Cold Rainy Day in Kanab

This is what we saw this morning in an RV park in Kanab.  That is a Silver Streak - I believe it's from the late 1970's.  They are such gorgeous trailers.  Also interesting is the vehicle with it.

This is some sort of European truck.  I need to go back and get a better picture of it.

Today started out with sun, but cold and really windy.  We drove out to Best Friends and thought about doing the tour, but we were not dressed correctly for the climate.  The wind was just whipping through our clothes.  So we went for a drive.
There were a lot of interesting rock formations.  Photography was difficult due to the cloud cover. As we approached the east end of Zion it was snowing on us.

Coral Sand, we didn't go into the state park.

This afternoon we have had torrential rain and dropping temperatures.  It could be worse, we could be in the nation's mid-section having tornadoes, or on the east coast anticipating the tropical storms.
If you read yesterday's post, I had pictures of an old building in disrepair.  Turns out it's an old movie set.  Kanab used to be quite the movie town for the filming of westerns.
Tomorrow we're going into St. George.  I need to go to Target.  Prices on things like plastic cutlery and paper plates are just ridiculous here.  People who live in remote small towns just pay through the nose for everything, and Kanab is no exception.

Cottonwood Trail in Kanab

Today we hiked out on the Cottonwood Trail.  The trail goes up and down, up and down across the fingers at the base of a mesa.  Is there a word for that part of a mesa, where it trails off onto the flats?  Anyway, it's a nice hike, but there are some pretty steep places.  Eventually we came upon a jeep trail and walked on for awhile.  We found this abandoned home site.  It's out in the middle of nowhere.  One wonders how they got all the building materials on site.
Update to post:  In the past, many westerns were filmed in Kanab and the surrounding area.  This is an old movie set used to film the "Apple Dumpling Gang."

An attractive dead tree.

See the trail going straight up?  Lot's of up and down here.

This is a large water course that's been carved.  It's a tiny goose neck.

It's not a terrible hike.  The best part was the jeep trail.  Its was flat and high up so we could see stuff.  Finding the old homestead was interesting.
I have new hiking shoes.  I have not yet totally bonded with them.  Of the 15 or so pairs that I've bought, these are the best so far, but they're not as good as my old ones.

Update on Working on the Beaver Monterey Engine

This is a cherry picker - it's an air driven lift.  Mike, on the right, and Matt are trying to attach the chain to the cylinder head so they can get it out.  The cylinder head is about 200 pounds.

Matt ended up crawling into the engine compartment to work on it.  Good thing he's young, flexible and wiry.

Here is an update on the Beaver.  We don't have to pull the engine, so there will be no cutting off of the back of the bus.  Essentially we are doing an in-frame engine rebuild.  We'll be doing cylinder kits (new sleeves and pistons), new fuel injectors, and new rod bearings.  Interestingly enough, the Caterpillar C9 is not a popular engine in this part of the country.  Getting parts has just been a bear.
The new bad news today is that the turbo charger is in the process of failing.  The center shaft has back and forth play in it.  This is a bad thing.  It can be rebuilt, and shouldn't cost an arm and a leg.
ALL of this is unexpected and Mike has referred to it as a freak failure.  I've asked if we can ever trust this engine again, and he assures us that we can.  The engine is very clean.  There's no sludge, no build up - no explanation for any of this.

We're exhausted.  Stress has an amazing ability to tire a person out.  We think we're going to try a flatish hike tomorrow and get the blood moving.  At this point we do not know when we'll be out of Kanab.  Stand by to be amazed.

Working on a Beaver Monterey Engine

Apparently when Monaco designed this RV, the thought that the engine might fail never occurred to them.  Thus their design paradigm involved the idea that an engine accessible through the owner’s bedroom closet floor, under the bed and through the main floor would be a good thing.  We can assure you that it is not. 

We have a specialized stick that holds up the bed.  Cascade Diesel made it for us and let us keep it.  In order to check the transmission fluid levels, the bed must be lifted.

Here is view of the engine as seen through the bedroom floor.

It’s good that this diesel mechanic is young, flexible and strong. 

They put the camera down to look at the pistons.  Number 6 absolutely needs to be re-sleeved.  Number 4 is questionable.  The camera is not a precision tool, I couldn’t make out anything.  It was sort of like reading gram stained slides in microbiology, they all looked like pink and purple blobs to me.

The cylinder head must be pulled.  This will allow visual inspection of the pistons as well as checking  other parts of the engine for damage.  It’s a difficult quest.

See the black thing sort of centered in the photo?  That’s the valve cover.  Underneath that is the cylinder head.  All of that wiring, piping and stuff has to come out.

Here is Jim, returning from one of his multiple trips to empty the dishpan, thus keeping water out of the grey tank.

So, at this point we don’t know what will happen yet.  Having to do a short block is the absolute nightmare scenario.  Why, you ask?  Because they may have to cut the back of the bus off.  Yep, I’m serious.  The front cap of the bus, the roof, and the back of the bus are one giant piece of fiber glass.  Apparently it never occurred to the Monaco engineers that an engine might have to be pulled.  If we were at a different shop, with a larger pit, the engine could be dropped.  This shop’s pit is not wide enough.  We’re trying to be positive about this, but it is difficult.  Actually, I’m on the edge of the slough of despond.

So, if you are in the market for a Class A ask the question – how is the engine accessed?  If the motor must be replaced, how is that accomplished?  Do not believe the smiling sales person who tells you that your engine will cheerfully go 300,000 miles with routine maintenance. 

Doing Time in Kanab

Prior to today, which is Monday, we had these thoughts.

We arrived at Little’s Diesel on April 29.  We’ve been parked with power and water, but no sewer.  I used to think that I would like to try boondocking, assuming we could find a road our low slung dachshund-like RV could navigate.  Hah!  Double hah hah hah!  I do not like being this gray tank constrained, it just wears on me.
Saturday we went to the dollar store and bought a 3 gallon dishpan.  It’s amazing how much water goes down the sink just from hand washing, tooth brushing (with the water turned off), and dishes.  We thought we had been conserving, until we put that dishpan in the sink.  We let it get about half full and then Jim takes it across the street and dumps it in the weeds.  He’s been out 4 times today, and we still have to get through dinner.  So that’s 6 gallons right there in one day.  We had to get through 3 days before the Party Pooper lady returned on Monday to empty the tanks.  I do not like this lifestyle.  My hat is off to people who boondock and enjoy it, but I am not ever going to be one of those people.
We have made peace with the fact that we are RV park people and we’re not going to worry about it anymore.  That will leave more boondocking for the people who do like it.
We’re not as tired as we were when we arrived.  Watching the RV being carried down the road was incredibly stressful.  We’ve been sleeping in and telling ourselves it will all work out.  I realize it’s not world hunger, but having the engine die like this with only 60k miles on it has been demoralizing.  It’s supposed to be a 300k engine.  It’s going to be awhile before we’re comfortable driving across the middle of nowhere again.  I really like RVing, it’s good to change one’s location without having to pack and unpack.  I like having my stuff.  But I really hate engine failures.

Now it is Monday. 

We have an undetermined number of bad fuel injectors.  We have at least two bad pistons.  Because our engine is a “wet sleeve”, the pistons can be re-sleeved instead of doing a short block replacement.  However, all is not yet good.  There is still the possibility of damage to other parts of the engine, which would require a new short block.  A new short block is a very big deal. Re-sleeving will take at least two weeks.
All of this is exacerbated by a troubled tank clean out today.  There was a spill. We don’t know why the spill occurred.  There has been no leakage since the Party Pooper lady left, but there was spill during the clean out.  So, tonight and tomorrow night we are in a hideously expensive Holiday Inn Express because we’re afraid to put anything else in the tanks. 
I realize that this doesn’t meet the criterion of the awfulness of Nepal, or some of the other recent terrible things that have happened, but this is a very big deal in our lives.  We’ve completely lost faith in this engine and are wondering if we should buy a house or a travel trailer, or something less complicated than a Class A.  We’re not going to go RV shopping anytime soon, but it’s a possibility.

The Bunting Trail in Kanab

Today was a day of unstable air.  This is what we saw this morning on our way out to hike another of the Kanab trail system.

Is anyone familiar with this?  The sign was stapled to the kiosk at the trail head.  What are they trapping?  Why?  Do people go out and check the traps?  What?  I think I'll call the Field Office Monday and ask what the deal is.

The cactus are still blooming alongside of the trail.

The trail starts out flat for about a quarter of a mile. It is supremely uninteresting at the start. Then the trail heads up.

I think this is the worst trail we have ever hiked.  It's incredibly steep.  What makes it so terrible is the trail deteriorates from being a trail to more of a drainage ditch full of rubble.  We gave it half an hour and decided that we did not want to do any more up because we were not looking forward to going down the loose rocks.  It was the correct decision.  We were both sliding downhill in places.

Look at the sky, that's an anvil cloud forming.

More scenery.

This is what we saw on the way out to do laundry.  Look in the lower right corner of the picture, and you can see virga over the mesas. 

After our unsatisfactory hike, there was laundry.  While we were in the laundromat it started pouring.  The power went out briefly.  When it came back on, the dryers would not restart without more money.  We were done, but there were some unhappy campers there.

And thus another day passes in Kanab.