Friday, April 11, 2008

After about 3-hours we arrived in Benson and we'll be here for the next week or two.  Benson is about 40-miles east of Tucson.  We chose Benson because it's about half-way (driving time wise) between Tucson and Tombstone/Bisbee.  Benson is a pretty small town...about 4500 full time residents.  There's not much here.  The usual franchise restaurants, Radio Shack, a few motels, gas stations, etc.  we had our usual Friday night pizza (yes, it was delivered to the campsite, sandy) but it was local pizza (instead of something uninteresting but safe like Pizza hut or Dominos).  Local pizza is always a crap shoot and this one was just ok...maybe a 6 on a 10 scale. 

The park is the Benson I-10 RV Park, about $14.85 per day for full hookup and cable, quite a change from Mesa.  WiFi is pay-as-you-go but at least it works.  The park has maybe 100 spots..all gravel with a small concrete patio for the picnic table.  This is the high desert so not much shade but there is wind!  Too windy here to put out the awning but as we are oriented in a northerly direction we have morning sun and afternoon shade on the patio side.  There's no pool, no coordinated activities, no hayrides.  But they do have a laundry and a couple of the friendliest people in the office that we've ever run into.  All-in-all this is a nice park. 

Had more trouble with the Jeep today.  Some of you haven't heard yet but we were out in the desert the other day looking for the grave of Wyatt Earp's second wife, Mattie.  It was an off-road run into the desert.  When we were ready to take off I couldn't get the Jeep out of park.  After some futzing and fiddling I got it out of park but when we stopped for groceries I couldn't get it into park.  After more fiddling and futzing I got it operating properly.  But, after we arrived in the park here and I was disconnecting from the camper the same thing happened...it was stuck in park.  It was a complete replay of the previous problem.  What I thought...hoped...would be a isolated occurrence is obviously a problem that needs attending.  And here we are in Benson, AZ.  As luck would have it there's a Jeep dealer in town.  So 'Willy' and I have an appointment there are 0900 Monday morning.  The fellow across the road had the same problem with his TJ a few years back and it wasn't all that complicated or expensive a fix.  Please keep your fingers and assorted other appendages crossed.

As if that wasn't enough.  I wanted to reposition the camper a bit and so I retracted the front slide out room and raised the jacks.  Three of them cooperated but the left rear jack (which has been temperamental for a couple of years now, wouldn't come up.  I was able to persuade it to raise by threatening it with a 5' length of 2x4.  The fellow across the road also had this same problem on his camper.  He solved it by replacing the springs on the jack.  I might try that but as the jack usually works it would seem that if the spring was the problem the jack would be temperamental all the time.  Isn't RV'ing fun!

No IRLP link out this way so I won't be linking in to the Wheaton repeater, guys and our APRS position isn't as accurate as it could be (ham radio talk for the rest of you).  Someone here in Benson must have an APRS station on the air and it captured our signal as we exited the highway just a bit south of the campground.  It hasn't captured a signal from us since so we must be out of range.  If you click the 'Where Are We' link on our web page we're about .5 miles north of the indicated position.  For those interested lat/long position is:  Latitude/Longitude: N31° 58.821', W110° 18.421'  If you pop those coordinates into maps.Google.com you'll get our current location.