Strolling Amok

Almost There

Originally posted 10/27/2012

Friday night, October 26: It was a good thing I decided to go for broke and get to a lower altitude. Without a data cell connection and with the only working radio in the truck, I had no clue that the “cold” snap at a low of 34 would become a forecasted 21 degrees the following night! The only thing I did know when I woke up that morning was that a cabin temp in the mid-forties was a bit brisk for my taste, and solar power or no, it was probably time to vamoose.

In contrast, the forecast for the Phoenix area is a low of 60 and a high of 90.

It was a long day of hopping about. I headed for a smallish town northwest of where I’d been, in order to get back onto I-40. There I found a hardware store to replace a blown fuse on the CPAP DC power cord, plus some screws and special washers for bolting the big iMac to the desktop. The hope is that I can move the trailer without having to swap the thing back and forth between its current transport and/or daytime location (my bed) and the official sleepytime location (the couch). The retaining system has to be good, however. It’s quite heavy, and all of its weight is in its glass screen.

I was in luck. I needed one of the two 30-pound propane tanks refilled (so the indicator claimed) and a refill source just happened to be across the street at a gas station. A nice lady came out and Read more…

Mesas and Buttes and Badlands, Oh My!

Originally published 10/24/2012

This post has been delayed by the lack of a cellular signal where I’m parked at the end of the day Monday, October 22. The cellphone is still able to cut it, but the Verizon hotspot thingie can’t see a thing. Not all that surprising, as its internal antenna is probably comparatively gimpy, or perhaps a data connection requires more horsepower. Will another camper in Quartzsite will have an affordable tip of two to get around that? Fashion an aluminum foil dish? Hold up a saucepan in back of it?

After a rocky start with my fixation on fuel mileage (7.8 MPG at the beginning of the day), I was fearing a repeat day of yesterday. Plus, I seemed to be perpetually going uphill and never down. After awhile, I cranked the cruise control down from 60 to a humiliating 55. The speed limit is 75. Turns out the uphill thing was true – I eventually had to swallow to let my ears pop. East of Amarillo, NM I began what seemed an endless descent. Signs warned of a 4% downgrade, and I perceived that figure to be pretty harmless. How steep could a lousy 4% be? It’s such a small number! Pretty steep, it turns out. It was a toboggan run. No worries – the Ol’ Furd shut the throttle off and then clamped down when it got about 3 MPH over the set speed. After that, I felt like I was ascending again now and then, but one glance at the boost gauge told a different story. It was still downhill, just much less so. Weird.

Eventually, the mileage averaged out to 10.4 at the end of the day, not bad considering a headwind that varied from 10-25 MPH. I passed my two designated wimp-out stops and Read more…

Spitting Against the Wind

Originally posted 10/21/2012

As you read last, I was looking forward to an interesting day today, and I got one. It happens not to resemble what I had in mind, but it has been interesting.

The Blue Swallow Motel in Tucumcari, New Mexico.

Tucumcari, NM does have old 66 running right through it – four lane’s worth. Not much traffic at all, either. It’s referred to as Historic Route 66 down here, and despite Tucumcari’s need to have an actual functional business district, there were a few restored motels along it. They were outnumbered by the quasi-restored ones, though. One had painted murals of James Dean with the Porsche that killed him, as well as some other Hollywood movie stars. Interesting, but not true retro. I noticed that the pavement on many side streets was completely free of potholes and patching. However, it was smoothly disintegrating from sun exposure. The tar evaporated while the gravel remained.

I toddled on through the length of the strip in town, stopping to take a few photos, then drove west on 66 along a simplified map of the county. 66 is not marked or identified on any road signs while you are actually on it, so forks in the road are problematic, especially when what seems like the obvious way to go has  Read more…

More of a Guide Than a Rule

Entering the flat part of New Mexico! Before long, it begins a very gradual but steady climb.

Originally posted 10/20/2012

A guide – that’s my travel itinerary – a fallback if I get boggled and am not sure where to be, when. Looks like it’s gettin’ pretty squirmy, due to today’s realization that there’s some mighty nice places to practice “dispersed camping” right along the way to Quartzite or whatever. Well, maybe not right on I-40, but not too far off.

I started off making a couple of mistakes along the way today, and with the truck’s fuel mileage returning to a more reasonable 11 MPG, I was able to gaze upon what looked like the narrow ribbon of old Route 66 running alongside the Interstate. Made me nostalgic, even though I never rode this section of it in my younger days back in the Pliocene Age.

My first mistake was stopping at the very upscale New Mexico Welcome Center just inside the eastern border of that state. I loaded up on tourist trap pamphlets, among which was one on Tucumcari, my next stop for an overnight. They had photos of the town’s main drag, which is old 66. The images were more eclectic than tantalizing, but still I’m wanting to go see some of it. Then I’ll head west along 66 itself until I hit Cuervo, then get back onto I-40. The photos of derelict gas stations and such were what effectively prompted this time-absorbing diversion. I had been scheduled for McHood Park in Winslow tomorrow night, a heroic 7-hour drive, but some time online produced a Read more…

Headway in a Headwind

For 12 bucks including fresh water, electricity and dump station, this ain’t bad!

Originally posted 10/18/2012

Greetings from Greater Metropolitan Texola, Ooooooklahoma! Texola is Exit 1, mile 1 from the Texas border. I started out the day getting 9.4 MPG against a sidewind and accidentally underpaid an unmanned Oklahoma tollboth. I’m sure they’ll send me a nice “Welcome to Oklahoma!” letter in the mail. Boy, just west of Tulsa, they have themselves a stretch of crappy concrete. You know, the kind that makes for a choppy, rhythmic bounce. It also irked me that Oklahoma has commandeered I-44 as a tollway. With booths at every exit, it makes one feel confined in a way that the tollways in Illinois don’t. Each town along the string has signs inviting a visit and listing the unique things they offer, but the atmosphere to get there is unpleasant. Is it just me?

At any rate, the road and/or the wind shifted to almost a direct headwind, and if it was the predicted 20 MPH, I’ll eat my beret. Mileage dropped to 8.8 at 60 MPH, traumatizing my fine Read more…

A Pond of Semis

Originally posted 10/17/2012

This post is more for curious family and friends than for the average blog’s reader (both of them). I’m done for the day near Vinita, OK at a rest area. After yesterday’s post about the average beleaguered truck driver, I’m going to see if I can stay at this rest area overnight mainly because I want to stay in a free area, and I’m not aware of anywhere else that qualifies between here and my next stop in Texola, some six hours away. Hopefully, I won’t find a mob with tire irons outside my door in the middle of the night. Let’s see, I can say, “Dang, I must have fallen asleep listening to some old Merle Haggard CDs I have! I was supposed to be out of here hours ago! Dagnabbit! Thanks for gettin’ me up, boys!” I hope to be at Double D RV Park, a commercial campsite, tomorrow as a chance to recharge the CPAP battery. Me gots no generator, so without the ability to hang a solar panel, I’m having to find sources of shore power or simply hook up to a different battery pack to delay the inevitable.

Motoring down I-44, a Civil Defense “test” came over the radio, and it wasn’t a test – a violent storm was coming through the  Read more…

The Sea of Semis

By morning, my rig was in the middle of a tight Semi sandwich!

Originally posted 10/17/2012

I left Indianapolis and headed southwest through Illinois and into Missouri. By gum, I need to check whatever settings there are on my Garmin Nuvi GPS. It’s eager to avoid Interstates that will get me to my next destination more efficiently. Routed me out of Indy on a couple of minor highways with traffic signals when I-70 was calling. Stepping into St. Louis, it was going to keep me out of the city itself by routing me around the south beltway. “Keep left to stay on I-65, keep left, keep left.” Then suddenly it was directing me to “Take I-NN south, exit exit right.” I looked straight out the passenger window to see the referenced exit fly past at 60 MPH. “Golly gee!” is not what I said.

Although the GPS now warned me with what it called 20 miles of heavy traffic, it actually was very, very good rush hour traffic by Chicago standards. It kept rolling and never stopped completely in wide, smooth lanes. I was able to just stay on the right and poop along for a few miles before it opened up and we were flying. The I took an exit and after 10 miles headed south, was directed to take a two-lane that was headed southwest.

It was well worth the 15 minutes that the navigational snafu had cost me heading in. The road was glass-smooth as it snaked through some considerable Read more…

Yes! Good News!

Funny, the things that please some people. The bracing sidewind while heading south on I-65 turned to a glorious tailwind on eastbound I-70, and I was able to urge The Enterprise’s Power Module (the Ford turbodiesel) up to 65 MPH and still get an indicated 14 MPG. For a stone-stock 4×4 in that weight class, that’s happiness. When I head back in the other direction against the wind, well, maybe not so much.

Some tens of miles short of Dayton Ohio were three of Dayton’s finest on motorcycles on an exit ramp, with lights on. Just after I passed them, they swung out and blocked all three lanes behind me, then slowly got up to speed. As I went on, I noticed that police cars were blocking the various entrance ramps I passed, and the flashing light parade continued behind me. It turned out that the President of the United States was making the rounds in Ohio, and as much as I respect the personage holding that office, I was thankful that I wasn’t having to follow his motorcade. I was trying to make time, and they appeared to be doing about 55 MPH or so. Great fuel mileage and just missing a roadblock – does it get any better?

In Columbus, the traffic got pretty tight, and GPS instructed me to exit left, and that exit turned out to be closed. Just as I came alongside the barricades, the GPS calmly announced that another exit, the one on the right, was what I wanted. This was four lanes of heavy, slow traffic, mind you. For some unexplainable reason,  Read more…