We Lucked Up Yesterday . . .
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We both slept in this morning enjoying the nice cool (cold) sleeping weather. With it going down to 37° last night, it’s the coldest we’ve seen in a couple of months, but very nice.
And we’ve got more of the same coming for us up in Bend for the next couple of weeks. Except for an 81° forecast for this Thursday, it’s pretty much 50’s and low 60’s as far as The Weather Channel can see.
I had an email this morning from a National General claims adjuster saying that the ‘door scrape guy’ from Apache Junction has filed a claim.
He’s asking for about $500 for the repair. But the funny thing is, he sent in this photo,
and not the one after I wiped all the paint smear off.
Otherwise it’s hard to see what’s he trying to repair. A little rubbing compound and some wax and it’s gone.
As I said in the blog post on April 1st, Apache Junction Door Scrape, when I rubbed the paint off, I felt no damage to the metal underneath. So I recommended that they deny the claim, or at least ask him to submit a more recent photo, preferably with a dated newspaper in the photo as well.
We’ll see how it goes.
About 1:30 Jan and I headed up I-5 about 25 miles to Yreka to have lunch and make a Wal-Mart run.
But we first we drove a couple of miles in the other direction to get a shot of these trucks at Truck Village.
Turns out these are in-service fire tankers that are assembled on site, and are used to fight northern California fires by CalFire. As far as the palette, the owner just loves bright colors and looks forward to coming up with new ones.
Probably hard to misplace one in a forest fire.
I like this so much I added the photo to the photos on the blog home page.
Heading back toward Yreka, our choice for lunch was a favorite of ours, the Black Bear Diner.
We’ve eaten here several times in the past, and it’s always been delicious. Looking over the extensive menu we both zeroed in on the BigFoot Chicken Fried Steak with steamed veggies and red-skin mashed potatoes and gravy.
But we started out with a really good salad with their homemade Bacon Ranch dressing.
Really great dressing.
And when our CFS came it was easy to see why they called it ‘Bigfoot’.
We both remarked how good the breading was, as well as the gravy. Everything was very well seasoned too. And it was big enough that we brought half of it home for tomorrow night’s dinner at Bend.
And of course we couldn’t come home without a couple of their individual serving pies. Jan got her favorite Coconut Cream Pie,
while I got the Apple Crumb Cobbler.
Bagging up our take-home food, we headed down the road to the nearby Wal-Mart, but along the way I stopped at a couple of auto parts stores looking for a new cap for our Dakota’s coolant recovery tank. The old one broke off the other day and fell down into the frame and disappeared.
Right now I’ve got Gorilla Tape over it until I get a replacement, but no luck. Both O’Reilly’s and AutoZone could order me one but didn’t stock them. Oh well, there’s always Amazon when we’re in Bend.
Finishing up at Wal-Mar we headed back to Weed and home. Along the way we noticed that we still couldn’t see Mt Shasta, at least not all of it.
It’s been obscured by clouds all day, so I guess we really lucked up yesterday. The mountain actually rises up about half way into the clouds. Weather like this is why pilots say “Clouds have rocks.â€
I’m still trying to figure out why I ran out of diesel. We had traveled 919 miles since we filled up in Tucson after the Escapade. Based on our normal 8 mpg, that would take about 115 gallons, leaving us 35 gallons in our 150 gallon tank. Even dropping back to 7mpg, that had us using about 130 gallons, leaving 20 gallons. And we’ve never gotten MPG that low.
When we ran out, our Silverleaf showed we had 28.8 gallons left. And I was going to fill up right up the road as I had planned.
I checked under the rig for fuel leakage when we were parked on the concrete pad at the Flag City RV Park in Lodi later that evening and found no puddles on any kind.
Now if I was really paranoid (and I am) I might wonder if someone might have siphoned diesel of the rig’s tank. Other than that, I don’t know.
But we’ll see.
Tomorrow we’ve got about 190 mile trip up to the Bend/Sunriver Thousand Trails, but before we leave about 10, we’re heading into downtown Weed to have breakfast at the fabled Hi-Lo Diner, the estranged parent of the Black Bear Diner chain.
Thought for the Day:
“By the time a man realizes that his father was right, he has a son who thinks he’s wrong.†― Charles Wadsworth
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Land of Fruits and Nuts . . .
With a 345 mile trip ahead of us on Saturday, we left the Soledad Canyon TT about 8:15am and headed south on the Antelope Valley Fwy about 17 miles until we got on I-5 and headed north toward Lodi, CA.
And then it was up one mountain and then down the other side. and again, and again, and again. About 75 miles worth.
The fabled Grapevine. Which pretty much ends at Grapevine, CA where things started to level out.
When they replaced the diesel tank on our rig after our blowout in 2015 the fuel gauge has been very squirrely, not that it wasn’t kinda squirrely before. But now when it gets to half tank it pretty much just falls to the empty peg.
But since I have the very accurate fuel monitor on my Silverleaf Computer Display, I haven’t had a problem. Until now.
My tank holds 150 gallons, and the last time I got diesel in Tucson, the Silverleaf said I had 30 gallons on board and I was able to put 120 gallons in the tank. And it’s always been very accurate. Until now.
So about 250 miles into our trip, and with 28.8 gallons on the Silverleaf, I ran out of diesel.
Long story short, by the time we got 15 gallons of diesel in the tank (Cummins says you need 15 gallons for priming and restart) and FINALLY got it started, it was going on 9pm and we still had 95 miles to go.
Even using the priming instructions that I had gotten from Cummins years ago it took a long time to get the engine started. Long enough that the battery was dragging. We finally got it started with the Good Sam’s RV mechanic jumping the rig batteries and then using a squirt of starting fluid.
It’s kind of funny about the use of starting fluid. Everyone, including Cummins tell you not to use it because it can damage your engine, including blowing it up. But everyone uses it, including Cummins dealers. And it definitely worked in our case.
I knew the office at Flag City RV Park in Lodi closed at 9 so I called ahead and they said they already had our site info in a envelope taped to the door and I could settle up in the morning. Great!
We finally pulled in the park about 11pm and found a very nice Sikh gentleman waiting for us with a golf cart ready to lead us to our pull-thru site, long enough that we didn’t have to unhitch. Much appreciated after our long day.
We slept in this morning, not getting up until after 8, and not getting on the road until about 10, OK since we only had a 245 mile run up to Weed, CA this morning.
Heading out we stopped at the office to settle up and then it was back on I-5N just a couple of blocks away. And this time rather than hills, we had miles and miles of fruit and nuts . . . and olives. Well, olives are fruit, so just fruit and nuts.
Jan and I both agree it should be a law that farmers have to put signs along the highway telling you what they’re growing. I mean, I can recognize corn, soybeans, cotton, alfalfa, and a few other crops, but fruits and nuts, not so much.
We had grapes, pistachios, walnuts, cherries, and olives. Now grapes we recognized, and I assume the cherries were the ones that were covered with nets. But the rest are just trees to us.
We want signs!
We first started seeing Mt. Shasta rising above the horizon about 140 miles out, and got these photos at 100 miles.
After a long climb back up into the mountains, we pulled into Friendly RV Park in Weed, CA about 3:30 and got parked and set up. And this is the view out our windshield.
Tomorrow we’ll spend some time driving around before heading up to the Bend/Sunriver Thousand Trails on Tuesday for a two week stay.
Thought for the Day:
“I have an inferiority complex, but it’s not a very good one.†― Steven Wright
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