Winter 2020 Trip, Day 19: Quartzsite and Salton Sea, Day 1

Posted on February 2, 2020 by Ben

M and I had a nice Shabbos with the T family in Scottsdale. It was great to catch up!

Last night we drove west, overnighting just east of Quartzsite, Arizona. This morning was cool and clear:

We drove in to Quartzite, RV capital of the world. We’ve visited Quartzsite many times. Every winter something like 100,000 RVs winter here in the BLM’s Long Term Vehicle Area. This time we just stopped in briefly, but most of the vendors left a week or two ago:

RVs for sale:

We continued on to Salton Sea, home of the annual Salton City and Glamis Fly-In, which I last flew in 2016. Before driving down to the shore, we dumped or sewer tanks and filled the fresh water tank:

Even though the fly-in doesn’t start until Wednesday, there are already plenty of pilots here, visiting from all over the world:

Unfortunately, by the time we were unpacked, a storm front was moving in making flying too dangerous. We drove the motorcycles into nearby Ocotillo Wells State Vehicular Recreation Area:

See the trip map for today’s drive.

Winter 2020 Trip, Day 2: Cumberland Gap NHP, Big South Fork NRRA, Obed WSR

Posted on January 16, 2020 by Ben

I awoke to a delivery truck at the Cracker Barrel restaurant where I spent the night. I headed out to my first stop, Cumberland Gap National Historical Park:

The park preserves the Cumberland Gap, a break in the Appalachian Mountains. The “discovery” of the gap by white settlers in 1750 allowed for the settling of Kentucky and Tennessee.

When I arrived, I discovered that the RV refrigerator no longer works on propane but does work on electricity, so I raised my solar panels and turned on the inverter to generate 120VAC:

For some reason, my current phone (LG V20) doesn’t communicate with the solar controller’s Bluetooth module, but my backup phone works. Here I’m generating 384 watts of power and consuming 261 watts to operate the refrigerator:

I wanted to visited the Gap itself as well as the Pinnacle Overlook, but the road has a 20-foot length limit, and I’m at 28 feet, so I dropped a motorcycle off the front rack:

From the overlook, the Gap is the cleft running to the lower left corner of the photograph:

Views from the overlook:

On the way back down, I visited a Civil War defensive position. The Gap changed hands several times during the Civil War:

I parked the motorcycle and hiked up to the Gap itself:

This memorial marks Daniel Boone’s trail through the Gap:

The 20-foot length limit on the road makes sense:

I continued east into Tennessee to Visit Big South Fork National River and Recreation Area:

I then headed south to visit Obed Wild and Scenic River:

I continued south to overnight at a closed Cabellas in Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia. See the trip map for today’s drive.

Summer 2018, Day 38: Short Pine OHV, Roosevelt NP

Posted on August 14, 2018 by Ben

Another great day at Glendive:

The horses wouldn’t come down today:

We got in a little over our heads today:

We packed up and headed east into North Dakota:

We stopped at the South Unit of Theodore Roosevelt National Park. Last year we visited the North Unit.

We visited Theodore Roosevelt’s Maltese Cross Cabin. Roosevelt moved here from New York after the death of his wife and mother:

The Maltese Cross carved into the cabin:

In the visitor center, this display listed the lands conserved by Roosevelt:

We went to an overlook for the Park’s badlands:

We continued east. Approaching Bismarck, I felt an odd shuddering in the steering wheel. We pulled off the interstate into a gravel parking lot and discovered most of the lug nuts on the front passenger wheel had broken off: