Venture In RV Park and Show Low in General

While in Show Low, we stayed at the Venture In RV Resort.  It's an age-qualified RV park very close to town.  This is what you see on the drive in to the park.  The interior roads are paved and wide.

We're the green bus.  We are parked on site 196.  The bus is on concrete, and we have a concrete patio.  Sites 196, 197, and 198 are the paved sites and would be worth asking for.

This is the down side to these sites.  They've put a curb at the back of the site.  If you're in a 5th wheel, or a gas bus it doesn't matter, but it did curtail how far back we could go.

These are the other sites in the park.  RVs and toads park on the volcanic crushed rock, and there is a concrete pad in between.

The entire park is sloped, if you're not on the big concrete pads, you'll need to level.

Staff is helpful and pleasant.  They do have an online reservation system, which I used.

Water pressure is ok, power is ok.  We had 2 bars of 4G LTE, and sometimes it was pretty slow.  This park has the BEST laundry room we've ever been in.  There are many machines and there are folding tables at a good height.  They also have the equipment that lets you pay using a credit card.  You can also have your machine text you when it's done.

Show Low has been compared to Bend, and called the "next Bend."  I don't think so.  The trees make it look like Bend and smell like Bend.  What's missing are the Cascade mountains and the Deschutes River.  Bend has a very different vibe than Show Low.  I don't think there are any craft breweries, either.  So it depends on what you're looking for.
Then there is the wind.  Other bloggers have commented that the wind in May was just disheartening, it was so strong.  It was strong our entire stay here.  There were many roads that would have good for road biking, but the gusting winds made it an unattractive prospect.

If we were to return to Show Low, we would stay here again.  There are some pretty gruesome looking RV parks in town, that are very dark due to all of their trees.

More Panorama

We've ridden both halves of Panorama now.  We like parts of it, but parts of it are very rocky.  There was some hike a bike on both halves due to volcanic rock in the trail.  This is a very pleasant part of the trail.

Somebody pelted out something, and then left it along side the trail.  It was sort of creepy.

Today we rode the long loop of the trail.  There is much scenic beauty once you climb up out of the piney forest.

This is the intersection with the shortcut and where Panorama climbs up onto the Twin Knolls part of the trail.   We took the short cut back to the car, we did this climb last time and didn't want to do it again today.

After riding we drove out to the end of Porter Mountain Road to see what we would see.  You see a lot of this.

There are some huge houses out there, with very impressive gates.

Allegedly our new coolant surge tank will be installed tomorrow.  That will leave us free to depart Show Low and move on to Albuquerque to get the engine pre-heat pump installed.  After that, perhaps our repair odyssey will be over.

Panorama Trail

We came to Show Low based on reading about the White Mountains trail system on the blog, Occupation of Independence.  Now that Jim and I are older, we enjoy the rocky technical trails much less than we used to.  The enjoyment of the challenge of negotiating the rocks is now out weighed by my desire to not be maimed.  It just takes too long to heal. 
Today we walked part of the Panorama trail.  It starts out as a packed dirt trail through the piney woods.  It reminds me a lot of Bend, except without so many rocks, and way fewer people.  We saw seven people on the trail.  Seven!

The trail eventually heads up and out of the woods.  The view is lovely and green.  Those little lumps out in the distance are cinder cones.

Tomorrow we'll return with the bikes, and enjoy some suffering at 6,750 feet.

Disaster Kitty Returns Once Again

When we arrived at Venture In RV Resort in Show Low, Jim went out to unhook the truck and discovered it was covered in a fine mist of one of the RV's precious bodily fluids.  It was a red fluid.  After we backed onto our concrete pad site, the red fluid continued to drip on the ground.  Perfect!  Just perfect!  We googled diesel repair in Show Low and found Show Low Diesel Repair.  He came out a couple of hours later, on his way home from picking up his wife in Phoenix, and told us no, it was engine antifreeze.
This morning he came back and discovered a fitting was only finger tight and was allowing the release of coolant.  He also discovered that one of the hydraulic fluid hoses had a 90 degree kink in it (think water hose) and was impeding the flow of fluid.  We could have lost power steering yesterday, on the switchbacks with the 6% grade.  You can't drive this thing without power steering. He also wants to replace the large container that holds the antifreeze because it has a crack.  Parts will be 5 to 7 days.  We extended our stay here to wait for the part.  Going to Santa Fe is now not looking likely.

OK - stay with me.  Extended our stay.  Held for parts.  Things are not so bad, until they are.

We have a Hydro Hot.  When they work, they are wonderful.  It burns diesel and provides on demand infinite hot water.  There is also a pump that takes engine antifreeze through copper coils, warms it up and takes it through the engine block for starting on cold mornings.  We used that pump this morning when the RV tech was fixing the leak and ensuring there was no air in the hydraulic fluid lines.  After he left, Jim walked outside and discovered the Hydro Hot was peeing red fluid on the ground.  The pump failed.
There were several calls to Hydro Hot today.  Jim spent some time on the ground under the bus verifying it was the engine pre-heat pump that failed.  The nearest hydro hot certified technician is in Mesa - on the other side of the Salt River.  The second closest certified technician is in Albuquerque.  No biggie, we thought, we'll drive there Sunday, get fixed Monday, and then return and wait for parts in Show Low.  NOPE.  The failed pump must be by-passed, or we'll be peeing engine antifreeze as soon as the engine starts. This information was conveyed on the last call to Hydro Hot when we asked if we could drive.  Hydro Hot technical support knows a lot, but they don't volunteer information; they will answer the question you asked.  Fortunately, we did ask at the very last minute.

Don of Copper Road RV (480-748-7131) came out and did the pump by-pass for us. 

This is the offending part.  It's the fuzzy thing in the top center of the photo.  I asked the shop in Albuquerque to order the part and have it air freighted to them.  After leaving here, we will go there.

This has been disturbing on so many fronts.  Losing the power steering going down to the Salt River could have been fatal.  The overall reliability of the engine has again been called in to question again.  That's actually not fair, I strongly suspect that the leak and the kink are fall out from the rebuild.  The Hydro Hot is disturbing because there are so few places certified to work on it, and it could have been so bad if we'd driven off believing we were peeing boiler antifreeze and not engine antifreeze.
So, we're back on the edge of the slough of despond.  There are worse places to be marooned, but I would really like to be able to put a set of reservations together and actually be where we wanted to be, and not where our broken bits have taken us.  

Tucson to Showlow, AZ

Yesterday's drive was from Tucson to Show Low, AZ.  We went via AZ60.  It was a day.  After arriving at the turn where we should have gone left into Florence, the GPS told us to go right.  So we did.  The next thing we knew we were out in the hinterlands with the GPS now trying to send us back where we should have gone in the first place.  We saw this.  Why is this truck blocking the road?  There was discussion of unhooking the pickup and trying to turn around and go back, but as we were waffling the truck finally cleared the road.  We kept driving through the featureless desert.

Then we saw the sign for the bridge with a weight limit of 6 tons.  We weigh about 36,000 pounds.  Apparently the bridge is stronger than they think it is because we crossed it.

Eventually we reached Florence.  Their main industry is prisons.  There are prisons everywhere.  It's a depressing place.

Then it was on to Globe.  See the "mountain" on the left?  Mine tailings.  They are all over this part of Arizona.

Globe is looking a little worse for wear.

After that it was on to the Salt River crossing.  We were moving from the bottom of the map to the top.  Those switchbacks are all 6% grades on a two lane road.  After you cross the river, it's about a 7% climb out of the canyon.  We knew this from reading the Mountain Directory West, but I have to tell you it was an impressive drive.

See the road down below where we currently are driving?

I took this as we were climbing back out of the canyon.

We were not expecting this.  It's an absolutely beautiful drive - at least for the passenger who can look out the window and gawk.

It's a strenuous drive.  There is much use of engine braking and there is much climbing.  I think the drive is actually worse going south bound due to really long steep grades.  The engine handled it well, there was no over heating.  I'm not sure we would do this route again in either direction, unless we really, really like Show Low.

More Cactus

This morning I was up and out early with the camera to see what the cactus were doing.  This is a tall cactus, and until this year I did not know it bloomed at all.  Each blossom lasts only one day, so you have to be quick.  Unfortunately its location causes it to be backlit by the morning sun.

It's very pretty.

The next three are all hybrids in the trichocereus family.

This is a wood pecker in a palm tree.  They're very noisy birds.

We have not accomplished all that we had hoped for today.  We have not been able to reach Mike to get the results of the testing on the transmission fluid.  It looks like we're going to have to leave here without changing the transmission fluid.  We did get the truck in to Jack Furrier to investigate the slow leak in the back tire.  There was a nail in the tire.
Fluid replacement in Tucson is becoming an issue for us.  We don't like the Freightliner people at all because they keep the RV all day, and even though you've made an appointment, they will not promise to get it done.  Kenmore has been great, but they've quit servicing RV's because so many RV owners (and their extended warranties) are just butt heads to deal with.  We may have to look at Phoenix for the yearly changing of the oil and etc.