Our RV Adventures

Our travel to Show Low Day began with coffee and muffins about 7:30 and then pulling out of our site about 9:20 heading over to the Maverik Country Store we had scouted out yesterday.

By fueling up in Camp Verde, rather than making the 10 mile round trip into Cottonwood just to save a penny a gallon, we could head straight out on AZ 260 to Show Low. But my finely crafted plan was not to be.

When I got to the station I found a double trailer fuel tanker stretched across the front of the station, right where I planned to pull in. So I had to go pass the station entrance and come in from the street to the side of the station. But this left me blocking the tanker from leaving. By the time I got parked the tanker guy was finishing up, and I ask him if he wanted me to move so he could get out.

He said ‘No’, he still had some paperwork to do. He then ask how we were doing. At this point I thought he looked familiar, and it turns out he was a vendor at the recent Gypsy Journal Rally in Yuma this past March. 

Wow! RV’ing is really a small world!

Once I started fueling up, I still had problems, or rather the pump did. It keep crashing, and then they would have to reboot it. Who knew gas pumps could crash?

I put in 127 gallons of diesel for a total of $525.00. But I probably won’t need diesel again until next month after we leave the Yosemite area, heading for northern California.

We finally pulled out of the station about 10:30. meeting up with Nick and Terry who were waiting for us about a mile away parked along side AZ 260. They pulled out in front of us as we approached and we were on our way. As we pulled out on the highway, Jan looked over and said “This feels good”. We’ve been parked for 3 weeks and it’s good to be back on the road.

The 150 mile trip took us through some spectacular scenery, and though there were a couple of hairpin turns, the roads were good and the drive was easy. There were a couple of long, slow climbs, but both rigs held their own on the hills.

Starting at about 3200 ft. in Camp Verde, we climbed to over 7500 ft., before easing down into Show Low at about 6400 ft.

We pulled into the Elk’s Lodge about 2pm, and after checking in and getting set up, we all headed out to have a late lunch at Native New Yorker, an Arizona chain we ate at last year and really enjoyed. They have potato skins, sandwiches, calzones, pizza, chicken wings, and chicken tenders (They call them ‘strippers’, and Nick got really excited when he saw the sign ‘Today is Stripper Wednesday’), and it’s all good.

Getting back to our rigs, Nick found his daughter, granddaughter, and son-in-law waiting to say hello.

A little later I got the sat dish set up, and we finished up our day watching TV.

More tomorrow.

I’ve reposted our visited to North Carolina and the Biltmore Estate in 2009.

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Thought for the Day:

Some people are like Slinkies.They serve no real purpose, but still give you a moderate amount of satisfaction when you push them down the stairs.

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Estates and Rocks…

Originally posted on June 23, 2009

Today was Biltmore Estate day, the main reason we did a 500 mile jog in our trip up the East Coast to Nova Scotia.

It’s hard to realize how big this place really is. The house is 175,000 square feet inside. That’s FOUR acres!

It has a total of 250 rooms, with 35 bedrooms for family and guests, and 43 bathrooms. It is/was the largest private home in the US.

It took about 6 years to build and was completed in time for its first party on Christmas Eve, 1895.

It was built by George Vanderbilt, grandson of Cornelius Vanderbilt, the shipping magnate. No one knows exactly how much it cost to build, but it’s estimated to be about 10 million dollars, and that’s in 1895 dollars.

The Biltmore

The Biltmore Stables

The stables shown above are to the right of the main house. I couldn’t get back far enough to get everything in one shot.

Originally, the Biltmore Estate consisted of 125,000 acres. Now it sits on 8,000 acres. The rest is now part of the Pisgah National Forest.

I was also amazed at the landscaping involved. They used over 2 million plants to landscape the grounds.

What I found even harder to believe was this view from the loggia (porch) at the back of the house.

View from the Porch

When the house was built in 1895 this view was of scrub brush and bare hills, with eroded gullys and fire-blackened tree stumps.

So Vanderbilt decided to have this area completely re-forested.

They resculpted the hills for the rolling look you see today, and then planted 10 of thousands of large trees and 100′s of thousands of bushes and scrubs.

It’s amazing what you can do if you have more money than you know what to do with!

After our tour of the house which took about 3 hours, we ate lunch at the Stable Cafe, which as the name indicates, is in the old stables.

The stalls have been converted into dining areas with tables also out in the center.

The Stable Cafe

Our Stall at the Stable Cafe

The food was very good, with Jan having a Chicken Salad Sandwich with Sun-dried Tomatoes on a croissant, and I had the Harvest Turkey Sandwich with melted brie, arugula, and blackberry mustard spread on a panini.

In addition to the Cafe, the stables also houses several gift shops and guest services.

After we left The Biltmore, we headed out about 25 miles northeast to Chimney Rock State Park.

Chimney Rock has been a tourist attraction since 1885. Over the years paths, staircases, and trails have been added to make access easier.

Finally in 1946, a 198 foot tunnel was tunneled into the side of the mountain,

Tunnel to the Elevator

and then a 268 foot vertical shaft was blasted down from the top to provide an elevator to the top.

After taking the elevator to the top, the path leads thru the obligatory gift shop and then out on a walkway to the stairs that takes you up on Chimney Rock at a height of 2280 feet.

Jan only made it 2270 feet, but I was really proud of her. She has a real fear of heights and I think she only does things like this to humor me. She made it to the top of Chimney Rock, but couldn’t do the last 10 feet to the edge. Honestly, I was really surprised she made that far. After 42 years, she still manages to surprise me.

Chimney Rock

Chimney Rock Closeup

From there you can see for 75 miles on a clear day. Our day was a little hazy, but still a great view.

Chimney Rock View 1

Chimney Rock View 2

After having ice cream at the cafe on top of the mountain, we headed home about 4 pm.

A long day, indeed.

Coffee and blueberry muffins started off this ‘Get Ready to Travel” day. Tomorrow we leave the Verde Valley for a few weeks in Show Low, AZ

I had a mental list of things that I wanted to get done, starting with reinstalling the air lifts that hold the cargo bay door open.

Then next I want to air up any tires that needed it, there’s where my problem started. Everything went smoothly until I tried to figure out why I wasn’t getting any reading on the tire pressure sensor on the driver’s side inside dual. I removed the sensor and tried to read the pressure on the valve extension with my gauge.

And got no reading whatsoever.

But since I’d had trouble with tire extensions several times before, I removed the extension and used a screwdriver to press the valve in and heard air, so I knew the tire wasn’t empty.

Now I needed a new extension, so I starting calling tire stores. Finally Big O Tires told me that Camelot RV Services stocked them. So off I went to town. It turns out the only ones they stocked that were long enough were the flexible ones, and not the normal rigid ones that I’d used before. So that’s what I got.

Getting back to the rig I installed the valve and got things working again.

My next chore was to finish cutting out the last of my RV Quick Shades to fit my windows.

By then it was about time to meet Nick and Terry, and Dennis and Carol Hill, owners of the RV Driving School, for one last dinner at our favorite local Mexican place, La Fonda.

After a great time at dinner, talking about RV’ing and traveling to Alaska, we finally said our goodbyes, and Jan and I drove over to Camp Verde to check out the Maverik Country Store to see if we can get in and out with our rig to fuel up tomorrow morning. And luckily it looks like we can.

So tomorrow morning, we’ll head out with Nick and Terry to make the 150 mile trip to Show Low.

More from Show Low tomorrow.

I’ve reposted our visit to the Pima Air & Space Museum in Tucson last year.

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Thought for the Day:

The trouble with being punctual is that nobody’s there to appreciate it.

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Originally posted on February 27, 2010

Our friends, Al and Adrienne, picked up as about 10am and we headed over to the Pima Air and Space Museum.

Arriving at the museum, we found that the landscaping followed some of the planes inside.

First we have the Fishhook Barrel Cactus.

Next we have Saguaro Cactus.

And then, of course, the Stealth Cactus!

I guess you had to be there.

This is a BD-5J MicroJet, the world’s smallest jet plane. And it was a kit!

Another kit, Burt Rutan’s Long EZ.

The Starr Bumble Bee, the world’s smallest plane.

The McCullough Super J-2 Gyrocopter

The HoppiCopter. I’d really like one of these.

It’s a big leap to the SR-71 Blackbird, the fastest plane in the world.

The A-10 Warthog ground attack plane.

A Beechcraft Bonanza. My uncle used to have one of these.

The Grumman F7F TigerCat.

The B-52. This one is one of 2 configured to carry the X-15 aloft.

This is the Douglas MB-1 Genie air to air missile. And it contained a NUCLEAR! warhead. It was to be launched into the middle of Russian bomber formations and take them all out at once. Jan’s father used to work on these when he was in the Air Force. It’s amazing how small they can make an atomic bomb.

This is B-57 Canberra bomber. I used to work on these. I was amazed to find that it had BUICK! jet engines in it. Who knew Buick even made jet engines.

The Convair B-58 Hustler, American’s first supersonic bomber.

The Cessna T-37 jet trainer. I also used to work on these.

The RA-5C Vigilante. In its original configuration as the the Navy A-5 bomber, it had a novel way of dropping its nuclear bomb load. It spit it out the tail! So many jokes, so little time.

NASA’s Super Guppy. It’s amazing that this thing could fly.

The Convair B-36 nuclear bomber. It had 10 engines, 6 prop engines and 4 jet engines!

At this point we took a break and went down the road to a great little Mexican place called Poco and Mom’s. And the food was great. My Green Chili Chicken Enchiladas was the best I’ve ever had.

Coming back to the museum, we began touring some of the displays. This is the Altair 8800 computer, probably the first practical home computer. It was a kit and was my first computer.

This is a photograph of Grace Hopper’s logbook showing the first computer ‘bug’. It was a moth that got caught in a relay, and is the origin of the term ‘computer bug’. This was from the time when computers filled whole buildings.

This is a Grumman F-4U Corsair of ‘Baa Baa Black Sheep” fame.

This is a German V1 ‘Buzz Bomb”.

The ‘Columbus’, a updated version of the Grumman J2F-2 Duck.

After a great time at the museum, we headed back to the park, passing Davis-Monthan AFB, America’s aircraft boneyard. Thousands of aircraft are mothballed here.

This satellite photo shows just a small portion of the planes stored there.

On the way home, we stopped by Fry’s Supermarket to pick up some groceries. Fry’s is Kroger’s here in Arizona.

This is our last full day here in Tucson. Tomorrow we’re heading over to Gila Bend for a few days before moving on to Yuma.

More tomorrow…

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