When we got back from running our errands Barry and Colleen were set up in the space next to us. Interestingly, the people in the space on the other side of us were Bob and Bette Thomas. We have known the Thomas’ for several years. They are also full timers and are the Treasurer and Secretary of the 100%ers Chapter of FMCA. I am the President of the Chapter and Jackie is the National Director. After Barry and Colleen got settled in we spent the rest of the day and evening visiting and catching up. We had not seen them since we left the Indio area in April, just before we began our trip North. Jackie and Colleen played their beloved Skipbo card game and Barry and I spent several hours doing karaoke in the back of the coach.
Wednesday morning I got up early to take the new Jeep down to the Chrysler-Dodge-Jeep dealership in Pahrump for repairs. In our last blog episode I mentioned that the car had some issues, including an apparent oil leak and a check engine light which wouldn’t go out. Barry followed me down and brought me back to the coach after I dropped off the car. A little later in the day we all went to Romero’s, our favorite Mexican restaurant in Pahrump, for lunch. For those visiting Pahrump, Romero’s is off the main highway on Humahuacca Street, across from the Chrysler dealership. The food and service are great. After lunch we did a little shopping at Walmart and then the four of us went up to the Elks Lodge for a cocktail.
The lodge was very busy - a lot of the snowbirds and other RVers are coming into town this time of year. Since we were here in Pahrump last October the lodge has been able to reinstall slot machines in the bar. They had been without them for several years. We were just sitting, talking, having a drink and playing some nickel poker when I hit a Royal Flush! Even on nickels this was a $200 win! Yea! The timing was great because while we were at the lodge I got a call from the service writer at the Jeep dealership. It turns out that the oil leak was the result of a small hole in the oil cooler apparently caused when someone hit the front of the car and pushed the grill back into the cooler. This really ticked me off because we know that it happened before we bought the car - we had noticed a small crack in the plastic bumper cover when we got the car. We didn’t give it too much thought because we had already bought the car and it wasn’t a big crack. Since the damage to the cooler was due to an accident it would not be covered by the warranty. The service advisor told me that the cost to replace it would be just under $1,000! Yikes! The check engine light was caused by bad glow plugs and a bad controller for the glow plugs. At least that would be covered under the warranty. The service advisor told me that he had to order both the oil cooler and the glow plug controller module from the San Francisco warehouse and that they wouldn’t be in for at least two or three days. He did say we could pick up the car and drive it as long as we didn’t make any long trips. Barry drove me over and I picked up the car. We spent the rest of the day just hanging out in the coach.
We spent the next three days, Thursday, Friday and Saturday, just hanging out with the Cohen’s and having a good time. We hit a couple of casinos but didn’t have too much luck. After my Royal Flush at the Elk’s no one hit any really big jackpots. We had lunch one day at the brand new Italian restaurant in Pahrump, Tomasinno’s. It is right next door to Romero’s and is owned by one of the owners of the Chrysler dealership across the street. The food and service were excellent and I would recommend it to anyone who visits Pahrump and wants some Italian. It is also a jazz nightclub, but we never got back to it for the evening entertainment. On Saturday we saw in the newspaper that there was an Oktoberfest at one of the parks in town, so we decided to go check it out. It took us forever to find the park and when we did we found a VERY meager festival. All that was there was an amateur polka band and a couple of tables with homemade crafts. They also had a BBQ set up and were doing brats and sauerkraut. It took us about an hour to find the park and we stayed there for about five minutes!
On Sunday Barry and Colleen packed up and left Pahrump. Barry had to go back to work on Monday. By the way, he owns and operates a transmission repair shop in Cathedral City, California (near Palm Springs) and is one of the best transmission guys in the country. If any reader of this blog ever finds themselves in need of transmission work while in the Palm Springs/Indio area, call Courtesy Transmission and ask for Barry. After the Cohen’s left we pretty much stayed around the coach and relaxed for the next few days. I had to get up early Monday to go out and do my qualification shoot for my Federal concealed weapons permit. I met the weapons instructor in the desert and he had me shoot one magazine (10 rounds) at a target. Since all 10 rounds hit in the middle of the target he told me, “OK, good enough” and signed off my qualification form. It took me longer to drive out to the desert for the shoot than the shoot itself took. Oh well, it’s something I have to do every year to keep my permit active. For those that may not know, several years ago Congress passed a bill which exempts law enforcement officers, both active and retired, from any state law regarding possession or carrying of a handgun. The only caveat is that you have to have a certification from a law enforcement agency to qualify for the exemption. Nye County, the county in which Pahrump is located, makes it fairly easy for retired officers to get a permit. I only have to shoot once a year with a licensed firearms instructor, and give the Sheriff’s Office $25. For that I get my permit and don’t have to worry about violating state laws regarding handguns as we travel. Some states, California, Massachusetts, and New York especially, have very strict handgun laws. Although I almost never carry a gun on my person, I always have one in the coach so its nice to know that I don’t have to worry about being hassled about it as we travel around the country. Monday afternoon the Jeep dealer called and said the parts were in and told me to bring the car in on Wednesday. Monday night we played Texas Hold’em at the RV park in the evening. We always enjoy these poker games with the other RVers at the park. You have a good time for a couple hours and can’t lose more than five or ten bucks even on a bad night.
Wednesday I took the car in to the shop so we were “grounded” for the day. I picked the car up late in the afternoon all fixed, although still unhappy about having to pay $1,000 for the repairs. I put in a call for the owner of the dealership in Great Falls, Montana where we bought the car to tell him about the situation and see if I could get him to pay for the repairs. I wasn’t too hopeful since we bought the car used and the paperwork clearly stated it was “as is”, but I figured it couldn’t hurt to at least tell him that we thought his dealership pulled a fast one on us. Unfortunately, the owner wasn’t in, so I had to leave a message.
On Thursday, the 15th of October, we finally got our first chance since arriving in Pahrump to do some geocaching. We only found eight because they were all remote desert caches requiring us to do a lot of driving on desert back roads and some hiking into the cache locations. Although we prefer the urban style city caching, it is fun to get out into the desert once in a while. Friday the owner of the dealership called me back and I explained the issue of the damaged car to him. He seemed to be concerned and told me he wanted to “check into” the problem and he would get back to me. I am a little more hopeful, but only a little.
Sunday, October 18th my brother Russ and his wife drove up to Pahrump from Vegas to spend the afternoon with us. We had taken them caching with us when we in Las Vegas a couple weeks before and both seemed to enjoy it. In fact, Russ told me that he
had gone out on his own and gotten several caches around his house in Vegas. Since they were interested, the four of us went out and did some caching in Pahrump. We found another three caches that were new to us, plus we took Russ by two or three other caches that we had
previously found so that he could get his find count up. After caching we had a nice BBQ at the coach before Russ and Zen headed back down to Las Vegas. Monday, the 19th, was our last day in Pahrump - seemed like the two weeks went by very fast. We went out and did some final caching and managed to add another five to our count.Tuesday, October 20th, we got up and headed out about 10:00 a.m. heading South. We are due in Tucson, Arizona for a Monaco rally on Friday, the 23rd, but we are going to split the 500 mile trip into three segments. Tuesday’s drive was about 160 miles from Pahrump to Needles, California. The hardest part of the trip was the 30 miles through metropolitan Las Vegas. Even though it was mostly freeway, it is still a lot of traffic and road construction. We got into Needles mid afternoon and settled into the Needles Marina RV park for the night. We didn’t even unhook the car, so we just stayed in and relaxed. The next morning, Wednesday, we left Needles and headed South through California to Interstate 10 near Blythe, California. There we turned
East and headed into Arizona, ultimately stopping at the Saddle Mountain RV park in Tonopah, Arizona. Tonopah is about 30 miles West of Phoenix, out in the middle of the desert. Its only claim to fame is that it is only a couple of miles from the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station, the largest nuclear power plant in the country. Again, we stayed in and relaxed for our one night stay.Thursday morning we left Tonopah and headed towards Tucson. We bypassed the Phoenix metropolitan area and finally stopped at an RV park along Interstate 10 about 20 miles North of Tucson. This would be our last stop before heading into the rally on Friday. After doing our laundry we just hung around the coach. This RV park, Picacho RV Resort, was also out in the middle of nowhere. Finally, Friday, October 23rd we left Picacho and headed the final 50 miles into Tucson to the Beaudry RV Resort. This resort was the site of the Monaco rally. This rally was the first that Monaco has put on since their bankruptcy in early 2009. Most of Monaco’s motorhome assets were purchased by the Navistar Corporation. Navistar has its roots in the old International Harvester company which used to make tractors and trucks. Navistar now has subsidiary companies that make International Trucks, buses, Workhorse motorhome chassis’, all the Monaco products (Monaco, Holiday Rambler, Safari and Beaver) and an Indian company that makes cars, trucks and farm equipment in India. They also have a number of other companies that are in the defense industry area. The rally we are attending is a Monaco corporate rally so there are a lot of the Monaco executives that attend and put on seminars. They are expecting over 500 coaches to attend, so it will be a very big rally. We are looking forward to it. The last Monaco corporate rally we attended was in Oregon about two years ago.
The actual rally starts on Monday, but we wanted to come in early so we could do a little exploring a caching in Tucson before the rally. We got settled into our spot and were going to go out and explore a little, but we got a call from the service writer that a service tech was on his way to our coach to check our slide problem. We had put in an advance notice to Beaudry regarding any service issues we wanted taken care of while at the rally. We had written up the problem we are having with our large living room slide not coming in without me having to go outside and push. We also had a couple of other minor issues. The technician came to the coach and checked the slide and told us that it was definitely the motor that needed replacing. He also fixed a small problem with one of the body panels coming loose by putting in a new screw. He told us that he would write up the motor issue so the service writer could check with our extended warranty company to get approval to replace the motor.
Since having the technician around pretty much used up Friday we didn’t go anywhere else. I went to the Beaudry parts counter and bought some stuff I needed to fix some of the lights inside the coach and spent an hour or so working on the lights. I try to have service people only work on those things I can’t do myself - it’s a whole lot cheaper since living in a motorhome means pretty much always having to fix something. We also walked over and met up with some old friends that we hadn’t seen in about a year, Ray and Susie Babcock, and Gary and Ramona Wilson. Both Ray and Gary are retired fireman from California. Ray and Susie are full timers, in fact, Ray is the Vice President of the 100%ers Chapter of FMCA. Gary and Ramona just went full time this year when they finally got their house rented. We stopped by and visited for a little while and caught up. Gary and Ramona work-camped all summer in Colorado, while Ray and Susie work-camped in the Lake Tahoe area. So far we have not been tempted to work-camp, but it certainly remains an option down the road..
Saturday we were contacted by the service writer who told us that they could take the motorhome into the shop to do the front wheel bearing pack that I had requested. We also found out that the shop had our slide motor in stock and that the total cost was just under the $500 deductible for our extended warranty, so we wouldn’t have to worry about getting approval. Sort of good news-bad news! Anyway, we packed up the coach and they picked it up at our site and took it into the garage. We headed out to do some geocaching in the area and then some shopping. We went out and spent a couple of hours caching and managed to get five more finds. When we got back to the park we found they had finished the repairs and parked the coach back in our spot. After getting set back up we went out and visited with some friends, Vernon and Peggy, who had just arrived at the rally site. They had been on the Alaska caravan with us and are very nice people. They have a Monaco coach and we had talked them into coming to the rally. We went out to dinner with them to a local Mexican restaurant. They are from Northern California and still have a house in Redding, California, although they spend most of the year on the road.
Sunday, October 25th was the last day we had before the rally starts on Monday. We decided that we would invite some of our friends who are at the rally for a Halibut cookout on Sunday afternoon. Jackie made a big pot of Halibut chowder on Saturday (it’s better if it sets for a day) and did some baked Halibut for the dinner. We had Ray and Susie, Gary and Ramona and Vernon and Peggy all over at our coach and had a wonderful pot luck. Everyone loved the fish and the chowder.
Monday, October 26th, I got up early and headed out by 7:00 a.m. over to a tire shop about a mile from the campground. We had gotten to the point where I felt we had to get new tires for the coach. The coach came with Goodyear tires and they just did not wear well. They did have about 50,000 miles on them, but they were wearing badly and one of the front tires was out of round, all of this causing a lot of bumping and bouncing while on the road. When we had arrived in Tucson on Friday I had made some calls getting estimates for new tires. Camping World, which was located right next door to Beaudry, wanted just under $3,500 for six new tires, but they only sold the same type Goodyear motorhome tires which I had on the coach. Beaudry wanted $3,600 for six Goodyears, and $4,400 for six Michelins. I finally called Western Tire and got an estimate for six Michelins for just a little over $3,500. This made me happy because I knew that the Michelins were usually more expensive than the Goodyears and everything that I had read indicated that people who switched to Michelins got better wear and better ride.
The reason I was up so early on Monday was that I had talked to the guy at Western Tire and gotten the estimate about 1:00 p.m. on Saturday. When I called him back about two hours later he indicated that he had gotten three other calls for the same tires, and he only had ten tires in stock. He told me that he would hold them for me until Monday morning, but that I had to show up early because he would sell them to the first person that came in and paid for them. Since I didn’t want to get Jackie up at 5:00 a.m. to pack up the coach, I headed over there in the car to look at the tires and pay for them, if necessary, to keep them available. I also wanted to check the dates on the tires to make sure they weren’t too old. Federal law requires the manufacturer to put a date code on every tire indicating the week and year of manufacture. You never want to buy a tire that is more than a year old at the time you put it on your vehicle.
I got to the shop and told the guy that I was there to “claim” the tires and that I would get the coach over in about an hour. We started the paperwork which held the tires, although he didn’t make me pay in advance. When I checked the dates on the six tires he had brought over from the warehouse I found that one was about a year and a half old. I asked him to check the other four he had in the warehouse to see if there was a newer one because I didn’t want any tires over a year old. He did and I ended up with three tires that were almost exactly one year old and three that were about six months old. I then went back to the RV park, got the coach and brought it over. While they were putting on the tires Jackie and I went out for breakfast and did some caching. We only found one cache because it only took them about 90 minutes to change out the tires. We took the coach back to the RV park and parked it in our spot again.
After getting the coach set back up again, we went over to the service center to talk to our service advisor. We had been under the impression that when they had replaced our slide motor on Saturday while the coach was in the shop having the front wheel bearing work done. When we had tried to put the slide in on Monday morning to take the coach to the tire shop, the slide wouldn’t come in and I had to go out and push, just like before. Come to find out, they hadn’t installed the motor yet. The tech got busy when the coach was in the shop on Saturday and never got around to putting it in. Late Monday morning the technician came out to our site and installed the new motor. It still doesn’t make the slide come in fast - I think we would need a bigger motor for that - but at least it comes in without any help.
After lunch we headed over to the exhibit area to check out the new coaches that they had on display. The seminars and vendor displays don’t start until Tuesday, but Monday you could go through the new coaches and they were going to have an “Oktoberfest” party with brats and beer in the afternoon. We went over with several other friends to check out the new coaches. What we found were mostly a lot of new 2008 coaches that were left over. There were also a couple of 2009's that had been built before Monaco went bankrupt in early 2009. Since Monaco, under their new ownership, had only started building coaches again in June of 2009 there were only a couple of actual brand new 2010 models on display. Back a couple of years ago Monaco was building 40 coaches a week in their plants - right now, just starting back up, they are doing about 8 a week. They are also only building coaches that have been ordered, no more “spec” coaches, at least for the time being. As we could see with the stock on display at the rally, dealers still have a lot of brand new two year old coaches for sale, leftovers from when the bottom dropped out of the RV market.
We spent a couple of hours checking out coaches and didn’t see anything new or different, or enticing enough for us to consider a new coach. We also stayed for the brats, which were pretty good, as well as the open bar, which was even better! After the party we went back to the coach for the rest of the night. After getting up so early and staying busy all day, I was pooped.
Tuesday morning, October 27th, was when the “real” rally started. They served breakfast in the morning and the seminars started about 8:00 a.m. Since we have been to so many rallies over the last four years, we have been to a lot of the seminars already, so we didn’t head over to the rally center until mid morning. We went through the vendor sales area and were surprised that there were several dozen vendors that had decided to come to the rally. We hadn’t thought this was going to be a real big rally when we first signed up five months ago, but there were over 500 coaches in attendance, so I guess the vendors heard about the number of sign-ups and decided to come. Jackie and I both went to a couple of seminars, pretty much those that were put on by the Monaco corporate staff. The VP of Product Development always puts on a pair of seminars, one for men only and one for women only. Both are well attended and they give the current Monaco (and Beaver, Safari and Holiday Rambler) owners an opportunity to provide input for future coaches on what they like, don’t like or would like to see in a coach. These seminars are always very interesting to attend.
Each afternoon, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, at 3:45 the various dealerships represented at the rally held a keg party out where the coach displays were. Since they only served beer and wine we always skip those. At 5:00 p.m. each of the three days they have an open bar in the dining hall. THAT we attend! The bar is open until around 6:00, then they have brief presentations and announcements and then they serve dinner. The dinners are always buffet, but the food is usually pretty good. On Tuesday they had Mexican food. After dinner they always have entertainment. Sometimes it is good, sometimes not so much. On Tuesday evening they had Jim Stafford, a comedian/musician who was excellent - a very funny guy that I would go to see again in venue like a casino or something.
Wednesday was pretty much a repeat of Tuesday, as was Thursday. A little walking around, a couple of seminars, then cocktails at 5:00 and dinner at 6. Wednesday’s dinner was turkey and meatloaf - OK, but not super good. Thursday’s dinner was flat iron steak which was pretty tasty. The entertainment both nights was some husband/wife singing team. Wednesday was supposed to be 50's - 60's music so we, along with most of the rest of the 1,000 or so people in the room stuck around to see how it was. The sound was horrible - they couldn’t get their sound system to mesh with the system in the hall. They also were not that good at singing. They were essentially doing karaoke - I saw the TV monitor on the stage and I recognized some of the soundtracks they were using as the same ones I have on my system. Bottom line was, after about 20 minutes, most of the people, including us, left. On Thursday night, most everyone left immediately after dinner and didn’t even wait for the show to start. I know we didn’t miss too much because as we were leaving the guy was doing some Willy Nelson songs and he was very bad. Oh well.
After I had the tires put on the coach on Monday, I never left the rally grounds until Friday morning. Jackie and Peggy went out to lunch on Wednesday to a local Greek restaurant. I guess it was good, they were raving about it. I’m not too big on Greek food. After Thursday’s dinner we headed back to the coach and crashed. Four days of being on your feet, walking around and drinking and eating nonstop makes you tired. Poor us!
Friday morning was the end of the rally. Everyone who had not registered to stay extra days at Beaudry had to be out of the park by 12:00. We were out at our usual 10:00 and on the freeway headed North towards Phoenix. We are going to stay in Phoenix, actually Goodyear on the far West end of town, for four days before heading up to Camp Verde, North of Phoenix. Camp Verde is a Western Horizon park and is actually our home park. We bought our WHR membership there a few months after we bought the coach and we have never been back there. We get a lot of use out of WHR, we spend a lot of time in different resorts, we just never made it back to our “home” park. We are going to spend two weeks in Camp Verde. The park is only about 20 miles from Cottonwood, Arizona, which is where my brother Dennis lives.
Well loyal readers, that is where we will end this chapter of the life and travels of Roy and Jackie. Join us in a few weeks to see what we are up to in the wilds of Central Arizona. Until then, stay safe, be happy and live well. Adios.
