USA Tour Week One - Sept 4-10
Well, we found out immediately that things were not good. We tried to start the motor home generator and it would only run for about 2 minutes and quit. We went ahead and left on Sept. 4th down to Portland (so Janice could see her Dad before we left) and spent the night there. We had forgotten the motorhome warrantee papers; luckily Becky drove them down to while we ate dinner in Tacoma. We decided to fix the generator on the road. We headed out on Interstate 84 and looked up a Camping World on the IPad, called, and made an appointment at the CW in Meridian, Idaho. We pulled into the Meridian KOA late to the tune of a horrible engine noise. CW fixed the generator (noice the the italics) and pointed us to a service garage for the engine. We got to spend a hour or so at that place whilst they fixed the power steering.
Finally, around 2pm we left Meridian and got on the road. Janice seems to need periodic stops at Walmart, so we didn't make it far. We stopped about 50 miles down the road at Mountain Home. I fired up the generator so Mitizi wouldn't perish in the heat, and guess what, the generator wouldn't run for more than two minutes. I called CW and while waiting for answers, we decided to hoof it BACK to Meridian. We got back just in time to find out that they couldn't work on it until the next day as they didn't have the part and the mechanic was going home. So, we got to stay in the CW parking lot that night being assured the part would be there by 8:20am or so.
The next day, around 9:30am, the part showed up. We got to spend a LOT of time in the CW lounge. Janice did find a way to entertain herself.
After waiting for yet another part, we finally got out of there around 2pm (again) and again headed down the road. Things went fine after about 150 miles...then a horrible noise and shaking from the rear of the motor home. We stopped by the side of the road and found that the outside tire on the rear dual had separated.
Again, the IPad saved us. We found a tire place in the next small town and they replaced the tire. Whilst doing that they told us the inner tire was in bad shape and that we should take the separated tire to Les Schwab and use the replacement cost for a new tire. So we took this tire.
Stuck it in the auxillary storage (aka shower) like a dead body, and again headed down the road.
Again the IPad helped out by finding a Les Schwab in Brigham City...so we stayed at the KOA there and showed up at Les Schwab in the morning. Thankfully, that only took an hour or so and we were on our way. Near Spanish Forks, we drove through a valley with some strategically placed windmills...so, we had to stop and take a picture.
It was a Mitzi stop as well. As usual, she does well traveling in the motorhome. Keeping and eye on things and making sure there is no food broken out of which she is not aware.
We were cruising down the road in Utah and saw signs for Arches National Park. We figured we had not been there before and should use the National Parks pass we picked up during our trip to Hawai'i. It was an impressive stop. It had formations somewhat like those in Monument Valley.
But the highlights were the 2000 natural arches. Many of them required a substantial hike and so we just got a few of them. but you can see all of our pictures here. After that, we headed off to Cortez. After spending the night there, we stopped off at Mesa Verde National Park. This is of the places I went as a kid with my parents and one we visited with Jeannette and Becky.
I think one of the reasons it was cold is because it was so stinking high up there. It kind of limited us as even a brief climb was pretty darned winding.
We did go into the Spruce House which was a "mild" climb down and up. Spruce House is the best preserved of all of the Cliff Dwellings at Mesa Verde.
We did take a bunch more pictures and you can see them here. Since we had spent so much time at Mesa Verde, we just went down the road a little to Durango to spend the last night of our first week.
