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!

On to Seven Feathers

We got a fairly decent start this morning in spite of the steady rain. We decided not to drain the tanks as they were only half full, but we did stop to take on diesel as we had decided last night not to try it in the dark.

We stopped at the Pilot near Brooks, Oregon which had quite a bunch of trucks lined up to fuel. I tried to use my RV Plus Charge Card at the pump, but it didn't seem to work. As I started to walk into the store, the young truck driver in the station next to us told me that the computer in the store was down and none of the pumps were working. He said he had been waiting over 45 minutes and that they kept telling him "just a few more minutes," so he was going to leave and drive on down the road. We had procrastinated about getting diesel and were pretty low and really weren't comfortable going much further...

I walked on into the store and just as I walked in, the clerk told me everything was working. So we filled up with 91.53 gallons of diesel at $4.079 per gallon. OUCH! Would it be a bit less painful if we filled more often?

It insisted on raining fairly hard the entire trip as we proceeded south on Interstate 5 --

We kept getting passed by vehicles with Oregon Duck flags flying --

This pickup had four flags -- and a barbecue in the back. The closer we got to Eugene and Oregon State University, the more of the flags we saw. There were cars with duck feet all over them as well as ones plastered with "O"s. We finally realized that the OSU - Stanford football games was this evening (as I write this, it's tied 14-14).

It was raining awfully hard, so I never did get a good picture of all of the thousands of sheep we saw in the pastures along the way. This is definitely sheep country.

We made good time and pulled into Seven Feathers RV Resort near Canyonville, Oregon a little after three PM. It was kind of fun to have the guide who took us to our site recognize us from our previous trips here. She even remembered that we had not been here last year! (She said she recognized my smile?)

Elkhart, Indiana -- 101 Degrees!

Oh, what a miserably hot day! We thought it was going to be cool and rainy -- a good traveling day as it was overcast this morning with an occasional drop of rain.

But, by the time we had everything packed up and put away and had the tanks dumped, the sky had cleared and it was beginning to get hot.We drove most of the way on Interstate 80/90 which is again a toll road in Ohio. ($14.75 to the Ohio Turnpike Commission) The corn and soybean fields were still quite green in Ohio, but the further west we drove, the more stressed they looked. Some of them really look dried out already...

I hope the price we paid for diesel today isn't an indication of what's going to be happening more as we go west. We paid  $3.959 a gallon today in Indiana; a full fifty cents more than we paid in New York just a week ago! And that's with the eight cents per gallon Pilot discount...

We drove back into Elkhart Campground (we were here last October) about 3:30 this afternoon. I debated whether to pay the extra $3 for a 50 amp site, but since we've been staying at 30 amp places the last couple of weeks, I decided to go ahead and splurge for the 50 amp. We're on the south side of the campground in a pull-through site. By the time I got the electric and water hooked up and Forry got the jack pads down, we were dripping wet. The thermometer read 101 degrees!

Thank goodness for 50 amps. We turned on BOTH air conditioners and just collapsed for a half hour or so. It's 10 PM and it's still 88 degrees outside.

We turned on the TV to watch the Mariners game a few minutes ago only to hear that Ichiro has been traded to the Yankees today! He's wearing a Yankee uniform for the game tonight!!! ;-(

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!

I Think We've Found a Gem!

Sometimes you just get lucky, I guess. We found a gem of an RV Park today! Yesterday when we decided we did not want to drive all the way to Clermont in one day, Forry just started looking at the map and outlined an area about halfway there. Then we looked at our directories to see what we could find in that area in the way of RV campgrounds.



We found two near White Springs that both looked good and offered a 50% discount. I called the first one, Lee's Country Campground, let it ring, but got no answer, not even an answering machine. So I sort of shrugged and started looking for the number of the second one. But before I could punch it in, my phone rang.

It was Myrna from Lee's Country Campground calling me back! And apologizing because she hadn't gotten to the phone in time to answer my call! Myrna asked me the usual questions: how big is your rig; any pets; do you need sewer, etc.
She then assured me that they had plenty of space and could give us a pull-through space.

We left Pine Lake RV Park in good time this morning and had an easy trip east on Interstate 10 through Tallahassee. We stopped for diesel at a Pilot near Midway, Florida. We put in 48.4 gallons at $3.829. With our RV Advantage Card it was a quick in-and-out as the card gives you Pump Start privileges and there is no need to go inside until it is time to pay. It also gives us 3 cents per gallon off. Not much, but that's $1.44 we didn't have to spend...

We were pleasantly surprised when we turned into Lee's Country Campground. It's small, they have eight acres with only 38 sites. Very tidy and clean. There is a gate across the entrance and there was someone there immediately to open it for us. The office is just beyond the gate and Myrna was waiting for us. She said that they had started the park from scratch twenty-two years ago. The park has no long-termers, mostly over-nighters and a few weekly renters.



 


Auntie Violet is parked on a grassy area with 50 watt electrical service and a water hook-up. We very quickly put the jacks down and the slides out. I put an acorn squash in the oven with some honey and butter and thawed some crab cakes for supper. Rigs have pulled in on both sides of us since this picture was taken. Like us, they are on their way further south.