It is always surprising to find something new and different right under your nose and realize it has been there all along.  We have been visiting our family in LA for several years have driven up and down Venice Blvd more times than we care to think about.  Carol at one time noticed the Museum of Jurassic Technology and after wondering for a bit put it out of her mind.  Yesterday Carol, our daughter-in-law Miriam and I were wondering what to do with some spare time with Avtalyon in tow.  We decided to head over to the museum to see what it had to offer.  We first checked out the web site to see if it seemed interesting.  If anything it left us with less idea of what we might find, but it intrigued us enough to venture in the door.  Once in it took us over two hours to extract ourselves.  I will not try to describe everything, check out the link above for much more detail.  

As promised Friday morning the delivery trucks arrived with new batteries and a new motor for the slideout room.  When we were preparing o return from lunch I got a call that the coach was ready to roll.  We finished our walk back from Andele, a Mexican Restaurant about a half mile from Sunland, paid our bill and were underway before 2 PM.

While we were rolling we called Bev and Dan Armstrong who we knew were in the Tucson area to see if we could get together.  After a bit of back and forth we realized that they were going to drive to Saguaro SKP Coop in Benson AZ to hear Arvel Bird perform in the Coop clubhouse.  We were aware of Arvel Bird since he has played at the Ganandogan Powwow just south of Rochester several times, while we were away.  He has also performed with the Rochester Chamber Orchestra.  Since we were already headed for Saguaro Coop and planned to stay there a couple of nights, it made sense for us to meet there.  And we did.  Bev and Dan arrived at about 11 Am and we had a great lunch spread that Carol put together with a minimum of effort.  We ate in the sun just outside the coach and conversation continued non stop until Dan got word that Arvel was in and setting up.  We walked over to the clubhouse where Dan contributed his effort as a “roadie” schlepping stuff from the car to the stage.

Eventually we returned to the coach and ordered in pizza which we elected to go and pick up.from G and F Pizza in Benson.  Good pizza if you happen to be in Benson and happen to be in the mood for pizza.  Not likely for most of you readers I am sure.

The show was wonderful.  Arvel is a master of the fiddle and native American flutes and I am sure many other instruments.    Rather than my blathering on about him click here to go to his website  http://arvelbird.com.  We came away with 2 CDs we bought and 1 that he had messed up the signature on which he gave to us.  We also picked up a DVD of him in performance which he gave away with the purchase of the CDs. He and his wife are very close with our friends the Armstrongs.

We all parted company after the concert and in the morning Carol and I left Benson behind to roll closer to LA.  We stopped mid afternoon at the Hi Jolly STVA (that is Short Term Visitor Area) just north of Quartzite AZ.  As I may have mentioned in the past Quartzite straddles I 10 just east of the California border.  Most of the land is controlled by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) of the Department of Interior and with some limited regulation is generally open to free or very low cost camping.  In STVA here there are no facilities.  We have no access to water, dump or electric.  We have plenty of water with us – 100 gallons and the capacity to hold 100 gallons of sewage.  For electricity we are using solar panels and some time on the generator.  Those new batteries are working out just fine.

We shopped for a new coach, we will be doing that for some time now, we may even buy something eventually.  Today I was pretty enamored of a Winnebago Journey (you heard that right Dot and Larry).  It is the same length as out coach and has a lot of nice features.  The price is, lets just say up there.  Plenty of time to think this over and look some more.  In the mean time we added some new LED lighting and other “stuff” that we just had to have.

Tomorrow we will rise at our usual time and try to get on the road by nine.  we have about 4 or 5 hours (LA traffic will determine that) to drive I 10 to the coast and then up the PCH (Pacific Coast Highway) to Malibu Beach RV Park where we will stay until the 24th.  There may not be much posting for the next two weeks.  We also booked flights to Rochester from Phoenix, February 17 to 20.  Haven’t been in Rochester in February in 12 years but our friend Zvi Zeitlin is giving his 45th annual recital in Kilbourn Hall on Sunday at 3 PM and he has announced it will be his last.  Two days later he will be 90.  

Our plan has been to drive to LA with brief stops along the way to visit with people as we go.  We made a stop in Austin to have dinner with Leigh and Patrick, yummy meal at “Second” we highly recommend it.  we parked at the Austin Elks Lodge which is up on hill overlooking downtown.  Hard to beat the view.  Leigh and Pat came for happy hour and we shared the bottle of Champagne that Scott Deb had brought – sorry we couldn’t find a time to share it with them – it was a very nice NY  Champagne -and and then we went on to dinner.

The next morning, that would be Tuesday, we got on the road relatively early and stopped in Fredricksburg to shop at Rustlin Robbs purveyor of salsas jams etc. lots of etc.  We also made a stop at the cooks store where I found Costa Rican coffee, Carol found a new fry pan and we did some other financial damage.  We continued on along 290 eventually joining I 10 for the long pull to LA where it is known as THE 10.  We stopped at the Walmart in Fort Stockton, they moved it since we stopped there last, and bought a couple of things before settling in for the night.

By 8:30 AM we had cleaned up from breakfast and were ready to move on.  I started the engine and pulled in the living room slide with no problem.  I threw the switch to activate the bedroom slide and nothing happened.  I traced the power as far as I could, actually made sure all the fuses were good and put in a call to Coach-net, my road service company.  They contacted H & H Truck Service, just a half mile down the street, who sent over a technician.  He started tracing the power all the way back to the motor for the bedroom slide out.  This is located under the bed, under the the storage compartment under the bed.  There was power all the way to the motor.  He had no way to repair or replace the motor.  He cranked the slide in manually so we could head on down the road to our next stop, Las Cruces where we will be having dinner with Leora Zeitlin and Stewart Kelter in about an hour.  We will be here at least until Friday noon as the parts will not be shipped until tomorrow.  We were very pleased with H & H Truck Service and with the way coach-net took care of our needs including getting us an appointment with Sunland RV in Las Crucis where we are parked now.

While we are here, I ordered new batteries for the coach.  Our Trojan 105 6 volt batteries are over seven years old and are not as peppy after a night of heating and lights as they once were.  Since we will be out in the desert again soon I want dependable batteries.  They will be installed at the same time as the slide out motor on Friday.  That will leave us 4 days to get to LA.  Plenty of time.  I will try to post when we get underway again.

We are preparing to move out in the morning.  We got in here on the 26th, Monday.  We have done very little in the way of sightseeing, hiking or other local activities.  Carol has been focused on getting her “store front” going so her photos will be available to sell. You can visit  http://anncarol.imagekind.com/ to see what she has been up to this past week.  I have had a continuous, it seems, round of minor maintenance and repair chores that have kept me busy between bouts with my own computer.  The tally of jobs seems long, but most of them were a couple of minutes and resolved issues that have been bugging me for some time.

In the mail when we arrived was a package from Fleetwood with a new latch for the throne room door and two marker lights for the front corners of the coach.  One had burned out and the other had cracked.  The throne room door latch was never right from the day we got the coach.  I had “fixed it” innumerable times and most recently had sought to replace it, but the cylinder opening is just slightly smaller than residential standard.  I figured Fleetwood would send me the part that fit.  They did, but instead of knobs the latch came with levers. It actually seems to be an improvement.  The marker light replacements caused me to be seen rolling around on the ground under the front of the coach and reaching way up into the innards to reach the connectors for the lamps.  Just a couple of minutes for each.

I took an hour and a half to wash the whole coach (not the roof) and get it nice and clean so I can dirty it on the road tomorrow.  It always feels good to remove the travel dirt so I can open a cabinet without getting filthy.  I had been trying to replace the parking lights on the front of the RAV4, but was unable to figure out how to do it without removing all of the grill and metal work above the bumper.  Took it into West RV and Automotive and they removed all that plastic and metalwork, at the cost of an hours labor, and changed two dollar light bulbs.  Thank you Toyota for an incredibly stupid design.

Part of our reason for hanging here in Livingston was to go to the New Years Eve show at the Liberty Opry.  We had contacted Deb Freedman and Scott Mackler who had just moved from Rochester to Dallas this Fall and they agreed to join us in Livingston and go on to the show.  Mid afternoon on the 31st they arrived at our site and it was really wonderful to see them way out west here.  They need to write there own blog post, or maybe book about the trials and tribulations of there move from Rochester to Dallas.  Scott has a new truck and Deb has yet to be able work as a doctor while she waits for Texas to license her.

 At about 5:30 per Carol’s plan we got in the RAV4 and headed for Liberty,  dinner first at Chili’s, the only passable restaurant in the area.  They have a bar even though the county is dry.  We joined the Chili’s Uniclub which got us permission to order drinks.  This began an episode that could have been on a sitcom.  They only had two wine glasses and three of us ordered wine.  Scott agreed to drink his white wine from an on the rocks glass.  The ladies ordered red wine, BAD red wine.  Back it went.  Deb decided to go along with Scott on the chardonnay, but Carol really wanted red wine so they brought her a Marguerite! not quite! so back she went with instructions to bring out the other red wine.  It was amazing just how white that wine looked and tasted.  I got my Marguerite and was quite happy.  We went on to the show and we all enjoyed it immensely.  It was four hours of country, rock, blues and gospel, why would any group call themselves “Rendered Heart” I kept thinking about rendering chicken fat..  I must have missed something.

We got back to the coach by a little after 1 PM and spent several minutes setting the living room up for sleeping.  The verdict is that the convertible sofa may be fine for one, but for two it is less than wonderful.  Who knew?  As we resumed consciousness, Carol began the preparation of a delightful breakfast with fresh made corn bread, scrambled eggs and fruit.  It sounds simple and the preparation was not elaborate, but we were all full and satisfied and then we sat at the table for another hour or so.  Finally as time came for them to leave we had to take some pictures to record the event.

I guess I have not had much to write about for the past week or at least time to write.  We took two days to drive from Deer Creek to Rainbow Plantation, the Escapee park in Summerdale, AL.  We stopped at Ochlockonee State Park in the FL Panhandle along the way.  It is a lovely park and if we are in the area we will definitely consider staying there again.  The most interesting sighting there was a white squirrel with a light black stripe on its back, not an albino.  The drive was remarkably without adventure.

At Rainbow Plantation we had a nice site, as they all are, with an oak tree hanging over us.  The sound of falling acorns on the roof was always jolting.  We were stopping there to visit our cousins Ellie and Eddie Holtzman whose daughter and family, Joy and Shaul Antar, live in Fairhope, about 25 minutes from the campground.  Ellie and Eddie were visiting so we planned to make it a family get together for Shabbat and Hanukkah.  We were invited to Shabbat dinner at the house and responded with an invitation to our motorhome followed by Chinese dinner in the traditional Jewish celebration of Christmas.  Hunan’s Chinese buffet was adequate to the occasion. It was not jammed like the Chinese restaurants in Rochester.

While parked in Rainbow Plantation, I noticed that the new LED over the entrance had gone out.  I was quite annoyed as it was expensive and I had been lead to expect 10,000 hours not 10 or 100.  I tried a few things and determined that the LED was fine, but the fixture was broken.  This necessitated a stop at Camping World for a replacement.  While there I picked up a double LED ceiling fixture to replace the ceiling florescent fixture which died last year.  The LED strips that I had been looking for cost $40 to $50 each and it needed two.  This whole fixture was the cost of one LED strip.  This resulted in fun and games as I brought the purchases home and began swapping light fixtures.  The dead fixture, which had been relocated to the driving area, came out to be replaced by a working florescent fixture from the kitchen work area, where I installed the new LED fixture.  That was the easy part.  The exterior fixture was secured with waterproof mastic which had to be carefully scraped off after removing the screws and prying the fixture away from the wall. Fortunately I had thought to buy some mastic for the new unit, I now have enough mastic to redo every fixture on the exterior of the coach.  Other minor maintenance included redoing the silicone seals on a couple of back marker lights that I had made a mess of last winter when I was trying to stop a leak by sealing everything that had an opening, between the rain drops.  As a grand finale, with Carol, I opened the compartment under the refrigerator that houses the major interior wiring harnesses and the converter (converts 120 volt AC to 12 volt DC).  We vacuumed several years of accumulated dust topped by a thick layer of Alaska dust.  I suspect there will be Alaska dust in this coach long after we have sold it.  It is everywhere.

Today we left Rainbow Plantation.  The comment we received more than once was “you’re leaving on Christmas Day?”  Yup, it is also the 6th night of Hanukkah, but few know that.  We decided to stop near Lafayette, LA in Poche Bridge at the Poche Fish ‘N Camp where we have been welcomed a couple of times in the past.  It is not too far off the highway and as a Passport America discount park it is very comfortable with full hookups.  If I haven’t described it in the past, or even if I have, it was originally a fish farm and the grounds are made up of three multi acre fish ponds with campsites around the edges.  It is a shame we are not fisher people as the camping includes fishing rights.  The Poche family have a long history in this region and in addtion to the Fish ‘N Camp they have a restaurant/meat market nearby.  There is nothing there for either of us.  I would really like to try the Boudin, but the main ingredient is pork which is a significant ingredient in all of their products.

Tomorrow we will move on to Livingston TX and the Rainbow’s End Escapee Park where we plan to be through New Years and we are meeting Scott and Deb their for New Years Eve entertainment.

We stopped at Paynes Prairie State Park just outside Micanopy Florida. We have been there before and found it to be an excellent spot for birding and relaxing. Roomy sites and very quiet. We took a long walk on Cone Dike trail. There were cautions about not feeding or approaching the bison or the Spanish wild horses that inhabit the prairie. We did not expect that to be a problem for us. As we approached the two mile post on the trail in the distance we saw a group of horses on the trail and decided to hold up to let them clear the area. They did not seem interested in moving on. Using our binoculars we were able to see that one of the horses was down on the trail and another was nuzzling it. This did not seem to be a healthy situation for the horses or for us to get any closer. We decided that a 4 mile round trip, two out and two back, would have to be sufficient. We stopped at the Visitor Center to let the staff know about the horse. The staff person made it clear that there was no likelihood of rescue as it is a wild life area not a zoo. We let her know we understood, but were concerned that other visitor might not like finding a dead or dying horse in the middle of the trail. She then told us a story of a group of walkers that had found a herd of bison on the trail between them and the Visitor Center at the end of a long walk. They were stranded for an hour or more waiting for the bison to move on. With assurance that the rangers would be notified we returned to the car and drove into Micanopy to wander through a few of the antique shops that are the primary feature in the center of town.
The next morning we got back on the road to Fort Desoto Park not too far from Carol’ brother and sister-in-law, Arthur and Natalie.  We spent the week visiting with them and other family ad friends.  Their daughter Ericka got a day off from the Christmas frenzy at Old navy and spent it with us.  We also got in the car drove to Naples, about a 2 1/2 hour drive, where we met Arnie and Peggy and Marilyn and Al , cousins, at the Naples Museum of Art.  This turned out to be a wonderful day in all respects, ignoring the 50 minute hold up on I 75 while they cleared a wreck from the driving lanes.  It was great to get the cousins together.  They figured that Art had not seen them in 26 years.  We spent a couple of hours in the museum and I would highly recommend it to anyone who is in the Naples area.  The Steve Tobin exhibit is a highlight and the recent Mexican artists’ work needs to be seen.  Carol and I were fascinated with a 1918 print of “Steerage” by Stieglitz surrounded by work that he had supported in his galleries.  We went on to dinner at Water Mark which was pleasant if undistinguished in its menu.  We all head a great time and stayed at the table until it was clear we needed to begin the 2 1/2 return to our assorted homes.  They had come over from the east coast.  Wednesday we took it easy and Thursday, as were thinking of moving on Art and Natalie invited Cecil and Doreen who we had met in Calgary to dinner – Papa Johns Pizza and salad by Carol.
As I write I am sitting in Deer Creek RV and Golf Resort, just a few minutes from Disney World.  We are visiting the Topfs who live here and last night the Singers who we last saw in Minot in 2005 rolled in and we all went to dinner at Sweet Tomato.  Today will be a mini CHAI gathering for lunch with two more couples.  They are all preparing for a rally this week.  We will be rolling on to Alabama tomorrow.  Norm, Carol and I took a great hike in Tiger Creek Preserve yesterday.  It felt great to get out and move.

After returning Alex to his parents and spending another week at Dan and Malena’s it was time to move on if we were going to keep up the rest of our schedule. Besides Saturday, Dec 3 had been exhausting. We started with Cory at a soccer game followed by a team lunch at a pizza place. We wandered the Charlottesville Main Street Mall and shopped at Alacazam for Chanukah presents. Finally we met Alex at his choral concert at 3. Following that we went back to the soccer pitch to pick up Cory and take both boys home so to the parents could meet cousin Steven Berbeco who was driving in rather unexpectedly to spend the night. We had a great time with the boys and around 10 or so Malena, Dan and Steven appeared. This was not the time to go to sleep, yet, as we needed to catch up. In the morning we had a round of goodbyes and followed Steven down out of the Hollow headed n similar directions.

We went on to Baltimore to see our friends Alan and Bunny Bernstein who had moved into Alan’s late mother’s house four years ago. We had seen them only sporadically in Rochester since their departure. It was great fun to see them on their home turf and to enjoy their guided tour of Jewish Baltimore. We certainly will need to give Baltimore more attention in the future. During the second night there it started to rain and I woke up with nightmares of mud because we were parked on the lawn at their direction. Having slogged through more mud than I care to think about at conventions and on the roads in Alaska, the sound of rain on the roof while parked on lawn was alarming. After a wonderful breakfast and a warm send off, I started the coach and started to back it down to the driveway. As the rear wheels reached pavement I turned the front wheel slightly and applied the brakes gently resulting in a slide sideways of about a foot. No damage to any trees or shrubs nor to the coach, but the lawn will require some attention to repair the ruts.

As we rolled out we knew we had three and a half days to cover 1,000 miles or so. As I write we are 800 miles along after two days, in Brunswick Georgia. We have not decided where we will pause tomorrow night, but we should have made the decision before we start the engine in the morning.

We have added some complications to our travels. We are looking to make a stop in Alabama where cousins Ellie and Eddie Holtzman will be visiting their daughter Joy and family. Eddie is not well and we don’t want to pass up the opportunity to see him. We will then have to make serious tracks across the south to get to LA by 1/10/2012. Still not sure where we will spend New years Eve. Liberty TX is not out of the question (see last years post if you don;t know why that would be fun).

For whatever reason I cannot seem to edit the Williamsburg post and the video of Alex was not working so here is the video:

Happy Thanksgiving to all!

The trip from Rochester to Covesvilles was not quite as planned.  Dan got sick and could not fly in to drive the Prius.  We decided to go back to Plan A which was to take turns driving the coach and the car with Josh riding  along and maybe driving the Prius with me as copilot.  We made a remarkably on time departure and got to Main Tire Exchange in Dansville, NY early only to find that the only tech capable of doing an alignment had been sent out on an emergency road service call.  While we waited another tech pulled the coach into the service bay and determined we had a loose bearing on the wheel that had had the worse tire wear..  Apparently that was the source of the wear.  By the time he had that tightened and put back together the alignment guy had returned.  He set up the equipment and determined within minutes that nothing had changed since the last time he had seen the coach and we were on the road again by noon.

We continued on to the Yogi Bear Shangri-la on the Creek in Milton PA with me driving the coach and Carol pushing the Prius.  We are not partial to this type of campground, but with three on board we needed to be able to pull out the slides for comfort and having hookups really made sense.  In the morning we rolled out in the same configuration.  After stopping for propane at the Carlyle Flying J we had an “incident.”  Neither Carol nor I are quite sure what happened, but the driver’s side mirror was removed from its rightful place and left dangling from it’s electrical connections.  Carol saw me swerve away from the passing truck and we conjecture he must have drifted into my lane.  My first indication of the contact was the sound of the mirror breaking away.   A brief stop on the shoulder allowed me to tape the mirror to the side of the coach so I wouldn’t lose it.  Then came the fun of driving with no mirror.  Fortunately we had radios with us and when I wanted to move left I could ask Carol to block for me and let me know when it was safe.  Fifty miles of that was enough and we pulled into the first available rest area so I could make further repairs.  By a miracle the glass had survived the impact and the primary damage was to the head of the mirror.  I was able to remount the mirror arm and with a liberal use of grey tape I was able to secure the mirror in a usable position and we continued on to Covesville with no further incidents.

Unfortunately Carol did not want to drive the coach with the taped up mirror and she was not comfortable with Josh practicing his driving under the conditions so he didn’t get the on road experience we had hoped to give him. Upon arrival I went online and found that the manufacturer of the mirror was still making the exact model and had them in stock.  I ordered one for second day delivery and planned to install it myself.  After crawling under the dash I determined that the entire installation amounted to driving four screws to mount the mirror and two plugs under the dash to power the adjusters, heaters and turn indicator.  This seemed to be quite an easy task.  Yesterday, Wednesday, when the mirror was due I crawled back under the dash to actually prepare by unplugging the two plugs, a seemingly trivial task albeit performed while lying on the floor contorted around the driver’s seat reaching over my head.

I tried three different tools to cut the one tie wrap used to secure the harness.  This was made difficult because I could not get leverage to slice it with a knife nor could I get the scissors under the wrap because of the angle.  I finally got it loose only to discover I had dislodged two other cables from places I had not noted.  One came from the control switch for the leveling system and after two tries and several uncomfortable minutes I was able to reset it on the circuit board so the levels worked as always.  The other was a red wire with a half circle on the end.  I traced that to the controller for the supplemental brakes in the car.  Since the black wire from the controller went to a screw on the frame it seemed clear that the red wire needed to be connected to a power supply and there was an open slot on a fuse block just in reach of the wire.  I will know tomorrow when I connect the car to take Alexander with us to Williamsburg whether I made that connection right.  If not it will be a simple matter to stick it in the other side of the slot.

I need to wrap this up and go help prepare for Thanksgiving Dinner.  A highlight will be a Skype video call with Malena’s sister Tafiline in South Africa.  Also her father, David, will be with us.  He was supposed to be going to Iran this week, but the security situation and visa problems are keeping him safely state side.  I look forward to the chance to spend some time with him face to face as we have have had many interesting conversations via email over the past year.