Traveling in a Converted bus to Mexico
A converted bus is not the same as traveling in an RV, especially if you yourself have contracted the conversion. Our 1976 MCI 8 bus conversion, that we call “Mac”, is now looking and acting like a 1994 model with beautiful new paint in red, maroon, black, and white swoop and point designs. The inside, too, is all upgraded with new wall and ceiling coverings, upholstery, floor coverings, audio visual, and lighting. We are told that it is finally finished and simply working well, but is it? There have been delays.
On THE day, we start out later than planned, not by an hour, but by several days. There is still a leak in a tag wheel, a slow one. We must stop first at the tire repair shop. We negotiate our bus, towing a car with kayaks on top, down our twisty Wild Cat road. After a short but pleasant ride down, we pull up at the tire repair place in Fortuna, CA. There it is found to be more than a leak ….there was an actual crack in the wheel next to the valve stem. The tire shop sent to Eureka for a new wheel and it was delivered in about an hour…..so we meanwhile went to have breakfast at Pepper’s. Pepper’s was a mile long walk and we needed the exercise.
The weather is turning. It was the week to turn the clocks back for the year, so we should expect the weather to change. The tire was being installed as we came back from breakfast.
After a pleasant ride down highway 101 and across the lakes Highway 20, we arrived late in the Sacramento area. We drove through the Fall colors and new bridge construction while communicating by texting with our daughter, Deeana. She and a friend are planning to meet us in Sacramento. They are traveling by train from Corvallis Oregon. Late in the afternoon our dinner is at one of our favorite stops, the Chinese restaurant at Cache Creek Casino in Capay Valley. About an hour later, bucking some traffic, our Mac bus (with us on board) cruises into the KOA campground nearest West Sacramento and the CHP academy. Our plan is to attend the graduation of a grandson, age 23, from the CA highway patrolman’s academy. It is an exciting and proud time for our family. Friends had already arrived. We are coming in late. There is a gracious young man waiting for us in the campground with a reservation envelope….our name on it, and he guides us neatly into a very long pull-through space. Our bus is forty feet by itself. With our car and kayaks, we are some 62 feet long, but this space is big enough for two of our size rigs. We are tired and crawl into our bed and sleep the night long.
Our plan for Halloween day is to pick up Deeana and her friend at the Amtrak station and take them with us to the graduation ceremonies. She is the mother of the graduate and very excited about her train trip to Sacramento. They are to arrive early at 6 am, however, I am getting messages on my phone that there has been a delay. It is more than a small delay. The train had to pull off during the night and replace wheels under the train and they would be four hours late, perhaps missing graduation itself at 10 am, and, instead, they plan to take part in the parties afterward. We feel sorry that they will miss the main part, looking as forward to it as they were. The other grandparents of our graduate are here in the same campground in their beautiful new fifth wheel camper. We enjoy their company at Eppies for a long leisurely breakfast and then use our GPS to find our way to the CHP academy. We call our little GPS “Miss Nuvi”, and turn her off if she says “recalculating” too many times. The graduation is wonderful and we are so proud of our handsome and smart grandson. He is second from the top of his class scholastically. Only three guests per cadet can go into the ceremony and the rest watch from closed circuit TV. It is a highlight to watch our cadet’s girl pin on his new badge and he, in his new uniform, looks to be in his prime. We take many photos and go to dinner together afterwards, finding Deeana and her friend at a hotel near the train station and taking them with us. It is Halloween, so we have bracelets of bright glowing colors to wear and are waited on by a Hippie girl and a padded farm boy in costume. Bella Bru is the restaurant and our graduate Tom’s girl is our hostess. She has been the manager here until she quit to go with him to his new assignment as a brand new CHP in downtown Los Angeles. It was late when we arrived back at our bus home.
A converted bus is not the same as traveling in an RV, especially if you yourself have contracted the conversion. Our 1976 MCI 8 bus conversion, that we call “Mac”, is now looking and acting like a 1994 model with beautiful new paint in red, maroon, black, and white swoop and point designs. The inside, too, is all upgraded with new wall and ceiling coverings, upholstery, floor coverings, audio visual, and lighting. We are told that it is finally finished and simply working well, but is it? There have been delays.
On THE day, we start out later than planned, not by an hour, but by several days. There is still a leak in a tag wheel, a slow one. We must stop first at the tire repair shop. We negotiate our bus, towing a car with kayaks on top, down our twisty Wild Cat road. After a short but pleasant ride down, we pull up at the tire repair place in Fortuna, CA. There it is found to be more than a leak ….there was an actual crack in the wheel next to the valve stem. The tire shop sent to Eureka for a new wheel and it was delivered in about an hour…..so we meanwhile went to have breakfast at Pepper’s. Pepper’s was a mile long walk and we needed the exercise.
The weather is turning. It was the week to turn the clocks back for the year, so we should expect the weather to change. The tire was being installed as we came back from breakfast.
After a pleasant ride down highway 101 and across the lakes Highway 20, we arrived late in the Sacramento area. We drove through the Fall colors and new bridge construction while communicating by texting with our daughter, Deeana. She and a friend are planning to meet us in Sacramento. They are traveling by train from Corvallis Oregon. Late in the afternoon our dinner is at one of our favorite stops, the Chinese restaurant at Cache Creek Casino in Capay Valley. About an hour later, bucking some traffic, our Mac bus (with us on board) cruises into the KOA campground nearest West Sacramento and the CHP academy. Our plan is to attend the graduation of a grandson, age 23, from the CA highway patrolman’s academy. It is an exciting and proud time for our family. Friends had already arrived. We are coming in late. There is a gracious young man waiting for us in the campground with a reservation envelope….our name on it, and he guides us neatly into a very long pull-through space. Our bus is forty feet by itself. With our car and kayaks, we are some 62 feet long, but this space is big enough for two of our size rigs. We are tired and crawl into our bed and sleep the night long.
Our plan for Halloween day is to pick up Deeana and her friend at the Amtrak station and take them with us to the graduation ceremonies. She is the mother of the graduate and very excited about her train trip to Sacramento. They are to arrive early at 6 am, however, I am getting messages on my phone that there has been a delay. It is more than a small delay. The train had to pull off during the night and replace wheels under the train and they would be four hours late, perhaps missing graduation itself at 10 am, and, instead, they plan to take part in the parties afterward. We feel sorry that they will miss the main part, looking as forward to it as they were. The other grandparents of our graduate are here in the same campground in their beautiful new fifth wheel camper. We enjoy their company at Eppies for a long leisurely breakfast and then use our GPS to find our way to the CHP academy. We call our little GPS “Miss Nuvi”, and turn her off if she says “recalculating” too many times. The graduation is wonderful and we are so proud of our handsome and smart grandson. He is second from the top of his class scholastically. Only three guests per cadet can go into the ceremony and the rest watch from closed circuit TV. It is a highlight to watch our cadet’s girl pin on his new badge and he, in his new uniform, looks to be in his prime. We take many photos and go to dinner together afterwards, finding Deeana and her friend at a hotel near the train station and taking them with us. It is Halloween, so we have bracelets of bright glowing colors to wear and are waited on by a Hippie girl and a padded farm boy in costume. Bella Bru is the restaurant and our graduate Tom’s girl is our hostess. She has been the manager here until she quit to go with him to his new assignment as a brand new CHP in downtown Los Angeles. It was late when we arrived back at our bus home.
November 1st, 2008
It is our plan to go to Folsom to kayak with friends. The rain starts and we find our new windows have a major leak, filling cup after cup with rain water inside the window. Then we find that we are so lucky to have the computer satellite dish repairman in this area for a few days and, since we cannot seem to go on-line, he comes to our RV to help. Kayaking seems less likely as we wait into later afternoon and the satellite dish is still not responding. Our Folsom friends have invited us for dinner and overnight and breakfast and to kayak in the morning if the rain goes away. We cannot refuse, though it means leaving the dish repairman in our home to finish his long process and us leaving, and he hiding the key in the electric box when he leaves. After a wonderful visit and dinner with our Folsom friends, we decide to drive back to our RV for the night. We are still parked in the KOA and have grandparents number two worried about why we are still in residence. I have somehow injured my rowing arm, the weather has not cleared, and we must check the leak water accumulated. More bad news: the repairman has finally concluded that the satellite dish has been damaged from being out in the weather during the bus’s new conversion. He finds that we plan to be within a couple hundred miles or so of Salt Lake City and that is the location of the manufacturer of the satellite dish. He insists that our best interests would be addressed by going directly to the manufacturer in Salt Lake for repairs before we venture into Mexico. If we go directly to Salt Lake, maybe we can get over the mountains before too much snow. We hook up, go though the last minute inspection to get underway and pull out of our very long pull-through space, not realizing that someone has taken the pin out of the hitch that holds it on the car. It could have fallen out somewhere, but, how would that have happened? Turning tight at the end of the road in the KOA Park was all the hitch needed to let go and we heard the screaming for us to stop from the workman that were watching. Scared, Andy stopped the bus a bit too quickly, making the car bump into the back of the Bus, damaging the back bumper, and bending the hitch as it doubled back. It didn’t shape up well to have to roll backwards over it to be able to release it. We must decide we are lucky that we did not leave the park in that condition. We are wondering if this trip was not meant to happen or someone is trying to tell us something. The rest of the day was spent, first going to Camping World in Rocklin to see if they know how to repair the hitch on a Sunday. JoAn drives the car and Andy drives the bus to get there. They cannot do a Blue Ox hitch but know the company that can and send us there, also, letting us stay overnight in their parking lot. We show Allied RV repair, in downtown Sacramento, the damage and purchase a new locking hitch pin. So much for getting over the mountains this weekend. Being positive thinkers, we luckily hit the time of day that both of them were open on a Sunday. Allied RV repair, who have Blue Ox hitches, closed at 4 pm and we were there, coincidently, about 330 pm. They will order a hitch for us in the morning and we must call Blue Ox on the east coast tomorrow at early am (before we pick up new hitch) to see if there is a warranty. My right arm is now feeling so bad that I must lie down and Andy goes into the stores to get repair tools for the leak above the window.
Our schedule is all off. Andy had prepared a day by day itinerary that included seeing also our youngest son in Tracy and his new house. Son Jim ended up helping us all day on the phone with his computer since ours is not working. He found numbers and locations that have Blue Ox hitches and directions to get there. We are not even going to have time to go his direction to see him now as we want to get over the mountains as soon as we can. We will make a definite stop coming back to see them. Today they are buying furniture for the new house. We are finding so many nice people that are willing to help us with our problems. They have been so nice at Camping World, Allied RV repair, and Dan, the MotoSat repair man.
November 4, 2008 – Tulare, CA
We are outta Dodge (or in this case Sacramento), finally. We have been here finding parts and pieces and putting ourselves back together for six days. We still have a small leak and my arm still hurts, but we sealed most leaks; then found that my camera problem was no more than needing a new $30 battery, and our satellite dish is okay and we need not go clear to Salt Lake City to fix it. The hospital today, here in Tulare, took x-rays of my arm and says I have rotocuff tendonitis and not a dislocated or broken arm. My arm seemed immediately better ……just knowing I guess. It means canceling our kayaking plans until later though.
We shopped for a new monitor for Andy’s laptop as his would turn black after just a few seconds of being turned on. Then we decided that he could buy a cable to connect his computer to the TV monitor and get by for now. Then he found by pushing a function button above the keyboard to make the screen brighter the monitor came back to life. The more he pushed the button the brighter the screen became. Somehow the adjacent button had been accidentally pushed which darkened the screen clear to black. That saved hundreds of dollars for repairing the screen, or a couple thousand for a new computer. The new Blue Ox hitch for the car was costly, $800, and there are now two new locking pins to hold it on.
Wall Mart Tulare has a friendly and knowledgeable guard that drives around with flashing lights, a happy smile, and Chamber of Commerce information for anyone who asks. He tells us that they will love to have us stay in their parking lot for up to three days, would you believe? We proceed having a wonderful dinner at Chili’s, taking my Naproxen prescription to Wall Mart to fill, and then even put up our TV antennae to watch the final results of the most talked about election in history. Things are looking up for us in spite of the crunch in the overall economy and it looks like Barack Obama will be our next president of the USA. and a benefit of going this southern route is that it is not raining—leak or no leak.
November 5, 2008
Andy drove out of the Tulare Wal Mart parking lot in the early morning hours with both GPS instruments programmed to go to the Temple RV park in St. George. The GPS is so useful….from the minute you leave the parking lot to get you out to the highway to keeping you in the right lane and guiding you into your destination at the end of the day. It is especially appreciated in big cities when it politely says “keep left” to keep you from ending up on the right for a left turn. It gives you good forewarning of things to come. Andy really appreciates the GPS, but, thank goodness, it doesn’t replace me and I still help guide and translate.
The Fantastic fan broke. It caught the wind on top of the bus and broke the mount that holds the motor in. Andy found a small extension that he needed to fix it by buying an opening mechanism of a different brand for parts. He is a mechanical genius that I cannot do without, along with being a superb husband. At one of the “stretch” breaks we took, he fastened it down until we have more time to fix it right. When we settle somewhere for a time, he has several fix it projects like putting a rotating vent with a weather vane for on top of the bathroom vent and a strut in the lift up seat of the bench. We make some interesting accidental discoveries as we are exploring. Near Fresno we found a Camping World at the end of a dead end after getting fuel at a truck stop. It was just in time for buying the part for the Fanastic Fan. We probably would not have found the wonderful parking at the Tulare Wall Mart if we had not found a hospital near it to get an exray on my arm. Today we had an adventure in Boron, the home of the 20 mule team wagons that mine Borax. We have been here several times, in this small town in the middle of nowhere, and find neat treasures. There are three good restaurants and a museum that is so interesting. The Boron compound mined near this town of Boran is the element used in more than 150 different products including Bone China, alloys, fish egg baits, atifreeze, dyes, matches, and paper. The 20 mule team that was used before they had trucks (at least the huge 150 ton trucks they use now). To be a 20 mule team driver, you had to be able to drive 12 lead mules and 6 mules that were trained to leap over the chain in the middle and pull to the opposite side of the team to keep the chain in the middle of the turn. Two draft mules close to the wagon were actually two draft horses. To be a 20 mule team driver, you would be some sort of hero.
November 6, 2008
Last night was a great sleep at the Buffalo Bill Casino’s back lot at Primm, NV. With the world’s largest rollercoaster outside our starboard side and trucks and RVs all around doing the same as us….sleeping, eating or gambling in the casino. This morning, first light, found Andy moving our unit to an uninhabited part of the desert to give it a wash with our own water from our now-diminished tank with a bucket and squirt hose. It just glows with beauty now and stars its new paint job. Bob and Shirley Lewis are staying at a fancy resort, Signature, in Las Vegas on a friends lot. It is far too expensive for us to stay a night, between $75 to $160 a night, but has a easy huge parking lot in front for us to park and Bob and Shirley picked us up for a little tour and breakfast at the Casino nearby. We had an animated visit catching up on news and talk about our long stay together ahead of us in Mexico. They dropped us back at our house on wheels and we drove to the Speedway Blvd. exit of I-15 for fuel and telephoning the Utah kids to say that we are heading their way to the Zion Gate RV resort and want to all meet there this evening and maybe go to dinner together.
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