Our 2006 Inaugural Bus Trip Part 8
Posted: Thursday March 24, 2016
Some of you may get this blog via email. That is easy to do by filling out the subscription on the right hand column. If you like to follow our travels that is a convenient way to know when we post something. We only post when we travel and there are times that it is several weeks between posts. If you subscribe you will not have to check in to see if we have left the house {grin}.
The downside to email subscription is that you get to see all the mistakes I make. With the blog I can go back and change my error, but that is not possible with the email version. The changes are almost always editorial and really don’t affect the main content of the blog.
For some reason I have had a terrible time getting my dates correct on the past seven posts. It is corrected on the blog, but email readers will wonder if I have lost what little bit of brain power I have left!
Now for the last installment of the 2006 inaugural trip:
Hello from Rifle CO.
Tuesday evening April, 11 2006. Eighth travelogue of this trip.
Well, we are nearly home (about 175 miles to go). So far we have traveled right at 2400 miles in the bus and 3-400 miles in the Durango. The bus has done very well. We had an air hose develop a hole in it today (pretty easy to fix) and the engine warning lights went on. The lights scared the heck out of me, but our electronic gage system (on our laptop) quickly told me that the low water sensor had “shot a code”. Simple solution was to add some antifreeze (had some with me) and then add some distilled water tonight. I guess that I must have done my homework OK, since we have not had any major problems. OR , maybe, it was because I loaded the bus with lots of tools and parts. I guess that is like buying insurance that you hope you never have to use. OR, maybe it was just plain dumb luck.
The Durango did not do as well. It started to run funky in the middle of Death Valley. I looked up the records and determined that it had not been tuned up in 50K miles! I bought some spark plugs and that helped. I need to change a couple of other things. The old girl has hung in there pretty well mechanically for 110K miles.
Friday we watched the races from the camping area. Pretty darn comfortable. Saturday we watched the qualifying from reserved seats close to the starting line. Talk about noise and vibration, there is no way to describe top fuel racing. At lunch time, we went to the Gates’ hospitality area at the Schumacher racing compound and had grilled Salmon!
Sunday we watched the first two rounds from the stands. We watched the last two rounds from the campground area (the noise/heat/vibration got to be too much). Before we went to the campground, we again had lunch at the Gates area and this time we had grilled chicken and wild rice.
The races were great and the folks who won were among our favorites.
Monday I had to ship another order. I got back to the campground around 10:00 and we got ready to hit the road. However, we first did a very short trip to the parking lot of the racetrack so that I could go in and watch some testing by the fuel cars. That gave me the opportunity to say hi to a few more friends and watch the cars launch right from the starting line.
Yesterday we drove to Richfield UT and stayed at Camp Wal Mart. The drive from Las Vegas to Richfield is absolutely stunning.
Today we drove to Rifle. Again, we believe this to be one of the most picturesque drives in the USA.
Tomorrow we get to pull the big hills on the way home.
We have been gone for just over 5 weeks. It is a good thing that I have documented our travels, because the trip has kind of been a blur. Without question, we have really enjoyed ourselves. There were times that we got to relax, but most of the time we were on the go –obviously doing fun things. We look forward to being home, but I would bet that we will be looking forward to our next trip within a week of setting foot on our property.