The Flowers Explore - Palm Springs California - Pt 1 2022/05/31-06/08

Arizona, it's been fun, but it's time to us to head back to where it all started (for the kids at least). California! I enjoyed the drive through the large cactus fields. 

This stop on our travels will almost get us from one coast to the other. That's a lot of driving though!

We weren't sure what this construction was that we were seeing along the drive, but Theresa mentioned that she's never seen so many cranes in one place working on something. That's going to be a big building. 

Every car and truck coming in goes through this agricultural inspection station. They waved us on through. No illegal vegetables in here. 

Welcome to California! 

Aww, California, did you miss us? 

Well we made it to Palm Springs, driving along the main road and over to our campground. Uh, I don't like that sign. I don't know if it's a weight limit for a bridge coming up, or if it's just for delivery trucks or what. Either way, we'll figure out how to u-turn this big RV and try a different direction. 

Here's our location! The Oasis RV in Palm Springs!

Except, uh oh. As soon as we pulled into the driveway of the resort my Tire Monitor started going crazy and making noise! Theresa read that we had started to lose pressure on the back RV tire. I can't stay in the driveway though, and there's still a little pressure in the tire. Our site is already assigned, so I quickly made my way over to it and... it was occupied! Grr! With no alternative, I found another empty space and backed the RV in.  

Well... that's a first for us on the road. Notice the crooked parking job and I was just trying to get it into a spot quickly. The spare tire for the RV travels underneath behind the rear axel. 

I wasn't thrilled to learn that it was a cheaper brand spare tire instead of the Goodyear Endurance we prefer to be traveling on. 

We've found for the most part that the people in RV parks are good people. Seeing our predicament with the flat tire, our neighbor came outside (in the 90+ degree heat) and offered his help. He had a professional jack (versus my bottle jack I carry around), helped get under the RV to align it on the axel, and even helped jack it up. He even said that he used to work at a tire shop and could help us patch it. To say thank you, we brought him back a cold 12 pack of his beverage of choice that he was pounding to beat the heat. 

Looking at the tire, that's quite a puncture hole. I don't think that's going to be a candidate for patching, but we'll stop by the tire shop tomorrow and see. 

Once a proper tire was installed, I hooked back up to the truck and re-parked it on the site. That tree on the right of the photo had some pretty thick branches, so I had to keep the RV to the side. 

Theresa and I found out the hard way that the tree is loaded with thorns! Theresa had one puncture through her shoe into her heel! I reached up to pull a branch out of the way as the slide extended and impaled my hand enough to draw blood!  

We had plans for making dinner tonight, but after a rough start, Little Caesars pizza was quick and easy. 

Working outside in the heat, and getting dirty changing the tire, a hot shower to rinse off the sweat sounds good right about now. Our RV has an instant hot water heater where we can set the temperature precisely. Ian went first and yelled while he was taking his shower that instead of being 106F like he likes, it was going from 124 to 140F! Definitely not something you want to be standing under. After a couple days I figured out what was happening. We get our water from a faucet and then use a hose to bring it into the RV. Apparently the water pipes aren't buried very deep because the water heats up inside them. 

I turned on the COLD tap inside the RV and this is the temperature of the water that came out. 116F! No wonder the hot water heater can't make 106F water. It's hotter than that coming in! This temperature varied depending on the time of day, but it was always above 100F. 

The hits just keep coming. Around 11pm Theresa noticed that our power went out and we were running on batteries. I went out to check the panel and was greeted by a black widow spider. Lovely. Well our panel isn't putting out any voltage and resetting it didn't help. Fortunately I didn't have a neighbor so I pulled out my extension cord and plugged into that panel. At least we can run the Air Conditioner now. 

The next day, the truck is registering this temperature. It's not the real temperature, but it feels hot. 

Over at America's Tire, they took a look and confirmed it could not be patched. Luckily for us, they had our exact tire in stock and were able to install a new one for us. Actually once we took a closer look, Theresa noticed the replacement tire had a bubble on it, and they pulled it off and gave us a better one. 

What ended up doing all the damage? 

A tire weight (used to balance a tire) from someone else's car! We must have run over it just right for it to flip up and go through the tire. 

We pulled in all the slides, and in the 100+ temperatures, I used the bottle jack to get the RV into the air and get the spare back off. We didn't actually drive on the spare, other than the repositioning of the RV into our spot again. No need to replace it yet. 

And now the new tire goes on. Here's hoping we get a few thousand good miles out of it. 

California, are you mad at us for leaving? So far we've had:

1. Re-route due to heavy load, 2. Flat tire, 3. Someone in our reserved spot, 4. Thorns around the site that drew blood, 5. Hot water heater not putting out the right temperature water, 6. Power outage, 7. Black Widow Spiders, 8. $225 new tire!

It can only get better from here.