours, it died down and the skies opened up in very dramatic fashion. It was just before sunset, so it was quite gorgeous, actually. We set the sun in front of us, and the storm in our rear view, and put down a few more miles. We made it to Houston where we parked for the night and went to bed.
We stopped in Houston because I'd made an appointment to get the windshield repaired. We went to Safelite in the morning, and they squirted some epoxy in there for us. It's a little more involved than that, but that's the gist of it. If you're keeping score, that's two repairs on this glass so far. I'd really rather not have to replace it since it's expensive, and even more expensive, because we'd want to get the ceramic film installed again as well. That work went without a hitch because you don't need a hitch to do it. But also because they're trained professionals and there were no issues getting it done quickly.
Looking ahead, we had an appointment in San Antonio to pick up our new soap pump. Not really an appointment so much as a three-day window in which to pick up the package. But I was already sick of having to fish out the soap manually off the end of the straw, so the sooner the better in my book. We found a campground about an hour north of San Antonio called Rebecca Creek Campground. It's a little private campground. It was fairly cheap, even for an RV site which includes electrical hookup (which we don't need) and a water hookup. We don't NEED the water hookup, but we can use it. We had a pretty uneventful ride to the campground and check-in was simple. I'd booked a site ahead online, so it was even easier. We were just told some basic common-sense rules, and shown to our site. We were some of the only people in the whole campground! It was dead quiet.
I broke the silence with my impact gun shortly after we parked. It had been a little over 6,000 miles and I try to do a decent job of rotating tires around 5,000. Mainly because it's easy to remember the numbers on the odometer; they were new at 40k, so 45k, 50k, etc. Nice round numbers, and it's not so long between rotations that I forget if I've already done it or not. The ground was a little bit soft, but I found a hunk of steel on the ground that made the foot of the jack just a little bit bigger and it was enough to prevent it sinking in. It wasn't the most safest tire rotation, but I just made sure not to get under any part of the van during the job and worked quickly. Nothing happened. I did a quick inspection of the brakes while I had the wheels off and everything appears normal. Wear looks minimal and uniform. Always take a peek around when you have something apart. It's simple and free preventive maintenance. Mandy ran the hose to fill up our water tanks to the tippy-top since we would be holding up no one by using the hose on a slow trickle for as long as it took.
We took Loki for a walk around and picked up another bag of trash. There was very little around the campground. It was primarily bottle caps and can tabs. The can tabs are probably not unsafe since they're just aluminum? But I still like to pick them up anyways; it looks nicer if nothing else. We made some dinner and pulled the van onto some bigger rocks to get it a bit more flatterer before bed. It's not comfy laying down on a slanted bed.
In the morning, we took turns taking showers in the campground's facilities. Mandy went first and gave me the heads up about some issues. Choose a shower wisely, as the heads aren't adjustable. Use the hot water sparingly, as there's very little to go around. Alright, noted. So I thought I was prepared. The men's room was apparently completely different. There was one toilet stall with two doors. Neither of which locked. Weird but okay. Then there was only one shower stall to her four. Okay so the choosing is easy. At least the shower head is adjustable, though. No door or additional curtain on the shower. Whatever, but strange. The hot water must have been less than two gallons I swear. It just got warm enough to stand in, then I got wet, and it started getting cold. So, yeah. I was just like "I should have stayed home". But, whatever. I've definitely had worse showers!
I think there's a dumping station somewhere, but we didn't see it on our way out and we didn't NEED it urgently, so we just kept rolling. We headed into San Antonio to scout the Amazon locker. Conveniently, there was a park right across the street. So, we parked there and made some breakfast and walked around with Loki. We wanted to see the riverwalk, so we started walking in that direction. By the time we were a couple blocks away from an entrance, I was thinking it was going to be a loooong walk back after walking around the riverwalk, so perhaps we should move the van closer. Plus, I wasn't in love with the spot we'd parked it; it was teensy bit shady. I wasn't super worried about the van, but perhaps slightly. Of course, everything was fine, but we moved closer anyways, and wandered all around the riverwalk for a few hours. We checked out the Alamo, too, but Loki got us kicked out in short order. We weren't inside the building, just near it, and an officer very gently asked us to leave. We apologized - we didn't know we were in violation - and left. We were more interested in the riverwalk anyways, so we went back to complete our loop.
Back at the van, we made some food and then scooped our soap pump from the locker and got out of town. I'm not a fan of the roads in San Antonio. Holy moly they were bad. Not just the road surfaces - which were exceptionally bad - but also the layout and signage. There are places where you have to choose upper or lower decks of highway correctly in order to make it to where you're trying to go, and if you've just entered the roadway, there's not a lot of distance to cut across 5 lanes of traffic. I might have missed a couple turns for not driving aggressively enough. But we made it out okay. It was surprisingly easy to leave the city. There was no traffic at all, which was quite nice. We stopped at a rest area for the night and climbed into bed.
Looking ahead, we had an appointment in San Antonio to pick up our new soap pump. Not really an appointment so much as a three-day window in which to pick up the package. But I was already sick of having to fish out the soap manually off the end of the straw, so the sooner the better in my book. We found a campground about an hour north of San Antonio called Rebecca Creek Campground. It's a little private campground. It was fairly cheap, even for an RV site which includes electrical hookup (which we don't need) and a water hookup. We don't NEED the water hookup, but we can use it. We had a pretty uneventful ride to the campground and check-in was simple. I'd booked a site ahead online, so it was even easier. We were just told some basic common-sense rules, and shown to our site. We were some of the only people in the whole campground! It was dead quiet.
I broke the silence with my impact gun shortly after we parked. It had been a little over 6,000 miles and I try to do a decent job of rotating tires around 5,000. Mainly because it's easy to remember the numbers on the odometer; they were new at 40k, so 45k, 50k, etc. Nice round numbers, and it's not so long between rotations that I forget if I've already done it or not. The ground was a little bit soft, but I found a hunk of steel on the ground that made the foot of the jack just a little bit bigger and it was enough to prevent it sinking in. It wasn't the most safest tire rotation, but I just made sure not to get under any part of the van during the job and worked quickly. Nothing happened. I did a quick inspection of the brakes while I had the wheels off and everything appears normal. Wear looks minimal and uniform. Always take a peek around when you have something apart. It's simple and free preventive maintenance. Mandy ran the hose to fill up our water tanks to the tippy-top since we would be holding up no one by using the hose on a slow trickle for as long as it took.
We took Loki for a walk around and picked up another bag of trash. There was very little around the campground. It was primarily bottle caps and can tabs. The can tabs are probably not unsafe since they're just aluminum? But I still like to pick them up anyways; it looks nicer if nothing else. We made some dinner and pulled the van onto some bigger rocks to get it a bit more flatterer before bed. It's not comfy laying down on a slanted bed.
In the morning, we took turns taking showers in the campground's facilities. Mandy went first and gave me the heads up about some issues. Choose a shower wisely, as the heads aren't adjustable. Use the hot water sparingly, as there's very little to go around. Alright, noted. So I thought I was prepared. The men's room was apparently completely different. There was one toilet stall with two doors. Neither of which locked. Weird but okay. Then there was only one shower stall to her four. Okay so the choosing is easy. At least the shower head is adjustable, though. No door or additional curtain on the shower. Whatever, but strange. The hot water must have been less than two gallons I swear. It just got warm enough to stand in, then I got wet, and it started getting cold. So, yeah. I was just like "I should have stayed home". But, whatever. I've definitely had worse showers!
I think there's a dumping station somewhere, but we didn't see it on our way out and we didn't NEED it urgently, so we just kept rolling. We headed into San Antonio to scout the Amazon locker. Conveniently, there was a park right across the street. So, we parked there and made some breakfast and walked around with Loki. We wanted to see the riverwalk, so we started walking in that direction. By the time we were a couple blocks away from an entrance, I was thinking it was going to be a loooong walk back after walking around the riverwalk, so perhaps we should move the van closer. Plus, I wasn't in love with the spot we'd parked it; it was teensy bit shady. I wasn't super worried about the van, but perhaps slightly. Of course, everything was fine, but we moved closer anyways, and wandered all around the riverwalk for a few hours. We checked out the Alamo, too, but Loki got us kicked out in short order. We weren't inside the building, just near it, and an officer very gently asked us to leave. We apologized - we didn't know we were in violation - and left. We were more interested in the riverwalk anyways, so we went back to complete our loop.
Back at the van, we made some food and then scooped our soap pump from the locker and got out of town. I'm not a fan of the roads in San Antonio. Holy moly they were bad. Not just the road surfaces - which were exceptionally bad - but also the layout and signage. There are places where you have to choose upper or lower decks of highway correctly in order to make it to where you're trying to go, and if you've just entered the roadway, there's not a lot of distance to cut across 5 lanes of traffic. I might have missed a couple turns for not driving aggressively enough. But we made it out okay. It was surprisingly easy to leave the city. There was no traffic at all, which was quite nice. We stopped at a rest area for the night and climbed into bed.
Friday we got moving without much delay; it was just a rest area so nothing to really do there. We drove to Kerrville, TX which has a pretty nice park. We didn't know that from the map, but once we got there we could confirm it's quite lovely. We made some breakfast while the day warmed up. The silicone sealer requires a minimum application temperature of 40F. Once we finished eating, it was warm enough to apply, so I climbed up the ladder and laid down a thin film over the roof plugs to hopefully stop our leaks.
Afterwards, we took Loki for a walk on the paths through the park. They were actually much longer than we ended up walking; I don't really know how far they go, but there was certainly plenty to keep us entertained. On our way back, we saw at least two dozen deer hanging out in the woods. I actually lost count there were so many. Have YOU ever counted over the number 20? It's hard. As we walked, we talked through a plan for the upcoming days. Something we're trying hard to be better at. On days when we don't have a concrete plan, we end up doing more driving than we really want to, so if we have a rough outline for 2-3 days ahead, we enjoy our time much more.
We were trying to figure out the best plan for a ski day, because I had a craving. The main three options on the table were Taos, Telluride, and Santa Fe. Santa Fe was the least out-of-our-way. But Taos was only another hour or so. Telluride would probably have the best snow, and the most skiing. Plus, Mandy has wanted to explore Telluride at ground level for years. She doesn't ski. Telluride would require an additional 2 days of driving. We looked at weather at each spot. Taos and Santa Fe were nearly the same; cold at night but mild during the day. Telluride was to be frigid at night and cold during the day. I was really reluctant to drive more just to be colder. We also looked at lift ticket prices. Telluride was the most expensive; around $150 or 160, I believe. Taos and Santa Fe were a little more than half that. Ultimately, we decided Santa Fe was the best option, and so we could begin working out the route between Kerrville and there. I just wanted to shed some light on what our decision-making process looks like, in case anyone was curious. A lot of times it probably seems like we're just absolutely randomized and winging it out here. But we do try to make choices about where to go based on some kind of logic.
Because of the homepage of this forum, we made our way to Marfa, TX. Just kidding. I mean, we did talk about stopping by the Marfa Prada to recreate the photo with our van, but that wasn't the only reason to head that way. There weren't really any particularly good reasons, but then, there's really not that much out there to do anyways. We thought about dipping down to Big Bend, but Loki is literally only allowed to go where vehicles can go - parking lots, roads, and campsites. I'm sure the campgrounds are probably nice, but it would have been quite a drive to have nearly the same experience as a Cracker Barrel (just with different scenery). We also wanted and opportunity to see the Marfa lights. These have been studied and most recently are believed to be an effect on car headlights. But they were visible long before people were driving cars across the desert, so I'm not sure if that's the whole story. Anyway, we drove most of the day and arrived around dusk, which I think is the best time to see them. Mandy popped outside to check them out while we were cooking dinner. We used the oven a bunch and it seems to be working fine since swapping to our spare fuse holder. We made crispy buffalo cauliflower and chicken and French fries in the air fryer which was pretty good. Not my favorite; I think the best way to make crispy cauliflower requires deep frying, which would make a mess of our van so we don't. The fries came out great, though. After we cleaned up everything, we walked over to the lighthouse to try and see the lights. There were lights that were obviously cars way across the desert, but I don't think that's what all the hype is about. We didn't see anything strange, but the night sky was pretty dark, so the stars were really visible. Loki got bored quickly, though, so we went home to bed.
Afterwards, we took Loki for a walk on the paths through the park. They were actually much longer than we ended up walking; I don't really know how far they go, but there was certainly plenty to keep us entertained. On our way back, we saw at least two dozen deer hanging out in the woods. I actually lost count there were so many. Have YOU ever counted over the number 20? It's hard. As we walked, we talked through a plan for the upcoming days. Something we're trying hard to be better at. On days when we don't have a concrete plan, we end up doing more driving than we really want to, so if we have a rough outline for 2-3 days ahead, we enjoy our time much more.
We were trying to figure out the best plan for a ski day, because I had a craving. The main three options on the table were Taos, Telluride, and Santa Fe. Santa Fe was the least out-of-our-way. But Taos was only another hour or so. Telluride would probably have the best snow, and the most skiing. Plus, Mandy has wanted to explore Telluride at ground level for years. She doesn't ski. Telluride would require an additional 2 days of driving. We looked at weather at each spot. Taos and Santa Fe were nearly the same; cold at night but mild during the day. Telluride was to be frigid at night and cold during the day. I was really reluctant to drive more just to be colder. We also looked at lift ticket prices. Telluride was the most expensive; around $150 or 160, I believe. Taos and Santa Fe were a little more than half that. Ultimately, we decided Santa Fe was the best option, and so we could begin working out the route between Kerrville and there. I just wanted to shed some light on what our decision-making process looks like, in case anyone was curious. A lot of times it probably seems like we're just absolutely randomized and winging it out here. But we do try to make choices about where to go based on some kind of logic.
Because of the homepage of this forum, we made our way to Marfa, TX. Just kidding. I mean, we did talk about stopping by the Marfa Prada to recreate the photo with our van, but that wasn't the only reason to head that way. There weren't really any particularly good reasons, but then, there's really not that much out there to do anyways. We thought about dipping down to Big Bend, but Loki is literally only allowed to go where vehicles can go - parking lots, roads, and campsites. I'm sure the campgrounds are probably nice, but it would have been quite a drive to have nearly the same experience as a Cracker Barrel (just with different scenery). We also wanted and opportunity to see the Marfa lights. These have been studied and most recently are believed to be an effect on car headlights. But they were visible long before people were driving cars across the desert, so I'm not sure if that's the whole story. Anyway, we drove most of the day and arrived around dusk, which I think is the best time to see them. Mandy popped outside to check them out while we were cooking dinner. We used the oven a bunch and it seems to be working fine since swapping to our spare fuse holder. We made crispy buffalo cauliflower and chicken and French fries in the air fryer which was pretty good. Not my favorite; I think the best way to make crispy cauliflower requires deep frying, which would make a mess of our van so we don't. The fries came out great, though. After we cleaned up everything, we walked over to the lighthouse to try and see the lights. There were lights that were obviously cars way across the desert, but I don't think that's what all the hype is about. We didn't see anything strange, but the night sky was pretty dark, so the stars were really visible. Loki got bored quickly, though, so we went home to bed.
Saturday morning, we hit the road to make a big hill climb. Our next destination was the McDonald Observatory operated by University of Texas. This observatory is located in the very creatively-named McDonald Observatory, Texas. That should give you an idea of how much is going on out there in far west Texas. I didn't really have much expectation, but we like to support the research, so we gave them a few dollars to take a self-guided tour and learn what we could about the place. I was actually deeply interested in one of the experiments they're currently running there called HET-DEX. Very curious to see the outcome of the analysis of that data and how it impacts the crisis in cosmology. We've derived the expansion rate of the universe by looking at the cosmic microwave background radiation, which is about 14 billion years old. We've also measured the expansion rate by looking at galaxies all around us. The two values we've measured differ by more than their respective uncertainties, so there's a problem. HET-DEX is looking at a huge number of galaxies from 2-10 billion lightyears away, which will give us a ton of data. The spectroscopic equipment they've setup on the telescope to do this is pretty brilliant. We'll (by "we" I mean people much smarter than me) be able to see if the expansion rate has changed over that period of time 10-2 billion years ago. Or we'll learn that one of the previous measurements was wrong. Either way, we'll learn a lot. But anyways, we pondered staying until evening to peek through one of the other telescopes they have there, but decided to move along because it seemed like it was going to be cloudy all night.
We moved along. A short ride down the hill to the north there's a picnic area with access to a short hike. We hopped out here and took Loki for a walk. The walk to the lookout, which takes you up a big hill and yields pretty nice views. We had fun relaxing on this pretty easy climb. From the lookout, we could see our van in the small parking lot, even though it's well-camouflaged in the west Texas landscape. Once we climbed back down and hopped into the van, we continued driving northwesterly. We decided to stop in Van Horn, TX for the night so I beeped as we arrived. Get it? Van horn? I'm hilarious. There wasn't much there, really. We just parked at a truck stop and found a quiet corner out of the way.
Sunday we made our way to White Sands National Park. Mandy did the research on this one and found that Loki was welcome to join in the exploration with us. That's rare for a national park, so we jumped on it. Plus, we'd be able to do some sledding! We arrived at the park and picked up a sled at the visitor's center and then headed out to the dunes. The first stop, we just hopped out and walked around without the sled. It looked pretty flat, so I thought we could climb up a dune and get a good view of where a good sliding dune was, then head there. Once we climbed up a couple hills though, we could see that it was actually not flat at all, and a ton of the area was obscured by other dunes. So, that was a bad idea. But, we enjoyed walking around, though neither of us as much as Loki did.
This was definitely his favorite stop in a long time. See, he's part Siberian husky, so he absolutely loves snow. When there's a fresh snowfall, he'll go out into the snow and shove his whole face in it and just inhale fully. But he's also part Staffordshire terrier, so he has really short hair and therefore hates the cold. So, after he's run around in the snow for about 3-5 minutes, he's ready to go back inside and thaw. The dunes at White Sands are a close enough approximation of snow, without any of the cold, so he can just run and run and run without freezing and he loved it so much. The only drawback was that we had to keep him on a leash, but Mandy ran with him for a while to try and get all his zoomies out. He could have gone for longer, I'm sure.
We eventually drove to a different site and brought the sled out onto the dunes to try it out. It's sticky. We learned that you have to go to the absolute steepest faces of the dunes in order to slide at all. And it helps you go faster if you lay as flat as possible. It's not nearly as fast as sledding on snow, but it was fun regardless. And what a workout climbing back up! We slid down several times each, then chilled at the top to catch our breaths. I did some stretches out there because it was so peaceful. The park is so expansive that everyone is quite spread out. It was no trouble at all to find our "own" dune to slide. Not that we owned it, just that there was no one else on it. Until there was. A group of four showed up because one of the children wanted to pat Loki. They were so polite about it - not that we'd have said no, anyway; he loves the attention. We ended up talking to them for quite a while about various sites to see around New Mexico, and we let them borrow the sled to go down the dunes a bunch.
We eventually made our way back to the van, had a snack, and then headed out of the park. Just up the road is a wastewater evaporation pond. The land adjacent to the pond has some clearings use for camping. We found a spot with ease and backed up to the water's edge. As the sun set on a beautiful day, we chatted with the man next door from Michigan. We never even got his name, even though we talked for an hour or two about our collective travels and experiences. It was really pleasant. Mandy and I shared the remainder of a bottle of wine we had, and Loki was content to lay on his bed between our chairs. It got cold fast once the sun was gone, so we moved inside to make some warm food and then cozy up in bed for the night.
We moved along. A short ride down the hill to the north there's a picnic area with access to a short hike. We hopped out here and took Loki for a walk. The walk to the lookout, which takes you up a big hill and yields pretty nice views. We had fun relaxing on this pretty easy climb. From the lookout, we could see our van in the small parking lot, even though it's well-camouflaged in the west Texas landscape. Once we climbed back down and hopped into the van, we continued driving northwesterly. We decided to stop in Van Horn, TX for the night so I beeped as we arrived. Get it? Van horn? I'm hilarious. There wasn't much there, really. We just parked at a truck stop and found a quiet corner out of the way.
Sunday we made our way to White Sands National Park. Mandy did the research on this one and found that Loki was welcome to join in the exploration with us. That's rare for a national park, so we jumped on it. Plus, we'd be able to do some sledding! We arrived at the park and picked up a sled at the visitor's center and then headed out to the dunes. The first stop, we just hopped out and walked around without the sled. It looked pretty flat, so I thought we could climb up a dune and get a good view of where a good sliding dune was, then head there. Once we climbed up a couple hills though, we could see that it was actually not flat at all, and a ton of the area was obscured by other dunes. So, that was a bad idea. But, we enjoyed walking around, though neither of us as much as Loki did.
This was definitely his favorite stop in a long time. See, he's part Siberian husky, so he absolutely loves snow. When there's a fresh snowfall, he'll go out into the snow and shove his whole face in it and just inhale fully. But he's also part Staffordshire terrier, so he has really short hair and therefore hates the cold. So, after he's run around in the snow for about 3-5 minutes, he's ready to go back inside and thaw. The dunes at White Sands are a close enough approximation of snow, without any of the cold, so he can just run and run and run without freezing and he loved it so much. The only drawback was that we had to keep him on a leash, but Mandy ran with him for a while to try and get all his zoomies out. He could have gone for longer, I'm sure.
We eventually drove to a different site and brought the sled out onto the dunes to try it out. It's sticky. We learned that you have to go to the absolute steepest faces of the dunes in order to slide at all. And it helps you go faster if you lay as flat as possible. It's not nearly as fast as sledding on snow, but it was fun regardless. And what a workout climbing back up! We slid down several times each, then chilled at the top to catch our breaths. I did some stretches out there because it was so peaceful. The park is so expansive that everyone is quite spread out. It was no trouble at all to find our "own" dune to slide. Not that we owned it, just that there was no one else on it. Until there was. A group of four showed up because one of the children wanted to pat Loki. They were so polite about it - not that we'd have said no, anyway; he loves the attention. We ended up talking to them for quite a while about various sites to see around New Mexico, and we let them borrow the sled to go down the dunes a bunch.
We eventually made our way back to the van, had a snack, and then headed out of the park. Just up the road is a wastewater evaporation pond. The land adjacent to the pond has some clearings use for camping. We found a spot with ease and backed up to the water's edge. As the sun set on a beautiful day, we chatted with the man next door from Michigan. We never even got his name, even though we talked for an hour or two about our collective travels and experiences. It was really pleasant. Mandy and I shared the remainder of a bottle of wine we had, and Loki was content to lay on his bed between our chairs. It got cold fast once the sun was gone, so we moved inside to make some warm food and then cozy up in bed for the night.
Monday, we took a walk first thing, but it was soo cold outside! We scurried back inside to defrost and hit the road. I drove us towards Santa Fe. Along the way, I caught a sign at the last minute that mentioned the Very Large Array at the next exit. I was hungry and could use a pee break, so I hopped off the highway. I thought it would be cool to check out the VLA. If nothing else than the sheer magnitude of the construction. As I started driving through a very small neighborhood, Mandy was like, "Where are you taking us?" then she looked it up, and the array was like 60 miles further out of our way. I admitted that I hadn't read the whole sign, I just assumed it was nearby at the exit. We parked downtown Socorro to make some breakfast and walk Loki instead. We picked up some groceries, too, and then continued making our way to Santa Fe.
Based on a recommendation we got at White Sands, we took a scenic route through Jemez Springs which sent us over a huge mountain pass. I think the van saw 10,000ft elevation at the top. If you're in the area, take this trip. It was so beautiful! There's a super-volcano there, and what looks like a giant field is actually the caldera. We basically drove right over the top of the volcano. There's a bunch of spots to hike all throughout the pass, and there's apparently a lot of elk - and I'm sure other wildlife, too - though we didn't see any. But we also didn't get out to hike. We kind of had tunnel vision on completing the somewhat long driving day. But we truly enjoyed the scenery from our windows as it went by. I had actually fallen asleep, and Mandy woke me up to see the natural beauty and I'm so thankful she did.
We wound our way down the other side of the mountains and descended to Santa Fe through Los Alamos. Did you know the atomic bomb was...invented? (I guess it was invented right? It's not accurate to say it was discovered) there? I'm not sure what type of research they're conducting these days, but security is kind of tight. We had to show ID just to drive the road. The agent said do not make any turns off the road. We didn't. Well, until we got into Santa Fe. We found a spot to park for the night, and took Loki for a sunset hike up a hill. A fellow hiker with a dog alerted us to a couple coyote he'd just seen that he believed were trying to bait his dog. So, per usual, we kept Loki on leash. And as usual, once the sun was down, the temperature dropped like a stone. We hurried home to warm up.
Tuesday morning was just a short ride up the hill to Ski Santa Fe. We arrived with plenty of time to make first chair and of course I didn't. After making breakfast, cleaning up, getting out my skis and assembling the bindings, putting on all my gear and stretching a bit, then picking up a lift ticket, it was about 9:30. But I didn't care. The weather was pleasantly warm, the sun was shining, the slopes were nearly empty, and the snow coverage was excellent. I did my usual - just make it up as I go. Turned where I felt like it. A lot of the runs have moguls here, so I spent a while on the bumps. I'd had received a recommendation that the tree skiing at Santa Fe was great, so I spent some time in the woods, too. I would agree, it was pretty great glades. They had a really small terrain park, too, so I spent some time screwing around there to get more comfortable in the air. It kind of felt the jumps were a little bit too small, so I hunted down the medium terrain park (the large one was marked as closed). Turns out, I was already at the medium one. So, I found the small one in my search, hit a couple rails and then went along my way. Mandy warmed up some chili we'd made for lunch, and it was soo good. I had a coffee and went back out for several more runs. My legs started cramping (CLASSIC!) so I took it easy and eventually called it a day around 3:00. All in all, it was a fantastic day. Besides a little frustration assembling my bindings, everything was just perfect.
I was exhausted, so it took me a while to disassemble everything and put all my gear away. I just took it slow. Mandy drove us down the mountain and south to Albuquerque for the night. We dumped our grey water at a gas station, and then headed over to the Barrel for the evening. I crashed so early. MY LEGS! Mandy cooked us some pork chops and stuffing and we watched some shows on the couch with Loki and then got into bed to sleep.
Wednesday was mostly a driving day. We hit the road - I drove so I could sit on the seat heater without dog on my lap - and made our way back the way we'd come, south on 25 for most of the day. We stopped in Deming, NM for some lunch at Benji's. We were thinking we should get some green chili because it's a local dish to New Mexico. But once we saw the menu, we changed our minds. I got pozole and Mandy got a burrito. The burrito was kind of disappointing, but the posole was excellent. The churros were fantastic, we took a couple to go but they didn't even make it to the van in the parking lot.
We continued the drive through Hatch and we both learned that Hatch chiles are named for the town. We thought it was just an arbitrary name, kind of like jalapeno or ghost. But nearly every building in the town had a bundle of chiles hanging to dry outside. So that was neat. We kept driving. Eventually, we made it to Faywood Hot Springs, where we'd reserved a site for the night. We checked in and explored the grounds with Loki, who was stoked to be out of the van. We were, too. After getting some walking in, we secured Loki inside the van, made sure he was content, and headed to the hot pools to soak for a while. It was so nice! We absolutely loved it here. We met a bunch of people who were nothing but nice and a real joy to chat with. We weren't hungry, due to the relatively late lunch, so we skipped dinner. We hung out with Loki for a while, though, and then after dark, we went back to watch the stars come out while we stayed nice and warm in the pool. It was just beautiful.
Based on a recommendation we got at White Sands, we took a scenic route through Jemez Springs which sent us over a huge mountain pass. I think the van saw 10,000ft elevation at the top. If you're in the area, take this trip. It was so beautiful! There's a super-volcano there, and what looks like a giant field is actually the caldera. We basically drove right over the top of the volcano. There's a bunch of spots to hike all throughout the pass, and there's apparently a lot of elk - and I'm sure other wildlife, too - though we didn't see any. But we also didn't get out to hike. We kind of had tunnel vision on completing the somewhat long driving day. But we truly enjoyed the scenery from our windows as it went by. I had actually fallen asleep, and Mandy woke me up to see the natural beauty and I'm so thankful she did.
We wound our way down the other side of the mountains and descended to Santa Fe through Los Alamos. Did you know the atomic bomb was...invented? (I guess it was invented right? It's not accurate to say it was discovered) there? I'm not sure what type of research they're conducting these days, but security is kind of tight. We had to show ID just to drive the road. The agent said do not make any turns off the road. We didn't. Well, until we got into Santa Fe. We found a spot to park for the night, and took Loki for a sunset hike up a hill. A fellow hiker with a dog alerted us to a couple coyote he'd just seen that he believed were trying to bait his dog. So, per usual, we kept Loki on leash. And as usual, once the sun was down, the temperature dropped like a stone. We hurried home to warm up.
Tuesday morning was just a short ride up the hill to Ski Santa Fe. We arrived with plenty of time to make first chair and of course I didn't. After making breakfast, cleaning up, getting out my skis and assembling the bindings, putting on all my gear and stretching a bit, then picking up a lift ticket, it was about 9:30. But I didn't care. The weather was pleasantly warm, the sun was shining, the slopes were nearly empty, and the snow coverage was excellent. I did my usual - just make it up as I go. Turned where I felt like it. A lot of the runs have moguls here, so I spent a while on the bumps. I'd had received a recommendation that the tree skiing at Santa Fe was great, so I spent some time in the woods, too. I would agree, it was pretty great glades. They had a really small terrain park, too, so I spent some time screwing around there to get more comfortable in the air. It kind of felt the jumps were a little bit too small, so I hunted down the medium terrain park (the large one was marked as closed). Turns out, I was already at the medium one. So, I found the small one in my search, hit a couple rails and then went along my way. Mandy warmed up some chili we'd made for lunch, and it was soo good. I had a coffee and went back out for several more runs. My legs started cramping (CLASSIC!) so I took it easy and eventually called it a day around 3:00. All in all, it was a fantastic day. Besides a little frustration assembling my bindings, everything was just perfect.
I was exhausted, so it took me a while to disassemble everything and put all my gear away. I just took it slow. Mandy drove us down the mountain and south to Albuquerque for the night. We dumped our grey water at a gas station, and then headed over to the Barrel for the evening. I crashed so early. MY LEGS! Mandy cooked us some pork chops and stuffing and we watched some shows on the couch with Loki and then got into bed to sleep.
Wednesday was mostly a driving day. We hit the road - I drove so I could sit on the seat heater without dog on my lap - and made our way back the way we'd come, south on 25 for most of the day. We stopped in Deming, NM for some lunch at Benji's. We were thinking we should get some green chili because it's a local dish to New Mexico. But once we saw the menu, we changed our minds. I got pozole and Mandy got a burrito. The burrito was kind of disappointing, but the posole was excellent. The churros were fantastic, we took a couple to go but they didn't even make it to the van in the parking lot.
We continued the drive through Hatch and we both learned that Hatch chiles are named for the town. We thought it was just an arbitrary name, kind of like jalapeno or ghost. But nearly every building in the town had a bundle of chiles hanging to dry outside. So that was neat. We kept driving. Eventually, we made it to Faywood Hot Springs, where we'd reserved a site for the night. We checked in and explored the grounds with Loki, who was stoked to be out of the van. We were, too. After getting some walking in, we secured Loki inside the van, made sure he was content, and headed to the hot pools to soak for a while. It was so nice! We absolutely loved it here. We met a bunch of people who were nothing but nice and a real joy to chat with. We weren't hungry, due to the relatively late lunch, so we skipped dinner. We hung out with Loki for a while, though, and then after dark, we went back to watch the stars come out while we stayed nice and warm in the pool. It was just beautiful.
Thursday, we took a beautiful sunrise soak in the hot springs as we slowly woke up for the day. Eventually, we took Loki for a walk around and had some breakfast. Then, we grabbed showers using the hot springs facilities before we hit the road after checkout. We pretty much drove straight through to Dragoon, AZ.
Dragoon is at the geographical center of nothing. It's a tiny town in the middle of nowhere, but there's some BLM land that was vacant and nearly silent. We parked and went for a walk up the road to a former granite quarry. We were passed by a local in a UTV who stopped and killed his engine to chat for a while. Super friendly guy. He told us a bit about the area, but he was a recent transplant himself, so he wasn't extremely knowledgeable. Eventually he sped off ahead of us up the road and we continued our walk. When we got close to the quarry, we called it quits because all three of us were getting hungry. We turned around and headed back down. As we made our way downhill, another Sprinter was driving up the hill. They parked well ahead of us and were getting out to explore by the time we reached their site. We said hi, and within the first couple sentences, the man said "wicked" and I was like, "Oh so you guys are from New England, too?" and then we ended up talking to them for an hour or more about their adventures. Their van is a Storyteller build. I'm not sure of the models and whatnot. But they're just out here doing the thing, loving it. Their journey is basically ours but in the opposite direction. We gave them some pointers of places we'd just been that they were planning to go to.
At exactly 5:30, Loki let us know it was his dinner time, so we said our goodbyes and continued our way home. We all ate and then wound down the night inside. We could very faintly hear the freight trains running through the town overnight.
Friday morning, we took a walk the opposite direction down the road to wake up a bit. Mandy didn't sleep well, so it was a late start which was fine. We didn't have anywhere to be soon. We did have plans though, so eventually we got to moving. We made our way to Phoenix and around to the north side of the city. We had made dinner plans with our friends Robbi and Miguel at Lovecraft. They met us there and we caught up with them for a while and had a great dinner. We'd chosen that spot since it was dog-friendly, but ultimately decided to leave Loki in the van. He seems to be doing fine in there on his own provided the window covers are in place. If he can see out and can see that we're not nearby, he gets stressed. If he can't see out at all, he just goes to sleep. Our friends had been kind enough to offer their address for us to receive a couple important items, which they brought to us at dinner.
Our van's registration expires at the end of April, at which point we'll be well out of the country. I realized this when we were in Beaumont, TX, last week, and scrambled to figure out a solution. In NH, a surrogate can renew a vehicle's registration (the owner doesn't have to be present), provided they have a copy of the registration handy. My mom thankfully offered to take care of that for us without us even asking, when we told her the dilemma. The new registration was mailed to our friends' address in Phoenix, so we're all good until April 2024 now. Crisis averted.
A couple years ago, I just told my family I wanted some sunglasses for my birthday and ended up with 3 pair of Woodies. They're great sunglasses for cheap. I'm sure there are better ones, but I've always known that I wreck sunglasses. The one time I paid $250 for a pair (they were prescription sunglasses), I lost them out a car window on the highway. I vowed to never pay nearly that much for sunglasses ever again. I either lose them or break them, all the time. So, I'm into the $20-30 range sunglasses. Anyway, when I pressure-washed Shaun and Jenny's house, the coating on one of my lenses on the last pair of Woodies started flaking off. Super distracting to look through. In San Antonio, I got a pair for ~$12 but I hate them. Where they naturally rest on my head, my eyelashes brush the inside of the lenses. So annoying. So, I contacted Woodies with my dilemma, to ask if there was any way to fix them. They responded with an offer to just sent me a new pair! I had them sent to Robbi and Miguel's address, so that was the second package they delivered to us. So thankful!
Anyway, we lingered in the parking lot a bit to let them pat Loki before they headed home and we found street parking to go to sleep for the night.
Dragoon is at the geographical center of nothing. It's a tiny town in the middle of nowhere, but there's some BLM land that was vacant and nearly silent. We parked and went for a walk up the road to a former granite quarry. We were passed by a local in a UTV who stopped and killed his engine to chat for a while. Super friendly guy. He told us a bit about the area, but he was a recent transplant himself, so he wasn't extremely knowledgeable. Eventually he sped off ahead of us up the road and we continued our walk. When we got close to the quarry, we called it quits because all three of us were getting hungry. We turned around and headed back down. As we made our way downhill, another Sprinter was driving up the hill. They parked well ahead of us and were getting out to explore by the time we reached their site. We said hi, and within the first couple sentences, the man said "wicked" and I was like, "Oh so you guys are from New England, too?" and then we ended up talking to them for an hour or more about their adventures. Their van is a Storyteller build. I'm not sure of the models and whatnot. But they're just out here doing the thing, loving it. Their journey is basically ours but in the opposite direction. We gave them some pointers of places we'd just been that they were planning to go to.
At exactly 5:30, Loki let us know it was his dinner time, so we said our goodbyes and continued our way home. We all ate and then wound down the night inside. We could very faintly hear the freight trains running through the town overnight.
Friday morning, we took a walk the opposite direction down the road to wake up a bit. Mandy didn't sleep well, so it was a late start which was fine. We didn't have anywhere to be soon. We did have plans though, so eventually we got to moving. We made our way to Phoenix and around to the north side of the city. We had made dinner plans with our friends Robbi and Miguel at Lovecraft. They met us there and we caught up with them for a while and had a great dinner. We'd chosen that spot since it was dog-friendly, but ultimately decided to leave Loki in the van. He seems to be doing fine in there on his own provided the window covers are in place. If he can see out and can see that we're not nearby, he gets stressed. If he can't see out at all, he just goes to sleep. Our friends had been kind enough to offer their address for us to receive a couple important items, which they brought to us at dinner.
Our van's registration expires at the end of April, at which point we'll be well out of the country. I realized this when we were in Beaumont, TX, last week, and scrambled to figure out a solution. In NH, a surrogate can renew a vehicle's registration (the owner doesn't have to be present), provided they have a copy of the registration handy. My mom thankfully offered to take care of that for us without us even asking, when we told her the dilemma. The new registration was mailed to our friends' address in Phoenix, so we're all good until April 2024 now. Crisis averted.
A couple years ago, I just told my family I wanted some sunglasses for my birthday and ended up with 3 pair of Woodies. They're great sunglasses for cheap. I'm sure there are better ones, but I've always known that I wreck sunglasses. The one time I paid $250 for a pair (they were prescription sunglasses), I lost them out a car window on the highway. I vowed to never pay nearly that much for sunglasses ever again. I either lose them or break them, all the time. So, I'm into the $20-30 range sunglasses. Anyway, when I pressure-washed Shaun and Jenny's house, the coating on one of my lenses on the last pair of Woodies started flaking off. Super distracting to look through. In San Antonio, I got a pair for ~$12 but I hate them. Where they naturally rest on my head, my eyelashes brush the inside of the lenses. So annoying. So, I contacted Woodies with my dilemma, to ask if there was any way to fix them. They responded with an offer to just sent me a new pair! I had them sent to Robbi and Miguel's address, so that was the second package they delivered to us. So thankful!
Anyway, we lingered in the parking lot a bit to let them pat Loki before they headed home and we found street parking to go to sleep for the night.
Alright so Saturday we woke up and started heading towards Parker, AZ. Normally, this wouldn't have been on our radar at all, but I happened to see an event there advertised on YouTube. Mike Finnegan of Motortrend fame mentioned he was headed there to race his jet boat. It seemed like a good time, so we added it to our route. We arrived late morning and started trying to figure out the lay of the land. It was not very clear to us how to get there, but it was easy to follow our ears to where the loud boats were. We had parked near the top end of the track, so we headed downstream towards the start line. Once there, we had a much clearer picture of the whole event; where the boats were dropping into the water, how they organize the starting line, etc. We spent a while behind the starting line, because it was much less crowded and had a much better view. I talked to someone shooting video for Finnegan's Garage who told me they'd found a hole in the boat's cylinder head and patched it with JB Weld which is kind of hilarious. And by some miracle, it was holding up to the abuse.
After a long day walking around in the sun, we were pretty beat. We made our way back to the van, and even though we were already at a campground, we didn't actually have a site for the night, so we had to leave. We drove across town to a casino to park for the night with a bunch of other RVs. The parking lot wasn't quite level, but it was fine. As the night wore on, one by one the generators shut down.
Sunday, we took the morning slowly. We weren't super keen on hanging out in a giant parking lot all day, but we didn't really have anywhere to be so we just took our time. We were waiting on a couple last-minute things to be delivered to an Amazon locker in Goodyear, AZ. Water filters for our reverse-osmosis filter system which should give us clean drinking water for a year, and a case for a new external hard drive because ours is nearly full at this point. We were able to pick up a new hard drive for cheap at Walmart, but we wanted a case to keep it safe over rough roads.
Anyway, once we got moving, we headed out of Parker and over to Quartzsite. Quartzsite was on our list last winter/spring when we were stationed in Arizona, but we never actually made it. Reasons. It's a very RV-friendly town, with tons of people there in vans, campers, trailers, RVs, etc. We found a spot in the middle of the desert and parked for the night. A couple UTVs drove by at a distance, but other than that, we saw no one the whole time. It was awesome! We don't always love being alone all the time; it's great when we meet new friends. But when we're alone, we do love that, too. We watched a beautiful sunset and cooked some dinner and just relaxed for the night in our own company.
Monday was a gorgeous sunrise out our windows. We took a morning walk across the cold desert floor until we had to turn around. We weren't in a rush, but we had a couple appointments to make so we were on the clock. It was a kind of chores day, and we had a bunch of things to accomplish. More last-minute things before crossing to Mexico. We headed to Goodyear, AZ mid-morning because I had an appointment to get a typhoid vaccine, as well as a couple prescriptions for travel. We had to get a couple grocery items, so then we went to Safeway to pick those up, as well as get my prescriptions filled. Killed two birds. Just kidding - we didn't kill any creatures. Well, except the bugs that kamikaze our windshield. Then, Loki had an appointment at Petco to get his heartworm, flea, and tick medications. While we were there, we figured to get a huge bag of food for him, too, just in case. And a box of toothbrushes for him. The edible kind, because they're way easier than actually brushing his teeth. Then, we went to T-mobile to try and figure out the best plan for what to do with our phones. Ultimately, we switched back to Google Fi and kept the same phones we've had, which took some doing. It was a lot of screen time to get everything working properly. Meanwhile I worked on that, Mandy went into Office Depot to make copies of all our documents. Some of the border crossings just look at originals, while others want to keep a hard copy. We made a bunch, it's probably not enough for all of them, but it's at least a start. We'll see.
So then, when we had accomplished all that we could, we headed out to some BLM land near Goodyear to enjoy the afternoon sun. We found a lovely little spot that was super quiet but easy to get to and parked for the night. We remembered to open the hood to prevent mice, and we all chilled in the sun until it set. It gets cold fast once it's dark, so we moved inside to heat up some leftovers and wind down for the evening.
After a long day walking around in the sun, we were pretty beat. We made our way back to the van, and even though we were already at a campground, we didn't actually have a site for the night, so we had to leave. We drove across town to a casino to park for the night with a bunch of other RVs. The parking lot wasn't quite level, but it was fine. As the night wore on, one by one the generators shut down.
Sunday, we took the morning slowly. We weren't super keen on hanging out in a giant parking lot all day, but we didn't really have anywhere to be so we just took our time. We were waiting on a couple last-minute things to be delivered to an Amazon locker in Goodyear, AZ. Water filters for our reverse-osmosis filter system which should give us clean drinking water for a year, and a case for a new external hard drive because ours is nearly full at this point. We were able to pick up a new hard drive for cheap at Walmart, but we wanted a case to keep it safe over rough roads.
Anyway, once we got moving, we headed out of Parker and over to Quartzsite. Quartzsite was on our list last winter/spring when we were stationed in Arizona, but we never actually made it. Reasons. It's a very RV-friendly town, with tons of people there in vans, campers, trailers, RVs, etc. We found a spot in the middle of the desert and parked for the night. A couple UTVs drove by at a distance, but other than that, we saw no one the whole time. It was awesome! We don't always love being alone all the time; it's great when we meet new friends. But when we're alone, we do love that, too. We watched a beautiful sunset and cooked some dinner and just relaxed for the night in our own company.
Monday was a gorgeous sunrise out our windows. We took a morning walk across the cold desert floor until we had to turn around. We weren't in a rush, but we had a couple appointments to make so we were on the clock. It was a kind of chores day, and we had a bunch of things to accomplish. More last-minute things before crossing to Mexico. We headed to Goodyear, AZ mid-morning because I had an appointment to get a typhoid vaccine, as well as a couple prescriptions for travel. We had to get a couple grocery items, so then we went to Safeway to pick those up, as well as get my prescriptions filled. Killed two birds. Just kidding - we didn't kill any creatures. Well, except the bugs that kamikaze our windshield. Then, Loki had an appointment at Petco to get his heartworm, flea, and tick medications. While we were there, we figured to get a huge bag of food for him, too, just in case. And a box of toothbrushes for him. The edible kind, because they're way easier than actually brushing his teeth. Then, we went to T-mobile to try and figure out the best plan for what to do with our phones. Ultimately, we switched back to Google Fi and kept the same phones we've had, which took some doing. It was a lot of screen time to get everything working properly. Meanwhile I worked on that, Mandy went into Office Depot to make copies of all our documents. Some of the border crossings just look at originals, while others want to keep a hard copy. We made a bunch, it's probably not enough for all of them, but it's at least a start. We'll see.
So then, when we had accomplished all that we could, we headed out to some BLM land near Goodyear to enjoy the afternoon sun. We found a lovely little spot that was super quiet but easy to get to and parked for the night. We remembered to open the hood to prevent mice, and we all chilled in the sun until it set. It gets cold fast once it's dark, so we moved inside to heat up some leftovers and wind down for the evening.
Tuesday morning we were in no rush. One of the packages we were waiting on was to be delivered by 10:00pm. The site we'd picked was very clean, but on our walk Monday afternoon, we saw some trash about. So, we took a walk in the morning and brought a bag with us. We picked up over 10 pounds of trash. Satisfying and disappointing. Once you start looking for it, it becomes way more visible. A lot of it was empty cartridges - mostly 9mm and 5.56 rounds. I know it's just metal, so it's probably less detrimental to be left out there as compared to plastic or styrofoam for example, but it's still unsightly. And I think it probably lowers the next visitors' standards a bit - "well, if the previous people left a bunch of stuff on the ground, then we can, too". And maybe they leave behind something that's more harmful. And it escalates from there.
Anyway, I digress. We went back home and enjoyed the sunshine more until it was time to head into town to get our packages. We got our things and then made some dinner. Peanut butter chicken and rice with asparagus. It was delicious! We made way too much, so we saved all the leftovers, of course. We cleaned up and headed to a fuel station with free water supply and filled up our freshwater tanks. It looks like most of the places to fill water in Mexico require payment, so we wanted to fill up all the way to the top to get as far as possible before we will need to pay for water. We found a parking lot nearby at a plaza to sleep for the night after that.
Wednesday, we drove up the street just a bit to O'Reilly after they opened. Last. Minute. Things. We grabbed an engine oil filter, DEF, and windshield sauce. We weren't low on DEF, but I haven't been able to determine how available it truly is, so we got a gallon to top it off anyway. Windshield juice had been giving us an alert for days, and the dead bug situation was getting out of hand, so it's nice to have that full again. And the oil filter is just in storage for now, but will eventually need to be installed. After that, we pointed our van south and headed to Lukeville, AZ.
We stopped at Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. Mainly to make breakfast, but also to take a breather and make sure everything was in order that we'd need once we crossed the border. I think there was some general anxiety for the day, just because. We thought we'd be fine, but you don't know until you're through, you know? We pulled up to the border and two agents inspected the interior. It was not incredibly thorough, but we opened all the doors, driver (me) got out, one climbed inside which Loki handled fairly well. They opened cabinets and drawers. I'm not sure what else, as I was outside. But it was only a few minutes. Then we parked out of the way and stepped inside to get our personal visas. We didn't import the van because we didn't need to yet and because I was quickly learning how rusty my Spanish is. I need to improve quickly so I can follow along through that process.
Then, that was it. We hopped back into the van and officially entered Mexico! Mandy navigated us to Puerto Penasco - I can't type an enye on this keyboard. There's a campground called Playa Bonita that's right next to the beach and is beautiful. One thing we didn't do during our last minute chores days was laundry. The logic there was that it's probably cheaper in Mexico. The campground has laundry machines on site that run for $1.50, which is pretty cheap. While Mandy finished up final edits to the video of part 2 of her time in Africa, I washed, dried, and folded all the laundry. Trying to explain that the laundry machine ate some of my quarters to the woman in charge of the laundry was quite difficult because my Spanish is terrible. I just took the loss. You have to feed them in very slowly. If you guys want to see that video, it's below. After we cleaned up everything we climbed into bed as the video uploaded and we went to sleep.
Anyway, I digress. We went back home and enjoyed the sunshine more until it was time to head into town to get our packages. We got our things and then made some dinner. Peanut butter chicken and rice with asparagus. It was delicious! We made way too much, so we saved all the leftovers, of course. We cleaned up and headed to a fuel station with free water supply and filled up our freshwater tanks. It looks like most of the places to fill water in Mexico require payment, so we wanted to fill up all the way to the top to get as far as possible before we will need to pay for water. We found a parking lot nearby at a plaza to sleep for the night after that.
Wednesday, we drove up the street just a bit to O'Reilly after they opened. Last. Minute. Things. We grabbed an engine oil filter, DEF, and windshield sauce. We weren't low on DEF, but I haven't been able to determine how available it truly is, so we got a gallon to top it off anyway. Windshield juice had been giving us an alert for days, and the dead bug situation was getting out of hand, so it's nice to have that full again. And the oil filter is just in storage for now, but will eventually need to be installed. After that, we pointed our van south and headed to Lukeville, AZ.
We stopped at Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. Mainly to make breakfast, but also to take a breather and make sure everything was in order that we'd need once we crossed the border. I think there was some general anxiety for the day, just because. We thought we'd be fine, but you don't know until you're through, you know? We pulled up to the border and two agents inspected the interior. It was not incredibly thorough, but we opened all the doors, driver (me) got out, one climbed inside which Loki handled fairly well. They opened cabinets and drawers. I'm not sure what else, as I was outside. But it was only a few minutes. Then we parked out of the way and stepped inside to get our personal visas. We didn't import the van because we didn't need to yet and because I was quickly learning how rusty my Spanish is. I need to improve quickly so I can follow along through that process.
Then, that was it. We hopped back into the van and officially entered Mexico! Mandy navigated us to Puerto Penasco - I can't type an enye on this keyboard. There's a campground called Playa Bonita that's right next to the beach and is beautiful. One thing we didn't do during our last minute chores days was laundry. The logic there was that it's probably cheaper in Mexico. The campground has laundry machines on site that run for $1.50, which is pretty cheap. While Mandy finished up final edits to the video of part 2 of her time in Africa, I washed, dried, and folded all the laundry. Trying to explain that the laundry machine ate some of my quarters to the woman in charge of the laundry was quite difficult because my Spanish is terrible. I just took the loss. You have to feed them in very slowly. If you guys want to see that video, it's below. After we cleaned up everything we climbed into bed as the video uploaded and we went to sleep.
Thursday, we walked the beach in the morning at Playa Bonita. The sand was ice cold. By the time we got to the water it felt nice because my feet were frozen and the water was actually warm relatively. We hurried back and my toes were numb by the time we got to the van. We made some breakfast and got a move on midmorning. We headed northwesterly on route 3 anti-clockwise around the Gulf. We had to go all the way up to Coahuila City to start heading south again. The drive was scenic, though bumpy. The pavement is exceptionally bad in some areas along the way. Mostly, though, there was nothing. Miles and miles of nothing. It felt a lot like areas of Arizona, just bigger, and with fewer buildings.
We rolled through our first military checkpoint on our way to Chateu San Felipe. My Spanish is very bad, so it was a struggle. They entered the van and spent several minutes underneath; I think they were very interested in the greywater tank? I didn't know how to explain what it was in Spanish, so I just left them to it. Eventually, they seemed to realize it was a drain from the shower. Then they were interested in what was inside the ceiling, and behind the wall panels. I don't know the spanish words for sheep's wool. Algodon is cotton, I think. That probably would have been close enough, but I'm way too late now. Anyways, eventually they seemed reluctantly satisfied, and let us move on. A short while later, we passed a second checkpoint. They simply asked where we were coming from and heading to. My Spanish worked well enough for that, and they said okay go ahead.
We arrived to Chateau San Felipe after a long day of driving, all eager to exit the van. None of us more than Loki, I think. But of course, two loose dogs wanted to greet him outside the van. We knew that would end poorly for everyone, so we waited until they got bored and left after a few minutes before climbing out. I walked Loki away from the van quickly, so he could greet the other dogs away from it. That way, they all got along great. We walked him around outside a bit before giving him dinner and setting him up inside with his bed and window covers. Then, Mandy and I went inside to enjoy some Mexican wine and surprise live music! We didn't know until we went in and ordered a glass each that there would be live music starting shortly. We found a comfy seat on the couch and ordered a small charcuterie board to snack on. Jose Tovar showed up and began setting up his violin and then playing. Exceptionally well. We were very pleasantly surprised; he was fantastic. The wines weren't bad, either! As a bonus, they had no issues with us parking there overnight, and they even have a gate with a security guard on duty overnight. After a while of relaxing on the couch sipping wine and snacking, we headed back out to climb into bed with Loki and pass out.
Friday morning, we worked on editing and uploading video for a while before hitting the road. We took a walk towards the ocean while it was uploading, but Loki put the brakes on before we got very far, so we turned around. The upload was moving very slowly, so we decided to hit the road for a short drive. The couple sitting next to us in the chateau last night had a house nearby and suggested we check out Pete's Camp, just down the street. So, we did. We checked in and found a spot to park, and then finished uploading the video. It took a few hours, but we got some lunch and drinks outside on the patio to pass the time while we waited.
Afterwards, we walked down to the beach. The tide was out and when it goes out here it goes WAY out. I'd estimate it's a half mile between the high and low tide lines. Perhaps more. So it was a long walk, and even at the water you have to walk out much further if you want to get to swimming depth. By the time we got there, it wasn't even warm enough outside to validate swimming. We walked home. Part of the reason it wasn't warm was because it was so windy. So it wasn't really comfortable to be outside much at all, except by the restaurant because it was shielded by the building. We got a couple drinks at the bar and then went back to the van to get inside for the night.
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