America's Southwest - 2013

I have been mentally preparing for my second competition at the Huntsman World Senior Games since last October. I have practiced my archery daily, and I have improved. Anne, too, is prepared for the doubles tennis games she will play with her partner, Judy. Over the many years they have played together at these contests, they have done well.

The first day’s drive towards St George, Utah, took us from Medford to Fallon, NV. Fallon is a small city on Hwy 50 southeast of the I-80 freeway and hustle and bustle of Reno. Fallon is a military town and is host to the Fallon Naval Air Station. This had been an eight hour day in our Freeway Cloud and both of us were ready for a break.

Fallon RV Park is at the northern fringe of the city, well presented, and convenient to the highway. The early evening sky was just beginning to darken as we registered and found our way to site 22. On previous trips to the SW we had stayed in Fallon. In a car, the time to reach Fallon is only about five hours and the busy home of the Naval Air Station breaks the trip to St George in half.

Reservations had been made to stay at the Willow Winds RV Park in Hurricane, UT. The Senior Games are held in and about St George, but unless one books an RV spot a half year early there are no spaces available within the city limits. The city of Hurricane, pronounced locally as Hurricun, is eight miles east of St George on I-15, and about ten miles south of exit 16 on UT-9. 

The Virgin River was the source of water for the cotton fields Brigham Young was going to develop in this western Land of Dixie. I-15 doesn’t faithfully follow the course of the Virgin River, but the early Latter Day Saints did. Nestled by the river and at the base of a large range of mesas to the south, the valley was a perfect place to form a new settlement. I don’t think the city’s name was any accident. The winds often blew stiffly and would rock the RV late into the night.

We pulled into Willow Winds on the fifth of October and we stayed until the seventeenth. Although we were a ways away from our sporting activities, the park was a good hub for us. All we needed to do was account for an extra half hour travel time in our schedules.

Anne and Judy were occupied with their matches on the same days I had my archery. Anne dropped me off at the archery field at around 0830 and then drove to Judy’s home in Sunriver, off Exit 2, west of St George. We arranged to have me recollected around 1630, after I had finished each long day of shooting.

Anne and Judy were defeated in a tie-breaker during their grab for bronze. Anne had played the last minutes of their match with a pulled calf muscle. She didn’t complain about her pain at the time, but I know if she had been able to work her court with a focused mind, they would have worn home metals.

I, with an honest outlook, saw no metal in my future on the field. Day one was organized for practice and setting sights for the 60, 50, and 40 yard ranges. St George lays at about 3,500 feet elevation. This is only 2,000 feet more that I have been shooting, in Medford. I noticed that my arrows were striking the target a few inches high. Two thousand feet isn’t much, but the lower air density can cause this effect. I shot several ends at each of the three range distances and established new sight settings.

Day two was spent in the southern Utah sun for eight hours. The field had 32 targets set up. Each target had four archers assigned. The four archers shot in pairs, an A line and a B line. The archers took five minute turns at hitting their assigned targets. After both lines have shot their six arrows, they all walk to the target to score the end and pull their arrows. As soon as all the archers have left the field, a whistle is blown and each archer shoots six more arrows. Thirty arrows are shot at each of the three target distances. When 60 yards is complete, the teams bring their target butts up to the 50 yard marker. At the new distance there is an end shot by each archer as practice. Thirty arrows are then shot before the target butts are pulled to the 40 yard line. I was dragging my quiver by the time Anne picked me up.

Day three on the range was greeted with winds of 20mph, gusting to 28mph. I, and most of the other archers, had never experienced shooting in these conditions. We mused about how no archer, excepting those who may have fallen subject to ancient military courts martial, would have been spending such a day shooting arrows. Needless, I didn’t shoot well this day. Miller Time seemed very slow to come and I was glad to have my year two of the Huntsman World Senior Games under my belt, along with the contents of a cold tinnie.

At this point neither of us had any scheduled expectations. Anne brought out her sewing machine and I read and putzed around the rest of the week. Patti Stanalonis was flying in with her softball team, from Albuquerque, on Sunday. We stayed through Wednesday so we could watch a few of the games her team played while on their way to a well-earned Bronze for this year’s work.

Glen Canyon Dam

Thursday morning we pulled out of Willow Winds and drove south and east towards Chinle, AZ. We planned to arrive at Cottonwood Campground at Canyon De Chelly (pronounced Shay) later in the day, set up a base, tour the canyon the next day, and drive the remainder of the way to Albuquerque on Saturday. We over shot our turn off and drove a few miles beyond before we could find an opportunity to turn our large RV and towed Honda CRV around. We asked directions to the campground from a Navajo street vender and quickly found our way to the park; the directions hadn’t been posted for the campground when coming from the Chinle direction.

There was no one manning the check-in booth when we arrived at Cottonwood. We selected site 41, paid our $14 daily fee and pulled in. Cottonwood has over ninety paved parking slots. Number 41 was large enough for us to pull directly into. The campground had few visitors the two days we were there. It is nicely kept with plenty of shade trees protecting the all-natural landscaping. The daily fee of $14 was pleasant, but no hookups came with it. The RV’s diesel generator powered the microwave for dinner preparation and saw us till the 2030 campground quiet hour when we had to turn it off, along with the TV.  

With over 17 million acres, the Navajo Nation encompasses the entire northeast quarter of the state of Arizona and spills over into New Mexico and Utah. Vast areas of pristine wilderness, majestic canyons, high mountain meadows, dry deserts, flatlands and blue skies characterize the land of the Navajo people.  

Canyon De Chelly is two vertical walled canyons carved some 800 feet into a high desert mesa of Arizona beginning a couple miles east of Chinle. The canyons spread out to form a Y-formation with the base anchored on the map at Chinle. There are two rim drives with pull-over lookouts offering spectacular vistas of the agriculturally worked base of the canyon; home for many of the area’s Navajo.

Each rim drive, one to the northeast and one to the southeast, has eight lookouts. From some of the lookouts one can park and then walk trails to the edge of the wall. On the far side, often quite high on the opposite cliff, one can see ruins of ancient wall dwellings occupied by the ancestors of the basin’s more modern timber framed citizens. History of human habitation within the canyon dates back to times BC.

The SE rim drive was the more convenient one from the Cottonwood Campground. In fact, it was on this rim where, the day before, we had used one of the lookout pull-overs to re-direct ourselves to the RV park. The lookouts were sprinkled along the rim drive over a distance of 14 miles. We took our time and checked out the views from each one. The most spectacular stop was at the last one where we were able to stand at the rim and look eye-to-eye with the top of Spider Rock.

We have all seen the TV commercial where a woman stands at the top of a spire, gleefully spinning around while waving at the abundance of sights to see when using her Visa card. The top Spider Rock is her stage. Believe me. She did not reach the top by ascending the nearly 800 feet of this sheer vertical and smoothly sided stone without rotorcraft assistance. A fantastic sight, the stone stands beside a shorter off-spring in the middle of the Canyon De Chelly basin. It is amazing to consider that the weathering process, which carved this beautiful canyon, had come to such a well-defined mass of erosive resistance when it came to this plug of stone.

Walking the gentle trail along the edge of the canyon at the Spider Rock lookout was the height of our visit to Canyon De Chelly. Most of the lookout parking lots had one or more vendors displaying their hand-crafted jewelry on blankets they had spread over the hoods of their cars, or pastels they had painted on small slabs of sandstone and placed neatly on the ground near the edge of the sidewalk. The paintings depicted traditional Navajo icons, or scenes remembering a feature of the canyon. Yes, we found some jewelry, and a painting that couldn’t be passed up.

We didn’t have time to also tour the northeastern rim lookouts. We were satisfied we had seen much of the best there was to see of the diverse canyon’s sights.

The next morning we were early to pull away from the campground. Our intent today is to reach our friends, Patti and ‘Stan’ Stanalonis, in Albuquerque by the middle of the afternoon. This leg of the trip was only a couple hundred miles and we weren’t in any great rush. I have learned that fuel economy is maximized with the Horizon diesel pusher when the 350hp Cummins’ rpm is kept at its ‘sweet spot’. For us, that was just shy of 1500 rpm, which happens when our speed was kept at 55 mph. This has been our cruising speed, back road or freeway.

Most of the off freeway travel through Nevada, Arizona, and New Mexico is over high desert plateau highways which have been carved straight as arrows between one mountain ridge to the next. The road’s gentle undulation creates opportunities for the 6-speed automatic transmission to shift into and out of a lower gear range. This, in turn, permits the Cummins a short window of higher revolution and destruction of our previously achieved miles per gallon records. On cruise control, and with a steering wheel gently gripped by a hand braced with softly contoured leather armrests, the miles drifted by at between 8 and 10mpg

There is, however, much to be desired about the outback’s highway construction. Many of these roads have been newly resurfaced. Some, however, as were the ones we found ourselves on this morning, must have been worked upon by a tribe of the Navajo who go by the name: Clan of the Road Painters. This clan’s vocation is to spread streaks of tar onto the highway and seal cracks which have formed due to the ever expanding and contracting substrate below the pavement. The result of this clan’s hard labor is hundreds of miles of brain numbing vibration interrupted by short respites of newly resurfaced roadway.

Albuquerque Central KOA Campground is immediately south of I-40 at the Juan Tabo exit. We were assigned to site 121 and in a few minutes were set up for a week’s stay.

Albuquerque’s roads are laid out on a rectangular grid. This architecture makes it a very convenient town to navigate. Juan Tabo runs north and south for several miles. Patti and Stan’s home is just 3.2miles north of the KOA, off Comanche Road. I abhor metropolitan traffic environments. I have to admit, however, the driving experience in Albuquerque is very non-threatening.

We have been friends for many years and we wouldn’t think of traveling in the SE without visiting Patti and Stan. Stan and I couldn’t have been in better hands. Anne and Patti mapped out excellent ideas for things for us to see and do while we visited the southeastern part of New Mexico.

Anne and I decided that since we may never again travel so close we should visit Carlsbad Caverns. A three day trip was mapped out that would take us to The Inn of the Mountain Gods at White’s City, a few miles outside of Ruidoso, NM. We would stay at the Inn following the day’s drive to Ruidoso. The next day we would drive to Carlsbad, spend the day visiting the caverns, and return to the Inn for a second night. The third day we would return to Albuquerque, via Alamogordo.

We met at Patti and Stan’s for breakfast and packed the back of Anne’s CRV for the journey. Stan drove the first leg south on I-25 which took us past Socorro, where one could turn off if he wanted to visit the National Radio Observatory VLA Telescope. Last year, when I caravanned in the Vanaroo with Dave, Joy, Chris, Jennifer, and the boys, we got to visit the very large array observatory. It was definitely impressive.

San Antonio is eleven miles south of Socorro and Stan turned eastward on Hwy 380. Four miles from San Antonio we came to a traffic stop. At 1100 there was going to be a missile launch from somewhere near Gallup and the missile was programmed to land in the White Sands desert. Hwy 380 takes one past the White Sands Missile Range and Trinity Site, which is home of the first explosion of an atomic bomb. Police officers dispatched from the White Sands’ base set up roadblocks for the routine missile reliability tests. The roadblocks leave deserted a 16 mile stretch of Hwy 380 for the flyover. The launch had been delayed half an hour so we got to visit with the officers and inspect the roadside desert flora.  Drats. None of us spotted the flyover.

Our only scheduled stop today was to be at the Smokey Bear Museum located in Capitan. It had been after a fire in the Capitan forests that a Ranger had found Smokey the Cub clinging low on a tree trunk. Smokey had suffered some small amount of injury during the blaze so the Ranger took him to a shelter for healing. Smokey was later flown to the Washington Zoo, in Washington D.C. It was while he lived at the zoo that Smokey Bear became the World’s icon in the effort to prevent man caused forest fires. Smokey lived to the age of 26 and was buried in a garden spot at the Capitan museum. This had been a fun and relaxing break in the day.

The city of Ruidoso is a few miles south of Capitan. The city is carved out of rolling hills which are part of the Mescalero Apache Tribe’s reservation. Ruidoso is a wintertime skier’s haven, hosted by 12,003 foot high Sierra Blanca Peak, and a year-round artisan village akin to that of Taos. The shops of Ruidoso were going to be must see for Anne and Patti.

The Inn of the Mountain Gods Resort and Casino is a few miles out of Ruidoso and close to a small town called White’s City. The very stately resort popped into sight suddenly when rounding a bend in the curvy mountain road. We were assigned close-by rooms on the 7^th floor. Each room had a balcony overlooking the mountainside golf course, an adjoining lake, and a distant view of Sierra Blanca Peak. After unpacking the ladies dismissed themselves for a quick checkout of the casino. Stan and I chose to share a couple of tinnies while resting ourselves in the sun warming his balcony. We shared work experience stories and enjoying the magnificent scenery. 

As dinner time rolled around we found ourselves at the casino’s buffet. The meal selection choices didn’t strike us as being as diverse as we had looked forward to. We were in agreement that this would be are last meal at that restaurant. A few slot machines needed to be tested on the way back to our rooms. We all enjoyed an early turn-in to ready us for a busy day tomorrow.

The drive to Carlsbad took us over more mountains and across more vast savannahs.  We passed through small roadside villages such as Hondo and Tinnie, which was my personal favorite; Roswell and Artesia are both large cities at crossroads with major New Mexico highways.

The name Roswell is synonymous with UFOs. An airborne object crashed on a ranch near Roswell, New Mexico, in June or July, 1947. Explanations of what took place are based on both official and unofficial communications. Although the crash is attributed, by the U.S. government, to a U.S. military surveillance balloon, the most famous explanation of what occurred is that the object was a spacecraft containing extraterrestrial life. Since the late 1970s, the Roswell incident has been the subject of much controversy and conspiracy theories.

Religion, politics, and Roswell are areas of conversation guaranteed to solicit audience participation. So it happened that many miles of this morning’s three hour drive to Carlsbad were swept away unnoticed, consumed with our own theories of what really may have happened near Roswell.

During the late 1800s Eddy County, New Mexico was largely know as cattle country.  In 1902, Carlsbad Caverns were discovered. How the caves were actually discovered is a bit disputed, but the most accepted story attributes the finding to Jim White. As the story goes, Mr. White was looking out over the rolling hillsides adjoining his share of Eddy County and he spotted smoke rising in the distance.  White set off to investigate the cause of the dark spire. When he arrived closer he could see that what appeared to have been smoke was actually a vast number of bats escaping a hole in the ground. The rest is history.

The caves, located in the Guadalupe Mountains, are now known as Carlsbad Caverns National Park. Jim White spent many years investigating the vast network of caves. He is attributed to naming most of the rooms in the caverns and to bringing the Carlsbad Caverns to national attention.

We arrived shortly after 1300. Guided tours for the day had ended but we could still do a self-tour of the Big Room. The Big Room is a natural limestone chamber which is almost 4,000 feet long, 625 feet wide, and 255 feet at the highest point. It is the third largest chamber in North America and ranks seventh in the world.

A little while ago, some 250 million years, the area surrounding Carlsbad Caverns National Park served as the coastline for an inland sea. Present in the sea was a plethora of marine life, whose remains formed a reef. In time, the sea had evaporated and the reef was buried under sediments.

The Park sits in a bed of limestone above groundwater level. During cavern development, however, the limestone bed was within the groundwater zone. Deep below the limestone are petroleum reserves (part of the Mid-Continent Oil Field). At a time near the end of the Cenozoic, hydrogen sulfide (H2S) began to seep upwards from the petroleum into the groundwater. The combination of hydrogen sulfide and oxygen from the water formed sulfuric acid: H2S + 2O2 → H2SO4. The sulfuric acid then continued upward, aggressively dissolving the limestone deposits to form caverns. The presence of gypsum, a byproduct of the reaction between sulfuric acid and limestone, is a confirmation of the occurrence of this process.

Once the acidic groundwater drained from the caverns, speleothems (where is John Mignone when you need him) began to be deposited within the cavern. During the last million years erosion processes occurring above ground created the natural entrance to the Carlsbad Caverns. Exposure to the surface has allowed for the influx of air into the cavern. Rainwater and snowmelt percolating downward into the ground picked up carbon dioxide. Once this water reached a cavern ceiling it precipitated and evaporated leaving behind a small calcium carbonate deposit. Growths from the roof downward formed through this process are known as stalactites. Additionally, water dripped onto the floor of the caverns contained carbonic acid and generate mineral deposits when it evaporated. Growths from the floor upward through this process are known as stalagmites. Different formations of speleothems include columns, soda straws, draperies, helictites, and popcorn. Changes in the ambient air temperature and rainfall affect the rate of growth of speleothems, as higher temperatures increase carbon dioxide production rates within the overlying soil. The color of speleothems is determined by trace amounts of different minerals in the formation.

Hold on there, Bob. That’s a little more geology than we really needed to know. The short version is that the Big Room consumed an hour and half of walking on well railed paths which took us past spectacular stony things cleverly highlighted in the, otherwise beyond just dark, cave.  The vastness of this cave network is unbelievable. The park contains additional networks of caverns White never knew existed. Many of those caverns are closed to public viewing and are reserved for scientific research only.

It was early evening by the time we returned to the Inn of the Mountain Gods for our last night’s stay. In the morning we were going to drive to Alamogordo on our way home to Albuquerque. We had worked hard while in the Caverns today and the beds were welcomed.  

Alamogordo is the gateway to White Sands Proving Grounds and home of the New Mexico Museum of Space History. Inside and outside of the museum is displayed the history of the World’s missile and rocket development. From Copernicus to John Glen and beyond: artifacts and descriptions of achievers in the rocket sciences from all corners of the globe are presented in this four story building.

As one sees when visiting places like the Smithsonian buildings in Washington, there is just too much to take in on one time-limited visit. The Museum of Space History is the same. Knowing such museums exist, and having had a glimpse of them, leaves one the opportunity to have reflections on the true greatness of man’s inventions; born out of both curiosity and survival.

Jack and Margie Mortley are very dear friends of Patti and Stan. Jack is the person I had bought the Triumph Stag from in 2006. Anne and I wanted to have an opportunity to visit with all of them together. Anne decided she would like to use the crock pot to prepare a chicken-chili dinner on Saturday and have them share it with us in the RV.

The meal and the evening were great successes. Jack and Margie also have a motorhome and they enjoyed looking ours over and sharing a few of their travel experiences. I asked Jack what special cars he still had in his barn and he told me of a classic Saab he wouldn’t mind selling me. We all pretty much agreed that the sale wouldn’t go through.

Patti and Stan had us over the next day for a brunch. Anne and Patti dashed off to visit a quilting outlet store at least that was their story. Later in the afternoon we were called and told they were having a wonderful time at the Route 66 Casino and that they would meet us later at a Nob Hill restaurant. That was ok. Stan and I had been watching NFL football and we were happy to let them buy us dinner with their winnings.

The restaurant on Nob Hill, in an original section of Albuquerque, is located on Central Avenue. Central is a section of the old Route 66 highway. A softball friend of Patti’s is a singer who was performing tonight with her band. We had a wonderful final meal together. But now it is time to return to the KOA and prepare for tomorrow’s early departure towards home.

We planned on a fairly short drive for our first day heading northwesterly back to Medford. I was only a couple hundred miles to Durango, CO. The initial miles took us through some very familiar territory. We exited I-25 at a city called Bernalillo, NM.

When I caravanned with Dave, Joy, Chris, Jennifer and the boys a year and half ago we had stayed at an RV park in Bernalillo. This park was alongside the Rio Grande river and if afforded us a great couple of days. Further along Hwy 550N, during that same trip, we had found a remote BLM trailhead parking area located several miles up a bumpy dirt road near the Zia and Jemez Pueblos. That, too, had been some great camping.

The highway beyond the Jemez Pueblo was new territory for both of us. It was an anxious drive for me today. All of the highways to this point were ones I had traveled alone, or with Anne, more than once in the last few years. Breaking new trails in a Vanaroo, or a sedan, is not too bothering. If you miss a critical junction, you just do a U-turn where convenient and correct your error. When you are piloting a 40 foot behemoth with an additional 12 feet of ride-along towed behind, U-turns are no longer an option.

Anne and I had carefully gone over the route to Durango. I circled critical intersections on the map and Anne faithfully kept an eye peeled for flags of change. The passage through Cuba, NM had been no sweat. The highway triangle associated with Bloomfield, Farmington, and Aztec was a bit of a worry. If you could magnify the road map way big, you may notice that at Bloomfield there is a very small jog to the right on Hwy 550N, before it goes on to Aztec.

We came to just one stop light in Bloomfield. This was at a very busy intersection, and one at which new concrete turn lanes were being built. The construction led to greater congestion than normal at this traffic light. We look carefully for signs that may suggest a route change, but we saw none. I crossed the highway when the light turned green.

We were instantly driving into a very residential section of Bloomfield. This was clearly no longer Hwy 550N. After a few blocks, and a lot of driver profanity, we found ourselves at a stop sign labeling the roadway to be Hwy 550N. Anne cleared traffic to the right, and I cleared to the left. When I pulled out there was a pickup on the right. This is when you can’t stop in the middle of the road and let the vehicle go by. This is when you gently pull into your lane confident the other driver sees you and that he knows where his break petal is located.

Option 1: There had never been a turn right for Hwy 550N sign at that stop light or, Option 2: The construction process had seen it removed.  Either way, we hadn’t found the residential section of Bloomfield to be that hot, and we had made it back on track safely. There were only a few dozen miles left before Durango, and the rest of the drive went well.

Durango, CO is located in a river canyon and is approached from high above via Hwy 550N. The road offers non-guard railed glimpses through shoulder foliage of the city nestled way below, while the pathway brings you in a swooping downhill, full engine brake drive around a continuously blind corner. The road then straightens out and flattens into a typical urban setting.

I had programmed the address to Alpen Rose RV Park into my batphone. The phones GPS guidance system has served us well. We didn’t question the directions we were getting from the phone until it led us down narrow; tree shrouded 12^th street and announced we had arrived. There was no RV campground anywhere near the city hall buildings on 12^th street. When I looked at the instructions I had given the phone, I discovered it had dropped the park’s street address and had just left Durango, CO.

The second time with the GPS was a charm. Alpen Rose is a beautiful RV park. We learned upon checking in that this was the last night the park would be open the rest of the year. We got all set up and had time to watch the sunset over the nearby cliffs. We drove downtown on Main Street to find a nice place for dinner.

Durango is a city of 18,000. It is home for a university and has a booming tourist trade during the summer. Nearby there are several notable ski slopes so there is good business during the winter months, as well. Parking spots were slim on the street this evening. We found one a block away from where we wanted to eat. Most of the shops were still open and they all looked fun to browse in. The restaurant was a busy Tex/Mex pub and we both enjoyed our choices.

Tomorrow we needed to cross Utah. The selected route would take us through Moab and up to I-70W. On I-70 we would drive to Richfield’s KOA campground, off Exit 40. Utah is famous for its rock monuments and we pulled over several times to take in these natural wonders. We would like to travel back to Moab, stay for a while, and try to consume some of its beautiful surroundings.

Back at the RV, I studied maps to see where we could drive tomorrow. Ely, NV looked good, but it wasn’t very far on our crossing of Nevada. We had stayed in Fallon on our trip south. There weren’t many options between the two towns. We decided to drive early to Ely, have a comfortable lunch and a nice break, and then trek on to Fallon.

There are a lot of mountains running north and south between Durango and Fallon. The Cummins diesel put in a good day’s work. From high desert plateaus covered with sage-like scrub, over snow shouldered passes reaching near 8,000 feet, back down to what looked like endless square miles of barren, untended mud flats, we took in a lot of wonderful north western America today.

The sun was approaching the highway as we drove US 50 west into Fallon.  We had passed a sign when we first joined Hwy 50 in eastern Nevada. The sign read: Highway 50, the loneliest highway in America. I think it can hold its head high. The RV has terrific automatic sun visors but there is a 4” gap between the windshield post on the side and the edge of the visor. The highway and the sun had aligned themselves such that I had to try to constantly dodge my head left and right to keep the sun out of the gap. This wasn’t the kind of conditions I wanted upon entering downtown Fallon. But, that’s what we got.

We cautiously passed through town and found the RV Park at the city’s northern fringe. They had the reservation Anne had called in yesterday, but the woman who had taken the data had miss-dated it and we were told it had been canceled. No worries, there were plenty of spaces available.

All RV teams form a natural routine of duties when setting up, and when taking down. We have started to find a comfortable grove. I went outside to connect power, cable, water, and sewer while Anne extended the sides and arranged chairs and the kitchen. When I came back inside, she asked me, “Was I ready for my beer?”  Yes, she is a fantastic traveling mate.

Tomorrow would take us across northern California and then into Oregon. Anne asked if I would like to drive into Fallon for dinner and a stop at the casino. I was pooped and declined. She would bring back some dinner for us. I would take a bit of time to rest and enjoy my tinnie.

Anne held the flashlight while I disconnected the CRV from the tow hitch. She got the keys and reported that there was no power in the battery. No problem. After the last time the battery had been zapped by something while we towed the CRV, we had bought a pair of 16 foot jumper cables.  The long cables would comfortably reach the rear batteries of the RV. Anne popped the hood and I showed her how the cables were connected. The car started right up.

Before she backed away, Anne said she noticed she had left the glove box open and her theory was that it may have drained the battery. Towing the CRV has caused a low battery twice, so far. I definitely need to talk to the Guaranty RV folks when we get home. There may be something amiss with the wiring package they had provided when they installed the car’s front towing hitch.