Summer of '08

As we headed back to Oregon, the fuel prices were at an all time high. We topped off in Mesa, which was the lowest price at $4.65/gal (diesel), and the highest paid was in Pendelton at $4.79/gal. We paid a total of $708 for 149 gallons for 1535 miles, which averaged 10.3 miles per gallon. We traveled the Mesa-Vegas-Salt Lake City-Boise-Portland route. Just before Provo, Utah, we discovered that we had lost our hydraulic fluid reservoir for the jacks. So we couldn’t put the jacks down for the rest of the trip and several weeks while in Salem. When we eventually got it replaced and installed it cost about $700.

We did make it almost home before we stopped in Hillsboro for granddaughter Emily’s graduation party from Art Tech High School in Wilsonville. Then it was on to the Salem Elks for the summer.


In mid June, David Smith (Desert Belle owner) called and asked us to take a trip to Klamath Falls to evaluate a side-paddle boat for sale that they may purchase for Saguaro Lake. We asked Dick and Colleen Bonney (the other captain) to take the trip with us and examine the engine. The boat needed work and we gave David our opinions.

Shortly after that, Molly & I headed down to the South Umpqua Lighthouse at Winchester Bay to visit Nada and Dorsey Hensley. They had volunteered as tour guides and office help for a month. It was a great outing and we stayed in a nice little motel on the Winchester Bay waterfront.

On July 1st, Molly and I took our real vacation and flew to Chicago to visit Dan & Cathy. They picked us up and then drove to their new place in Elkhart, Indiana. We had a book of 1000 things to do before you die, and asked them if they didn’t have any specific agenda, if we could see some of these places. We got to check off: Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore, Shipshewana, Amish Acres in Nappanee, and The 100-mile Heritage Trail. Along the way we also did and saw many other interesting things such as the RV Hall of Fame Museum. We spent the fourth of July out on their pontoon boat watching the fireworks, and also did a poker run on their lake.

The last few days before flying home was spend in Chicago marking off some of the 1000 things there. We stayed in a high rise condo over looking the harbor that we had reserved through a friend of a friend of Cathy’s. Some of the 1000 things included: Viewing Chicago’s Architecture, Chicago’s Comedy Scene at Second City, eating Chicago-Style Pizza at Uno Pizzeria, Millennium Park (which we over-looked from our condo), the Shedd Aquarium, Wrigley Field, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Home and Studio in Oak Park, and on the way to the airport we stopped at Superdawg for their well known hot dogs. One of the neatest things experienced in the city was their transit system. We bought a two-day pass on the Elevated Railway (the EL) and traveled all over the city by getting on and off where ever we wanted. It was a great time filled with a lot of activities.

The Frank Lloyd Wright Home was one of several of his houses that we have visited now with Cathy. She got us into appreciating his architecture when we were on our Route 66 trip and visited the Dana House in Springfield, IL. When she visited us in Mesa we toured his studio in Phoenix, Taliesin West. So when we got back to Salem, we decided to visit his only house designed in Oregon at the Oregon Gardens. It was called the Gordon House and was an example of his inexpensive production models.

In August, we decided to travel to the Long Beach Peninsula in the RV to visit Pat & Susan Canniff and Tom & Kathy Edward’s RV lots there. We also visited Dick & Colleen Bonney who lived just across the lake. The weather was rainy and blowing during the visit, but we had a good time. Then we three couples with RV’s headed down to Cathlamet, Washington to the Cruiser’s Rendezvous and the annual pot-luck dinner. It was fun reminiscing with the old Mexican Cruisers.

Bud and Lisa Root invited us to stay in their Time-Share in Rockaway Beach on the Oregon coast during early September. The weather was beautiful and it was nice to just kick back and relax for a week. Thank you Bud & Lisa!

In late September, we finally had to say goodbye to Oregon again and head back to Mesa for the winter tourist season on Saguaro Lake. We decided to head down I-5 through California and then over to Mesa on I-10. With careful planning I only had to stop for fuel once in California. The fuel price was less than this spring ranging from $4.02 in Roseburg, Oregon to $3.61 in Quartzite, Arizona. We paid a total of $533 for 139 gallons for 1377 miles, which averaged of 9.9 miles per gallon. This appeared to be a better route even though it was through California.

When we got into our normal space at Apache Wells RV Resort, I gave David a call to let him know we were back in town. He quickly told me I could do a charter the next day if I wanted. The charter, to make a long story short, was less than ideal. Those people will probably not get the same annual charter that they’ve gotten in the past for their Rosh Hashanah holiday.

Molly flew back to Oregon to attend a quilting retreat in the Cascade Mountains with her sister Joann. Molly had left her machine in Oregon so she wouldn’t have to take it on the plane and Tom & Sue Stose had offered to drive her back to Mesa since they were heading down right after the retreat. Molly had a great time and has already signed up for next year.

While they were driving back, a lady we had talked to about buying a Park-Model here in the park last season, stopped by and made us a very reasonable offer. I called Molly, and she said, "Buy It"! So when she and Tom & Sue arrived, they had a nice furnished place to stay for several days while visiting. They like to tell friends that Molly and Brent are really nice, they even bought us a place just to stay while visiting. It was entirely furnished and had a very comfortable Arizona Room attached with it's own bathroom and large closet.

While Molly was still in Oregon, her sister Joann called. They had had so much fun that she treatened that Molly wasn't going to come back to Mesa until I could find her a place that she could have her sewing machine up all the time rather than continually having to put it away after using it in the RV. So we HAD to buy it! Now Molly has her own sewing machine table in the Arizona Room where she can quilt to her hearts content

Jeanette (Molly’s daughter) had previously been arranging with me for a surprise for Molly’s up coming birthday. Jeanette and Lynda (other daughter) were going to fly in and surprise her. Strangely enough, I kept the secret! At about 9:00 pm on October 31, I got up and said I though I would go get her a birthday present. Molly looked very quizitive and unbelieving. We normally go to bed about that time and watch TV in bed. I told her that I would be gone about two hours and that she may want to stay up and get dressed. More quizitive looks! She though maybe someone may be flying in to surprise her, but the airport is only 20 minutes away. After picking up Lynda from the SW terminal, we waited for about 45 minutes for Jeanette to arrive at the Alaska terminal. When we drove in Molly couldn’t believe it and was showing great emotion, seeing both girls together and knowing they loved her enough to travel a great distance to spend a few days with her on her birthday. The stayed for three nights in our "new condo" so they could have some time to themselves as well.

Shortly after that, our Tucson friends Nada and Dorsey came to spend a night in the park model. We had owned it now for three weeks and we hadn’t even spent a night in it ourselves. Although on Sunday 11/9 we had our HD satellite installed, so on Monday the 10th we finally moved into our "new condo".

I’ll stop our "Summer" summary here with this news. I will continue to update this blog as new events unfold or when I get time. Thanks for caring enough to read it.

Brent

Mesa, Arizona '07 - '08

The last BLOG entry ended with high expectations of getting down to Albion to do some cruising this winter, but those expectations quickly evaporated when time kept slipping away waiting for the fuel tank to be repaired. It was finally late December when we were notified it was fixed. The project that should have taken two weeks, took two months….but then again, it’s Mexico! Molly & I did a whirl-wind trip to San Carlos to close up the boat and move it back to the storage yard. We decided that maybe we would wait now until Spring to put Albion in the water to get it ready for some cruising in May, after the Desert Belle season ended.

The days in Mesa, however, were filled with company and other events. Horst & Bea Eberspaecher, and Will & Joann Gallant came up for the Christmas Light Parade on Saguaro Lake, which the Desert Belle always leads. And it is normally a company party with invited friends. Other friends that came for a complimentary trip this season included Bud & Lisa Root, and their friends Mike & Terry, <Nada & Dorsey Hensley, John & Barb Wilde, Earl & Marta Encell, Cathy Fleming, and Pat & Susan Caniff. Some of the other events we took these guests to included the Arizona Opry, Organ Stop Pizza, drive up the Apache Trail, Olive Mill, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin West, our favorite restaurant Café Roma>, and the Broadway Palm dinner theater to see Hello Dolly.

<Cathy came from Elkhart, Indiana for a few days and then her, Bea, and Molly took off for L. A., California for Joann Gallant’s daughter Kristen's wedding in the Wayfarers Chapel. They were busy doing a lot of the busy work during the wedding and had a great time calling it this year’s "hen fest". Molly & I also were busy going to several plays and concerts including "Jersey Boys" at the ASU Gammage Auditorium, "SWING" and "Buddy" at the Broadway Palm dinner theater, Smothers Brothers, Bobby Rydell & Lesley Gore at several CalAm RV parks, and Wyatt Earp by Wyatt Earp (a grand nephew of THE Wyatt Earp) at the Palace Saloon>, one of the original saloons on Whiskey Row in Prescott, Arizona. We also made a trip up to Globe, AZ to tour the <Besh-Ba-Gowah Pueblo. It was a fascinating site that has done some reconstructing of some of the ancient indian pueblo buildings so you can go inside and climb around seeing what they were like when in use.

At the end of March, we went to Sunsites, Arizona to stay with Horst & Bea, and were also joined by Will & Joann. We made a trip through <Bisbee viewing the "hole" left from copper mining, and then spent the better part of a day in Tombstone. David Smith (Desert Belle owner) sponsored the Tombstone portion of the trip for extra work I had performed. He told us to have a time fun on him and recommended several sights not to miss. And it was a blast, eating in Big Nose Kate’s Saloon and sitting at the <same table that Wyatt Earp had sat at during his time there. We sent an email postcard back to David thanking him for the trip. But as always, the girls got a little rowdy>!

We spend the next day touring the <Chiricahua N.M. on the East side of the valley from where Horst & Bea live. The rock formations there are something to behold. The next day we made a short trip up in back of Horst & Bea’s home to the Cochise Stronghold, where the great Apache chief was able to avoid discovery and capture. He is buried up there somewhere but the only white man that know where is his friend Tom Jeffords. We hiked around some the short trails and identified some of the plants>. Again, a great time with great friends.

After the Desert Belle peak season ended on May 1st, we headed down to San Carlos and Albion. In March I had gone down and put her in a slip at Marina Real, just north of San Carlos. We put Albion up for sale with the idea of buying a park-model in Apache Wells RV Resort since our Mesa location looked like it was going to be a long-term opportunity on the Desert Belle and we weren’t getting down to the boat during the winter anymore. If the boat didn’t sell by the next Spring we would consider taking it back to the Northwest for periodic summer cruising. The plan was to spend the month of May working on the boat making it pretty and then cruising the Sea of Cortez for a few weeks. However, the following is an email we wrote back to fellow cruisers about what happened during that month.

5/14/08
Albion's near disaster
Howdy fellow cruisers;

Albion is safe in the work yard at Marina Real and Molly & I are back in Tucson to pick up a boat part for Albion.

It all started Saturday. I had spent the day polishing the stainless stanchions, bow pulpit, and lifelines and decided that was enough for the day in the 100 degree heat. While we were sitting in the cockpit relaxing I decided to start the engine and make sure it started and operated properly. We had been on the boat now for a week cleaning and getting things fixed. And Albion had been at the dock in Marina Real> for a month and a half. So it was time to make sure it still ran. It started fine, shifted into forward and reverse just fine, and then I shut it off. As usual, I check the normally dry engine "room" for any leaks. IT WAS FULL OF WATER!!!! And I heard water gushing in from the rear. I tore the bed apart to check the drip-less packing gland under it and the water was running in as though there was no packing gland there. The bellows had torn.

I spent the next hour and a half trying to get enough of the lip on the back portion of the bellows to clamp back onto the shaft boot. I could make the water slow down, but then it would spring eternal. While Molly watched the water run in and the bilge-pump pump it out, I ran over to San Carlos to see if I could get a replacement hose for the bellows. NO! I stopped at the work yard/dry storage at Marina Real to let them know I had an emergency and would have to have the boat hauled immediately. They said to check with the office. Ran to the office, made sure they knew it was an emergency....."the boat is sinking!!!", and they radioed the boys at the yard to get over here ASAP. As I got to the boat, two other dock guys were already there, helped me throw the lines loose and headed over to the ramp. By the time we motored over to the ramp.....bilge running the entire time....the trailer was there, and luckily for us it was near high tide....Albion needs more water for it's winged keel. The movers worked efficiently and in no time Albion was heading down the road to the dry work yard leaving a trail of water from the still running bilge pump!

Mi Casa (Mel & Sherry) graciously loaned us their RV to stay in until Albion is back in the water. The next day, a referred mechanic came by to help remove the shaft and get the drip-less packing gland and torn bellows off the shaft. To get the packing gland off, you first have to remove the coupler that holds the shaft to the transmission. It wouldn't move. He got a unique piece of equipment, something like a wheel puller, but try try try as we might.....it wouldn't come off. After discussing our options, the mechanic said he has never seen a coupler come off a shaft after it had been on as long as ours...about 9 years. He suggested cutting the shaft $$, pulling it out, having a new coupler and shaft made $$$$, and cutting a notch in the rudder $$$ to put the new shaft back in (rather than taking the rudder off). I eventually bowed to his expertise and he gave me the cutting grinder to cut the shaft and said he'd be back in an hour or so. I took the grinder up and took a big swallow....maybe I'll try ONE MORE TIME. I had put a scratch in the shaft when we started working with the puller to see if we were making any progress. As I took a second look, I thought maybe while we were doing all our discussing, the pressure MAY HAVE MOVED the coupler a fraction. I put another block on the propeller so it wouldn't turn, and tried with all my Swedish stubbornness one more time. IT SEEMED TO MOVE!!!! I tried it again, and again, and in about 20 minutes I had the coupler, the packing gland, and bellows off the shaft. YAHOO!!! The mechanic was very surprised when he returned and I was feeling like I won the lottery.

Back to the marine mart to order a new bellows, but they said I would have to order the entire packing gland $$$ and it would take two weeks. Not good enough! I called the manufacturer, PYI Inc., in Bellingham WA, ordered just the bellows $, and had it shipped on two day delivery to friends Nada and Dorsey's in Tucson while we went up there and waited. The part just arrived and is the correct part. Tomorrow we will be heading back to the boat in San Carlos, re-install the gland with the new bellows, put Albion back in the water to finish our work, take it for a sea trial, and put it up for sale (not sail).Just thought I would give our cruising friends a little update. Albion is scheduled for haul-out on May 28 after which we will drive back to Mesa to get the RV and head back to the Northwest for the summer.

[Update after we got back to San Carlos] The bellows went on, no problem and we launched the next day. But there was still a lot of work to do on the boat and by the time we got it pretty well complete, the nice cruising weather ended. We decided to run the boat back to San Carlos, haul out early, and put it back in dry storage in Marina Secca until sold or next Spring.