rachelle_keller

We left Yellowstone in October but have been mostly parked in one place for weeks at a time. Where's the adventure in that?

Leaving the RV Park
Yesterday at noon was "checkout time" at the ol' Anaheim Harbor RV park. It was a lovely stay, being able to walk to Disneyland at any time and all, but we were ready to move on. In fact, The rent there is over a thousand dollars a month for a few square feet of freshly-sealed asphalt! Couldn't afford to stay there anyway. Plus, our decision to leave was that the winter cold front was coming in. That means cold and rain. Yeah, it rarely rains in SoCal, but during these cold wet times it can be downright miserable for going to Disneyland. We weren't even going to consider paying that kind of rent to stay home in the bus. We didn't hook the car and tow dolly onto the back of the bus right away, Big Al drove the bus and I followed him with the car and tow dolly "in tow". As I watched the bus leave the RV park I realized that the "dip" in the driveway going out was going to be perhaps a bit of a problem. Often going in and out of the park we would scrape the trailer hitch on the ground ever-so-slightly. The bus had a big ol' hitch with our Stinger Hitch "landing gear" attached. Needless to say, it was looooowwwww. So as the bus departed the RV park with a large scraping sound...and a rather large furrow in the edge of said "freshly sealed asphalt". From the other marks I realize that we weren't the first, and we won't be the last. Se ya next time Anaheim RV!

Last Day at Disneyland
On to Disneyland! Okay, it was less than a mile but I had never been there with the bus before. We both have annual passes so we didn't have to pay the $22.00 for the bus and $12.00 for the car to park. Annual passes are great! After an unexpectedly good lunch at the ESPN Zone in Downtown Disney (we had not been there before, ever. Sports aren't our thing. We're nerds), we entered Disneyland via the Monorail.  Disneyland brought a new Mark VII monorail into service last summer. It is modeled and colored after the original Monorail that Walt Disney had enjoyed, lack of proper air conditioning and all. We had been drooling over riding that monorail train since we saw the test runs in July. On this trip it seemed that every time we took the Monorail into Disneyland we got the creaky old trains. They just weren't running the new one because Disney's fine "legal department" said that the windows didn't open far enough to allow for adequate ventilation. Yet, open the windows any farther and someone might fall out. Go figure. The new train is not equipped with mechanical a/c.

So on the way in we took the Monorail and got the NEW train. Not only did we get the NEW train, the conductor asked us if we wanted to sit up front with the driver! Not only was this the first time we had ridden the new Monorail train, but we also got to ride up front! We would have been happy just riding on the new Monorail, but UP FRONT! Wow. Congratulations, Disney. In the "Year of a Million Dreams" in a place where "Dreams Really Do Come True...", you made a score!

We left Disneyland just as the first of the cold front was beginning to roll in. The skies were getting cloudy, the wind was picking up, and the air was noticeable cooler. It was just as well. Disneyland was swinging into the full holiday season where even during the weekdays it is wall-to-wall and shoulder-to-shoulder people. We have been spoiled by the "slow times" so we feel no urge to fight the crowds.


Leaving Disneyland
Now was the time to hook the car onto the back of the bus, generally not a difficult task in and of itself. However, on the right ( passenger side) of the car tow dolly, the tire was low. Putting a couple thousand pounds of Hyundai Sonata on top of it didn't help matters. No problem. We have everything with us...like an air compressor to fill the tire. Since this is an electric air compressor, I started the main bus generator...after a couple of tries (we hadn't started it in a while) it turned over, ran for about 30 seconds, and died. The main generator runs off of the bus fuel supply, which was hovering just above, maybe, an eight of a tank. Not enough fuel in the bus to run the generator. No problem, we have a backup generator that runs on gas, except we have never used it and it didn't actually have any gas in it, plus it still needed oil. The backup, backup generator...also out of gas.

The SMART thing to do would have been to roll the car back off the dolly, take the gas can, drive around the corner, fill the gas can, come back in and fill the little generator. But that would be no fun, nor would it be an "adventure". We left the car loaded and figured we would just drive with the extremely low tire until we could find a place to pull off for air...or so we thought. Did you know that in greater Orange County and the Inland Empire along higways 60 and 91 there are NO filling stations big enough to accommodate a 50-foot+ setup of a bus and a car, let alone a normal diesel with a tractor trailer? Nope. No truck stops, depots (that aren't commercial), filling stations, or the like, anywhere. There were gas stations where we could have at least got some air for the tire, but getting off the freeway, squeezing through the station and the streets would have been a nightmare. Some of the businesses and exits were even closed because of the recent fires. I admit it was kind of creeping looking up on the hillside just yards away and seeing whole townhome complexes completely gutted by fire as well as the RV park in the riverbottoms where we once stayed just completely charred. Did I mention that we had a little over an eighth of a tank of diesel fuel in the bus?

Mounting Stress
We were going through Orange County's Inland Empire, and although it is sunday, traffic is just crawling as usual. I am on my iPhone desperately trying to find any location for "diesel" fuel or air...at the same time using my 3-year-outdated truck stop directory. Nothing. It's getting dark. We moved into Riverside County. I could not believe that the "next 12 exits" were for Riverside and not a single &@^%# truck stop to be found. Our bus has an old, but sturdy and strong, Detroit Diesel 2-stroke engine and must be kept "in the power band" (higher rpm's) to function properly. That can't be good on fuel. Plus we are going up and down hills. It's the up part that stressed me the most.

Then Big Al says, "What the...", and the driver's side mirror had come loose and was about to fall out. He was able to catch it and bring it in before it crashed to the ground at 50-60 mph. The driver's side mirror is absolutely critical for lane changes. From that point, if he needed to change lanes he would just hold the mirror out the window. Quite funny, now that I think about it, but scary. The edges are sharp. So picture it now being dark, traffic has thinned somewhat, and Big Al is sticking his arm out the window holding a large mirror panel to make a lane change. Funny! Now, how to reattach the thing. It's going to take some special adhesive for sure!

The tire on the tow dolly was still holding out...Wooo!

An Oasis in the Desert
I don't know how far we had gone, but shining like a beacon in the desert was the Morongo Casino, Resort, and Fuel Station! Thank God for "indian casinos" in the middle of nowhere! It wasn't exactly a truck stop but there was plenty of room for us to pull in and get fuel for the bus. I'm not sure if diesels can "run on fumes" but that might have been an accurate description. Then using convenient pay-at-the-pump technology, we put fuel in the bus $125.00 at a time. The pump would stop at $125.00 every time. I think we only did this twice. Fuel prices were down so we got much more for our dollar than we did the previous year.

The gas station/mini mart was large and well-lit. We also filled the generators with regular gas. Which would have been easy, for the most part, but MY cards would not work at the pump. Hey, my money's good too! We could have filled the gas can too, but why do we have a gas can with NO cap? And the new generator needed oil...where the heck do we put it and how much? We just winged it. It worked out ok.

Another benefit to this particular oasis...FREE air! Oh, yeah! I was able to put air in the dolly tire at last. Notice I said "I". Not that Big Al didn't want to do it, but someone had to stay in the bus with their foot on the brake because the emergency brake isn't working all that well. A huge bus rolling downhill out-of-control, not a good idea. There wer no further problems with the tire dolly.


"Indian Casinos" are Great!
Unlike Las Vegas casinos, this casino/resort was open and welcome to RVers overnighting in their parking lot...most likely in hopes of a cash "donation" deposited via the hundres of slot machines housed within. There was an obvious lack of video poker machines. I was kinda bummed. We went in to get a nice hot dinner anyway. It was just like any Las Vegas casino as they were trying to entice California residents to drive there for the weekend rather than Las Vegas. We laughed because they had dance clubs with live bands. Two of the bands on the list were bands that had been playing at Disneyland for the past 4 years or so. They were good, so they moved on, I guess.

The food was good and the night was exceptionally quiet. The new generator ran our electric blanket for roughly 8 hours. We decided if we were just going to use the electric blanket it's best to run the smaller generator. More time, less fuel. It's all part of the "adventure".

The next day we pulled out. Al kinda "fixed" the mirror. Nice. It just kinda matches the "motif".


And in the first half hour of travel we passed probably 10 truck stops.