144 miles is not what I would call a good start to our 2008 Big Adventure. We made it to Flag as they affectionally call it in Arizona. Flag is where everyone in Phoenix wants to be in August. A nice little college town in the shadow of the massive Mt Humphrey, a classic cinder cone volcano.
We were suppose to start out yesterday and stop at the Camp Wally here in Flag but after we unplugged the house power we noticed that the propane for the refrigerator did not kick in. That is bad. No refrigeration no heading for Flagstaff. It was too late to get it looked into so I did what I could to repair it. Nothing. We looked up the repair shop number and called them first thing in the morning.
We got into the shop, Orangewood RV on Bell Road in Surprise, at 8:00 am and got the repair done and were on the road at 11:45am. Total cost $94 for cleaning out the flue in the refrigeration unit. Evidently it rusts and the rust falls down onto the burners, blocking them. They said that they cleaned the system and everything was working.
It is all uphill, just about, from Phoenix at 800 feet above sea level to Flag which is about 7,000 feet above sea level. We had a lot of wind blowing the RV around which really took a lot out of me physically. We took a break at Camp Verde, Arizona and checked out the Cliff Castle Casino which was just off of I-17. The casino is somewhat RV unfriendly. Their RV and truck parking lot was taken over by a car dealer's tent sale and we had to wait 20 minutes for a shuttle which stops and waits at the Discount Cigarette store where smokers could run in and replenish their supply. The casino was pretty nice but I think its customers were predominately smokers because it had that golden brown patina that casinos with poor air handling systems get after 4-5 years. Just about every other slot player had a cigartette hanging out of his/her mouth. The place reeked. Seven got a chip for her casino chip collection and we left. The shuttle was not to be seen, probably parked, waiting in front of the cigarette shop again, so we hoofed it down the hill to the RV.
Not too much later we heard the tell-tale beeping coming from the refrigerator. It stopped working again because it could not get any propane. We looked up RV refrigerator dealers in Flag and tried calling them but our list was 8 years old. Seven finally called one in Cottonwood and he recommended a friend's shop in Flag for us. We called them and got directions.
We got to the Flagstaff RV Service Center on 4316 N Highway 89 and got in line and hoped that they could get to our RV before their 5pm quitting time. Lucky us. The technician, Robert, took one quick look and told us what the problem was in about 2 minutes - dirty burners and a dirty flue. We said "how can that be, we just had them cleaned 4 hours ago?" They shrugged and said that they were dirty so we said clean them. About an hour later the shop manager, Jason, came back and said we were set to go. He said it looked like to him that the burners had not been cleaned and the propane pressure had not been adjusted. Both of those things could have caused the problem. We paid $103 and then saw Robert, who worked on our RV. We asked him if it looked like the burners had been cleaned and he said absolutely not. He said that to clean them compressed air is forced into the pipe and that shakes any debrie loose. We are going to stop payment to Orangewood RV tomorrow if they do not remove the charge.
We had a quick supper at Pizza Hut. Two personal pan pizzas with salad. Good stuff. After that we went over to Flag's big time mall for some mall walking. Walking the Flag mall didn't take more than 3 minutes at most so I did it 3 times. Seven met me in Sears where she bought some shirts. I wanted some ice cream but didn't see any stores that might have had some.
We are dry camping in an auto supply store parking lot for the night. The store closed at 6pm. Not too bad. Train tracks are near by but I won't hear them in about 15 minutes. We didn't fire up the generator and watch our soap, the Young and the Restless. They rerun all the week's episodes on Saturday and Sunday on Soapnet so we will catch up to the stories then when we will have electricity. On to Cortez or Mancos and Mesa Verde tomorrow.
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