A Rainy Drizzly Drive

This is the view we woke up to this morning --

It drizzled and lightly rained off and on the whole trip as we traveled from Farmington, New Mexico on Highway 64 to 550 which took us into Durango, Colorado. From there we took Highway 160 over to Cortez, then 491 to the Utah border. It was good two lane highway most of the way, but it gets very high. We topped out at over 8500 feet and my ears could tell you all about it.

Since these highways are not Interstate routes, they do not have the big truck stops for fueling up. We kept looking for a place that we could diesel at that we could also get in and out of. Forry pulled into a station that looked pretty good, but turned out to be a dead end (they had built a car wash across where the exit area had been.). We ended up having to disconnect Toad II so that he could turn Auntie Violet around. I had to run the credit card twice in order to get $100 worth of fuel ($50 with each use of the card). It's so much less hassle at a Flying J or Pilot! Then, of course, we had to go through the whole hooking up the toad again...

We went past Mesa Verde National Park and decided to put it on our list of places we want to come back and explore. Hwy 491 ends at Monticello, Utah. From there we took Highway 191 on north to Moab.

This part of Utah is adjacent to Canyonlands National Park and we began to see more and more of the incredible land formations that make up the park.

The red rocks and the abrupt cliffs abound --

There are fantastic formations all over --

As we descended from the high plateaus, we began once more to see signs of spring such as the pale greens of these cottonwoods --

The OK RV Park sits below these incredible cliffs. When we arrived, the sun came out and we were able to set up in beautiful 68 degree weather --

About seven o'clock, the clouds moved in again and we are now in the midst of an old-fashioned thunderstorm!

Off to Spokane Again

We got ourselves organized this morning, getting ready to head for Spokane -- hopefully for the last time this year! The tow bar package from RoadMaster that was back-ordered for the new Suzuki finally arrived at Camping World and we made an appointment to have it installed tomorrow morning.

Since we have no way to tow Toad II, I followed Auntie Violet. I really like driving the new rig. Maybe because I have had a chance to drive it so much lately...?

After I opened the gate for Forry, I parked across the road to watch him come through --

I shut the gate behind him, then watched him head up the hill, out of the coulee --

We stopped on the way and got some VERY expensive diesel -- $4.32 per gallon! And that's with the Flying J discount! We've seen it for around $4.16 in Spokane. Looks like we should have waited!

We came on out to the new Camping World in Liberty Lake. We had made arrangements with Larry, the service manager, to park overnight in their lot so that they can get started on the rig when they open at 8 AM. They are also going to install the Air Force brake system we got a couple of years ago at the Gypsy Rally. This is a new store with a new crew, so we'll see how it goes... We do have a 50 amp hook-up, so should be able to spend a comfortable night.

Since we will most likely be heading south once we are finished here (though we'll go back to the ranch to load up), we thought we'd take Son Sean out to dinner one more time before we left. He wanted Mexican food, so we went out to Casa de Oro, one of his favorites.

Now we're back at the Camping World  parking lot, watching the first go-around of the National Finals Bull Riding from Las Vegas.

Filling Diesel With the New Pilot RV Plus Card

Everyone who has a diesel pusher knows what a hassle it can be to fill up on diesel sometimes. You can pull into the truck area and use their really fast diesel hoses or can risk the low roofs on the auto side with their really slow pumps. Once in a great while you can find a station with designated RV pumps somewhat out of the normal traffic flow.

But our motor homes have big tanks. Most of the pumps have cash limits on how much diesel you can pump. Often it's $50 worth. If you're lucky, you can insert the same card again and it will let you do it one more time. Or you go into the store, get in line with the truckers, give your credit card to the clerk and ask to have the pump turned on. Often they ask how much fuel you want? So you've got to guess: when did we fuel up last? How low was the gauge? How much was it a gallon? So you give them a guess and they fill out a charge slip for you to sign. Then you go back out and tell your spouse they can go ahead and start fueling. Then you go back in, get in line, get your credit card back and get a new charge (for the fuel you actually used). By the time you get back outside, hopefully your partner will have pulled out of the refueling line and is waiting to pick you up.

Then Pilot/Flying J came out with a Frequent Fueler ADVANTAGE card that you could insert at the pump along with your credit card. It allowed the pump to turn on without a trip inside AND gave you a 3 cent per gallon discount. You still had to go in and sign the charge slip. But it was a whole less hassle!

Recently we read about the arrangement that Good Sam Club had made with Pilot/Flying J to issue a new Pilot RV Plus charge card that would give an 8 cent discount. We sent the application in and got an email in a week or so saying we were approved, but they were swamped with applicants and it would be a while until we got our card. The cards finally came during our two month stay at Mouse Mountain RV Park, so we didn't get a chance to use them until yesterday. With the cards was a letter giving us a password to activate the cards. We had also gotten an email telling us the User ID (I think they did it separately so that intercepting one would not have been enough...) and control numbers.

Yesterday we pulled into  Flying J #626 on State Road 2, Exit 305 on Interstate 9 near St. Augustine. They had an RV island over on the right with one side vacant, so we pulled right in. With a bit of trepidation as to what would happen, I inserted the new card. The screen asked for the Control Number, I punched it in and VIOLA! the pump turned on. We pumped $383.95 of diesel (76.628 gallons) with nary a pause! The receipt came out showing the price to be $4.019 a gallon -- 8 cents less then the listed price on the pump. Forry pulled in the fuel slide-out and off we went!

All in all, a VERY GOOD -- and FAST -- experience!