The RV...

The RV has been a pretty comfortable ride for the first few days.  The boys are happy to now be in their own beds (they’ve been sharing a queen or double in every place we’ve stayed until now) and there’s enough storage space for all our luggage, food etc.  We were upgraded to a ‘slide out’ – the left hand side of the vehicle slides out on a hydraulic rail after you park to give more room in the kitchen and 3^rd bed.

RV at Indian Flat camp site,
just outside Yosemite NP.

Doogs happy to be in his own
bed at last.

Ferg has the job of connecting water and power when we pull up at an RV park.  He’s taken that on pretty well and goes through a check list before we take off to make sure vents are closed, external compartments are locked, hoses and pipes are stowed etc.  Doogs has the job of ‘dumping’ – emptying the black and grey water at designated park sites.  It’s a pretty simple system involving valves and hoses (although we told Dougal he’d have a shoulder length glove  and a surgical mask to clean out the toilet pipes manually!).

Water, power and sewerage
all had to be tended to.

 

Doogs had gone missing when it was time to empty the sewerage...

 

But turned up second time around!




Driving in the US is a treat.  The RV handles pretty well with power steering and cruise control and gets along at about 60 – 65mph.  The freeways make covering distances pretty easy and the drivers are all very courteous – most of then give RV’s sporting hire company signs a pretty wide berth.  We’ve hardly seen any roadkill yet (apart from the rather dubiously named ‘Roadkill Café’ on Route 66 just off Interstate 40) – not sure whether that means most of the wildlife has been shot already or they have a pretty good system of cleaning up the carcasses.

The kitchen in the vehicle is pretty simple – fridge which keeps things reasonably cold, 3 burner gas stove, an oven and microwave.  Fi has made some pretty good meals – stir frys and a spag bol after our hike in the Grand Canyon.  Breakfast is usually cereal and boiled eggs and we normally make some sandwiches for lunch if we are travelling or hiking somewhere.  We bought some gin for Fi before we left San Diego and I’ve been enjoying Fat Tire beer – a very tasty drop I discovered when we were last here back in 2000.

Just enough room to get
tucker ready for the day.



Our favourite camp site.  Silver Lake,
just below the Tioga Pass in the Sierra Nevada

 We’ve got a shower and toilet in the vehicle but the RV parks we have stayed at are pretty well equipped with facilities.  We don’t want to be emptying black and grey water at every stop we come to so we try to minimise the use of the onboard shower facilities.  Most of the RV parks have pretty reasonable showers and washing up facilities and laundries.  Some also have cable TV hook ups.  Free WIFI is provided at most camps and most have a pool as well.  Most of the sites cost about $40 - $50 a night to stay.

A Fat Tire (in the glass; not around my middle)
and a diet Pepsi after a day in Yosemite.

At 25 feet, ours is by no means the biggest RV on the road.  Some of them are more akin to busses rather than cars and have multiple slide outs on each side of the vehicle.  People seem to have their entire households with them – they walk their dogs in the morning and have little enclosures beside their vehicles for them to run around in.  We parked beside an older couple from Alabama at the Grand Canyon who had a weber Q doing some ribs for dinner and most of the larger vehicles are towing a car, pushbikes, boats or motorbikes.

Some of the place names  we’ve passed are classic American – “Bear Head Mountain”, “Devil Dog Road” and “Rattlesnake Wash (gully)”.  They all sound like names out of a Western.  In some places in Arizona, the countryside resembles Afghanistan (just a comparison; not a flash back) – flat low desert with a narrow green belt astride the Colorado River.  In the distance, rocky, barren mountains dominate the skyline.

This service station and store
even had a brothel out the back...

 

 

Very stark countryside in
some places.

Driving the RV........ It is not that hard but not that easy!!! initially it took me awhile to build up the courage to drive the RV (& thus give Ben a break from driving).   So about 300 miles into the first leg......... Ok - here we go.  It is automatic and has the gear stick "on the tree", it has power steering (phew),  it is 25 feet long (long enough that you can't see behind you, using the rear vision mirror!),  it has two rather big side view mirrors - which you constantly use to see who is to your right and left. The radio reception is very patchy ( given the vastness of the US), we try and listen to tunes when "in range".  The boys are sitting in around the table behind the driver seat (wearing lap belts). - either sleeping, reading, writing in their journal or gaming ( when they are charged).

So I have stepped up into the cabin, sitting in the drivers seat, make sure I can see right and left via the rear mirrors, put the RV into drive and remind myself "keep to the right"!!!!!  Fortunately there are many cars about - so I can take their lead and follow.... Now onto the highway, in the Arizona desert, not too much traffic, though there are lots of scary big trucks!!!!!! 

Silver Lake resort...with warning signs
of the locals...

We've tried to adopt the Geoff Benson two fingered wave from the steering wheel when we see another RV (a slight rise of 2 fingers without moving your hand from the wheel - a form of greeting in rural areas of Australia).  Not too many responses from other drivers yet - apart from looks of bewilderment.  One hire RV gave us a very enthusiastic wave back with hands waving in the air and grins from ear to ear.  It might take a while before the Aussie country wave catches on but we'll keep persevering!