Posts from the ‘On the Road’ Category

Jan 24

Turning Lemons Into Lemonade

Kelly and I initially registered our Airstream with the California DMV in July of 2012. The process was a fiasco, as the workers there could not decide how to designate the trailer … body type PTI (permanent travel trailer) or CCH (trailer coach). In what was an unnecessarily lengthy deliberation, DMV officials feverishly scoured various official looking manuals and appendix guides in search of the answer.

Waiting helplessly and quite frustrated, I used my iPhone to quickly navigate to a FAQ page on the DMV website in search of answers. About 90 seconds later I was able to confirm CCH was the proper designation type.

No matter, the team of DMV all-stars concluded that PTI was the correct designation, and soon thereafter issued Kelly and me PTI license plates.

Today, I finally put the matter to bed and corrected the issue, but not before first driving 75 miles from my home to the nearest DMV wherein I was able to secure an appointment before a February-2nd deadline as imposed by a not so friendly, late night encounter with a California highway patrol officer a few months ago.

An hour of my time and one $1,140 re-resgistration later, I was on my way. A not so wonderful way to start a Friday.

Looking to salvage a shitty start to our Friday and weekend, Kelly and I quickly set our attention to Coyote Lake Campground (CLC), a park we’ve visited before.

Lacking a reservation, but assuming there would be ample availability, we drove to the park in hopes of securing a spot for two nights. Incredulity, the park is nearly empty. In fact we have an entire giant campsite loop all to ourselves. Situated only 20-minutes from the headache-inducing DMV, CLC is currently a serene oasis.

Perhaps we are the only folks braving the 68 degree “winter camping” temperatures this weekend?

Kelly and I plan to park ourselves here until Sunday before venturing back into the real world.

Jan 3

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Legendary Jerome

Last week Kelly’s mom and her husband offered Kelly and me various suggestions in and around the Sedona area – places we might want to explore while we are here. One such place was Jerome … which they described as a former mining encampment that has reinvented itself into a neat little town with interesting shops.

To be honest, base upon that description I wasn’t quite sold on the idea. Nonetheless, Kelly did a bit more internet research of her own and she was intrigued. Since the town is only about 20 minutes drive from our campground, we decided it was worth further exploration and ventured off to see things with our own eyes … and Wednesday, Lilly tagged along and the three of us spent a few hours wandering the town.

This place is awesome. We loved it.

Jerome, viewed from below

To fully appreciate why this town is such a gem, a bit of history is in order…

Jerome’s modern history began in 1876 when three lone prospectors staked claims on what proved to be crazy-rich copper deposits. Fairly quickly word spread and soon thereafter every Tom, Dick, & Harry arrived onto the scene, desperately seeking and dreaming of their own rags-to-riches turnaround.

Minerals at the heart of the boom

In 1883 the first legitimate mining corporation was formed. Well funded, the United Verde Copper Company bought Jerome into the big leagues of the US mining scene. With this growth, Jerome experienced a swell in population, wealth, and debauchery … along with devastating amounts of destruction due to rampant fires.

Wandering Jerome’s former red light district

An old facade

Cracks in a building

An exposed basement wall

Ever the survivor, Jerome would not surrender – its mines easily surfacing vast quantities of money with which to rebuild itself. Finally, in 1912, an East Coast fat-cat named James S. Douglas brought real “east coast money” to the scene and essentially bought-out the town’s mining claims. With deep pockets and a first-rate rolodex, Douglas secured other investors and infused serious cash and infrastructure into his operation (which he renamed Little Daisy Mine) and scaled the situation to the tune of nearly $1 billion (yes, billion) in revenue during his reign as the “Copper King”. Pack burros, mules-drawn freight wagons and horses were replaced by steam engines, autos and trucks … all of which grew mining capacities, expanding beyond copper, to unearth additional gold, silver, lead, zinc, azurite, and malachite deposits.

Douglas’s mines literally printed money. He and his investors were swimming in riches.

The Douglas mansion

The mansion, now part of Arizona’s state park system

Heavy industrial equipment replaced the mule drawn carts

As Jerome’s mining output was exploding by orders of magnitude, so to did the population. By the late 1920’s, over 15,000 people – across 20 nationalities – resided in the mining camp. Not surprisingly, as the population swelled, so to did the cosmopolitan day-to-day life … and wealth and debauchery … and the fires.

Eventually local leaders saw fit to hire a police force and also bring religion into the mix. In the end, nothing really changed. Despite the addition of many churches and jail cells, the bootlegging, saloons, and prostitutes continued to flourish. Keep in mind all of this was happening literally on the side of a 30-degree mountain.

Inside the tiny Catholic church

Church stain glass window

Eventually, the great depression and its suffocating grasp slowed the wheels of commerce and the once almighty Jerome fell onto very hard times. The “Copper King” was dealt a crushing blow. The boom became bust.

From what I can tell, the town sputtered for decades. As the population dipped below 100 residents, and on the cusp of drowning, Jerome was thrown a life buoy…

Similar to many places across the country, the 60’s brought artists, hippies, and others of the “counter-culture” movement to Jerome. Quickly, they settled and began selling their artisan wares. These initially unwelcome long-haired undesirables attracted buyers … and as the saying goes – the rest is history.

The longstanding Connor Hotel

Hippies …

Jerome candy shop

Wandering about

Today, Jerome is afforded protection as a National Historic Monument, but mainly is a tourist town and affords people with excess cash a nice place to have their second home.

It’s also one bad-ass place, steeped in rich history.

Wandering the streets, remnants of destruction are everywhere. Everything is old, but interlaced with new … a workers dormitory has been converted into a private residence, Madelena’s House (ie- brothel) is now an artist gallery, the Senate Saloon is now a fashion salon, the mining company hospital is now a hotel. The list of old-to-new transformation throughout Jerome is endless. 45-years of richly colorful history affords this place all the ingredients of a must see location. Given the vast network of mining tunnels (nearly 90 miles in total) directly beneath, it’s amazing that the town hasn’t collapsed upon itself.

Get there before it does. **

Gates no longer have a building

Original sewer drain access

An abandoned home rest precariously on sketchy footing

** Although not for lack of trying. For example – in 1930, following an underground blast, one jail’s foundation failed, allowing it to slide 225 feet down the mountainside. Later – in true bad-ass spirit – a bulldozer drug it from the middle of the street to where it sits today, safely away from potential traffic harm.

Dec 28

Sun City West

As mentioned in my last post, Kelly and I left Tucson on Christmas morning and drove to Sun City West – home of Kelly’s father and his wife (Sandy). Sun City West is an interesting place – something straight from the stereotypical pages flipping through your imagination. There are lots of golf courses, a seemingly infinite number of retired people (some really old), and a shocking abundance of medical care facilities.

More, for the person preferring to run errands while driving a golf-cart in lieu of an automobile, this place is fit for purpose.

The locals refer to this township as “SCW” and I always enjoy visiting this area. Something about all these retirees racing around in gasoline powered golf carts with lap dog driving shotgun makes me smile. I’d guess that at any given moment I am the only mixed race, socially liberal Democrat within the city limits, but despite that nuance, I find a peacefulness to the area. From what I can tell, people here seem to fall into two camps – a happily retired and pleasantly carefree person, or a curmudgeonly bastard … likely pissed-off at somebody for no sensible reason.

I get a kick out of both scenarios which affords me plenty of humor all around. BTW, if you’re wondering – Gene and Sandy fall into the happily retired and pleasantly carefree camp. They love it here.

(True story … one morning at the senior center fitness room, I witnessed two locals nearly break into a fist-fight because one guy was mad at the other for allegedly scaring the dog he brought into the gym. Literally, two grumpy old men cussing like sailors and daring the others to keep talking trash. It was awesome to witness. Displaying a knack to multi-task, I was impressed that the guy with the dog didn’t once break stride atop the recumbent bicycle he was riding.)

Gene and Sandy are great hosts and visiting their home is always easy. We abandon our trailer and stay with them in their home, which is spacious and comfortable. As an added bonus, Lilly has access to a big backyard wherein she can run freely.

Fortunately, the streets in SCW are wide and barren – a combination which easily accommodates our home for a few days.

Mabel rests quietly on Marble Drive.

Once upon a time, spending time in a home like this was no big deal, but now these periods of Airstream abandonment seem oddly foreign. At roughly 1800 sqft, their home is not huge by our societal standards, but compared to our 188 sqft home, theirs seems huge and grandiose to what we are used to. To be honest, retreating back to the familiar cocoon is strangely comforting.

Another benefit of arriving to SCW was my rendezvous with the holiday gift package my mom sent us. Complete with traditional family foodie items and other gifts, the care package landed at Gene and Sandy’s prior to our arrival and I was happy to have a bit of Christmas tradition, albeit 1,600 miles away from my immediate family and frigid upper Midwest temperatures.

Regrettably, I didn’t capture many fun pictures during our stay, but like our stay in Tucson, these few days in SCW were fantastic. Gene and Sandy are fabulous hosts and before we knew it, Sunday morning arrived and we began our trip north to Sedona.

Dec 25

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Pre-Christmas in Arizona

Friday morning (Dec-20th) we began the long drive to Kelly’s mom’s house. We’ve traveled this stretch of road before and knew to expect a mostly uninspiring experience. Suffice it to say, 834 miles later we arrived to Marana, our destination just north of Tucson.

Kelly drove exactly zero miles.

The sun sets along Interstate-10

While visiting Kelly’s mom, we stayed at Valley of the Sun RV park near her home. As we live in an RV park when not traveling, I wasn’t thrilled to be staying in yet another park, especially with all the beautiful boon-docking in the area. But we are here to spend time with family and this location is only a few minutes walk to Kelly’s mom’s home.

This particular park is typical of many – lots of big rigs in close proximity to one another, a cuckoo-bird park manager who seemingly is barely competent, and lots of overly friendly retirees, most with an uncanny ability to talk for extended periods of times, yet fail to articulate anything interesting.

The long row of RVs

Boring chit-chadder with the locals aside, the visit was great. We had a few quality days with Kelly’s mom and her husband. And while I’d love to tell you we did all sorts of wonderful and exciting things, I’d be a liar if I gave any impression of the sort. The truth is we were quite lazy … and it was perfect.

I did some computer repairs for Kelly’s mom, ate lots of unhealthy food, completed a bit of trailer maintenance, washed the truck, etc. Mainly, little things that aren’t really interesting except to those directly involved. That said, in our desire to avoid being the target of local RV park gossip, we did complete a local hike and sit for a proper Christmas-Eve dinner. That is to say – we city slickers in the shiny Airstream, tried to fit in amongst the army of otherwise nosey snow-birds.

First up was a nice hike.

Not far from where we were staying is Picacho Peak State Park. Following a quick 15 minute drive, we arrived to the visitor center, paid our $7 park entry, chatted with the ranger (yes, more chit-chat), and began our ascent to the park’s namesake. During the hike we were disappointed to see that Lilly is not capable of using the cable handrails anchored into the rocks to assist herself as needed. It turns out that her ability to scramble incredibly steep and sometimes loose rock faces are not akin to those of a mountain goat … and despite her best efforts, couldn’t quite push onward to the peak (but we came damn close).

Notwithstanding our failings, we did had a nice three hours on the trails, most of which involved some amount of scrambling and navigating over rocks or other boulders. Lilly was in heaven.

Lilly leading the way

Scrambling one of the steeper sections

Trail on the backside of the mountain, overlooking ranch and farmlands

The park is quite nice – on the smaller side, but a very nice state park. Campsites are primitive, but fairly spacious and appeared to be well maintained. Adjacent to the state park are amenities to compliment any family during their stay – tours of an ostrich farm, a Dairy Queen, an automotive repair shop & gas station, and obviously … an adult sex toy store.

Christmas-Eve was relatively subdued. We ate a nice meal prepared by Kelly and her mom, exchanged a few gifts, engaged in a bit of conversation banter, and watched an old episode of The Unit. The evening was quite nice, but sadly our last in before moving on.

My new stocking cap – totally diggin’ the pom-pom

Kelly & Barb making final touches to dinner

On Christmas Day morning, Kelly and I said our goodbyes, thanked our hosts for a wonderful couple of days and drove about 90 miles to Sun City West – home of Kelly’s father and his wife.

** Note, the following contains nerdy details related to hitch maintenance

I make a habit of checking hitch bolts connected to the trailer before every tow, however, I’ve never checked the bolts attaching the hitch receiver to the frame of the truck. Having towed about 12,000 miles, I suppose it’s only logical that the bolts will loosen, but to my surprise, torque was nowhere near the installation specifications of 110 ft lbs.

If you have not checked your hitch receiver, you should. For my 2012 Ford F-150, the process was quite simple. Ten bolts (5 per side) tightened … a really quick inspection. More, since I was already under the truck, I took a good look at the entire hitch receiver to ensure there are no cracks or other potentially dangerous issues lurking.

5 bolts per side

I also made a point to inspect the (Equalizer) hitch assembly and tighten all bolts to torque specifications, something I’ve done a few times in the past.