arrive at his chosen goal or destination." Christopher Columbus
May, 2015….After getting the coach from Vegas to Arizona we wanted to get her on a shakedown cruise close to home before it started to get any hotter. We spent 3 nights at an RV park on the Fort McDowell Indian Reservation just outside Fountain Hills, AZ. We stayed at a well reviewed park called Eagle View Resort (Asah Gweh Oou-o). If you need to stay close to the Phoenix area this is a great place. All sites have full hookup and are well maintained. It's not too far and not too close to the city so it's quiet and if you like casinos there is one near by.
Every morning we had this little visitor hanging around outside our coach.
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| Nature siting of a Roadrunner |
We got to figure out all the different controls and operational functions of staying in the coach. Mike practiced hooking up to shore power and dealing with the grey and black tanks while I began my task of decorating and outfitting the coach with all the items we would need to make our condo on wheels more comfortable.
Prescott, Arizona- Our next trip was more interesting. We picked up the coach the night before to load up and leave the next morning. That morning, not having shore power, we fired up the generator so we could turn on the refrigerator and get it cold before loading up the food. This was in May in Phoenix and it was going to be a warm start so we also turned on the AC. Everything started fine but then the refrigerator kept cycling on and off. Not good... I, of course, panicked and right away thought the trip was not going to happen. Mike, as usual, began immediately to trouble shoot the problem and discovered we had something wrong with the inverter. The inverter is necessary to run things that require electricity when you are not connected to shore power or when running the generator. While driving, the refrigerator holding your perishables always needs to be on; therefore, the inverter is an important piece of equipment. Not wanting to cancel our trip we decided to call a mobile RV mechanic. He came out, couldn't fix the problem but was able to get things working with a temporary fix; we would need to have it further serviced when we got back.
We made it to Point of the Rocks RV Park in Prescott, Arizona with everything working. It was a nice park with lots of trees; the roads in the park are not paved but were easy to drive on, although dusty. The park is near Watson Lake and there is a short walking trail right to the lake from the RV Park. There is an extensive well marked trail system around Watson Lake. I hiked and explored the trails and found them to be first rate.
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| Part of the trail around Watson Lake |
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| Some Rock trails but well marked with white dots. |
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| Part of the trail |
With fabulous views everywhere, I practiced using my new camera (Nikon DSR 3200) since I will be the designated trip photographer.
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| Watson Lake |
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| Watson Lake |
Mike, since he couldn’t hike with his bad knee, decided to assess the inverter’s problem and found that the inverter wasn’t broken but was overheating. He was able to fix it himself by changing some of the inverter’s configuration parameters. This was really good news because inverters are expensive. Mechanical complications are inevitable with RV ownership and having a good skill set to tackle them yourself is important. Our experience on this trip reassured me that with Mike’s knowledge and expertise we could handle anything.
We only stayed 3 nights and 2 days, definitely too short, especially with the cooler weather in Prescott. Leaving the RV Park on our last day was a challenge. We were fortunate to get one of the few pull through sites that the park had that could accommodate a large coach, especially as we were still beginners when it came to parking. The roads getting around the park are narrow in some spots but doable if careful. The park wasn’t full when we arrived so it was easy getting into our site but on the day we left it was full and Mike would have to make a tight turn getting out of our site. Some of the veteran RV’ers were very helpful navigating us out of our site and said Mike handled it like a pro.
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| Hanging out |
The coach will go in for service and some modifications. Mike will continue to work on his projects with the coach. His current project is to tackle our Internet connection and storage capabilities. We want to travel with our mountain bikes so he is designing and building a storage box below to hold them.
We normally would be in Utah for August but with working on the coach and getting the house ready to sell we have to endure the hot summer. I’ve planned a trip with the coach to Show Low, Arizona at the end of August which will give us the much needed break from the heat.
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| Cactus in Bloom |
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