11/6/19 to 11/13/19 - Bowie, AZ to Deming, NM (117 miles) stayed seven nights at Low-Hi RV Ranch for $114/week
Our Step Motor Died
One close-to-freezing morning as we were packing up to leave, we noticed the motor that controls the bottom two steps below the front door didn’t want to close. Not good. You can’t drive down the road with steps sticking three feet out into the next lane. Bill was able to pull the pin to disengage the steps and we used zip ties to hold them shut for the day’s drive. When we stopped for lunch at a rest area, we opened the door and heard the motor whining, so we cut the zip ties and tried for 30 minutes to get the pin back in so the steps would engage and close on their own.
We went several days with no issues, until we pulled into a Flying J for gas. I opened the door to step out and heard the most awful grinding noise as the steps opened. They worked one more time for Bill, then CAPUT! Thankfully, this time they were closed, but the RV is TALL! The first built-in step is about hip height, so we had to climb in to get to our destination in Deming.
We had heard stories about how often step motors died. These are the same motors that control automatic windows in cars. They’re readily available and inexpensive. We had toyed with the idea of buying a spare when we were in Red Bay in June, but we didn’t think we’d need one so soon. There was no one nearby who could install one, so Bill watched A LOT of YouTube videos, and fairly certain he could replace it on his own, contacted Tiffin, who Fedexed a new one. Bill was so kind as to rig some steps with cinder blocks from our site so I could get in and out without hurting myself. We extended our stay and settled in to wait.
Deming is a cute little historic town with some interesting history. They have a Fred Harvey exhibit at the railroad depot turned visitor center and a great town museum. I spent an afternoon learning about the military base that used to train soldiers to site locations for bombing and looking at the amazing pottery from the native Mimbres people of the region. I love the geometric patterns in high contrast colors and the cartoony creatures that represented desert animals, like snakes, birds, goats and frogs. Look!
Deming is also home to Rockhound State Park, a rare park where you can take away the jasper, quartz, geodes and thunder eggs that you find. It’s easy to get lost if you get off of the trails, because your head is always down and you’re not looking where you’re going or where you’ve been. We sacked a lunch and walked with picks and hammers looking for pretty stones most of one afternoon. Brendan loved this place when he was a kid, because he was really into rocks!
The RV Park we stayed at was called Low - HI RV Ranch. It is the world headquarters for Loners on Wheels (the Low in Low - HI) an RV club for singles. They have parks all over the country and allow couples in, too. It was a great community in the middle of the desert. They has mixers and Friday night socials and drove to Mexico to eat dinner every Tuesday. The people were extremely friendly. They suggested restaurants in town that we should try.
Now, New Mexican food is not TexMex. Most notably, they have two sauces, red and green, that they put on everything. Hatch, New Mexico is a town about thirty minutes away, known for the green hatch chili pepper. So I thought the green sauce would be hotter. I ordered my meal with green and Bill got his with red. The red sauce was way hotter. Poor Bill had to scrape the sauce off his meal and work around this very spicy stuff. I gave him half of my meal and tried to eat the red sauce-covered items, but even for me, it was HOT!
It took a week for the motor to arrive. Bill had already taken out the old one, and had the new one installed in minutes! He’s getting really handy:). We were on our way the next day, felling close to home and ready to reconnect and rest for a while.
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