generator

Cows Come Calling, Milestone Birthday, Generator Conks Out

/ Suzanne Hight / 6 Comments

From the Coconino National Forest near Flagstaff, Arizona:

Summer is definitely showing signs of winding down here in the mountains. The angle of the sun is noticeably different than it was when we arrived here back in late May, making the shadows longer and darker. The temperatures have continued to be mostly very pleasant with highs in the upper 70s, with just a few days climbing into the low 80s. However, with the exception of about a week of rain last month, the monsoon failed to really develop in this area so the humidity levels have been very low, making the temperatures even more pleasant.

Summertime in the Coconino National Forest

Of course, our campsite and the nearby road are very dusty, so it’s a constant battle trying to keep the rig and the truck somewhat clean. I’ve already told Andy that our next stop needs to be a place with water hookups so I can spend a day or two deep-cleaning the inside of the RV to get rid of all the dirt and dust we’ve accumulated. But every boondocker worth their salt knows that a little dirt never hurt anyone, and we’ve learned to just do the best we can with a whisk broom and a hand-vacuum.

Over the summer, the grass around here has grown tall and thick, thanks to so much winter and spring moisture. Starting in early August, when we would drive into Flagstaff, we noticed that there were cows grazing in the forest lands on the other side of Highway 180 from where we are located. We thought that was unusual, but then again there are plenty of old dried-out cow patties scattered around our campsite that would indicate that cows have been here in the past.

Then last Friday, we both started noticing these weird sounds coming from off in the distance, down the mountain. They got louder and louder as the day went on, until we recognized them as cows bellowing. And finally, around 2:30 PM, cows started appearing out of the trees, wandering through our campsite, headed further up the mountain toward the nearby pond (Hart Prairie Tank).

The cow parade lasted for a couple of hours. They were mostly females with their calves, but there were a few bulls in the mix as well. They were pretty noisy, calling out to each other as they were being herded into their new grazing area. By nightfall they had pretty much congregated near the pond, and we could here them  throughout the night.

Since then, the cows have spread out over the area, and they wander from spot to spot, grazing on the tall grass. I see them scattered out all along my usual hiking routes, sometimes in large clusters, but often in small groups of four or five. We still get regular visits several times a day from four to six at a time coming through our camp, especially in the early morning or late afternoon. One day Andy was sitting outside in his chair reading, and I looked out the window and saw four cows right behind him. He had no idea they were there, they had walked up so quietly. 🙂

I did a little research and found that some of the local ranchers lease the grazing rights from the National Forest in order to meet the local demand for grass-fed beef in stores and restaurants. As a vegetarian, it’s sad to me to think that these intelligent, social and docile animals will wind up being butchered, but I’m glad that they at least didn’t have to spend their short lives on some factory farm being fed grains that they are not designed to eat.

Yesterday was a big day in our household. It was Andy’s birthday–he finally reached the Big 7-0! He said he doesn’t feel any older, and he certainly doesn’t look any older, so I guess it’s true that 70 is just a number. Happy Birthday, Andy!!

My plan was to bake some cinnamon rolls for his birthday breakfast, so as soon as he rolled out bed, I went to start the generator so I could use the convection oven. Of all days, on Andy’s birthday the generator refused to run. It started a time or two, but would immediately shut down. We had been having some intermittent issues with it, and Andy had been nursing it along with Seafoam fuel treatments and checking the oil, but yesterday, nothing he tried would work to keep the genny running.

The generator decided to crap out on Andy’s birthday, so no cinnamon rolls for breakfast.

It was time to call in the professionals.

So we headed to Starbucks. 🙂

Although Starbucks didn’t have cinnamon rolls, they do have some decent pastries, so we had coffee and sugar for breakfast while I did a little research on Google to look for a generator service shop. I found a place in Flagstaff that works on Onan generators (ours is the RV QC 4000) and who have excellent reviews, so after we left Starbucks, Andy called them while I went inside the post office to pick up our mail, and he made a service appointment for 8:00 AM this morning. (If you know Andy, you know he’s NOT a morning person, so that’s how seriously important it was to get the generator fixed.)

We went back to the rig for the afternoon to make sure that the kitties were comfortable since it was a little on the warm side. We leave the windows open and the fans on while we’re away, so we don’t like to leave the rig unattended for too long. Once things started to cool off later in the afternoon, we drove back into Flagstaff and I took Andy out for an early-bird birthday dinner at the top-rated (per Yelp!) Mexican restaurant in town, MartAnne’s. I chose this place because, in addition to their rave reviews, they also have several great vegan/vegetarian options on their menu. They actually have crispy seitan tacos, served with rice and beans, which we both had to try. The server gave us complementary chips and salsa (they’re not usually free there), since we ordered guacamole and it was Andy’s birthday. Their salsa is excellent, very smoky and a little spicy. We each had a margarita, and thoroughly enjoyed our meal there.

Delicious seitan crispy tacos at MartAnne’s Mexican restaurant in Flagstaff

Afterwards we walked around the historic downtown area, checking out some of the shops, and picked up a bottle of hard cherry cider for later. Then we drove to Baskin-Robbins where we could enjoy some dairy-free dessert. We made it back to the rig before sundown so we could make some preparations for taking the rig in for the generator service this morning.

We had no way of knowing how long the rig would be in the repair shop, and were a little worried about the kitties being in the rig for very long while it was parked in the direct sun while they worked on the generator. We talked about me following Andy into town in the truck in case we needed to rescue the kitties and take them someplace cool. But, in that scenario, the campsite would be unattended, and we didn’t want to lose our solar panels, so after we got back from Baskin-Robbins last night, Andy went ahead and loaded the solar panels in the back of the truck, and we decided that I would stay in camp unless he called me to come rescue him and the fur-babies.

We got up very early this morning so that Andy could leave with the rig around 7:15 AM for our 8:00 appointment. He texted me around 8:30 to let me know they had already diagnosed the problem and were getting it taken care of. First of all, for some reason the oil dipstick did not fit correctly and we were getting an oil leak. Secondly, the carburetor was dirty and needed cleaning. They replaced the dipstick, removed and cleaned the carburetor, and then did an oil change on the generator. The total charge was $160 for parts and labor, and they were done by  about 9:15. The morning was cool enough that the kitties were fine, so it was a very successful visit to the repair shop. A big shout-out to Flag Tool & Engine Repair–if you’re ever in the Flagstaff area and need generator work done, be sure to look them up!

While Andy had the rig in town, he went ahead and dumped the tanks, refilled the water and propane, and topped off the gas tank, so we’re good to go for another week of awesome boondocking!!

Cloudy or sunny, full-time RV life is awesome!

Living in an RV means you have to be able to roll with the punches and go with the flow. We’ve actually been very pleased so far with how this RV has performed in our first year of full-timing. This RV was never designed for full-time living, but it’s held up pretty darn well. I think it helps that we don’t move around as much as a lot of other full-timers do, so we don’t put as much stress on the rig. Over the summer, we’ve driven her about 30 miles per week, just to go into town to dump the tanks and get water/propane. We’ll do more driving this fall, but even then, we tend to get where we’re going and then stay there for at least a couple of weeks before moving on. That’s just the way we roll, and I think it’s good for us AND the rig.

Hard to believe that Monday will be our one-year anniversary of living full-time in Lizzy. We just got our new 2020 Texas registration stickers in the mail to go on the windshields of both vehicles. Texas is kind of weird–instead of a yearly sticker to go on the plate, it goes on the windshield. Texas does require a yearly vehicle inspection to complete the registration, but when you renew on-line as we did, you can self-certify that the vehicle is currently out-of-state, and they will send you the sticker anyway. Then, once you drive back into Texas, you have three days to find an inspection station and get the inspection done–until then, there will be a note on your file with the DMV stating that your registration is incomplete. We’ll be heading heading through Texas in late October or early November on our way back to Mississippi for Thanksgiving, and will get the inspection done then.

We have legal vehicles for another year!

So that’s all the excitement around camp for now. We’re all doing well, enjoying life with the deer and the cows, listening to the wind in the pines and the aspens, hiking through the mountains, reading good books, and generally feeling blessed to be where we are.

Thanks for taking time to read our blog! Feel free to share it with family and friends who might be interested in full-time RV living. If you want to keep up with our adventures, please subscribe. And you can also find us on Instagram at Instagram.com/JustCallUsNomads if you want to keep up with us between blog posts.

Safe travels!

Settled In For Awhile, Amazon Lockers, Holiday Plans

/ Suzanne Hight / 1 Comment

Wow, it’s been ten days since I published an update to this blog. I kept thinking I would get around to it, but since things have been pretty laid-back lately, I didn’t have anything of real interest to report. But this morning I got a phone call from my Mom, and she was worried because there had been no blog updates or Instagram posts for awhile. So even if nobody else in the world notices that we haven’t communicated, we can always count on Mom to be looking out for us! We love you, Mom!! ❤

We are still in the same spot on Forest Road 151, north of Flagstaff, where we’ve been camped for four weeks now. We’re on a large pull-through site, and last week we re-positioned the rig so that it’s parked where it will get plenty of afternoon shade. Even though the afternoon temperatures are only in the 70’s, the inside of the rig can get 15-20 degrees warmer than the outside if we’re parked in direct sunlight. This spot in the shade keeps the rig very comfortable for us and the kitties. And since our solar panels are portable, we can keep them set up where they continue to get full sunlight.

Re-positioned the rig so that it’s parked in the shade

Most of our recreational activities since our last post have been taking hikes in the forest around us. We’ve found a couple more trails that we really like, one of which goes through a beautiful aspen grove that is shady and cool. The weather has been perfect for hiking–highs in the mid 70’s, with humidity levels around 15%.

Beautiful wispy clouds in a blue sky on one of my hikes

We’ve had no major issues with anything on the rig or the truck lately (knock on wood!). Our onboard generator (Onan 4000Kw) started running a little rough, so Handy Andy treated it to a little SeaFoam gas treatment, and it seems to be doing fine now. We also had to replace a few LED bulbs inside the rig, so we ordered them from Amazon and had them shipped to an Amazon locker in Flagstaff for pickup.

If you aren’t familiar with Amazon lockers, let me fill you in. They’re the best thing since sliced bread for nomads like us who need to have Amazon orders shipped to a physical address, which we don’t have anymore. They’re also perfect for people in sticks-and-bricks houses who are worried about packages getting stolen from their front porches. The Amazon lockers are just that–big metal lockers–which are located in brick-and-mortar businesses in mid-to-large size cities. We’ve used lockers in Tucson (located at a 24-hour convenience store), Anthem/Phoenix (located in a Chase Bank lobby), and Flagstaff (located inside Whole Foods).

If you want to use a locker, you simply do a search on Amazon.com to find the location of a locker near you, and add that location to your address book in Amazon. Then when you place your order, you select that address as your delivery location. When your order is delivered to the locker, you will receive a text message as well as an email which contains a numeric code that you will use to open the locker. The email will also have a bar code which can be scanned instead of entering the numeric code.

You simply go to the locker location where you’ll find a wall of lockers with a touchscreen pad. Enter your code or scan the bar code from your mobile device, and the locker door opens automatically so you can retrieve your package. It’s so cool!!

Amazon lockers in Tucson AZ

The important thing to remember is that you only have three days to retrieve your package from the locker, so make sure you get there on time. Right now the lockers are only in larger cities, but more are being added all the time. We highly recommend using them, especially if you’re away from home and need something shipped from Amazon pronto!!

We had originally planned to be in this location for two weeks, but with the perfect weather, beautiful scenery, and easy access to shopping and services in Flagstaff, we just haven’t felt the urge to move on. Yes, we would like to visit other places, but why leave perfection? Technically, we’ve overstayed our limit here, but there are plenty of open campsites on this road and no one has kicked us out yet, so we’re staying put for now.

That said, we have made some definite plans for the fall holiday season. We made reservations at Tombigbee State Park in Tupelo, Mississippi for two weeks in November so we can be with my family for Thanksgiving. I had hoped to find something  with full hookups a little closer to my parents’ home, but there doesn’t seem to be any such place. We could probably have dry-camped on a family member’s property, but we would be a long way from a dump station; so we decided to just go back to the same park where we spent our first week as full-timers after we sold our house. I’m really excited about getting to see my folks again, as we will have been on the road for almost fifteen months by then.

We’ll probably spend the summer here in the Flagstaff area, move over to New Mexico around September or October, working our way south toward the border, then start moving east across Texas in late October/early November, and then heading to Mississippi for Thanksgiving. And then, in December we’ll head west again to winter in Yuma.

But who knows? Plans are made to be broken! That’s why we don’t usually make reservations anywhere, but we did want to make sure that we had a place to park for Thanksgiving, so we went ahead and locked in our favorite campsite in Tombigbee SP.

So, in case you were wondering if we were still here, yes, we are. We’ve met some of our neighbors camping along the road here, and like us, they’re all planning to spend the summer here, so we’re not alone.

Not much snow left on the peaks now, but still beautiful

It’s hard to believe that June is almost over. And that means we have an expense report coming up soon. Be sure to watch for our next blog post where we let you know what it’s costing us to live full-time on the road.

Thanks for taking time to read our blog! Feel free to share it with family and friends who might be interested in full-time RV living. If you want to keep up with our adventures, please subscribe. And you can also find us on Instagram at Instagram.com/JustCallUsNomads if you want to keep up with us between blog posts.

Safe travels!

Battery Update, Christmas Plans, More Geocaching

/ Suzanne Hight / 2 Comments

As I reported in the last post, we had another episode of battery death, this time with our brand new 150 amp-hour batteries that we just purchased last week at Camping World. At the time of that post, we had let the generator run all night to try to recharge the batteries. Here’s what happened next.

When Andy got up, we shut off the generator and checked the batteries. Still nothing. Everything was dead, and they were not being charged from the generator.

Next we tried charging them from the alternator while running the engine (the batteries normally get charged while we’re driving the RV). That didn’t work either.

We checked the fusebox again, and didn’t see any problems with the fuses or breakers. At this point, we were starting to think it was a problem with the converter (the system that converts 110 current from the generator or shore power into DC current to be stored in the battery). However, since all the 12-volt systems in the RV were completely offline, it was just exactly as if the battery disconnect switch had been  flipped, even though it had not been. And THAT reminded us that there was another fused breaker hidden underneath the big pantry drawer below the stove.

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Reset button on the battery disconnect breaker located under the kitchen pantry drawer

In order to reach that breaker, you have to empty the drawer and then remove it from its tracks to gain access. Once he could reach the breaker, Andy pressed the tiny reset button, and…

VOILA!!

All the 12-volt systems were back online! The battery was still weak, registering around 11.95 volts as I remember, but at least we knew why the batteries had not been charging…they were in effect disconnected from the system.

We immediately fired up the generator and let it run for a couple of hours, and then checked the batteries again, and found that they were indeed charging and were back to a safe reading of 12.95. And since we needed to run the generator in the evening so I could use the Instant Pots for dinner, we kept the batteries topped off at 12.95.

The next test was to see how well they held up overnight with the furnace blower running, as well as the other minor draws on the system. When Andy got up this morning and checked the batteries, they read about 12.19, or about 60% capacity, which was acceptable. We ran the generator for a little over an hour this morning, and by then the reading was about 13.1, so we’re feeling great about that.

Our best guess of what happened is that when we failed to run the generator on Tuesday morning based on the reading on the stupid control panel, the batteries drained to the point that it caused the disconnect breaker to trip when we turned off the generator on Tuesday night to switch back over to the 12-volt system.

So we’ve learned some valuable lessons in the last two days:

  • We cannot rely on the factory-installed battery meter to monitor the available charge on the batteries. Instead, we are now using the multi-meter to get the exact voltage, even though it’s a pain to have to open up the battery compartment (located under one of the entry steps) to use the meter. We check it several times a day. At some point we’ll probably look into having a proper battery meter installed that displays the voltage at all times.
  • We will always run the generator at least twice a day to keep the batteries topped off, unless we’re driving the RV, in which case they’ll be charged from the alternator.
  • If the entire 12-volt system goes dead, the first thing we will check will be the disconnect breaker under the kitchen drawer.

So Andy called Camping World in Tucson to cancel the service appointment that we had scheduled with them for 8:00 AM on Friday. Turns out they didn’t even log the appointment so they wouldn’t have been expecting us anyway. Funny how that all worked out.

Tomorrow we’ll be picking up our new solar panels and Kodiak generator at our friends’ house in Phoenix. They were kind enough to let us have the equipment shipped to their address, and we’re looking forward to getting to visit with them for a little bit! While we’re in Phoenix, we’re also going to have lunch at one of our old favorites, Green New American Vegetarian restaurant on 7th Street. They have an extensive vegan menu, and we can’t wait to chow down!

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We’ve loved camping among these giant saguaros!

We have also made our plans for Christmas. We’ll be leaving this beautiful BLM campsite  in the Cactus Forest on Thursday of next week (sad face!), and we’ll travel to Glendale where we have reservations at an RV park for six nights. It will be nice to have full hookups again for a little while–unlimited showers, laundry facilities onsite, sewer hookups, electricity, and wi-fi. We were fortunate to get a site in this campground on our Passport America membership at half-price, so the six nights will only cost us $117, which is awesome! We’ll stay there through Christmas Day, and then pull out on December 26th for destination still to be determined.

In the meantime, I’m continuing to hunt for geocaches, finding my fourth one this morning. The ones that I’ve found are all located just off the road so I could have easily driven to the spot and saved some time. But I’ve picked up this hobby primarily for the exercise, so I’m hiking through the desert to each of the cache sites, burning off some calories and seeing some beautiful scenery.

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My 3rd geocache find was hanging near an electrical transmission tower.

If you would like to know more about what geocaching is and how it works, check out their website at Geocaching.com.

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My 4th geocache find was in an oxygen cylindar stuck in a tree. Fun find!

Yesterday we made a quick trip into Marana to ship a Christmas package to my parents and pick up a few grocery items for our salads. While there we also had lunch at Chipotle (the sofritas bowl rocks!!) and later some ice cream at The Screamery.

So that’s what’s been going on around here…just enjoying some blue skies, comfortable temperatures, and fully-charged batteries!! Our next big challenge this weekend will be learning to use our new solar system so we don’t have to run the generator so much to keep the batteries charged. Free power from the sun!!

Be sure to follow us on Instagram to stay up to date with us between blog posts! Also, feel free to share these posts with your family and friends if they are interested in learning more about full time RV life!

Safe travels, and Happy Holidays!!

Dead Batteries Again, Geocaching, Maintenance

/ Suzanne Hight / 1 Comment

It wouldn’t be RV life without something in the rig breaking or malfunctioning, but we didn’t expect it to be the house batteries. We just replaced them a week ago.

New batteries installed to make boondocking more comfortable

As I mentioned before, since we’ve been boondocking in the desert, we’ve been running the generator for an hour in the morning and an hour in the evening to keep the batteries topped off. The battery meter on the control panel (granted, it’s not the most reliable indicator) never went below 3/4 before we would run the generator.

Until yesterday.

For whatever reason, we did not run the generator yesterday morning as usual. At lunchtime it was still reading 3/4 and we still did not run it. We know it’s not good to let the batteries discharge below 1/2, but since it was still at 3/4, no alarm bells were going off. We knew we would be running the generator in the evening because I needed to use the microwave when making dinner.

We ran the generator for at least an hour while we had dinner, letting the batteries top off. Then, as we got ready to do the dishes, Andy turned off the generator for the evening, and the rig immediately went pitch black. Totally dark. No little LED lights. Nada. Nothing.

We grabbed a flashlight and checked the breakers in the fusebox, and everything looked fine there. We restarted the generator and all the power came back on, so we knew it wasn’t a breaker or a fuse. We just weren’t getting any power from the batteries.

Andy dug out his volt-meter from the storage bin and checked the voltage on the batteries. They both read 11.95, when they should be over 12. So it was obvious we were going to have to let the generator run all night to have lights, water, heat and refrigeration.

I’m not sure what we’re going to do this morning. Right now it’s about 6:30 AM and Andy is still asleep, but when he gets up we’ll try the batteries again. If they’re still dead, we will most likely make a return trip to Camping World in Tucson to try and get this issue resolved.

It just doesn’t make good sense–the rig was working fine on batteries just before we ran the generator at dinnertime. The generator should have topped off the batteries so they should have had even more charge an hour later. But instead, they were dead. Something just isn’t right. And yes, for those RV geeks out there, we did check the battery disconnect switch (a.k.a. the “store/use” switch”), and it was set to “Use”.

So stay tuned to see how this turns out!!

Otherwise, we’ve been thoroughly enjoying camping here in the desert on BLM land. On Monday, I finally went on my first geocache hunt and successfully located the cache inside a large fake rock, which also housed a live scorpion! I didn’t have any trinkets with me to swap, so I just signed the log book.

My first geocache find was inside a fake rock

Yesterday (Tuesday), I went on my second hunt and found the cache inside an old microwave oven that had been left in the fork of a palo verde tree. This time I had come prepared, as I had picked up some mini-dominos from the Dollar Tree on Monday afternoon when I went Christmas shopping. I left one of the dominos in the cache and removed a little Christmas ornament.

My second geocache find was inside a microwave in a tree!

If we wind up staying here for a few more days, depending on the batteries, my next geocache hunt will be for a cache that’s rated “micro”, which means the container is very small, at least in relation to a fake rock and a microwave oven. It will be fun to try something a little more challenging now that I’ve gotten my feet wet. There are lots of geocaches registered in the area, so I’m hoping we can be here a little longer.

Yesterday we also got notification that our new solar equipment has been delivered to our friends in Phoenix. We’ll be driving into Phoenix on Friday to pick it up, and possibly staying in Phoenix for a few days, depending once again on the battery situation. We should have our plans firmed up by later today.

Andy spent the last couple of afternoons doing some maintenance on the rig. First he replaced some weather-stripping along the over-cab area on the passenger side where it had come loose and was sagging. Then he did a thorough inspection of the roof and re-sealed some areas where the caulking had cracked or deteriorated. Water is the enemy of an RV, and we want to make sure that we don’t have any leaks that could lead to rotting wood or mold.

Handy Andy taking care of preventative maintenance on the roof

Not much else going on–I did drive into Marana on Monday afternoon to do a little Christmas shopping, and I also finally pulled out my ukulele and started trying to teach myself a few songs. Just need to get some callouses built up on my fingertips!

Sunset on 12/11/18 was especially spectacular!

And we’re still enjoying the most beautiful sunsets ever here in the Arizona desert! I also enjoy the gorgeous sunrises, but I’m the only one in the rig that’s awake to see them! 🙂 I’ve shot a few more timelapses with the GoPro and will try to put together a compilation video in the next few days.

Keeping our fingers crossed on the battery situation!

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Happy Holidays, everyone!

House of Pies, Leaving New Mexico, A Day of Challenges

/ Suzanne Hight / 6 Comments

After an amazing two months in New Mexico, it was finally time to move on to lower altitudes and higher temperatures.

New Mexico cactus in our campsite

We spent yesterday (Saturday) in Deming, running errands, stocking up on groceries and doing a little more sightseeing. First we went by the post office to pick up our mail, about three weeks’ worth, that had been forwarded from our home base in Livingston, Texas. Next we stopped by the bank to use the ATM machine to get a little traveling money.

By then it was lunchtime, and after checking the local reviews on Yelp, decided to try out Elisa’s House of Pies and Restaurant which just happened to be right next to the bank. This place is a little jewel that you would hardly notice from the outside, tucked away on a little alleyway. But once we stepped inside, met the owners and tasted the food, we were blown away.

Elisa’s House of Pies and Restaurant is a jewel!

Elisa and her husband are true Southerners–he’s from South Carolina and she’s from Pascagoula, Mississippi–and their hospitality and food reflect their heritage. Andy and I both had vegetable plates, and the collard greens were definitely the star of the show. They were amazing! And then there were six different pies from which to choose–Pecan, Buttermilk, Pineapple-Coconut Chess, Millionaire, Sweet Potato and Key Lime. Andy got the Millionaire and I got the Chess, and they were both to die for, tasted just like home.

Vegetable plate with the best collards ever!

We had such a good time talking to Elisa and her husband, as well as their daughter and son-in-law who showed up to help them with their Christmas decorations. We found out that they had also done some full-time RVing when they retired from their janitorial services business in Washington State, and that they have been in Deming for about nine years. They are such a sweet couple, great cooks, and we look forward to visiting them again the next time we come through Deming.

Elisa and her husband with me and Andy. Such sweet people!

After we finished lunch we went to Walmart to do our shopping, and then we stopped for an afternoon latte at the Copper Kettle coffee shop in downtown Deming before heading back to the campsite. We spent the rest of the evening having dinner and getting things set to leave this morning.

Time for a latte at the Copper Kettle in Deming.

So yesterday was a great day.

Today, not so much.

This morning I got up early and fed the cats as usual. We’ve noticed lately that Molly seems to be having some “potty difficulties” that come and go, but this morning she was really having problems. She went to the litter box at least 8-10 times and was obviously stressed. She finally seemed to get her business done and settled down, but it seems like we need to take her in for a check up. Both the cats got thorough checkups and blood work done before we went on the road and they were pronounced healthy, but Molly might need a second opinion.

We planned to pull out of Pancho Villa State Park around 10:30, drive west to Lordsburg where we would stop for lunch in Veterans Park, and then continue to Bowie, Arizona where we would boondock for the night in a large parking lot next to the Shell station.

Our last morning in New Mexico at Pancho Villa State Park

When we were breaking camp, Andy unplugged the RV from the electrical post as usual. But I noticed that the refrigerator did not switch over to propane as it usually does when we disconnect. I let him know that something seemed wrong, and when he started troubleshooting he found out that our house batteries were completely dead.

Well, that’s not good when you’re planning to boondock.

He cranked up the RV and turned on the generator, and after a little while the batteries recharged enough for us to feel comfortable moving forward with our original plan for the day. We finished packing up, dumped the tanks, and then pulled out of the state park, headed west. It was a beautiful drive west on Highway 9 to Hachita, NM, then north on Highway 146 to I-10 where we once again turned west toward Arizona.

Driving through southern New Mexico on Highway 146.

As planned, we stopped at Veterans Park in Lordsburg, New Mexico for lunch. It’s not much of a park, just a gravel drive with some covered picnic tables, and we were the only ones there, but it was a fine place to stop for lunch. The batteries had recovered enough on the drive that the meter showed them to be fully charged. We had our usual salad and beans for lunch, and then just relaxed for awhile before moving on. But we noticed that the batteries had already started to deplete after just a little while with the lights on…not good. So we’ll definitely have to have them seen about tomorrow.

Parked for lunch in Veterans Park in Lordsburg NM

We left Lordsburg about 3:00 and arrived at our destination a little before 4:00. Our plan was to fill up our gas tanks at the Shell station in exchange for boondocking on their lot (we knew they allowed overnight parking from the listing on FreeCampsites.net). However when we pulled up to the gas pumps, we found that their regular unleaded gas was $3.69 per gallon–totally outrageous!

We checked our Gas Buddy app and found that gas was anywhere from $2.69 – $2.83 in the vicinity, so we turned around and drove back east for 12 miles to San Simon where we bought gas at a Chevron station for $2.69/gallon.

And here’s where it gets interesting.

I filled up the truck with gas, using my usual credit card. Andy pulled the RV up to a gas pump but when he went to pump the gas, he found a sign on the pump that said he had to leave his credit card with the attendant before pumping. The same sign was on all the pumps except the one I had used. Weird.

So he went inside to see the attendant, and they kept his drivers license while he pumped the gas. The RV took $105 worth of gas. He went back inside to pay for it, using his credit card (both our cards are on the same account, but the cards have different numbers, and I’m the primary on the account). I was sitting in the truck while he went inside.

A few minutes later I got a text message from the credit card company, asking me to confirm a charge for $105 at a Chevron station. I texted back to confirm, but then Andy came out of the store and told me that his card had been denied three times. What the heck!

So I went back inside with him and we tried to use my card, the same one I had just used to fill up the truck, paying at the pump. This time my card was also denied, so I wound up using a different credit card to pay for the gas.

On the way out, Andy asked them if we could park overnight in their lot, and they said sure, no problem, as long as we didn’t block traffic. Andy had decided that he had rather stay at this location instead of driving back to the station with the high prices.

So that’s where we’ve wound up boondocking for the night, at the Chevron station in San Simon, Arizona, right off I-10. They have a large lot where a lot of 18-wheelers are also parked, but we found a spot far enough away from the large trucks that it shouldn’t be an issue.

Boondocking behind the Chevron station in San Simon, AZ

As soon as we got parked, I got on the phone with Capital One and spent a half-hour trying to make sure that our cards were not compromised. They said that we got the fraud alerts because this Chevron station doesn’t use chip readers (they still swipe cards) and because of the large dollar amount, not to mention we had two simultaneous transactions on the same account (one on my card and one on his)–all these issues combined to raise red flags. We’ve been on the road for three months, we regularly fill up both vehicles at the same station on our separate cards, and we’ve never had a problem. But, long story short, our cards are fine, and Capital One now has a voice recording of me being very irritable.

After we settled in, Andy fired up the generator and I cooked a pot of vegetable soup in the Instant Pot. Hopefully we’ll be able to get a good night’s sleep before continuing our travels in the morning. Our first order of business will be to shop for new batteries for our coach, as we can’t really boondock without them. We’ll be stopping in Tucson to get that seen about tomorrow. But for tonight, we’ll just run the generator to make sure we have heat and light in the rig.

We’ll be keeping an eye on Molly to see how she’s feeling. If she still seems to be having issues in the morning, we’ll see about getting her to a veterinarian in Tucson. We also have a package from Amazon that we’ll need to pick up in Tucson on Tuesday or Wednesday, so obviously we’ll be spending some time in the area.

And that’s life on the road….some days are diamonds, some days are stone.

But it’s all an adventure, and we’re loving it.