On The Level

February 23, 2014

What a difference a few days can make - we left Sedona with the glowing feeling that not only had we experienced one of the greatest places the country had to offer but that our decision to buy a motorhome and hit the road was one of the best we'd ever made. Forty-eight hours later we were discussing the procedure that we needed to begin in order to dump this God-cursed mechanical headache and return to normal life. What happened?

Our first stop was an overnight RV campground just east of Albuquerque - hey it was going to be the nostalgia of Route 66, right? (Overnight RV camps are sites that are located just off the interstates, catering to RVers who just need a place to sleep on their way to more desirable destinations. They are usually lacking any amenities and are strictly utilitarian.) Welcome to the Mecca Of Utilitarianism:

 

Yep - on a sloping hill of dirt, someone hired a road grader to come in and level a bunch of "sites" and after adding the electrical, water and sewer connections declared this to be an RV park. I'm reasonably certain that we were the only ones there so I kept The Equalizer next to the bed for the night. We actually thought it was kind of funny and Mary Ellen had some fun emailing pictures of our resort to the kids and a few friends. The reactions ranged from "OMG!" to "Eeek!" 

The next morning we had our longest drive ahead of us, 412 miles to Fort Stockton, Texas (of "Buffalo Soldiers" fame.) Our route would take us from the Albuquerque area southeast along Route 85 through eastern New Mexico and into the wilds of West Texas that Marty Robbins sang about. Now, I don't want to disparage anyone from New Mexico and you can chalk this up to eastern snobbery but I have no idea how anyone can live out there. To say there is nothing is an understatement. Take a look:

This is EXACTLY what we drove through for almost eight hours. As far as the eye can see, hour after hour after hour. It was so empty that Mary Ellen decided to try driving again and really did well. Within an hour she was holding it steady and finally relaxed for a while. Occasionally we would pass through some sadly dilapidated little village, almost a ghost town, with faded signs, closed buildings and all the requisite cars up on cinder blocks. But passing through was really a matter of missing it if you blinked and then...back to the realm of emptiness. We did pass through the town of Roswell (of Area 51 fame) and were quite surprised with the first half of it. The town is very large and modern with a huge military academy. But right after that we entered nothing but a larger version of what we had seen earlier - closed stores and businesses,  and a bleak remnant of what must have been a vibrant and prosperous western town (until the aliens landed at least.)

Onward we pushed towards Carlsbad and the border of Texas. As we're passing through Carlsbad (and just as we pass a Ford dealership) an alarm begins sounding from the dashboard, a series of twenty-five beeps (we counted them later) which repeated every three minutes. Everything seems to be OK but we pull over and start doing a visual inspection of the outside. Mary Ellen soon discovers the problem: from the compartment where our "house" batteries are located, a steady stream of reddish liquid is streaming out of the bottom. But that's not the best part - it must have been dripping for a while because not only is the mystery reservoir now empty but the back of the RV, the towing mechanism and my new Jeep Wrangler looks like someone has been spraying them for a while with the red goo. The cables, the license plate the windshield, the cloth top...all soaked and stained. Despite this mess we are able to pull into the Ford dealership and get one of the departing techs (it's four thirty on a Saturday afternoon) to stop and take a look at it. It turns out the reservoir contained the hydraulic fluid that powers our leveling jacks. I ask him about the possibility of fixing it and he tells me the nearest place that can work on it is in El Paso - three hundred miles away. But, he says, we can still drive with it...we just can't level it out when we stop. Since we can't level it out we can't extend our slide so now we are down to half the space in an already intimate atmosphere. 

Reluctantly we do the only thing we can do, continue on our journey and when we reach San Antonio forty-eight hours from now, look for a large enough shop that can figure out what happened and fix it. For the entire next four hundred miles, every three minutes, the beeping begins again, driving us even further out of our minds with aggravation and misery. That night we stay at a pleasant little RV park near Fort Stockton, complete with shade trees, a little cafe attached to the office and a spectacular display of stars - it's the first time I've been able to see the Milky Way in years. Talking in bed before passing out, we conclude that on a scale of one to ten, so far RVing barely gets a three. Looking back we can see all the mistakes we made and decide to give it three more months before we cash in our chips and chalk the whole miserable experience up to another lesson learned.

But by the morning we are taking positive action, finding a reputable RV repair facility in San Antonio who can "level" us out and looking forward to the next day's excursion to see the Alamo and San Antonio's famous River Walk. We arrive at our RV park for the night and are dismayed to find that we've been assigned to a spot on the side of a hill. With no leveling jacks we are once more without the elbow room the slide-out will provide. Still, we decide to hang in there for one more day and after hooking up all the utilities, turn to unhitching the Jeep for tomorrow's sightseeing. But with the day's road dirt and debris mixing with the still-tacky hydraulic fluid, we are soon both covered with a black, greasy sludge. Our clothes are ruined, our hands will probably never be clean again and we look like a couple of diesel mechanics at a Texas truck stop. All of our hopeful good vibes from the morning are gone, we're back to second-guessing everything we've been trying to do for the last three months and our heads are filled with thoughts of what a nice place we can afford to rent until der kinder decide where they are going to land. 

Tonight I'll be showering with a bottle of grease-cutting dish detergent instead of a bar of soap and recalling how we gave up our home in Rumson for the joys of Rving...