Telescoping ladder

Many RVs come with a ladder built in on the back, but unfortunately ours did not. Apparently the latest trend is to skip the ladder, so I guess our coach was ahead of the curve. Still, being able to climb onto the roof, or reach other high parts of the sides, is rather useful. Especially since the coach is 12’ 7” high.

So, another useful recent purchase was a ladder. A rather versatile ladder: it can be collapsed for compact storage, and extended to various heights up to 16.5 feet, plenty to reach our roof, plus can fold in the middle to make a two-sided A-frame ladder about 8 feet high, perfect for reaching up the sides. Yet it’s lightweight, at only 38 pounds:

Ladder

Here it is collapsed and stored in the back of our truck:

Ladder

Travel from Phoenix to Salome, AZ

We departed Phoenix, Arizona and headed to Salome, Arizona. Our last coach drive of 2021.

Here’s the map route (going from right to left); 113 miles, a couple of hours drive in our coach:

Map route

Paladin wasn’t thrilled, as usual:

Paladin

We were passed by a Tiffin Phaeton coach, and fellow Oregonians too:

Phaeton RV

Some pics of the road, desert, and hills:

Road

Road

Road

A stop for lunch:

Lunch

Continuing down the road:

Road

Road

Road

Our destination until mid-January:

RV park

Stay tuned for a timelapse video!

Dry camping at Straight Line RV

The coach was with Straight Line RV in Phoenix, Arizona to replace and paint some basement doors, while we were staying at an Airbnb. They did excellent work; I highly recommend them.

They weren’t quite finished after we checked out of the Airbnb, so we spent the night in their yard:

Coach

Not a big deal; the coach is self-contained. And they even provided a 50 amp electrical hookup, so we could run the AC without needing the generator (they had kept it plugged in while working on it, to keep the fridge going):

Coach

We shared the yard with some fire vehicles:

Fire engine

Coach and fire engine

Coach

Morning:

Coach

Coach

Coach

Slides in, ready to head out:

Slides in

The electric door locks weren’t working quite right, but they went above and beyond to drive a three-hour roundtrip to our next campsite to try to fix them. It turned out to be a manufacturing fault with one of the small doors, so I decided to leave that as a manually-locking door, since I very rarely use that compartment. (They would have fixed it for us, but it wasn’t worth the hassle.)

Again, I highly recommend Straight Line RV for any RV body or paint work. They did a great job, and were very accommodating to work with.

What’s the difference between an RV resort, RV park, campground, moochdocking, dispersed camping, and boondocking?

In my posts about places we’ve stayed, you may have noticed some patterns in the names, e.g. Shadow Hills RV Resort and Coyote Valley RV Resort, compared to Sonoran Desert RV Park and Orange Grove RV Park.

You may have wondered, what makes some an “RV resort”, and others an “RV park”? (Or you may not.)

Well, places can call themselves whatever they want, of course, but generally an RV resort will have nicer facilities and amenities. For example, a resort would typically have large paved sites, compared to gravel for a park; a nicer pool and clubhouse; and services like garbage pickup from the site, where you just put garbage bags out front and they collect it, vs taking it to a dumpster, and propane refilling, where they collect an empty propane cylinder and refill it for you, instead of lugging it yourself.

A comparison; here’s our site at Coyote Valley RV Resort:

Large site

vs our site at Orange Grove RV Park:

Campsite

Both very nice, in different ways, but some differences.

Then there are other types, for example Thousand Trails San Benito Preserve I would characterize as a campground; a mixture of RV sites, tent sites, and cabins. A little more rustic than a typical RV park:

Truck and coach in new campsite

Similarly, state parks like Valley of the Rogue State Park I would also call a campground, also with lots of trees, and sometimes not full hookups (though in this case paved sites):

Truck and coach in campsite

There are other situations, such as services like Harvest Hosts, where companies let people stay overnight in their parking lot, and Boondockers Welcome, where people let RVs stay for a day or two on their property. (These two services have now merged.) We tried the latter a while back, at Kevin and Julie’s Boondockers Welcome site; they often don’t have any hookups, but this was a nice one, with power and water provided:

Campsite

A similar concept is “moochdocking”, where one stays on the property of a friend or family member. We did that at Mom’s place, with just 15 amp power:

Parked at Mom's house

There is also dispersed camping, where RVs can spread out on public lands, in designated sites. And boondocking, where RVs just stop anywhere (in authorized areas) on public lands. Those situations are dry camping, with no hookups. We haven’t done those yet, but plan to soon.

I hope this was interesting! A bit different than my usual posts.

Sonoran Desert RV Park

Our first stop in Arizona for a week, the Sonoran Desert RV Park in Gila Bend:

Sonoran Desert RV Park

Campground map:

Sonoran Desert RV Park map

Our campsite was quite large; long enough to park the truck either behind or in front. And in fact enough room to park several other vehicles, if we had them. We left our truck hooked up for a couple of days until we were ready to go out, then parked in front, until the last day, when we hooked it up again for faster egress the following morning:

Campsite

Campsite

Paladin in the doorway:

Paladin in the doorway

Jenn and I did our traditional walks around the park; some of these pictures are from each of us. Starting with the Sonoran Desert RV Park sign:

Sonoran Desert RV Park sign

 The office:

Office

Cacti:

Cactus

Cactus

Ranch house activity hall:

Ranch house

Pool:

Pool

“Solitary confinement”:

Solitary confinement

Solitary confinement

Solitary confinement

Patio:

Patio

Dog area:

Dog area

Dog area

Dog area

Our campsite again:

Campsite

Campsite

Agave plant:

Agave

Quail sculpture:

Quail sculpture

Very nice sunsets here:

Sunset

Sunset

Sunset

Sunset

Sunset

Sunset

Sunset

That factory is a Calgon Carbon facility, doing stuff with activated carbon.

Coach ground effect lights:

Coach ground effect lights

Our first full day here, the campground owner sent an email saying they’d have a Mexican food truck visiting that evening; we partook of their services for dinner. Convenient!

Mexican food truck

Another sunset:

Sunset

Another night, we had some griddle burgers:

Sunset

Sunset

A nice campground; we’d stay here again.

Travel from Indio, CA to Gila Bend, AZ

We departed Indio, California and headed to Gila Bend, Arizona. Another new state in our RV journey (we’ve been there before, but not driving).

Here’s the map route; 252 miles, a four or so hour drive in our coach. (That marker in the middle is where we’ll be spending the holidays.)

Map route

The first step for a travel day is to load up the truck bed with the outdoor stuff; it’s quite full, with chairs, rug, griddle, fire pit, propane tank, cleaning equipment, and other stuff. But great to have that extra storage:

Truck bed

Hills and part of the Colorado River aquaduct:

Hills and aquaduct

Paladin:

Paladin

Paladin

Being passed by another RV:

RV

Date palm trees:

Date palm trees

Arizona state line sign:

Arizona state line

Welcome to Arizona sign:

Welcome to Arizona

Arizona centennial sign:

Arizona centennial

Quartzsite and Phoenix sign:

Quartzsite

One of the first sightings of cacti:

Cactus

Love’s fuel stop:

Love's fuel

Yes, that top number is dollars; $295 for almost 69 gallons of diesel (nice)… less than half our tank capacity (150 gallons). Though we get a discount off that via our fuel card:

Love's fuel

Desert:

Desert

Paladin:

Paladin

Sitting in his box on the counter:

Paladin

More cacti:

Cactus

Stay tuned tomorrow for a timelapse dashcam video (with music!).

Toilet flush switch replacement

Our coach has two toilets; an electric gravity toilet in the mid bath (that spins a ball to dump straight down into the black tank), and an electric macerating toilet in the rear bath (that uses a bunch of water to pump the waste forward to the black tank).

The mid-bath toilet has a lever on the side of the toilet: pull up to add some water (to help flush solids), and push down to flush.

However, while adding water worked fine, flushing became unreliable. Sometimes it’d work immediately, sometimes one would have to hold the lever down for several seconds.

I researched the unit, and determined that the flush switch was likely the fault. So I ordered a replacement.

Here’s the switch behind the toilet, after I pulled the insulating covers away from the pins. This switch is toggled upwards to flush by the rotation of the lever, or downwards to add water:

Toilet switch

The aforementioned lever:

Lever

I pulled the wires off the pins of the old switch, and tried connecting to the replacement switch (hanging down); it worked perfectly:

Trying replacement switch

I wore my headlamp to see behind the toilet:

David with headlamp

Having determined that the new switch worked, I worked on removing the old switch. It was mounted to the porcelain toilet with three screws under the handle:

Under handle

Getting those screws out and back in again was the hardest thing, since the toilet was so close to the wall. I tried my drill with an angle bit, but it was too close for that, too:

Drill with angle bit

I managed it by unscrewing the hard way — holding a screw bit in pliers, for leverage:

Unscrewing the hard way

Unscrewing the hard way

(I need to get a short screwdriver!)

Another look at the switch:

Testing new switch

Replaced the handle; it works!

Replaced handle

An assortment of tools for this repair:

Tools

It was very satisfying to fix this. Things break in even the best RVs; they’re an earthquake on wheels. Over time I’m sure I’ll build up new skills in repairing and modifying things, just like I did in the homestead. Just a new set of skills.