I spent the night in nearly deserted Quartzsite after picking up my package and mail. But where to go next? I studied maps, forecasts, boondocking resources, blogs and all that. I had only one for-certain destination: Vancouver Island in July to take Lou’s ashes out to sea. There are a lot of ways to get there in the next two and a half months. Some of the ways are, eh, way too familiar, even boring. Are there routes that are new to me, or that I haven’t taken in many years? Where the nights aren’t still freezing or where the unpaved areas aren’t mud? I continued my research.

I haven’t been in southeastern Utah in a while, and there’s still so much of it I haven’t seen. And the weather there is now in that zone between too cold and too hot. So I’ll be drifting northeast before heading to the Northwest. 

What’s on the way besides Sedona, Flagstaff and Grand Canyon? How about the mountains south of Prescott? Yeah. I drove through there once but didn’t camp. And what about the mountains between Prescott and Sedona? Okay.

But what’s between here and there? I used to think nothing of driving eight to ten hours a day, and I think I could still do it if I had a short schedule to keep. But I’ve come to enjoy a slower pace. Shorter drives, longer stays.

Then I saw something on the map that had been on my mental list: Alamo Lake. It’s not really “on the way.” It’s in the middle of a Quartzsite-Wickenburg-Kingman triangle with access via one 30-mile paved road from US-60. So it’s a considerable detour, not a convenient waypoint. There’s a dirt road from the Lake to Wickenburg, but it could be a washboard hell. So I’ll be taking the paved road back.

And it’s a nice road through totally unpopulated, undeveloped land. A section goes through some saguaro-studded hills. The pavement is good, the scenery was  nice, it was perfect open window weather, and this particular Tuesday morning I wasn’t another soul around. Aaaaaaahhh…

Alamo Lake is a state park, but there’s BLM land adjacent. There are a few dozen other campers here, most in fifth-wheel trailers. But I found a spot a comfortable distance from the others. And except for a couple of OHVs driving sedately by, and a dog that barked for a few seconds, it has been very quiet. If I had a smaller vehicle with 4-wheel drive I could access tiny campsites down by the water. I can walk down there instead.

A friend I call The Other Alan once wrote a blog post about how he avoids camping by water, because that’s where the bugs are. There was a healthy enough breeze today to keep the flies and such grounded. So I had the doors and windows open. Very refreshing in the Rolling Steel Tent. However, the air got still after sunset and swarms of tiny things were attracted to the formerly nonfunctional light. Can’t have everything perfect.

Last week I was in bed reading when the recessed LED light over the counter blinked off. Rats.

My first assumption was the light had reached the end of its life. Since the lights came in a four-pack and I had used only three, I should have a spare — unless it was one of the things I purged during my last reworking of the Rolling Steel Tent. After searching all my boxes, yep, I no longer had it. So I spent twenty bucks on another four-pack from Amazon. If one light had died then the remaining two were likely to go sometime.

While awaiting that delivery I discovered the roof vent fan also didn’t work. It’s tied into the same line as the light. Ah-ha! Maybe it’s a fuse. I started with the one built into the vent. It was still good. I checked all the fuses in my junction box. All of them, because I hadn’t labeled the circuits. They were good.

Maybe it was something in the wiring. That would be a pain to check since most of it is behind paneling. Ergh. I procrastinated until today, because the new lights had arrived. 

Hmmmm… 

Why did this happen? What was different? What had I done?

Ah-ha, maybe… 

Earlier I had fished out a section of the wiring in preparation for testing it. And I had jiggled the connection. I giggled the wire again and the light and fan came back on. As the old farts around the shop say, “Well there’s yer problem.”