Ugly

I tore into the cart this morning before it got too hot, however it didn’t take long before the temp climbed to 110 degrees. It actually doesn’t take long to pull the body. I think I had it done within 20 minutes. Landen helped me lift the body off once I got all the bolts our.

Before

After

After pulling the tank I cleaned it up and sure enough… there was the leak, a crack on the bottom about 8 inches long. Actually it was only leaking from about 2 inches of the crack. Last night I tested a dab of some Gorilla Glue I had on the tank and this morning it looked pretty good and seemed to stick to the tank well. So today I smeared Gorilla Glue down the whole length of the crack. Then I got the bright idea to stick my Shop-Vac in the filler hole and draw a vacuum on the tank in hopes to suck the glue into the crack. I know, Shop-Vac and gasoline doesn’t sound too safe but the tank was clean and dry. This actually worked out pretty well because when I vacuumed the tank it collapsed a bit and really opened up the crack so I was able to add more glue inside the crack.

It looks pretty ugly but, hey, if it works who cares. It’s not visible when installed anyway. After doing a little more research I wish I had used Seal-All instead of Gorilla Glue. Seal-All is more for sealing where as Gorilla Glue is for gluing parts together. Seal-All says it is impervious to gasoline and is good for sealing gas tanks. I have used Seal-All for plumbing leaks and it worked well. Well if the Gorilla Glue starts to leak I will give Seal-All a try next time. If that don’t do it I will get out my soldering iron and try my luck at plastic welding.

More things to fix

After going outside this morning I noticed a strong smell of gasoline. What now, I though. Looking under the gold cart I found the source, a puddle of gas. Apparently the gas tank sprung a leak. After finding out a new tank will cost over $200, I started researching a fix. Seems nothing sticks to Polypropylene, which is the material the tank is made of. I did some research online and found a number of people that successfully patched theirs by smearing different types of glues or epoxies on them. I guess you can’t really securely stick anything to polypropylene but maybe a leak can be fixed by adding a layer of glue, at least for a while. I think I will have to give it a try. In order to fix it I have to remove the tank. In order to remove the tank I have to remove the body. Fortunately it really isn’t a major job, but in 100+ degree heat it might be a bit uncomfortable.

And it just gets hotter

After the cool winter we had, and the month of May being just great, I was hoping for a mild summer. Unfortunately it is above average so far. Next time you are watching the news, pay attention to the weather map when they show the temperatures around the country. Arizona is the hottest. With both air conditioners running we manage to keep it comfortable inside the motorhome, except when Susan starts cooking, then it gets a bit warm. We have been trying to do most of the cooking outside.

Couple of new additions, after 7 years I finally had to have a new patio awning installed.

The original was just worn out. We do use it a lot. Also our front windshield cover finally had enough sun.

Before

After

It used to be bright white. I elected to go with gray this time. Next on the list is new upholstery and carpet.

No he really isn’t a big as he looks. There are a couple of these guys that hang around my patio. They are not afraid of us at all. They come running over to me and I can just reach down and pick them up. I guess they know I won’t do them any harm.

Jimmie sighting

I saw Jimmie Johnson (Susan’s favorite NASCAR driver) Fly over the resort here today. I didn’t know at the time who it was however but I heard a jet flying over and looked up to see what it was. This is not too uncommon but it always catches our attention when one goes over. Later this afternoon we heard the roar of a jet take off from the airport. A while later Susan was on the computer and found out that Jimmie was at the Lowe’s just around the corner from us. It must of just been a private appearance for the Lowe’s employees because there was no advertisement and a search on Google comes up with nothing. The way she found out is one of her friends saw his post on Facebook and emailed her about it. Susan and Landen were bummed that they missed him.

I know, it’s been a while

It has been a while since I have posted anything to our Blog. Since we are not traveling this summer, there is not much exciting going on. As you can see in these photos, it is starting to get hot.

Monday

Tuesday


Today

At about 10:00a this morning it was already 100 degrees. I still manage to do my morning walks before the heat climbs but I stopped my evening walks since it doesn’t drop below 100 until about 9:00p. I tried the treadmill in the gym but it aint the same. Last night we had to run the air all through the night, it’s getting to that point.

Landen has been having a good time.

We head for the pool every day to keep cool. Sure is nice having a pool right out our front yard. I bought Landen a project from Lowes the other day. He really enjoyed using Papa’s tools to build his Bug Box, especially the power ones.

Since we really don’t have many bugs here he has been using it for a house for his Legos.

He really has an imagination when playing with his legos.

Just a few million

Ever wonder what a few million dollars looks like?

Well here ya go.


A shot of the Channel at Lake Havasu.

Let the fun begin

Memorial weekend is the big summer kickoff here in Havasu. Today Landen and I headed down to the channel to see the craziness and there was no shortage of it. First of all it took me about an hour to find a place to park. It was one of those, keep driving around the parking lots until someone decides to leaving. We finally got lucky and got a spot close to the action, right next to the Zip Line.

Of course Landen wanted to go for the Zip Line but at $15 a shot I wasn’t too excited about it. It was close to 100 degrees and everyone was partying to the fullest.

Even Wilson was having a good time. Here’s a little more eye candy, Welcome to my world!

Don’t forget, you can click on any photo to enlarge it.

Fun times

Landen is having a great time. How could he not? He is hanging out with Nana and Papa in Lake Havasu City when all the other kids are still in school. We have spent just about every day in the pool

Cactus cat

Our neighbor, on their way back to Idaho for the summer sent us this.

Out in Gold Canyon Ranch, AZ.
Yesterday morning - a friend called and informed me that a Mountain Lion had chased a Bobcat up a tall Saguaro and that it was still there !!
So - with Camera and long lens - I dashed out and this was the result. A once in a life time "Kodak Moment" .......What a beautiful creature. He was quite relaxed, at times napping - just waiting for an opportunity to come back down. That Saguaro was 45- 50' in height, I guess Mr. Mountain Lion didn't feel it was worth being "harpooned" by those long needles!

I hate it when that happens

Today my computer wasn’t feeling very well. Suddenly it just locked up on me. I couldn’t even shut it down without doing a hard shutdown, you know, hold the power button down for 5 seconds. I tried several things to remedy the problem with no help. It worked OK in Safe mode but after a normal boot it would lockup within 15 seconds. This went on for several hours. Then as sudden as it came on, it went away. I never did find the culprit but all seems fine now. Time will tell.

They should be ashamed

I am talking about the cookie company that supplies the cookies for the Girl Scout cookie sales. I just read an article in the local paper here in Havasu that states the girl scouts sold a record 41,724 boxes of cookies this year. That came to a total of $166,896.00. Now that is not what the Girl Scouts got. They only got a mear $16,689.60, 10% of all sales. In other words, the Girl Scouts only get 40 cents for every $4.00 box of cookies. The cookie company gets $3.60 for a box of cookies! I can buy a box for less at Walmart and that’s after Walmart gets their profit. They should be ashamed getting these little girls to make the big profits for them! I remember asking my brother how much my nieces Scout Troop gets per box and he said about $0.50 a box. I wrote the scout troop a check for $20 and told them to forget the cookies.

Race canceled

No not NASCAR. The Desert Storm Boat Race was canceled today and tomorrow because of high winds. The winds started up last night and rose to around 47 MPH today. Tomorrow it is supposed to calm down to around 25 MPH. Usually things get blown around pretty good here at the park during high winds. Car covers get blown away and patio furniture end up in the surrounding desert. I guess people have learned during the years because as I cruised around the resort I found nothing out of place. Anyway, even though the boat didn’t get to play they still plan to party. The airport reports full hangers from all the personal jets that came to town for the race. Yes, they not only have high powered boats and half million dollar trucks to pull them, they also have high dollar jets to fly them in and out. I think the only ones that are out of luck this weekend are the fuel stations that expected to sell lots of expensive high octane gas for the boats.

Unfortunately this is the first year for a while that I missed the Laughlin River Run. I say, “I missed” because Susan made a Laughlin trip with a few ladies the other day. Things just didn’t work out for me.

The boats are in town

I went down to main street today to check out some of the boats in town for the Desert Storm Shootout. Today they lined them up for show. Some decided to forgo the show and play. You could hear them on the water from just about anywhere in Havasu. Tomorrow is the parade through the channel and Saturday is the shootout. The weather says 47 MPH wind gusts for Saturday. This should be interesting. Here is a few photos for ya.

How about a little bling for your boat?

You need a car to go along with that boat?

Damn, ran out of room for more motors. 1,400 horsepower total.

Your gonna need one of these…

To pull one of these.

No, its not a Corvette.

So much going on

Some old warplanes are coming into town for the weekend.

For around $3,000 you can even get a chance to fly one of these. No license required. A bit much for me though. It’s still fun watching them fly over our motorhome.

Also this weekend is the Desert Storm Boat Races. So far there are 111 high performance boats signed up. It all starts Wednesday when they close off the main street in town and line then up and down the street for display. Friday morning they will parade through the channel for a look at them in the water the Saturday is the Shootout where they will run 2 miles down the lake for best speed.

Another event is the Laughlin River Run where bikers from all over come to the river for a week of fun and games. Lots of cool bikes and leather.

Bonsai

After the neighbors left there was no one to take care of their gardenias. I noticed they were dieing off so I brought them over to our place and trimmed off all the dead growth.

Now it looks like a Bonsai Gardenia. Kind of cool looking.

WORK!

Our park manager came to me the other day and asked if I wanted some work. I laughed. He said there is an owner’s lot that needs some maintenance and he didn’t have time to do it. I contacted the owners and put in a bid and got the job. The job consisted of repairing the irrigation, rebuilding some block walls, removing a couple of overgrown trees, and some general clean up. It was a 1 day job but I stretched it out to 2, didn’t want to work too hard.

Before

After

The weather is warming up. Today it almost got to 100 degrees but was shy a few tenths.

This lizard found some shade under these rocks. Fortunately we get a good breeze between the motorhome and the casita so that is where I sat under the awning and watched the NASCAR race today. Tomorrow I will probably do the same.

New generation

We found a new generation of humming birds in a tree near us the other day. There are 2 baby humming birds stuffed in this nest about the size if a golf ball.

The amazing thing is the nest is right out in the open along a busy traveled path. They don’t seem to mind all the people that stop by to take a look.

The weather is all over the place right now. We had a 100+ day a few back and last night rain. The wind has been quite strong today and for the next 2 days we are expecting a thunderstorm. Sure makes for great sunsets.

It’s thinning out

Won’t be long before we are one of the few left here at the resort in Havasu. The Snowbirds are migrating north at a rapid rate. We are planning to stay until we head to California to pick up our Grandson for the summer. Susan has not had to do much cooking this last week because of all the going away parties everyone is having. It’s starting to warm up here but it is still cold up north, especially for those folks heading for Canada. Yesterday it reached a little over 100 but the wind kept it under 100 today.

Bill Williams River Hike

I just added the photos of our hike at the Bill Williams River here in Arizona. This river was named after an early explorer in the area. It joins lake Havasu just north of the Parker Dam. The River area is a National Wildlife Refuge because of the many species of birds found there.

Snakes are out

Saw this guy on a hike today. He was stretched across the path in front of us. We tossed a couple of rocks toward him to send him on his way but he didn’t respond until we tossed some gravel at him. Boy that sure pissed him off. He spun around into a coil and looked right at us with rattle going a mile a minute, then ran off into the bushes. We could still hear him as we passed by on our way. I will post more of the hike pictures to our photo site soon.

This is what I did today

Yesterday I damn near wore myself out wiping down the motorhome. I was going to wash it after the dust camp we stayed at in Vegas but it really didn’t look that bad so I just got a bucket of water and a step ladder and wiped and dried the whole thing down. Going up and down the ladder and wiping with one hand and drying with the other gave me quite a workout.

Today I attacked the wheels. I have been wanting to shine up the aluminum for a while now and got it done today. Fortunately I have one of those Power Balls from Mothers

and borrowed my neighbors drill motor so it took me about an hour instead of 4.

All fixed

I finally got the seal replaced on my front wheel. I made the appointment and the day of the appointment I called the shop that first replaced the seal, and who agreed to pay for the replacement, to let them know I was taking it in and they should expect a call from the shop I am taking it to. This time however I got a hold of a different guy that gave me a hard time about it. I finally told him I had the appointment and am taking it in and will deal with who will pay later. I arrived at the shop and told them to call the first shop and let them know what they find and maybe expect a hassle. Turns out that when they called they got the first person I talked to and was told to fax over the bill and they will pay by credit card. Anyway I got the job done at no charge to me.

The trip back to our lot didn’t turn out too well though. I couldn’t avoid some debris in the road and ended up ripping some wires out under the motorhome and put a good dent in my tail pipe. The wires were an easy fix and I straightened out the pipe as well as I could.

After cleaning things up I happened to look over at the wheel that was worked on and spotted a stream of oil running down from the axel across the wheel and pooling on the ground. All I could do is stand there and laugh. After pulling the center cap off the wheel I noticed the oil was coming from the axel oil drain plug. A simple ¼ turn tightened it up and after cleaning up the oil there were no more leaks. Now I got a small mess under my tire that I either have to move the motorhome or jack the wheel off the ground to clean.

Better

Susan is feeling much better now. She still has a cough and is feeling a bit weak but she is at least up and around. This makes me feel much better also. I rescheduled the motorhome appointment to get the bearing seal replaced. I will also be calling Chem-Dry to get the carpet cleaned since we were going to have it done before Susan got sick.

The weather is shaping up real nice around here. It has been comfortably cool in the mornings and warm in the afternoons and the wind has not been an issue.

I added the NASCAR pictures from the Vegas race, enjoy.

Sick

We didn’t come back from the NASCAR race without a souvenir. Susan came back with the Flu. I am talking serious flu. The doctor said it is the Swine Flu…I thought that was gone. Anyway, they prescribed some high dollar drugs which I bought thinking it would make it all go away. I should know better. I am one that won’t even take an aspirin unless I am really hurting but I wanted her to feel better. Turns out that the major side effect of all 3 meds they prescribed is vomiting. I thought that was what we were trying to stop. For 3 days she could not eat, drink, or sleep because her stomach wouldn’t let her. She finally decided to stop all meds and today she feels much better.

If you get the Flu, don’t let the doctor talk you into paying mega bucks for Tamiflu. It will only make you feel worse.

Back in Havasu again

We made it back to Lake Havasu City today in spite of the high wind warnings. The weather report said the winds would be worst in the afternoon so we got an early start and made it through without problems. I filled the leaking wheel bearing and checked it a half hour into the trip. I had to top it off again so an hour later I pulled over to check it again. It was still full so I felt better about that. It hasn’t leaked since. However I called the shop that replaced it in December and they agreed to replace it again. The problem is they are 260 miles away. So they agreed to pay the bill if I take it to an authorized service center here in Havasu. Nice work! Even though it isn’t leaking right now I have an appointment Friday to get it replaced.

NASCAR was fun, as usual. Susan and I got into Las Vegas about noon Thursday and took time for a little lunch before heading into the track. We spent the days with our daughter, her husband and friends and headed out to the motorhome for the nights. Thursday was NASCAR practice Friday was qualifying and Saturday and Sunday were the races. I will post photos to our photo site soon.

The race is over

Well the race is over and Susan’s driver didn’t win. We still had a great time with our daughter and friends.

The races were exciting nun the less with some pretty spectacular mishaps right in front of us.

Tomorrow we head back to Havasu. I filled my wheel hub with fresh oil and I think we can make it back to Havasu with no problem there. The problem might be the weather. They are calling for High winds which makes driving a motorhome kind of tricky. I will just have to play it by ear and drive slower and more careful if the winds are too bad.

Las Vegas

Oh, did I mention we are in Las Vegas? We arrived Thursday for the NASCAR race weekend. The drive was good until we arrived in town then every stop we made we smelled something burning. I pulled over to investigate but didn’t notice anything. After arriving at the track and getting settled in I checked things out closer and found the culprit. I have a leaking wheel bearing seal on one of my front wheels. The fluid drips out on the hot brake rotors and hence the smell. I bought some oil and will top it off before we leave on Monday and see if we can make it back to Havasu.

Other than that we are having a great time as usual.

We are with our daughter again and it is so nice to be able to spend some time with her, her husband and Reese the dog.