Wednesday September 30, 2009-Priest Gulch campground

Here is Stella & I and Gene and Linda sitting at the Argentine Grill where we had supper tonight. We had a great meal and wished that our friends had been able to go with us before they had to leave.

Stella and I stayed at the trailer today and put things away in preparation for leaving tomorrow. I got many of the outside things put away and Stella made good progress on the inside of the trailer.

We had discovered that the pump on our auxiliary fuel tank had stopped working. I suspected something was loose on the new connections an employee of the Auto Zone, and after inspecting the work, I found that not only was the connection on the alligator clip loose, the entire new ring clip on the positive post of the battery was loose and needed to be replaced. We had stopped the day before while on our drive and bought the parts to replace the alligator clip with a ring connection but then I found that I didn't have an electrical crimper to make the connection. Richard, one of the park employees, said he had a crimper that we could use, but when we got to his trailer, he could not open the drawer in his toolbox because another tool had become wedged in the drawer and he couldn't open the one he needed to get the crimper tool. We decided to drive into Dolores or Cortez to find a tool but on the way out of the park I saw an RV repairman who was working on a trailer. I stopped and asked him for help and he not only used his crimping tool, he installed the ring clip and now the pump works! We decided to drive into Cortez to fill up both tanks so that we could start out tomorrow with full fuel tanks. It took us about an hour and a half to make the trip, but at least now we are full of fuel. We took 64.2 gallons of diesel to go 1110.8 miles for a 17.3 MPG average.

When we finished our meal at the grill, I made a call to the Internet provider for the park, Amerispot, complaining about our lack of Internet today. The lady that answered the telephone was not helpful at all but I guess my complaint accomplished something because when we got back to the park, neither of us even had to log on to access the Internet. When we got back to the park, we all decided that it was too windy and too cold for a fire. The weather had turned much colder today and it had been very windy all day long and we were all worried about low temperatures tonight. We all turned in early tonight and let water drip so that our water lines wouldn't freeze.

We had a very nice visit to the Priest Gulch and in spite of not having cell phone service and spotty Internet, we will likely come back. We have made some good friends here and we will visit with them again.

So long.