Trials and Tribulations in a House on Wheels

Now that I’ve moved our website from GoDaddy to BlueHost, everything actually seems to be working.  If you missed the last post because GoDaddy was down for the second time, I think it should load successfully from here on out.  

I can’t believe how fast our travels are going by.  The other day I commented to Tami … “Hey, it’s December.  Christmas is in December!”  It’s so not the December I’m used to – and I’m in no way complaining about that, but hard to reconcile 80 degree weather with my internal calendar.  We’ve spent the last couple weeks in the greater Phoenix area, and there’s so much to talk about I think I’ll break it up into a couple, or even a few entries.  I’ll start with the unplanned excitement.

If you’ve known us long enough, you know we used to be into boating and had a boat moored in Bellingham Bay.  Besides the usual boating stuff, we always spent 4th of July on the boat for an afternoon of fun, food, friends and fireworks – the big show in Bellingham launches just out from the marina.  One year, during our 4th of July afternoon festivities, a boat on the next dock caught fire.  My first instinct was to grab my camera and shoot a bunch of pictures as I watched the next boat catch fire, and then the next.  That was when I learned how fast fiberglass burns.  That realization turned to fear quickly and we made ready to get the F(oxtrot) out of there.  From our boat we could feel the flames and I wasn’t sticking around hoping to avoid disaster.

I’ll bet something like this is rare enough that if it happens to you once in a lifetime, you’re in a select few.  Except for us, once is never enough!  ‘Glamping’ north of Phoenix in Cave Creek, we were almost all the way back to nature with 50 amps of power, water hookup, our satellite dish, but no sewer connection!  Roughing it for sure.  One morning I was working on a make-shift window shade out of some left over reflective material we had purchased, and I hear a horn going off.  Not the steady pulse of an alarm horn, but a constant stream of noise that didn’t fit the surroundings.  When out in the brush there arose such a clatter, I sprang for my shoes to see what was the matter.  Actually I pulled my window shade hack off the window and the panic began.  Plumes of black smoke were rising from a couple camp spots over and people were gathering to view the commotion.  I opened the door to hear the popping of things that weren’t supposed to burning.  Tami was just getting in the shower and while spinning in place and grabbing what little hair I have left, I started yelling for her to get the dogs and get out.  Of course she had no idea what was going on but as I was yelling FIRE I guess I eventually convinced her there was a problem.  With the boat fire now playing over in my mind, and some nice dry brush in between us and plumes, I was thinking it wouldn’t take long for our fiberglass home on wheels to become a molten mass of resin.  Tami got the dogs in the Jeep and I calmly made our house ready for travel by ripping things down from the walls, throwing furniture on the bed, trying to get the slides in with things in the way, and losing the keys.  But we did get out of our spot and moved safely away from danger where we waited several hours for the fire fighters to say they had everything under control.  We’ve seen how fast brush fires spread in AZ and again I wasn’t going to sit there and hope for the best.  

As it turns out, there was a kid camping under the stars – no tent, just him and a car.  Somehow his car caught on fire.  It was mostly the car and the asphalt that was burning and producing all the black smoke, but I could’t tell from where we were.  All I saw was an impending multi-acre brush fire. Later we learned that he fled the scene after the fire started and there were several sheriff SUVs at the site looking for him in the surrounding desert.  Not sure if they actually found him or not, but one major question remains.  Why are there so many car fires in AZ?  There was just another one on the freeway 2 days ago, and it seems most of the major brush fires they’ve had in the last few years were started by car fires!  It gets hot in AZ, but it’s not hot all the time.  And not hot enough to burn metal.  I just don’t get it!  This is like the Bermuda Triangle of car fires. Beware of Phoenix! But thankfully all turned out well and our coach lived to really get damaged a few days later…

As you know the house we’ll be moving to eventually is in Fountain Hills AZ, about 20 minutes east of Scottsdale.  We can’t move there now because of the VRBO bookings we have set up until mid April, and that led us to this great adventure.  But there was a small gap in renters while we were nearby which gave us the opportunity to spend the night in the driveway at our house – couldn’t go in because it had been professionally cleaned for the next renters.  But we could use the pool, as well as use it as a launching point for visiting friends and a couple new businesses in Fountain Hills.  We have an RV pad that stretches to the back yard and allows us to legally park our moho behind a fence.  Next to the RV pad is a seemingly harmless oleander hedge.  (Harmless as long as you don’t eat it).  I assessed the sitch and after climbing up on the roof to cut some branches off of the palo verde tree that hangs down over the driveway, I thought we had it made.  Driving in was a tight fit, and I scraped the hedge a bit but wasn’t too bad.  After all – it’s just leaves right?  Well, as I now have learned, leaves attach themselves to branches, and those suckers are nasty a-holes.  Once we were parked I went to Ace and bought some hedge clippers so I could cut the oleander back a bit further before attempting the extraction.  But there is a slight bend in the driveway and when backing out, to keep the wheels from going off the edge, I had to turn so the front of the coach was really in the bushes.  I tried to maneuver far enough to the side so that we would clear them, but it wasn’t enough.  Not only did I make some rather large permanent lines in the paint that weren’t meant to be there, but the palo verde also mangled the top of the roof ladder on the way out.  I’ve duct taped it now though so at least it doesn’t look bad.  🤣 And did I mention that the check engine light went on as we drove to our house?  Something tells me we weren’t supposed to go there.

When we arrived at our next destination, we opened one of the pantry cabinets and our new large glass bottle of olive oil decided it didn’t want to be in there anymore and jumped for freedom.  It didn’t make it.  After getting the glass out of our hands and fingers, we started trying to mop up olive oil from the walls, furnace vents, and rugs.  Yuck.  This is a process that will likely continue for some time.

I guess when you’re living in a small space that’s meant for travel to all kinds of locations and goes through a minor (or sometimes major) earthquake every few days depending on the road, it’s going to be hard to keep it looking new.  But, we’ll keep as many things as possible in plastic containers from now on, and I’ll try to avoid the tight spaces – especially if those wily branches are involved.

In the next post we’ll leave Debbie Downer and turn this frown upside down. I’ll talk about some of the fun things we did in the area, as it was mostly a great time.  Just a few scars to remember it by.