Life On The Road ~ Part 8

Phase 2 of the Bullhead City saga:

That boiling hot summer in the Mojave desert served to cast a pall over the things I'd enjoyed the first six months we were there. Well, that wasn't the only thing. The other thing was the medical care. If we thought the weather was hotter than you-know-what, it was nothing to the absolute scalding we received obtaining medical care. That in itself is a bit of a long story, but suffice it to say, we began referring to the medical community in Bullhead as the 'Medical Mafia'. Seriously, I should write a separate post sometime about the bonafide fleecing we got through the unscrupulous practices that are common there, but I try not to get into online rants if I can help it. Mmmm.

What I did enjoy was not having to drive 70 miles to the nearest Walmart. There were several other nice, big grocery stores in town, as well. And a small mall! There were chain drugstores, CVS and Walgreen's! (As opposed to tiny homegrown pharmacies that were strictly utilitarian, i.e. no makeup, magazine racks or girlie goodies.) There was a JoAnne's! There was a Michael's! There were more than three restaurants! Including big name franchises! There were several fast food joints! You may be laughing, but I'm a shopaholic and do appreciate conveniences, so spending nearly two years in the boonies makes one appreciate the things we take for granted!

London Bridge in Lake Havasu

We took a couple of day trips to Lake Havasu to our south, now the home of the famous London Bridge. And Patrick got to meet a dear old buddy of his there that he hadn't seen in thirty years! That was awesome.We enjoyed little outings to Chloride and Oatman, which are considered 'living' ghost towns, meaning there are human (not spirit!) residents trying to keep the places alive by turning them into picturesque tourist destinations. Oatman, especially, with its population of wild burros roaming the streets has a fascinating story, found by following the link above.

I really loved going to the turquoise mine near Kingman, which has its own shop. For a jewelry maker and rock lover, that was a little piece of paradise!

I was amazed to find the gravel parking lot outside the
mine store full of ground turquoise chips!

Cabochons, beads, loose stones, raw stones, uncut chunks, finished jewelry...you name it! They had other types of stones, too, including some gorgeous apple coral, but it was a turquoise store. A store full of turquoise! Imagine!

Some of my beautiful Kingman turquoise pieces.

Then in the spring of 2014, we got new residents in the park: a little family of WILD BURROS! They had wandered down into the river basin from Oatman and found a donkey Shangri-La in the comparative oasis of Davis Camp. I was thrilled and delighted to discover these critters would walk right up and eat out of your hand and let you pet them...for a minute. As long as you had food to give them, they were your best pal. As soon as the food ran out, "Adios, amigos!" and they'd promptly walk away. There was a female and two males; we called the old male 'Grandpa'. He looked rough; he was scarred and graying and didn't have much patience. In fact, he was downright crabby. By late May, as we were sitting outside enjoying the sun setting over the river, we watched the little burro family cropping grass nearby. "You know what?" I said to Patrick. "I think that female is pregnant." And I was right...she grew steadily bigger and bigger throughout the summer.

'Mama' and 'Baby Daddy'

Finally, in August, our neighbor shared the news with us that Mama had had her baby...and boy howdy! The local coyotes were mighty anxious to 'meet' that burro colt! But 'Grandpa' and the younger male that we came to refer to as 'Baby Daddy', kept them at bay. One day, my neighbor came over and said, "Mama's down at the other end of the park taking the baby for a walk, let's go!" Off we hotfooted it to that section of the park and soon spotted them. We parked and slowly approached. Amazingly, Mama let us get close and my neighbor actually petted the baby, while I took some pictures. He was only a week old! I didn't pet him that day but it wasn't long before the entire family came close enough to our site for me to get a chance to touch the fuzzy critter. He was so soft and just beautiful!

Baby Burro!

After a fairly quiet and uneventful 2nd winter, our departure time drew near in spring of 2015. We had been in Bullhead for eighteen months! At the beginning of March, I began packing up, chipping away at it a little at a time every day, giving the coach a good going over and getting rid of excess unnecessary stuff. We had a reservation for the 29th of March, a Sunday, at a park in Leeds, UT. just northeast of Saint George and just west of Hurricane. (Hurricane was where we used to drive 70 miles from Kanab to go to Walmart.) We wanted to get through Las Vegas on Sunday, thinking there would be less traffic that day.

There was a bit of anxiety, too. Patrick had not started the engine of the RV since he turned it off October 31st, 2013. I don't really know why not; he always did periodically start it everywhere else we'd been. Just a symptom of the apathy towards movement that had begun to set in on us, I guess. But we were yearning to leave Bullhead.

The Friday before the Sunday we were due in Leeds, Patrick climbed into the driver's seat of the RV and turned the key. Nothing. He growled. He turned the key again and Vrroomm! She started! Unbelievable! Sounded good, too! He let it run a while and said the next morning we'd take it to get the oil changed and all that good stuff. Saturday morning we unhooked the umbilicals and off we went. No problems at all! She ran like a dream; you'd never believe she had sat dormant for eighteen months. All went well at the lube place; we paid and began to pull out...when we saw two of the guys running after us shouting 'Stop! Stop!" What the heck?!

Patrick hit the brakes and one of the guys who ran up said, "You're pouring gasoline everywhere!" I think I may have suffered a mini blackout at that moment. Ok, that was dramatic, but I do have phobic reactions of terror to any kind of automotive malfunction. I don't know where that comes from, but the least little vehicle related setback sends me off in a panic. My sister tells me I'm a catastrophic fantasizer and she is absolutely right. In this particular situation, I immediately started envisioning having to replace the entire engine or some other horrifically expensive repair. Or worst of all, being permanently grounded in Bullhead. Forever. Noooooo!

While I struggled to regain control over my wild imaginings, Patrick asked if he could back it up and get them to take a look at it. "Nope. Sorry, we don't do repairs here; you gotta take it over to the repair shop." and they pointed in the direction we needed to get there. So, leaking gas all the way, we drove the two blocks to the repair shop. Inside, the manager was soon shaking his head, "Sorry, no time to look at it today. We're jammed. You'll have to bring it in on Monday." What?? You mean we have to drive this potential fiery explosion back to Davis Camp and then up here again? (Told you I was a catastrophic fantasizer.) Patrick on the other hand, got back in the rig and back to the RV park we went. He immediately set about calling the park in Leeds and telling them we would be delayed and hoped to be there on Tuesday.

Monday came and I followed Patrick in the van so we could go hang out somewhere while we waited for the RV to be diagnosed and fixed. At 4:00, the shop called and told us to come and get it. (No call with the diagnosis.) But it was fixed and the next day we'd be on the road to Leeds. Mmm, maybe not so much...we'd not had good experiences with repair shops in this town (for the van), and this turned out to be no exception.

We got to the shop and went in to get the keys and pay the bill, when the shop manager came out and asked, "How long have you had that stalling problem?" "Stalling problem?" we asked, "What stalling problem?"
"Well, we found the problem and we fixed it. You had a torn diaphragm in your fuel pressure regulator. So we put a new diaphragm in it. But when we went to move the RV back out into the lot, it kept dying. Took us forever just to get it out of the shop." We stared at him. "We've never had that problem before. In fact, when we brought it in, it was running like a dream...till the gas started leaking." "Well, I can't let you take it on the road, it's too dangerous." he said. "We'll have to look at it again tomorrow." I stared blankly at him and said, "Well, that's a problem. We live in that thing." Now he stared blankly at us. But he was a quick thinker and immediately offered to hook us up to the electric outlet behind the building in the back parking lot. It is not a fun thing to spend a night behind a repair shop anytime, anywhere. But it was better than nothing and we didn't want to pay for a motel.

Patrick called the park in Leeds again to let them know it would be another day and started looking online to see if any parts stores in the area carried the type of fuel regulator the RV needed. First thing the next morning, he was waiting outside for the shop manager, followed him inside when he opened up and proceeded to tell the guy that Such'n'such Auto Parts down the street had a regulator that would work and that they ought to just replace the entire part instead of trying to put a diaphragm in it...yada yada, car talk, car talk... (Patrick was a dealership parts manager for 20 years before he was disabled.) The guy said he'd keep that in mind and blew him off. We waited all day while they dorked around. Mid-afternoon, after no success with his own theories, the guy ran down to the parts store Patrick had mentioned, slapped the RV's regulator on the counter and asked the kid at the register if they carried any of those. The kid said blankly, "What is it?" Just then an older guy came out from the back room and said, "Oh, we've got a whole box of 'em!" The repair shop guy took one back, had his mechanic put it on ol' Georgie Boy and vrroomm! We were back in business! No stalling! No leaking! Hurrrrray!

Bright and early the next morning, April 1, we unhooked everything, Patrick backed the RV up to Ruby-Deaux, I got in the van and off we went. Across the river and barreling up the incline toward 95 in Nevada, Vegas-bound, I looked in the rear view mirror. Goodbye Bullhead! I confess I was happy to see it there...no more Medical Mafia, no more boiling heat, no more choking dust, no more inept repair people, no more constant 40 MPH wind...

Leeds, Utah here we come! Woo-hoooo!

Till next time,

“Oh the places you'll go! There is fun to be done! There are points to be scored. There are games to be won. And the magical things you can do with that ball will make you the winning-est winner of all.” 
― Dr. Seuss, Oh, The Places You’ll Go!