March 1st, 2021
March came in with a sunny but cold morning; around 9C / 48F. Guess it’s preparing us for cooler climes further north.
As our mail was supposed to arrive from SD last Thursday, then last Saturday but was delayed again, we hung around the RV Park until 2 hoping it would arrive. We have an appointment with a bank in Lake Havasu tomorrow morning as we decided it’s time to get a local bank with more brick and mortar branches, especially for selling Tigger. We’ve been trying to get an appointment at branches here in Yuma for over a week but have been unsuccessful. Fran tried on Thursday calling a Chase in Lake Havasu and they had plenty of times so we picked Tuesday first thing.
2:05 pm and the mail showed up and lo and behold, our package of mail was in it. We had already gotten the trailer hitched up and only had to disconnect the power and we were on our way. We made it to a BLM camp spot just south of Lake Havasu by 5:30 and had a quiet but cold night there.
We made it to the bank on time on Tuesday and got an account set up and continued northward. We will have to get our mail again in a bit to receive our ATM cards but there’s no rush for that.
This morning while continuing northward, we made a stop to visit the oldest continuously inhabited mining town in Arizona: Chloride.
In its heyday, up to 5,000 people lived here; today maybe 300. They have kept up the old wild west feel to the town and the draw we came to see: The Chloride Murals, is just a little ways out of town.
We weren’t sure we’d be able to get the trailer down that 2.2 km windy, dirt road, so we parked near the end of the pavement in town. We walked to the murals which felt good after driving for two hours.
After returning to the truck/trailer (we need to find names for our new wheels! – any suggestions out there?), we decided to check out the town and maybe have lunch. We found the “Yesteryear” hotel/restaurant and while parking saw a little wooden town replica across the way.
We wandered through Cyanide Springs first:
and then went for lunch. It was a pretty darn big restaurant and very few people so we felt comfortable eating inside. We ordered a jug of lemonade – not our usual coke – and enjoyed a good lunch.
By 2ish we were on the road again and while driving we made a list of what we’d need from the trailer to take to Tigger to get it cleaned up etc. We drove another couple of hours to the east side of Boulder City passing the Hoover Dam to the Hoover Dam Casino where RV parking is allowed free of charge.
After checking in at the front desk, we checked out the practically empty casino, played a dollar each and used the facilities. We then went to grab our chairs and Kindles to sit just beyond the parking lot with a great view of Lake Mead before the sun went behind the clouds that came up and it got too cool.
.
We returned to that spot to watch the sunset about an hour later but it was very underwhelming. We had a pretty quiet night here and took off again Wednesday morning by 7:30 to drive the remaining distance to Pahrump.
Not sure we’ve mentioned much about this if at all, so here goes: we are seriously considering getting temporary residence in Mexico. So for the past few weeks we’ve been trying to get through to the consulate to set up an appointment for the process. It’s been very frustrating as their online systems doesn’t appear to do anything no matter what city we use for the location we want and their 1 877 number is extremely difficult to get through to and IF you do, they can’t seem to get an appointment any easier OR you get cut off! Invariably you are either on hold for 15 minutes and it cuts out OR you get through at around the 11 or 12 minute mark and at 15 minutes you get cut off mid conversation. So we’ll keep trying; doing it in Yuma would have been perfect but that didn’t pan out so now we’re trying the Vegas office.
Upon arriving in Pahrump, we found a place to camp on the BLM land right along the eastern edges of town and unhitched the truck. We packed up the few items we needed and drove to the storage place. Before entering we realized the most important thing we didn’t put on the list of things to bring with us was: keys! So back to the trailer we went and upon arriving once again at the storage place, we saw Tigger had a completely flat tire on the front passenger side – dang! However, all the good news outweighed that by far; the engine started right away after hooking up the battery, it didn’t seem to need a wash (just a bit of dusting on the windows), the solar panels were completely charged, there were no leaks (although to be fair, it probably hadn’t rained much in the past 3 months) AND the gennie started on the 2nd try!
So Doug worked on getting the flat tire off and putting the spare on while Fran checked around inside to be sure all was well and it didn’t need cleaning again. We have three prospective buyers lined up; one for Friday, one for Saturday and one early in the following week . Fingers crossed!
Here in Pahrump, the sky clouded over and the sun did not come out for the rest of the day; the temperature cooled off due to that and while Doug was changing the tire, we actually had a couple of minutes of hail!
Doug put the flat tire in the back of the truck and we drove back into town to a tire shop where they said the tire was pretty much shot – been sitting too long flat and had several cracks in it; they sourced us a tire right away and it was a reasonable price. While Doug waited for the tire to come, Fran drove back to the storage place and swapped the truck for Tigger and came back to get the new tire installed; they threw in a complete rotation at no extra cost and 90 minutes later we were back at the storage unit swamping vehicles back.
New tire:
Here’s what we took from Tigger as a keepsake:
After stopping for some refreshments and free Wi-Fi at Walmart, we made our way back to the trailer which was safe and sound.
We awoke Thursday to a sunny but cold morning: 2C / 35F! Such a difference from Yuma; we are up at 800m /2700’ vs 76m / 250’. After doing a few more things to prepare Tigger we drove over to the public library for internet. They allow you inside with a mask for about an hour to use Wi-Fi with your laptop plugged in or you can sit outside in the parking lot with no power.
Friday was much warmer and a GREAT day for us. We had the first prospective buyer meet us at the storage place to view Tigger; he brought along an RV inspector and after 90 minutes, no major issues were found (as we’d expected and hoped).
Then Jason called his fiancé back in Austin and made us an offer at almost list price! We took it and listened in while he called his bank to have the funds wired to us. Within in an hour, we saw the money in our account. His fiancé will be arriving on Saturday night and we’ll hand over the keys on Sunday after running through everything with them.
Wow, we are ecstatic but also a little sad to be saying goodbye to that part of our lives. Jason seemed super excited to drive it back to Texas and we believe it’s going to a good home. Doug cancelled the other prospective buyer and let a few others that were interested, but hadn’t firm up viewing times, know that it was sold!
So Saturday we had a free day. We went to the library for Wi-fi and Doug got online and paid off the loan on the Tundra. So we’ll need to reach out and the get title from South Dakota’s DMV in a bit.
We decided to take a drive down the Titus Canyon Road into Death Valley which we’d done in Tigger last October. The weather was not as sunny but the canyon was still spectacular.
Sunday morning we drove to Vegas to pick up Jason and his fiancé, Rebecca to bring them to Tigger. We spent a couple of hours going over everything with them, doing the paperwork and handing over the keys. (see pic above)
SIDEBAR: We bought Tigger back in June 2011 with 26,000 miles on it. By the time we sold it this weekend, it had nearly 136,000 miles on it and was still going strong. So we had it for almost ten years and it gave us so much enjoyment. Here’s hoping Jason & Rebecca enjoy it even half as much.
Now we are feeling much freer. What do we do now? – it’s too early to head north due to the weather. We really had not anticipated such a quick sale; in October we’d had the rig on the market for several weeks with no sale.
We decided to celebrate and packed up the trailer, hitched up and went into Vegas to a hotel for a few nights stopping first at Fat Tuesday’s for a celebratory Mudslide slushy.
Upon arriving at the hotel, Doug noticed two issues with the trailer: one tire seemed low and one of the corners of a solar panel appears to have lifted from the roof.
Monday, he spent some time working on both these issues as well as a couple of others that came up as a result of them.
Tuesday morning we received a call from the new owners of Tigger saying that as they left Las Vegas, the drive shaft broke! They’d driven the Titus Canyon Road on Sunday (after we told them about it) and were not sure if something happened then or what. They were looking for a recommendation for a mechanic. Doug told them about a place we’d used last year to get the rear brakes done and also offered them the air compressor hose that we had that did not work with our current air compressor. They accepted that and Doug drove over to their hotel to give it to them and sort out the mechanic. We do feel bad for them but we had no issues in this regard so maybe something happened on their drive. Doug did say they took it very well and did not seem angry about it.
NOTE: The following Monday morning Doug happened to send an email to the new owner of Tigger with some info we’d not given them. He thanked us and then told us the drive shaft issue (as well as an dented exhaust pipe) was deemed by two different mechanics to have been caused by something he must have hit doing the Titus Canyon road; phew! Now we feel better that we didn’t sell them something that broke down so quickly with a major issue.
