First Time out with our new to us Bounder

“No,” the little stranger stated flatly before I could finish my question. “And I must tell you, I am offended by the presence of this – monstrosity.“ The little old man with the Dutch accent and perfectly coifed white mustache snapped an accusing finger at the coach behind me.

:”Eric,” the woman, who was frantically loading the faded blue van at Campsite 5, pleaded.

“…And I intend to file a formal complaint with the authorities against you, and I think you should leave. Now.”

The little man gasped, as if he had released a great weight from his soul.

Welcome to the maiden voyage of my new-to-me Bounder, at Bow Willow, Campsite 7, Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, the day after Thanksgiving.

This is where I blew it. What I should’ve done is rushed back to my thirty-four foot monstrosity, grabbed pen, paper and, lacking a tape recorder, camcorder, and interviewed the guy; get the whowhatwherewhenhowandwhy of it. Instead, I felt the burn in my face, my eyes hardened.

“I find that statement,” I said in a measured, stunned, cadence, “pathetic.”

The little guy lit up.

“Nonetheless, I am doing it.”

I nodded, broke eye contact, then turned back, posing my original purpose for approaching him.

“Do you have change for a…”

“I am going right now.”

The woman, roughly the little guy’s age, paused. Still struck dumb, I nodded again, and walked back up to the family, never to know the details of this man’s outburst.

The day hadn’t started out that way. We had pulled into the gas station on 2nd and Main in El Cajon, got lucky and pulled straight in. Alex, the 9 year-old, hopped out with the FRS and guided me up to align with the pump, then ran in to pre-pay for the gas. The guy filling his car on the other side stuck his hands in his pocket and looked up and down my ’87 Bounder.

“That’s a handsome rig y’got there,” he offered. “Y’know I don’t know the first thing about RVs, but I like the way this one looks, and I like the rear door. Seems safer that way.”

A lady up the line called out jokingly about the sticker shock of filling it up.

“I know,” the lady laughed, “I got a Winnebago.”

We hit the freeway with Kellian and Nicholas, the three-year old twins, chanting “RV! RV!” me fiddling with the Gear Venders gear splitter, once again amazed at how much muscle this vehicle has. I found myself having to concentrate with all my effort to keep the Bounder within my lane. Though the suspension, alignment and steering are at least acceptable, I’ve just never driven anything this big. I find it a daunting task. Both the dogs tried to crawl up in my lap. This would be their first camping trip ever. We’d never had room for them before. Smith, a Doberman/German Shepherd mix, weighs in at ninety pounds, Thompson, a Doberman/Greyhound mix, a mere seventy.

“Did you check the weather?” my better half asked.

“Wind advisory in the mountains, gusting up to thirty-five miles an hour,” I answered, “Nothing in the desert.” I smiled over at her. “We’ll catch Olde Hiway 80 if it gets too bad.”

We howled up 8 east, finally getting down to 55 when I got stuck behind some trucks. The first wind gusts hit at the Pine Valley bridge, and by Kitchen Creek we knew we had to get off the freeway. Meanwhile, though on occasion going downhill I was doing 70; rigs bigger than us with trailers were passing me. I was scared half to death, and was glad to get off the freeway, although the wind still kicked us around quite a bit. By the time we hit Jacumba, things looked good. I got back on the freeway, and started down one of the scariest pieces of freeway I know, Devils Canyon, a six per cent grade with enough twists and turns for a spy novel. The sign said ‘Slow to 35’, and I did, getting behind an old tractor-trailer that was riding his brakes and getting down to 30. I would’ve followed him all the way down, but people behind me were careening out of our lane to the left lane at such breakneck speeds that I decided it would be better to be in front of this guy than behind him. Let them rear-end him instead of us.

Down at the bottom, there was absolutely no wind, and we got off at Ocotillo, caught S-2 west, and cruised at 55 to Bow Willow.

I had expected all the formal campgrounds to be full, since we’d gotten a late start on this four-day weekend. In the Anza-Borrego, you can camp anywhere, with reasonable rules and regulations, so I had no fear of finding something out there. At Bow Willow, though, we found plenty of good sites open. Specifically, Site 7. Having not really expected to find a spot open, I hadn’t thought about the fourteen dollars you need to pay for two nights. I went asking around the other sites for change for a twenty, hence, my altercation with the little man with the Dutch accent.

The couple with the faded blue van left shortly after. I hid inside the Bounder until they were gone. They left a bad taste in my mouth that I’m still trying to spit out.

Still not familiar with everything, it took me several attempts to line the coach up so the RVA hydraulic levelers could get us flat enough for the refrigerator. Finally I found several large smooth rocks and put them under the right rear leveler to get it close enough. The rear tires dangled off the ground. I killed the engine, then looked back into our rolling motel room with at least some trepidation.

My wife and I don’t come from a ‘camping family’ background. My wife’s family just didn’t, and the three times that I can remember my family going camping was under protest, in a trailer, in a campground, me and my siblings sitting around, bored to death while Dad read the newspaper. My Mom, the instigator of this camping experience, finally threw in the towel saying, “I can cook and wash dishes at home.”

My wife and I decided to start camping because we were spending all our weekends and all our vacations driving out to the Anza-Borrego Desert. We’d load up early in the morning, drive out, spend the whole day exploring every little road, every canyon, then arrive back home in the dark. I drove, and it was exhausting, so I started campaigning for an alternative, like camping. Besides, I figured, we’d become so obsessed with the desert and being there all night as well as all day, seemed a natural extension.

I think I should mention this was about twenty years ago.

There are distinct styles of camping. Our first few years definitely had the flavor of a clandestine survivalist operation. We slept on the ground with the only luxury being a borrowed tent and old beat-up sleeping bags. We knew nothing, had nothing. No camp stove, no chairs, no lantern. Robin learned to cook over a campfire after tasting one, just one, military-style MRE (Meals Ready to Eat). We sat on rocks and plotted our next day with flashlights and topo maps. I remember those times as being both terrifying and adventurous, driving out to the desert to where we knew it was open camping, usually BLM land, finding a place where obviously others had camped, and setting up our meager provisions, not knowing what the hell we were doing. When the darkness closed in around our campfire, we surely knew how the pioneers felt. Despite our scanty equipment, or maybe because it was gear not really meant for camping, our loyal Bronco II always groaned under the weight.


Then I met a guy named Lloyd Smith. Lloyd and his wife were passionate campers, spending almost every weekend at this pursuit, but you wouldn’t know it was the same past-time as ours. Lloyd meticulously packed his gear into their Subaru, making sure the crystal goblets and bottles of Merlot were cellar temperature. They luxuriated in foldout chairs around a fire ring in a place called a ‘campground’. Lloyd, a gourmand, would prepare scrumptious meals on his crystal clean white-gas powered camp stove, favoring California nouveau recipes. The Smiths didn’t look at all like Neanderthals who’d just discovered fire, nor did their late model vehicle look like an Oakies Model T fleeing the Dust Bowl. This style of camping suited the wife much, much better, and although she rejects to this day the idea of a ‘campground’ having anything to do with ‘camping’, we began gathering gear, like warm sleeping bags and, finally, air mattresses. Until recently, we struggled to rationalize the necessity of this decadence.

Also about this time, my wife, a working college student, started a club on campus that resulted in nothing less than ‘followers’. Lots of them. All, except one, young men. They liked camping with us, and this turned into a weekly activity, little two-nighters that would have four vehicles packed with young people ready to hike, drive, march and explore any nook or cranny within climbing distance. Young men tend to favor the survivalist/Neanderthal camping style, so that our campsites looked like militia encampments. Hell, we were even buzzed a couple of times by black helicopters. This wasn’t just a bunch of people camping in the same area, we were camping TOGETHER, with Robin the Grand Mamma cooking for all of them, huge meals with marinated steak, ranch-style beans and tortillas, or breakfast with eggs, bacon, sausage links and gallons of strong coffee. Everybody brought a little bit of their families’ camping styles, and both the size of our camping enclaves and these peoples’ suggestion, influenced the gear that we gathered, and gear that was given us. With numerous vehicles and numerous drivers, the volume of gear was never a problem. In time, of course, all those young people with their great gobs of free time, moved on. We found that we needed to have two sets of gear, one for The large groups, and one that would fit in our one, quickly aging, Bronco II.

Then something new got thrown into the mix about ten years ago. Children. Three of them. Indeed, the last major camping trip we took to the Mojave, (http://explorehistoricalif.tripod.com/xplorhistcal/id49.html) made it pretty clear we were faced with a dilemma: If we didn’t come up with a better way, we weren’t going camping anymore. At least one trip had to be cancelled because, as I prepared to load the new full-sized Bronco with all the gear necessary for my little herd, I looked back the see my progeny undoing all my work. Finding someone to watch the dogs had always been a hassle, and their loyalty to my wife is only outdone by Robin’s loyalty to them. Thank God the children have me. The answer we came up with was a Motor Home, an RV, a coach.

What continues to pique my imagination, and which no one else seems even to give a nod to, is just how many systems are layered onto this mode of recreation to make it possible, even opulent. Propulsion, suspension, environmental conditioning, whether it be heating or cooling, water, refrigeration, sanitation, cooking capabilities, water heating. Then the extras, a shower, for pity’s sake, a microwave and sound system, Kwikee steps, not one but two televisions with all the accommodating wiring for an antennae that cranks up, and VCR. (In time I know I’m going to have to upgrade to a DVD and a satellite dish, but only to keep up with the Jones’s) And then the things necessary to integrate these myriad functions; hydraulic levelers, deep cycle batteries, a generator, water pump, water filter, knife valves. Getting all of it to work at once, and reliably, makes this potentially the downfall of the whole idea. Not that you can’t get it all to work, but like the audiophile that spends all his time and money hunting the better player, the new speakers, installing the improved amplifier, I don’t want to forget about the music. I don’t want to forget, and I want my children to know, why we go camping.

As I unloaded firewood, bikes, camp chairs, I reconnoitered our position. We had a sharp rise behind the camp, campsites to the east and west, and a spectacular view of the Carizzo Badlands to the north. Ocotillo sprouted across the open high ground, creosote and burro bush were all in bloom. I noted that Buckhorn, Silver and Teddy Bear Cholla cactus all lived in close proximity to each other, somewhat unusual. The campsite to our east, #9, was vacant except for a pile of chairs, obviously claimed.

“Daddy!” Nick bellowed, pointing to a trail that climbed up the steep ridge behind us. “Up! UUUP!”

“No,” I told him. “Too steep. Later, when we’ve got hiking boots on you.”

I looked around for Robin. Alex was hauling his GI Joe Jeeps and such out of the RV. I looked back up at Nick. He was halfway up the hill. He looked back with skree slipping out from underneath his tennis shoes, and he started to cry. I dashed up to grab him before he could do the nose-dive he has become so famous for. When I reached him, though, he promptly started dragging me up the hill. There was no way I could safely pick him up.

“Hey, Dad,” Alex bellowed. “Where ya’ going?”

“Ask Nick, “ I shot back. Alex pursued. Nick and I crested the rise. A large rugged valley opened up to the south. I spotted several potential mining digs off to the southwest.

“Hey Dad, what’s that?”

I looked down at the ground where Alex pointed, then stepped back.

“A grave.”

Alex and I stood silent for a second. There was a substantial pile of stones at one end, making this a somewhat unique grave in the desert. An attempt at a headstone?

“It’s so small.”

“Infant’s grave,” I answered, glanced over to Nick, who had started coughing and hacking, “Maybe a small child.” I looked around to the east, and spotted a second grave, this one adult size. I looked up. The Carrizo Badlands filled the north and northeast, Carrizo Wash, Canyon Sin Nombre, Aroyo Seco Del Diablo. Not a bad view for eternity. Were the two graves mother and child at childbirth? To come way up here to dig a grave suggested to me that they weren’t just rolling through on the stagecoach line nearby. Probably homesteaders in this desolate beautiful place.

“How old?” Alex asked clinically. The stones’ tops had desert varnish. I shook my head.

“Can’t say.”

Somehow I managed to haul my children back down the hill without killing them or myself. Nick’s cough wasn’t getting better.

It was about lunchtime. Robin made Digiorno Pizza in the Magic Chef oven.

“Do you want to eat on the picnic table or in here?” Robin asked the children.

“In the RV!” Alex cheered.

I sighed.

At first we tied the dogs to the bumper, with the shade of the site’s cabana falling over them. They would have none of it, whining and crying like children. Robin had no choice but to guide them around with her. Kellian and Nick learned to walk them.

A ‘C’ class camper pulled up in #6, then a new 24-foot Flair moved in to #11. The little guy with the Dutch accent had made me furtive and paranoid. With the arrival of these other Rvers, I felt some relief. Safety in numbers, I thought.

Then the people at campsite #9 pulled up in a VW pop-up van. Although gray and old, they reminded me of Lloyd Smith and his wife. Obviously practiced, they abandoned the picnic table underneath the site’s cabana and set up a card table, covered it with a blue and white checked table cloth, candelabra and plates, all the time hugging and kissing each other like young lovers. My children screamed and yelled, our dogs barked and played. Number 9 glared at us.

This was not meant as a true planned-out camping trip with goals of things to see and do. It was a shakedown cruise, to test the equipment, familiarize ourselves with its idiosyncrasies, a good reason to stay at a campground instead of taking a risky backroad. With nothing really planned, the dogs got walked a lot, and I tinkered around the machine.

My Bounder falls into the category of a ‘fixer-upper’. We got it cheap, figuring the multitude of repairs it will require will also allow us to shape it to our own desires. The frame is solid, the drive-train superlative, the suspension can be upgraded, the vast majority of appliances work just fine. I have a list, though, of repairs and things to be done that go on for a full page.

The check valve leaked, and I’ll be honest, until I asked the taciturn old man in the back at Rick’s RV in El Cajon, I didn’t even realize it wasn’t an actual valve that could be turned on and off. I had rigged a piece of old lawn hose into the ‘city water’ connection so that it dripped down through the hole for the holding tank hose. I brought a bucket and slipped it underneath the leaking hose. This was where I got water for the dogs. There had been a substantial gully washer of a leak underneath the bathroom sink. I had replaced the cracked ‘T’ joint with a whole new set-up, but this wept a drop or two on occasion, like the ‘T’ joint to the water heater. We turned off the water pump unless we needed it.

I couldn’t get the house batteries fully charged. At best the gauge would hover about a third up through the green range. All three batteries looked practically new, so I had pulled all the terminals and cleaned them, then sprayed a corrosion inhibitor over them. No improvement. I had hoped, with the long drive out to Bow Willow, that that might do the trick. It hadn’t. Now I fretted. With the big 6.5 Onan generator, I hadn’t worried about it that much anyway, but the glaring old couple at campsite #9 had me uncomfortable. Did I dare fire it up?

The propane tank gauge said it was completely full, and had read that since we’d bought the thing, though I had tested the propane side of the refrigerator, the furnace, hot water heater and stove over the last four weeks, running all of them at length. Still the gauge showed full.

Ever since the Cedar Fire had nearly burned us out and covered San Diego County in an ash storm, Nick’s infant breathing problems had cropped up again, another reason to get out of town for a weekend. We’d brought his nebulizer breathing machine along, which required AC, so around four I fired up the generator and sat Nick down at the dinette table. Nick gratefully took to sucking at the tube with the atomized medicine and saline mix, and I could see through the window the old couple at #9 glaring at us all that much more.

The day had been crystal clear, no wind. It cooled off now, dropping from the seventies into the high fifties. I started a fire so Robin could cook dinner, steaks that had marinated since leaving the house.

I should’ve run the generator for a couple of hours, but I didn’t. (At this time I thought that was one of the main functions of the generator, to charge the house batteries.)

Steaks require an open wood fire, but Robin opted to warm the beans and tortillas on the stove and in the oven, and once again, we ate inside, the novelty of the RV overwhelming the draw of the outdoors. At least I hoped that was the case.

The twins hadn’t napped, Alex had ridden his bike all over the local roads, Smith was exhausted from being walked around all day, and Thomas was willing to consider going to bed. I took the dogs out for one more walk.

Dusk had fallen. The sky was red, orange, pink. The smell of creosote and cheese bush filled the air, the desert moist from recent rains. My heart soared, and I made sure to throw a couple more pieces of wood on the fire. The kids would go to bed, and Robin and I, and probably the dogs, would sit by the fire, drink some beer and wine, and know peace and solitude. As I policed the campsite, I heard a sonorous deep voice coming from #9. The old couple had five kerosene lanterns hanging about the cabana. They had lawn chairs and a small foldout table with red wine and cheese set up, but no fire. The old man was reading from a book in a melodic deep voice. I paused and listened as he read T.S. Elliot. If we sat by our fire we could listen.

I opened the door and a blast of heated air hit me. The kids were in the back watching TV.

“Get in,” the wife ordered. “Don’t let the heat out.”

Robin had turned the driver and passenger seats around and closed the ‘privacy drapes’. She had a glass of wine in her hand. There was a Karl Strauss at the driver’s seat. She stretched her legs out over the engine cowling. The furnace clicked off, satisfied for the moment. I didn’t even realize Robin knew where the thermostat was. The radio was playing the Eagles.

“C’mon, sit down, I got a beer for you. Let’s relax.”

I pointed through the window.

“I threw some extra wood on the fire.”

“You can watch it from here.” She looked at me, and answered my unspoken thought. “I got a glass of wine, a comfortable chair, a real good sound system, and central heat. I ain’t goin’ nowhere. Sit.”

I did as I was told, and saw my worst fears come true . I cracked the drapes, saw the snapping fire, but could not hear it, smell it, feel the heat. Campsite #9 glowed, with all the lanterns. Beyond that, the sullen swell of rises and ridges stretched out to the Badlands, gone in the gloom. Stars hung low.

On the other hand, we were wonderfully comfortable that night. The twins played musical beds, crawling into bed with Alex on the folded-out dinette set/ bed, then sneaking into Robin’s bunk, then mine until I gave up and went to sleep in the back which the twins had vacated. Shortly, they were back there with me, Nick’s cough not nearly as bad as it had been. What chance for us to be here if it weren’t for the RV?

I woke up warm and rested to Smith whining nervously at the door. I took the dogs out.

The sun hadn’t risen yet, the false dawn filling the eastern sky with a dark crimson and lavender. When I went past Site #9, I noticed that all the kerosene lanterns had been taken down and were gone from sight. Though there seemed to be no one stirring in the camp, the card table with the blue and white checkered cloth appeared already set for breakfast, with crystal glasses not yet filled, silverware neatly lined up on cloth napkins next to the two plates.

The battery gauge showed down in the red. We had a big breakfast of eggs, ham and biscuits. We ate in the well-heated RV. Though the heater had run all night, the propane gauge still showed full. If the gauge was broken, how much propane did we have left? A glance out the window showed the couple at Camp #9 eating breakfast as well. It looked like crescents and orange juice. Soon they began packing up, very slowly.

I watched them with anticipation, since my plan was to fire up the generator and recharge the batteries once they left. Around eleven they finished loading up and crept out, giving our campsite one last ugly look. Even before they were out of sight I had the generator running. There was a large clunk from the power module. I checked, the charge light had come on. The house battery meter read the bottom of the green.

The family and I took a hike, walked around the rise to our south, picking our way through campsite #11. From this side the climb up the rise was much easier. We wound through honey mesquite and burro bush until we crested the rise. We checked out the digs to the southwest of the graves, one of them a substantial horizontal cut into the mountain, chasing a crumbly white quartz vein. Thompson managed to step on a cholla ball, but we got lucky, none of its needles penetrated the pad. Then we all inspected the graves again.

Finally we started back down to our camp.

I let the generator run for two hours. When I shut it down, I was disappointed to see the battery meter showing us barely at the halfway point of the yellow.

“It just makes an awful lot of noise. How much gas does it use?”

“About a gallon an hour.”

I let it run for another hour. Still the needle hovered in the yellow. I decided to let it go, or maybe run the generator that night.

Someone decided we should walk out to Bow Willow Canyon, but as we started down the road, who should drive up but a family from Alex’s Cub Scout Den.

“Hey Dave,” Ron leaned out the window of his 24 foot South Wind, towing a Jeep. “What’re you doin’ here?”

‘Waiting for you,” I countered. Ron had only bought his unit a few weeks before we’d bought our, but he seemed to have it all figured out already. A real outdoorsman, he’s backpacked through the Sierras and camped most everywhere. I suspect, though, with his wife and three adopted children, he was faced pretty much with the same situation we were, find a better way, or not be able to go camping any longer.

My son Alex recruited Alec and Seth, Ron’s two sons, and the trio set about wreaking havoc on the GI Joe’s my son had brought.

I ran the generator for another hour with little improvement in the charge.

My thought was, with the unexpected arrival of Ron and his family, we’d end up sharing a fire with them that night. It was decidedly warmer than the night before.

I walked over to #5. Ron was nursing his fire to life. I stepped up next to him.

“What time y’got?” I asked.

“6:30.”

I nodded.

“My people are crashing.”

“So early?”

I nodded again.

“I was kind’a hoping we’d all sit around the fire, but .”

“Well, the boys’n me were gonna go out for a midnight drive in the Jeep,” Ron said, “See if we could spot any wildlife out after dark.”

I sighed. Ron scratched at his beard as he studied his meager fire.

“Say, you wouldn’t happen to have any extra wood, would ya’?”

“Tons,” I answered.

I reentered the coach, the heater fan blowing.

“Feels colder tonight,” the wife offered.

“No, no, it’s much warmer than yesterday,” I countered.

What she meant, of course, was the inside of the coach. I was thinking the weather in general. I woke up in the early morning hours and realized the central heat was not working. I got up and threw extra blankets on everyone. We’ve run out of propane, I concluded, yet didn’t turn off the central heat. The fan ran all night, and by the next morning, the house batteries were so drained, there wasn’t enough energy to power a light.

“Ran out of propane,” I stated, “the gauge is busted.”

“Then there’s no fuel for the stove,” Robin answered. She flicked her Bic, and the stove lit off, making an utter liar out of me.

“So what’s wrong with the furnace?”

“Well, we’re headed home, right?”

“Right after breakfast.”

“Will the engine start?”

The engine started. The engine battery is isolated from the house system, right? I let it idle as I loaded all our gear. I don’t get much help loading. Robin has her chores, the twins are t still too small to help, and Alex refuses on principal. When I finally put the children aboard, having said good-bye to Ron and his herd, raised the levelers and jerry-rigged the steps up with a bungee cord (Kwikee steps need juice from the house batteries to crank up).

We ended up joy riding over to Blair Valley, about ten miles west of Bow Willow, basically just seeing other places that we could take this monstrosity. It was while we were maneuvering around Big Blair Valley that I noticed that the voltmeter gauge was barely off the bottom, nowhere near twelve volts. The only thing I could think was the alternator had chosen this moment to fail me. Roughly a hundred miles away from home, and twenty-five, thirty miles away from a town, I judiciously got us back to S-2 and headed east to Ocotilla, the said nearest town.

The engine ran great, though, although now I also noticed a dull orange light glowing behind the word ‘choke’. We got to Ocotilla; still the engine ran great. I got on the freeway, no problem. Indeed, we drove all the way home. When I pulled up in front of the house, I killed the engine, then tried to restart it. Not even a click. The auxiliary battery gauge still read dead, and now the engine battery was dead, too. I Plugged the coach into the house for twenty-four hours, tried the engine, it started right up. Meanwhile the auxiliary battery gauge sits just about as high up as it seems to get, just into the green. The engine voltmeter read just above the red as before, then after only a moment, ticked up to roughly eleven volts, and then after a time, twelve. I went down and had the auxiliary batteries tested, and according to the guys at AutoZone, they’re good. Could my isolator be bad? Before I pulled the batteries, I let them sit without anything charging them for more than a day, then checked. The auxiliary battery gauge showed no change, it had not dropped.
All advice greatly appreciated.