Day 151: WiFi, Winners, and Walmart

Posted on January 5, 2014 by Ben

We had a wonderful Shabbos in Scottsdale at the Scottsdale Torah Center. We had the pleasure of having dinner with Rabbi G and his family as well as other folks from the community. We had lunch with the M family, and found that we had quite a bit in common. Thanks for making our Shabbos so special!

On Saturday night, I found that the WiFi antenna wasn’t working correctly, so this morning we drove to Lowe’s and I bought the parts needed to fix what turned out to be a not-fully-seated pin in the RJ45 connector on the cable running to the antenna. That problem solved, we drove a couple blocks north to the Penske Racing Museum, which is a one-room museum nestled amongst a row of high end car dealerships:

Our son is in a “get excited about cars” phase, so on our walk back to where the RV was parked, we checked out some of the modest offerings in the adjacent dealership lots:

Heading south, we stocked up on Kosher meat and cheese, filled the SUV, and stopped for the night at the Walmart of Tempe, AZ. See the trip map for details.

Day 149: Leaving Bulldog OHV

Posted on January 4, 2014 by Ben

This morning, the kids discovered the ball run Trish had put up and ~~ripped it down and started over~~ made some modifications:

I went for a bike ride. It’s wonderful to be riding in 70 degree weather at 10am in January!

We’ve had a wonderful 8 days here in the Bulldog OHV area of Tonto National Forest, but it’s time to go. Here we are hitched up:

After I got back from the bike ride, I removed the remaining running board (see yesterday’s post) and we hitched up. We then drove back to the Chevron with the $5 dump station before heading to Scottsdale for Shabbos. We arrived in Rabbi G’s (name withheld for privacy) driveway with plenty of time to get set up. Good Shabbos from Scottsdale, AZ!

Day 148: Making the SUV lighter in Bulldog OHV

Posted on January 2, 2014 by Ben

Today after homeschool we decided to head into Apache Junction by way of the 8 mile off-road FS10 route that I biked a few days ago. The “road” is really bad in spots, and coming down a steep hill the washed out trench in the middle of the road was a bit too wide and the SUV slipped in to the trench on the passenger side, crushing the running board up into the body of the SUV.

Oops:

Looking back up the hill:

Truth be told, I’ve always hated the running boards because they reduce ground clearance, so I wasn’t sad to discover that the front of the running board had been sheared off its mount. I got out some tools and finished the job:

Yup, this one’s done:

Post surgery, the SUV has a lot more clearance:

Not wanting to litter, we packed out the running board. I’ll remove the other one tomorrow before we leave Bulldog OHV:

Enjoy your last day on the SUV, driver’s side running board, you’ll be joining your starboard friend tomorrow:

We pulled off FS10 to check out an old mine, which now has a modern water gauging station installed:

It took us about 90 minutes to cross those 8 miles to Apache Junction, just a bit slower than by bike. That’s how bad the road was. We did food shopping and laundry, and stopped at Grandpa Glenn’s to say hello to him and Edna. We filled up our 45 gallon water bag for the trip back to the RV, as the RV is almost out of fresh water:

Once we returned to the RV, I drained the water bag into the RV’s fresh water tank via garden hose. Trish tried out a wall-mounted ball run we recently received: