Sunday, July 7, and Monday, July 8, 2013: On the Way to Pio Pico:

We expected that it was going to be quite hot on Sunday, so we left for Ehrenberg, Arizona, 265 miles away, at 5:17 AM.  The highest temperature we experienced on the way was 102.  Otherwise, the trip was uneventful.  We arrived at the Colorado River Resort a little after 10:00 AM.  We've been here before.  It's not pretentious, but just fine.  We're going to be here only one night, so we didn't even disconnect the truck from the trailer. 

We just hustled inside to turn on the A/C, expecting blessed relief.  Wishful thinking.  Try as they might, our two air conditioners could only make a small dent in the stifling heat.  It was in the low 90s inside. 

We were miserable.  The break, such as it was, finally came after darkness fell.  By midnight, the outside temperature had plummeted to only 95.  That was a level our A/C could handle.  We left Ehrenberg early (5:19 this time) to avoid the expected heat.  It was a good idea.  We made it up the very long climb on I-8 out of El Centro with the “Engine Coolant Hot” readout appearing on the information panel near the end, but without the warning bells that tell you to stop kidding yourself. When we got to the top and stopped to add some fuel, things started to turn sour.  Becky noticed “something hanging” from the bottom of the trailer.  It turned out to be the bracket that holds the spare tire.  The bracket was fine; it was just that it was holding nothing. 

Sometime in the past 24 hours, the spare tire had disappeared . We don’t know if it was stolen or somehow fell off, but it was gone.  However it had happened, we need to get a new spare sooner rather than later . With our poor experience with tires, there is no reason to delay unnecessarily.  We had to make it “spareless” to Pio Pico, where we are going to stay for three weeks, but we will not leave there without a new spare.  Normally, the spare wheel is just generic (that is, plain), not one that matches the fancy aluminum ones on the trailer.  We decided to replace the missing plain wheel with one that matched the others, so the next time we have a flat (or, more likely a blowout, given our recent history) we would not have a mismatch, as in the past, until we could switch back to a matching wheel.  (We have pride, you know.)  

As soon as we got to an area with cell phone reception, I placed a call to the factory parts department, and my (now) old friend, Gary, the parts manager.  Of course, I got his answering machine.  I left a callback message, which he returned just moments later---mere seconds after the cell phone coverage disappeared again.  By the time I could call him back a few hours later, we played phone tag six or seven times before completing the order for a new wheel.  For the third time, he gave me the dealer price (½ of retail) on the replacement wheel.  Thank you, Gary.

The trip to the Pio Pico Thousand Trails Preserve was 211 miles, much less than originally planned.  Early on, we had changed the route to take advantage of a road through the Cleveland National Forest that did not appear on any map (although our GPS knew about it).  The route had been recommended by Pio Pico Range,r Matt, who Becky talked to while we were still in Ehrenberg.  It turned out to be a beautiful trip, but on a very winding road.  It may not have saved us any appreciable time, but it saved us 50 miles, for whatever that is worth.  We arrived at Pio Pico (located in the metropolis named Jamul) about 10:00AM, and found a decent site.  

Pio Pico has very few 50-amp sites, and we didn’t find one.  That means we can’t run both air conditioners at the same time, but it shouldn’t matter that much because it is not expected to be anywhere near as hot at Pio Pico as it has been on the way there.

So much for expectations:  It reached 94 Monday afternoon.  We hustled to the hardware store to buy a fan.  Even with the addition of a fan to move the air, the inside temperature reached 90 before cooling down after darkness fell.

 

Once we arrived, we discovered that the winding road through the Cleveland National Forest had put quite a strain on our interior cabinet catches.  One of them ultimately gave up and dumped a few things on the floor---including Becky’s Elna sewing machine that she has had since college.  I tried to fix the one part that broke in the process, and was only partially successful.  But it’s close enough for the time being.  This is the second time the sewing machine has fallen out of the cabinet and suffered some damage.  But it still works very well.

 

The first order of business after setting up was turning on the new satellite dish to bring up our DirecTV signal.  The TV in the living room came up just fine, but on the bedroom TV there was an error message that required calling DirecTV for technical advice (or more).  Having no cell service available here, I used the pay phone in the on-site store.  It didn’t work all that well, and I had trouble communicating with the lady at DirecTV.

But the more I talked to her, the more I realized she was an idiot.  She continuously asked questions that indicated she had no idea what I was talking about.  After a half hour, I gave up and jumped in the truck to drive to some place where I could get cell service.  At the Jamul post office, I got an adequate signal and called DirecTV again.  This time I scored.  The new lady was not only smart but very helpful.  She gave me a procedure to follow to (hopefully) clear the problem, and also gave me the phone number of the local DirecTV installer who could come out to the site if the problem remained.  I raced home, only to discover that the problem had gone away on its own while I was gone.

We had already decided that we had gone too long without a Panda Express run, so we headed for the nearest Panda Express restaurant, ten miles away in El Cajon, to pick up dinner.

It was worth it.  That was a nice way to end a very long day.  We were finally settled in and functioning well.