March 2018 – Page 3 – Our RV Adventures

Monthly Archives: March 2018

March 27, 2018 Uncategorized

No News Is . . .

Probably Not Good News.

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I didn’t heard from Brock’s Car Care today, which I’m afraid means that the problem ended up being the more expensive oil pump replacement. Of course I’m hoping that the real reason is that they’re just really backed up and haven’t gotten to it yet.

Well, I can hope, can’t I.

I’m spend some time day today researching how to move a ZenCart shopping cart website to a new server. Now that I’ve got control of the SQL databases I can start working on the move up to the Godaddy cloud.

I plan to first set up a test move using a slower shared Godaddy server. Then once that’s perfected, I’ll shut the websites down over a weekend, copy all files off and then up to Godaddy using a faster dedicated server. Then I’ll turn everything back on, and we should be good to go.

Hopefully.

I got a lot of nice comments the other day after I reposted our visit to the Out of Africa Wildlife Park near Cottonwood, AZ. I know we’ve got a lot of new readers in the last few years, so for many of you this is all new stuff.

So tonight’s blog is a repost of our visit to Bearizona near Williams, AZ and the Grand Canyon while we were traveling with our good friend’s Nick and Terry Russell.

Bearizona and Las Vegas . . . April 30, 2011

Today was a travel day, from Williams, AZ to the Thousand Trails RV Park in Las Vegas. But before I tell you about that, I wanted to recount our visit to Bearizona yesterday, along with Nick and Terry.

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Here’s my sweetie with the park mascot.

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These are American Burros who are apparently more interested in dinner than us.

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Next we had the American Bison or Buffalo.

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This guy was only about 20 feet from the truck, and I think he was bigger than the truck.

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These are Gray Wolves. When we pulled up to their area, they were just laying around under the trees until one of the park guys went by on his ATV. They all perked up and came running over to the road, I guess thinking they were going to be fed.

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In the next area, we had Dall Sheep. We saw a lot of these along the roads in Alaska.

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And more sheep, this time Big Horn Sheep. We’ve seen these a number of times traveling out west.

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This is the fabled White Buffalo. True albino buffalo are extremely rare, but I don’t know what these are. They could be leucistic, which means they would have blue eyes instead of the pink eyes of an albino, or they could be a buffalo/cow cross.

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Finally we saw bears, lots of bears. Black ones, brown ones, little ones, big ones. All around us.

But the cutest ones were the four 3 month old cubs. They were playing, falling, and wrestling like a bunch of puppies, into everything.

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They even had a baby javelina, with his own bed.

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He even has his own toy to play with. I wonder if the Big Horn Sheep have a toy javelina to play with?

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Another one of those ‘so ugly they’re cute’ animals.

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In the Petting Zoo area, Miss Terry made a new friend. In fact, for a while we thought he was going to follow her home.

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A baby fox.

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But, beside the bear cubs, I think everyone’s favorite were the Bobcats. It was almost like they enjoyed posing for us.

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They would sit on the rock for a while, take a break and wander off, and then come back and sit on the rock again.

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Just beautiful animals.

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We all had a great time at Bearizona and look forward to visiting it again next year to check out the new animals.

Bearizona is well worth your time if you’re in the area.

Now back to today.

We left the Canyon Gate RV Park in Williams about 9, heading for Las Vegas 213 miles away. The reason we left so early for such a short trip was that Nick had planned to stop at the Speedco about 15 miles outside of Kingman and get the oil changed in his rig. And I was going to check out the instant oil analysis service they offered.

But it didn’t quite work out that way. Despite Nick having called twice and being assured they worked on RV’s and could get him in and out quickly, when he pulled into the parking lot, he was basically told to get out, and that they only worked on big trucks driven by guys working for a living.

When Nick mentioned that their website says they service RV’s, the guy said he didn’t care, just move!

And then they seemed to go out of their way to make it difficult for us to get out of their parking lot. So much so, that I ended up damaging the left front corner of my rig getting out of a tight turn.

Even stranger, a flat bed tractor-trailer pulled in right before us, and after talking to the same guy, started to leave immediately. But then had to wait for Nick to move out of his way. In doing so, he told Nick “these guys are a bunch of a$$hole$”.

So either his truck wasn’t big enough, or he wasn’t working hard enough, I guess.

I know that plenty of RV’ers have used Speedco, but I never have, and now never will.

So, after this brief but unpleasant interlude, we were back on the road to Las Vegas, about 115 miles away.

We were a little worried about the high wind advisories we were seeing, warning of bad conditions crossing the new Hoover Dam Bypass Bridge, but except for the occasional ‘interesting’ wind gust, the trip was smooth and the scenery was great.

Both Nick and Jan had worried about crossing the new bridge, but because the sides are high, and RV’s are supposed to stay in the left lane, you never realize that you are almost 900 feet about the Colorado River as you cross.

It’s really kind of disappointing.

We got into the Thousand Trails here in Vegas a little after 1 and got set up. Then about 3 we drove down to Boulder Station Casino to check out the buffet there.

And it was just as good as last year. As usual we sat around talking for a good while before heading home about 5 pm.

We’re going to be here for two weeks, and hopefully we’ll have as much fun as last year.

Thought for the Day:

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March 26, 2018 Uncategorized

A Big Step Closer . . .

My day started with an early call from Brock’s Car Care, telling me that as soon as they started up my truck, the oil pressure came right up normally.

BUT . . . they said they could hear a little rod knock and lifter noise for a few seconds before it smoothed right out, indicating that the engine had run for a short while without oil pressure. So they were able to see the problem. and they’re sure that no lasting damage was done to the engine during this episode.

Because it’s seemingly intermittent, they first suspected that with the high mileage on the truck (277,000+), some carbon/crud buildup in the oil pan had broken loose (maybe when the driveshaft broke off) and is occasionally clogging the oil pickup tube in the pan. Which explains why it didn’t show up during the previous repair, then did for me, and then didn’t this morning.

So they’re first going to drop the oil pan and see what’s going on. Hopefully cleaning all the gunk out will correct the problem. If not, the only thing really left is to go in and replace the oil pump.

More $$$$

But still cheaper than a new truck.

One last thing to note is that this looks to have nothing to do with my ‘oil pressure’ problem a couple of months ago. Then the engine never actually lost oil pressure, since I could drive for an hour or more with no problems. And replacing the oil filter fixed the sensor problem.

Hopefully I’ll have the truck back tomorrow or Wednesday.

On the upside I did make a big jump forward at work today. I finally found where the previous IT guy hid the SQL databases used by the websites, and have control of them. I can now can copy them/back them up . . . and when I’m ready, move them online to Godaddy.

And going through a desk drawer, I also found where the previous IT guy hid his marijuana bong and Zig Zag rolling papers. Which probablys explain why the webserver he set up is so squirrely.

Getting home about 4:15, we headed back out to have dinner at the nearby Pho 20. As on previous visits, we went to our favorites. Jan got her House Crunch Salad with their delicious Miso Dressing, as well as an order of Shrimp Spring Rolls with Peanut Sauce.

I got the big bowl of the While Meat Chicken Pho with Mixed Veggies. And the Mixed Veggies pretty much covered the gambit, with Cauliflower, Broccoli, Cabbage, Carrots, Mushrooms, Spinach, Snow Peas, Onions, and Cucumbers.

This, along with the usual Pho garnish plate with Bean Spouts, Thai Basil, Cilantro, and Jalapeno’s, makes for a full bowl of Pho.

One thing that Sherry, the Pho 20 owner, is known for is giving us samples of new dishes and other gifts. And tonight’s was a bowl of her new Hot & Sour Soup that’s going on the menu.