We hung out in Safford for two days waiting to have a mechanic give the engine a look. It never moved and they just kept telling me how busy they were, which they did appear to be. It was only a bit frustrating, as they had acted so eager to help me out when I first contacted them. Oh well, try and make lemonade out of it, right?

We were only about ninety minutes from Grammy’s house, so we headed over to spend a couple days with her, our always gracious host through the years.

On the morning of day four Ali and I took off early in the morning for Safford. The night before they still hadn’t touched the bus, and I was pretty well over sitting around waiting for a mechanic, so Ali was going to drop me off. I figured I’d just check a couple of things out myself, and then hit the road again and see what happened.

I brought along a timing light and a compression tester, along with 16 new spark plugs, just in case. But when we pulled up fifteen minutes after the shop had opened for the day, the bus was gone. I went inside and found a couple of guys discussing it. The mechanic had fired it up that morning and immediately noticed the carb didn’t sound right. Honestly, I don’t know what he heard that was off, it sounded good to me, but that experience is why I brought it to him in the first place. He said the jets on the carb were turned all the way out, which is why it was running so rich.

Doh! I just knew it was going to be something simple that I wasn’t figuring out. Now I know. Because the new carb had been idling so well I didn’t give any thought to the jets. The mechanic and the shop foreman both took the bus out for a spin and came back happy, saying it all seemed just fine to them. I paid them a hundred bucks and hit the road, but not before throwing a new set of plugs in the engine once again. May as well start 100% fresh.

A couple of hours later I was back in Tucson. The bus had run great the whole way, and did in fact have a highway cruising speed about four miles an hour faster than before, meaning 65 instead of 61. Pulled a lot better on the big hills, too.

So, just a couple days after what had, in the moment, seemed like a sure end to this particular bus adventure, we were ready to hit the road again.

We decided to spend a couple more days with Grammy before we left. She lives in a 55+ retirement community with an HOA that would make me scream every day of my life if I had to live there. You know, rules, rules, rules, and all that. Needless to say, a 1965 Wanderlodge is not welcome. Down the road a few miles is this strange RV park. I’ve been told, by one of the residents, that it’s a safe place to leave motorhomes because the house out back is a chop shop run by some guys who the other thieves know better than to mess with. We’ve dropped the bus off here in the past when visiting Grammy, but it spends its nights without us.

Right down the road is Tumacácori National Historical Park. There is a nice hike between this park and the Tubac State Park about 4 miles north of it. If you do the hike they give you a nice pin to commemorate it, so we set off to do that. Of course, the shuttle between the two isn’t running right now, so instead of doing an 8 mile round trip, they let you go halfway and turn around. We did a little more than that, then drove up to Tubac.

How our kids envision school.

After leaving Grammy’s house, we drove a couple hours up to Patagonia Lake State Park. If we wanted to test the bus engine, this was the perfect drive for it. Geez. The road in was full of tight turns that led immediately into ridiculously steep climbs. I held my breath the entire time, but the bus powered up and over, and we eventually crept alongside the lake at 4,000′.

Finally got some lights installed.

The bottom entry step is really the only thing on the bus that’s rusted. I put a couple of L brackets on it now, but it’s going to take some fancy cutting and welding to ever fix properly.

This is the ancient Onan generator that takes up a huge storage space, as well as adds about a million unnecessary pounds to the bus. It actually works, but we have no need for it. I’d love to get that thing out of there.

Ouest taking after her parents, doing physical activities with completely inappropriate footwear on. Somehow neither one of them ended up in the frigid lake.

A little drizzle passed over and gave us a nice rainbow in return. I have to say, Arizona landscapes are a lot more varied than I used to give them credit for.