Packing, packing, packing.

Here's a thought for those of you who would like to sally forth into the great unknown in your brand new RV: LEARN HOW TO PACK! That's right, there's only so much room for your stuff in one of these aluminum boxes. You absolutely must pack effectively if you want to bring along everything you'll need on the road.

Our thirty-foot Tioga motor home is what they call a "basement model." That means the manufacturer has jacked the floor level of the coach up off the truck frame far enough to create a vacant space between the frame and the floor. This vacant space is then devoted to storage. Sometimes, it even runs clear through from side to side. Naturally, between the wheel wells is where you get the tallest lockers. Into these you can pack fairly large items, things like my galvanized tub in which I packed all the "wet" items like hoses, filter units, and hose fittings or the plastic tub for all the sewer-related items. In between these large lockers, in places like over wheel wells, you have several low-profile lockers. Into these I would store things like the drive-up blocks, a fiberglass ladder for adjusting the awing, and a set of folding chairs if the provided picnic bench seating looked too grungy. These low-profile lockers tended to extend from the left side to the right side of the coach.

I studied these various lockers for some time before I began to pack things into them. I'm glad I did. From what I saw on the road, many people don't do any planning at all. They simply stand five feet away and throw things into the lockers. When you have a compartment that is, say, fourteen inches high, twenty-four inches deep, and four feet wide, you want to make the most of that space in three dimensions. But when you just chuck items into the space, you end up with a jumble of goods that don't make full use of the height.

To counter this problem, I went to home depot and purchased heavy duty plastic tubs normally used for mixing mortar (photo top left). They measure approximately two by three feet. In my largest locker, I was able to fit two of these, one on top of the other, which largely filled the space, with enough room left over to fit extra oil, camp stove fuel, antifreeze, and a camp lantern standing up. In the bottom tub went the camp stove, the barbecue tools, a bag of charcoal, two 100-foot ropes, and the steel barbecue grill-top that we used when that essential item was absent on the RV park's barbecue fixture, which usually consisted of a large, rusty truck wheel laying flat on the ground.

Into the top tub went every gizmo and widget I could think of that would make my life easier in a pinch. Here you would find a level, a basket of WD40, light-weight oil, lock lubricant, Silcone sealant, etc. Also here was the 110v extension cord, the TV cable, the heavy rubber hammer for testing tire inflation, an axe, jumper cables, picnic tablecloth hold-down clips, plastic table cloth, and lots more.

Between the two tubs I stored the rubber-backed 4'x6' industrial carpet that I would throw down in front of the RV door (where allowed by the park). The carpet sitting on top of the first tub made it easy to slide tub 2 into place on top.

One locker I packed completely full of firewood. That, in retrospect, was a bad idea. Did you know that some states have a law against hauling wood in from other states? Well, I was duly informed of this fact when we were getting our tires changed in Minnesota. The tire jockey told us that it was like a $500.00 fine to do so. Needless to say, the firewood stayed at the tire shop for their next weenie roast.

One thing you need for stabilizing your RV are wooden blocks. These blocks go on the ground under the rear scissor jacks so the jacks don't have to extend as far. Mind you, more modern coaches often have built-in jacks and you don't bother with the wood. But if you do need these little gems, I found a great way to keep them organized. Since I wanted to keep my blocks in the rear compartment with the drive-up blocks, a compartment only about two feet wide and six inches high, I devised a drawer to put them in (photo right). The drawer is about 13" wide and six feet long and has a set of single-direction wheels mounted on the rear of the box and a handle on the front. Just pushing the blocks into the open locker would make it difficult to retrieve them when they had been pushed out of your reach. But with the blocks in the drawer I merely have to grab the handle, lift slightly over the lip of the locker, and pull it completely out until the wheels in back catch on the lip. I then set the handled end on the ground. Nothing could be easier. In the drawer, along with the blocks, I keep an army shovel, a kneeling pad in case the ground is wet or rocky when I get down to lower the scissor jacks, and the combination socket and handle that you use to lower the jacks. When I'm done with the drawer, I simply pick it up and roll it back into place in the locker. Very neat and tidy. And by the way, the army shovel came in very handy in Minnesota when I had to dig a hole for the tire jockey to remount the tire after the old one had blown out beside the freeway. Not sure what I would have done without that shovel.

So, that's all for now on the subject of exterior storage. The big thing to remember is to not only use all your width and depth in any given locker, but the height of the locker as well.

Home At Last

Well, folks, the Tioga is finally back in the driveway, the home furnace is fired up, and Concetta is fixing dinner in her own earth-bound kitchen for the first time in five weeks. Wow! Five weeks. It's hard to believe we've been that long on the road. It just went by in a flash. The Tioga racked up just a tad over 7,000 miles and still runs like a top. We did lose a set of tires in Minnesota. But other than that bit of foolishness, not another thing gave us trouble. We wanted to take the coach on a dry run before our departure date, but it never came to pass. We never tried the water heater, the furnace, the air conditioner, the water systems, the sewage systems, the generator, or taken a shower in that swiftly disintegrating plastic enclosure whose flaws I gummed up with waterproof silicone and prayed.

To reward us for our blind faith, absolutely everything worked like a champ. Even the CD player that I had never tried worked for literally a hundred hours or more with our books on tape. We did burn out a couple of low-voltage lights. Both the on-board clocks gave up on the same day. And we came home with one running light dark out of the handful I replaced before we left.

At one point on a bumpy road in Missouri the coffee maker came lose from its moorings, tumbled out on the counter, and bounced to the floor. We just replaced it in its rack, loaded it with coffee, and brewed up our next pot of java.

For those of you who have been following the blog throughout, you know that I asked everyone what the little switch under the sink did. Flipping it on and off did nothing. I dismantled it before we left and shinned everything thoroughly. Still nothing appeared to come on when the switch was flipped. Finally, just a few days ago, I discovered the answer when Concetta was complaining about the heat in the kitchen. "There's a fan right over your head," I said. "All we have to do is crank up the vent lid and turn it on. The unit had it's own on/off switch on this particular ceiling fixture.

But as I performed the operation of getting the fan on line, it suddenly hit me that the designers of the coach were probably diabolical enough to put a second on/off switch for the ceiling unit down by the sink. I reached over and hit the curiously-located switch and, voila, the fan overhead shut off. Jeeze! To think I had even emailed the previous owner of the coach and asked him what the switch did. He didn't know.

So, it appears that we'll be keeping the RV for future adventures. I wasn't sure we'd adapt, but we not only adapted but enjoyed the experience immensely. I, for one, can't want to start planning the next trip.

For now, we're home. While we unwind, I'd like to finish out this blog with some things we learned that might help others in their adventures into the RV world. Until then, I wish you good food, good wine, and exciting destinations -- and a warm house when you come home.

Ciao.

From rainy Richfield to rainy Ely

Today we moved from one rainy city to another. In between, we saw some of the finest Great Basin desert country the West has to offer, all of it, incongruously enough, bathed in sparkling sunlight and unseasonable warmth.

All of our highways today were narrow, two-lane affairs which meandered from one tiny, one-horse town to another. We passed turnoffs to towns with names like Aurora, Sigurd, Oasis, Oak City, Holden, Hinkley, and Deseret, farming towns of which we'd never heard nor ever had an occasion to visit. Even the towns we cruised through at 25mph like Scipio and Salina seemed curiously stuck in an earlier time. We stopped in just one town, that of Delta, which proclaimed an interesting museum. Delta showed up on the itinerary an hour or so prior to the lunch hour so we thought it would be a good leg-stretching opportunity before we stopped for our sandwich and chips.

Much to our delight, the museum turned out to be so much more than a leg-stretching opportunity. Still, to view the museum from the street it certainly didn't look like much. In the front yard sat an old, woefully dilapidated frame house from the 1920s, the location of the original museum we later learned. Set well back from this house and the street was a sort of concrete block building with the entrance door barely discernible from where we stood. Since we'd seen the museum's road sign, we knew the entrance had to be back there somewhere so we set off to find it. Moments later we discovered the entrance hidden from view behind the 1920s house.

As you know if you've been reading this blog for any time at all, Concetta and I just love museums. For an hour or two we consider them just the finest entertainment you can have. The museum in Delta proved no exception. And, this time, our museum experience came with our own personal guide and interpreter. What could be better?

When we first entered we found two elderly ladies waiting to greet us. The older of the two, a one-time surveyor's wife turned docent, simply beamed at the prospect of showing two newcomers around her facility. We couldn't have been happier. The museum's collection runs to everything from rocks and minerals, to western art. From mining and railroading equipment, to a authentic example of a Japanese internment camp barracks. Everything was a bit crowded, but very artfully and tastefully displayed. LaWanna, our guide, reassured us that the museum collection, though it contained substantially more in its collections than we were seeing, was destined for a brand new museum building in the very near future. Certainly we should make time to come back and see it some day.

As it turned out, we thoroughly enjoyed the museum and LaWanna. I even got her to pose for a number of photographs. She good naturedly complied, though I suspect I was probably the one and only person who had made such a request. Several displays took my eye, but none more firmly than the switchboard that, according to LaWanna, was still in use into the 1960s. The reason that I was drawn to the switchboard was because my Dad spent much of his career at the Western Electric Company installing them. Can't you just hear all those switchboard operators in all those old black and white movies say, "Number pleeeeeeease!"

As usual I tried stumping the resident docent, LaWanna with some of the rustic antiques in the section of the museum devoted to more primitive tools and such. I pointed to a couple of ice saws and dared her to tell me what they were used for. Darn if she didn't know exactly what use was intended for the six-foot saws. I couldn't stump her at all. Pretty smart cookie, she was. I did find one tool that I couldn't identify (photo lower left). Oddly enough, they had two of them, as did Rick in Saguache, Colorado. Rick hadn't known what to make of the tools, either. I have included a photo of the sort of hook thingy here in case you know.

After the museum at Delta, we set out again, only stopping when we found a wonderful flat section beside the highway some miles out of town. The lunch spot came complete with a terrific view of the mountains to the west (photo below right). The rest of the day we just cruised, listened to our book on tape, and enjoyed the bedazzling array of cloud formations and as they scudded across the blue vault of the sky. Virtually no towns or habitations of any kind do you find between Delta and Baker, Nevada, so the scenery just had to do. Every once in a while I'd just have to stop and photograph the stunningly empty landscape. Everything felt so remote and untouched by humans, I just loved it. This particular stretch of road, Highway 50 from Utah to Nevada, has escaped my notice until this trip. Oh, I've been up and down Highway 50 in Nevada on numerous occasions, but east of Ely always looked like venturing a little too far into the wilderness for my tastes. On the contrary. This little stretch of real estate is just fabulously wild and beautiful. The towns, where you can find them, are full of friendly, welcoming folks who would like nothing better than to help acquaint you with their hidden secrets. I for one intend to take them up on their offer.

As we approached Ely, perhaps from a distance of fifty miles, we began to notice a tumult of slate-gray clouds piling up against the foothills and peaks of the Egan Range. After cruising in the soft fall sunlight of western Utah and eastern Nevada all day, the promise of rain in the very hours that we would be arriving and setting up in camp certainly did not excite us. Still, it looked ominously beautiful and we couldn't turn our eyes away.

Just as we suspected, just a hand-full of miles from the Ely KOA, the rain began in earnest. Great. Just what I wanted was to get soaking wet again. But, as fate would have it, this time the rain backed off to a half-hearted drizzle once we had checked in and were assigned our spot. Then, by the time I had put the front wheels on the blocks and hooked up water, sewer, electric, and cable TV, the rain stopped and the afternoon sun began to struggle through the cloud cover. Wow! The sun on the wet landscape, the voluminous storm clouds, the stark look of the sun-glinted distant peaks was too much to ignore. I grabbed the camera and disappeared for a half hour while I prowled around through the dripping sage and juniper trying to get the perfect shot of it all (photo below left).

Tomorrow we are faced with perhaps the longest day of our trip at just over 300 miles. We almost never attempt to drive more than 175 miles in one day, usually far less. Were we to drive more miles than that, we would inevitably sacrifice any opportunity to stop, be distracted by some interesting museum, park, antiques shop, or photo opportunity. Fortunately, much of the Highway 50 corridor that we will be traveling tomorrow we have traveled numerous times before in our exploration of America's first transcontinental artery, the Lincoln Highway. So tomorrow, we'll probably zoom right by Austin and Eureka, ignore the turnoff to the scenic 722 bypass, and turn our heads away when antique shops loom on the horizon. This is not to say that I'll be ignoring the inevitable photo ops, I know there will be some of those. But in all probability, I'll spend so much time driving tomorrow that I won't be sitting down with the computer to finish this particular saga tomorrow night. Hopefully, I'll catch up in a day or so be sure and tune it to catch the wrap up.

Until then, we wish you good food, good wine, and exciting destinations. Oh, yeah!

Ciao.

Under the wire -- Almost

We just got into camp today in Richfield, Utah, ahead of the rain. Only problem, just getting to the front door does not get the plumbing and electrical set up, the sewer line run, and niceties like the TV cable connected. Those things, unfortunately, I had to attend to just as the clouds parted and a very determined downpour began. For a moment I thought that perhaps that I'd just get back inside and wait out the rain. But then I thought, what if it doesn't stop all night. So, I continued the setup and within ten or twelve minutes had finished and dashed back under cover. Back inside, I stripped off the soaking clothes, jumped into the shower, and minutes later was sitting all nice and comfy inside watching the rain pour down. Even though we had ended our day in a sort of anticlimax, certainly the rest of the day had been darn enjoyable.

Last night, we had not been able to locate a regular campground, the ones that come complete with picnic tables, barbecue facilities, and lots of elbow room between the RVs. Yesterday, Price, Utah, had been our afternoon target city and the only AAA recommended spot with regular RV hookups was an older motel on the fringes of town whose owners had set up a couple of dozen hookups behind the motel. This type of setup is never one of my favorites simply because they often seem to skimp on the amenities considered standard by more bonafide camp grounds. Still, once we had set up and connected, we soon discovered that it wasn't a bad place. It was certainly quiet and lacking in any traffic. Only one chap arrived after we did and, yes, he did take quite a long time to position himself. But after he settled down we didn't hear a peep out of anyone.

The reason for picking out Price on the map was many-fold. For one thing, I have a ton of relatives on my Mom's side living in and around Price. She used to keep track of them and I, unfortunately, have not. But I remember her talking about them and visiting them while my son, Robert, was a child. Dad and Robert and the local family members would prowl the deserts, stopping along the way to go prairie dog hunting. Someday I have to come back and try and re-establish those connections. In lieu of that future quest I wanted to drive the local roads, visit the local museums that I have known about for decades, and just try and capture those still vivid feelings I have for the place that Mon, Dad, Brother Cliff, and I first visited back in 1962 or so.

Today, Concetta and I had decided to spend the first half of the day doing museums, then head south, tour through the town of Cleveland where my maternal grandmother's brother lived fifty years ago, then head on south to eventually grab Highway 50 toward Nevada. The first museum we wanted to visit was known simply as the "Prehistoric Museum" on the map. The thing to keep in mind about Utah, and especially the territory south of Price, is that prehistoric finds, both paleo-Indian from thousands of years ago AND dinosaur-related from tens of millions of years ago are as plentiful as left-over hippies in Key West, Florida.


I have to tell you that most times I don't get overly excited about either of these topics. Museum displays that light my fire tend to be devoted to the historic rather than the pre-historic. I'd much rather look at accoutrements from General Custer's 7th Calvary or an old stagecoach from the Butterfield Stage Company. Still, I have to say that this pre-historic museum in Price is just about as good as museums get. I found myself actually getting excited about the paleo-Indian displays, especially the ones devoted to their crafts, which abounded on both levels of the museum. I especially liked a display devoted to teaching the viewer exactly what steps were necessary for turning a big block of obsidian "cobble" into a tiny, finely crafted arrowhead. I just starred at it for many minutes, trying to memorize as much of the process as possible. Some things don't photograph well and this display was one of those. But I'd love for you to see it.

Another display that just blew me away was the reconstruction of a Ute Indian pit house -- actually half the house. I just loved it. Obviously, American Indians were just darn smart people. This house was just perfect for keeping cool in the summer and warm in the winter without using a lot of lumber. I have included photos for you to see (above left). The structure is round and has supporting timbers of, I think, of something like juniper. Then they used a wattle and dab technique to bridge the gaps between the timbers. Over this they piled about five inches of dirt. This whole structure sat atop a round pit about two feet deep lined with stones. Everything looked very sturdy and weather tight and I expect that the home maintained a fairly constant temperature inside. Very, very impressive.

One of the things in which this particular museum specializes are dinosaur "footprints." Yes, you heard right. Because they mine for coal in Utah, coal miners often come across footprints of long extinct creatures in the coal strata. You can see from the photo at left that the museum has four of only six known stegosaur footprints in existence in the whole wide world. Incredible.

The museum contained two wings, one devoted to the paleo-Indians on two levels, and the second devoted to dinosaurs on both levels. We learned about arrow shaft making. We learned about basket making. We learned how to heard rabbits into a semi-circular enclosure set up in advance with a sort of fishnet made out of plant fibers, usually from a plant called "dogbane." We learned how the Indians would start a fire in a certain area, then tribe members would fan out and "herd" grasshoppers toward the fire. Then, when the fire died down, the Indians would collect the roasted grasshoppers, pound them into a sort of meal. With the meal they made tortilla-like cakes. These grasshopper cakes are very high in protein, we know now, and substituted for protein when animals could not be procured.

Our next museum lay six miles to the north in the little Utah town of "Helper." Wikipedia says "Helper is situated at the mouth of Price Canyon, alongside the Price River, on the eastern side of the Wasatch Plateau in Central Utah. Trains traveling westward from the Price side to the Salt Lake City side of the plateau required additional 'helper' engines in order to make the steep (2.4% grade) 15 mile climb up Price Canyon to the town of Soldier Summit. Helper was named after these helper engines, which the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad stationed in the city." I have an interest in the Denver and Rio Grande because my maternal grandfather worked as a bridge builder for them in, I believe, the 1920s. In 1924 I know the family was living in the town of Clear Creek west of Price because that's where my Mom was born, that being a very important event in my life.

I hoped that a trip to the museum would improve my education on the railroad and its history. Unfortunately, when we arrived we discovered that the facility is closed on Mondays. So Concetta and I set off down main street to look for any interesting photo ops. I shot the photo at right of a largely untouched art deco theater just up the street from the closed museum. I'm not sure if the 1935 film classic, "The 39 Steps," is playing there now, or whether the marque was made up in 1935 and they've never showed another movie since. Either way it was fun to see.

After our walk around Helper we had lunch on the edge of the Price River, then began our long trek south toward the town of Richfield, Utah. We did stop briefly in the town of Castle Dale to take in another museum which specialized in some very fine taxidermy. Their stuffed big (and small) game animals were so realistically done that at one point when I told Concetta to be careful, the bobcat she was bending over to look at was alive, she actually jumped back.

After Castle Dale, we sat back, put in our book on tape, and just enjoyed the desert scenery rolling by. Off to the south the rain clouds were building, but our immediate world consisted of a wondrous pallet of pastel colored skies, moody white clouds, and speckled sunlit hayfields. I was really hoping we'd make camp before the rains came, but you know how that turned out.

Anyway, tomorrow we're hoping to make the border crossing from Utah to our home state of Nevada and, if we're lucky, to the town of Ely on Highway 50. We don't have any cultural sites in mind at this point, but I'm hoping that something will turn up. Until then, we wish you good food, good wine, and exciting destinations.

Ciao.

Running for Utah, the edge of the Great Basin

This morning in Grand Junction, Colorado, we awoke to the same sounds we fell asleep to, that of a legion of pet dogs, both tiny and massive, announcing that their human caretakers were still remiss in their duties, much as they'd been for the several hours before we turned the lights out. I kid you not. If you combined all the dogs we've seen on this voyage, in every camp site from Washington to Illinois, and from South Dakota to Colorado, they would not in their entirety add up to the menagerie present at the Grand Junction KOA yesterday. I thought at first we had wandered into a dog convention, since virtually every RV seemed to contain one to several. One traveler had set up, I'm sure with the park manager's permission, a dog grooming salon in the door yard outside her fifth wheel. I was dumbfounded! I swear that I saw everything from the tiniest hood ornament-like dogs to a pony-sized St. Bernard stroll by our windows. Most people out walking their charges had anywhere from two to four on leashes, the existence of which I was certainly glad for. Had all of these carnivores gotten loose at one time, I, as a non dog aficionado, might have been devoured before I could retrieve my shootin' iron. So it was that Concetta and I cleared out of Grand Junction this morning as fast as we could to put the barking din behind us. Our present camp in Price, Utah, seems to be entirely devoid of creatures, at least so far. Let's hope it remains so.

Okay, well, enough of that rant. Today our goal was to leave Grand Junction on Interstate 70, a necessity for moving on toward Utah though, as you know, we always try and stay away from the Interstates. This time we needed I70 to get to the turnoff to the town of Moab, Utah, which lies south of the Arches National Park. Our intention was to skirt to the east of the Park, have lunch in Moab and stock up on supplies, then take a more westerly road, Highway 191, which skirts the park on the west side and drive north toward the Salt Lake City area.

Let me just say, that even though we had to skip the Arches area this trip, the country we saw as we drove to and from Moab was nothing short of stunning. Huge mesas of massive sandstone layers and interspersing volcanic layers stood out against the azure sky like rubies on a blue satin cloth. I stopped for photographs so often I think our average speed today was probably about 20 miles per hour.

Moab is a very interesting town. My earliest memories of Moab are derived from reading Edward Abbey's, Desert Solitaire in my youth. If you haven't read it, make it your goal to do so before you visit Moab. Abbey was one of the very first "vocal" environmentalists. He wrote many books on nature and man's misuse of it, Desert Solitaire being only the first. In that book Abbey is a park ranger stationed in the Moab area, though if I remember right, he lived in a mobile or travel trailer in the Arches National Park. His perceptions of the average park-using tourists were just wonderful, and made him an icon in the environmental movement overnight.

So, why do I bring Abbey up? Well, it's because Moab has become the outdoor adventurer's nirvana of the West. Everywhere -- and I mean EVERYWHERE -- you look all you see are twenty-something kids driving Rubicon Jeeps piled high with, bicycles, kayaks, and camping gear. Every other business proclaims that they are THE best place to sign up for your raft trip on the Colorado. There are ATV and Humvee tours to the back country in case all you have is a city-sized motor home and want to get out and tear up some real estate before you get back to the suburbs. Bike rentals, outdoor gear for sale, and adds for vacation packages are plastered everywhere.

And I was astounded to see how healthy everyone looked. Even the guy slicing Virginia Ham for me at the deli counter at Moab's "City Market" looked lean and fit, like he taught distance swimming or downhill skiing in his off hours. Most of the customers in the store appeared to be just taking a necessary break before they did their next 10 mile hike into the wilderness. The parking lot of the store was jammed with tourists, many driving rented motor homes. Two different couples I passed in the super market isles were speaking foreign languages, one I put down as Swedish, the other, well, my best guess was one of the ex-eastern block countries. Just exactly who comes from the old Soviet Bloc to go biking in the Utah desert? Well, if you take a look at Moab, you'll decide that it's probably lots of folks.

Anyway, I think if Edward Abbey wasn't already dead he'd probably have thrown himself off one of the arches the first time he encountered this modern onslaught of tourists. I can almost hear him -- I was probably 18 when I read his book -- and complaining that we're making the wilderness far too easy to access for the wildernesses own good. Man, back in 1968 he just had no idea, no idea at all.

Okay, enough of that rant as well. I don't want to discourage you from going to Moab and having fun, though I would surely pick an "off season" vacation if you can. Concetta and I thought that the Utah wilderness that we saw today was some of the most awe-inspiring yet. Personally, I just love those lofty mesas you see out here that tower above the valley floor, knowing that they rose straight up out of the surrounding terrain. I find it fascinating to note the different strata of rocks and sandstones, soft layers followed by hard layers, back and forth. It makes for some of the most interesting geology you'll ever see. And imagining the forces that were necessary to thrust those mesas skyward always makes me appreciate the awesome power of earth's internal mechanisms.

Speaking of mechanisms, I had a chance when we landed in camp this afternoon to photograph the drive-up ramp that I spoke of in yesterday's blog. If you haven't already caught the update, you might want to go take a look.

And while I'm on the subject of mechanisms, I was presented with a different sort of problem when hooking up the sewer line today when we got to our present camp. Let me say first that at every camp that offers "full hookups," you will find a sewer outlet next to your space accompanied by an electrical connection box and a faucet for your fresh water connection. The sewer is usually a four inch plastic pipe sticking out of the ground anywhere from zero inches to four or five inches. Those heights are best. Those heights allow you to use what I call an "accordion" unit, a contraption that is much like an old-time string of paper dolls, all hinged together, that you extend out from the coach sewer outlet to the standpipe in the ground. Unlike the paper doll metaphor, the "accordion" extends out in a steadily decreasing height so that it's highest next to the coach and lowest next to the sewer stand pipe. The interior of the "accordion" is rounded so your flexible plastic sewer hose snuggles right down inside and is held firmly. So, you hook up one end of your sewer pipe to the coaches' outlet pipe, one end to the standpipe on the ground, lay the whole thing in the "accordion," and you're good to go.

But if you find a stand pipe, as I did today, sticking out of the ground a good ten inches? Now your "accordion" is way to low at the standpipe end. I'm sure you know what they say about s**t running downhill. You just have to have a downhill slope to get things moving in the direction you want them to go. Of course, I've seen other campers who don't seem to care about this aspect of gravity one bit. Those are the guys who tend to lay their hoses right on the ground and then at the standpipe end the hose suddenly has to make a four or five inch leap into the air to do its job. I just shake my head trying to imagine just how that technique is able to completely clear the pipe before the pipe is stowed away in the coach.

Fortunately, the previous owners of this coach solved the problem of what to do when park owners don't know s**t from Shinola (as my Dad used to say) about how far above ground to construct their standpipes. Those previous owners bequeathed to me a couple of lengths of six-foot plastic home gutter material, the kind that's sort of U-shaped. I've only had to use them a couple of times but they are absolutely essential when you encounter the too-high standpipe problem.

In my basement lockers I have a variety of "containers" for storing things. For all the water-related gear I have a galvanized tub about thirty inches in diameter. For all the sewer related gear I have a rectangular plastic tub normally used to mix mortar for doing brick work. I think I found both at Home Depot. Today I dumped everything out of the containers, upended them next to the coach, and, along with some wooden blocks, used them to support a length of the gutter material. Since the galvanized tub was taller than the plastic tub, they formed a natural incline for the gutter material to rest on. That done, I installed the plastic sewer pipe, resting it inside the gutter, and voila! My sewer connection was at the right height for the standpipe, inclined perfectly to ease the flow of, well, whatever, and looked neat in the bargain.

So that's it for now. In future issues of the Blog I'll try and address other problems we've encountered and, hopefully, conquered. This trip is drawing to a close, unfortunately, but we've had so much fun that I predict that we'll soon be on the road again. Today we listened to some of our treasure trove of music from Wally World as we ate up the miles between Moab and Price, Utah. Two of the CDs I grabbed were America's greatest hits and Simon and Garfunkel's Bridge Over Troubled Water. Predictably, both albums contained songs about traveling. I think that we can safely assume that more travel is in store for the Happy Wanderers. Not sure when, and not sure where, but it's on the horizon as we speak and will hove into view before we know it.

Tomorrow we're going to kill a few hours here in Price before we hit the road and head west. It's reported that they not only have a prehistoric museum hereabouts for Concetta, but a railroad museum for yours truly. What more could anyone want? So stay tuned. We're not done yet, not by a long shot.

Until next time, we wish you good food, good wine, and quiet pets (Concetta told me not to say that last part).

Ciao.