Something's Burning, Pull Over !!

Oh dear, we're having a hard time leaving this RV park this morning for Bishop, California. Monty, our old motorhome on the right, refuses to leave unless Buttercup, the even older motorhome on the left, comes with us. And Buttercup's not ready for the road. We're not sure what we're going to do. Okay, let's get serious here. It wasn't Monty. It was me. I didn't want to leave without Buttercup. I thought this was the coolest RV I've ever seen. It's a 1960s era Ultravan, originally conceived in California and production later moved to Kansas. It's powered by a Corvair engine. Who does that kind of thing? And when I did a little bit of research on them, I found out that some of them were powered by a 455 Olds V8, a Chevy Corvette engine, and even a Chevette engine. Come on, you got to admit, this thing's pretty cool. Okay, back to our main story. Today, we're leaving a very pleasant RV park in the Yucca Valley, Yucca City, for Bishop, California, along the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada mountain range. After our overheating escapade yesterday, when we arrived here in the heat of the day when poor Monty was totally exhausted, we decided that today we'd get smart and leave before sunrise to hopefully get by these hills leading out of the Yucca Valley before the heat started to really build up. So buckle up, pour yourself a drink, sit back and relax, and enjoy the scenery as we out of the Yucca Valley and head toward the Sierra Nevada mountain range. We'll join up with you again on the outskirts of Barstow. I'm just sitting here I got time it's clear to see from up here the world seems small we can sit together it's so beautiful you and me meant to be in the great outdoor take a step back to see the truth from a distance you can tell okay let's freeze this frame for a moment and analyze what's happening we're blissfully traveling this wide open highway when Michaela, who has the best smelling nose in the world, while I have absolutely no sense of smell, believes something is burning and she urgently says, pull over, pull over, pull over. I smell something hot, burning. Something's hot, burning. Look at how quickly she springs into action, goes outside to check the tow car and the rest of the rig, while the dumbass driver gets a stoned look on his face and starts to slowly look around, checks his shoes first, works his way to the back of the rig, tries to lift up the bed where the diesel engine is underneath, gives up because it's too heavy, goes forward and looks in a few cupboards, looks into the fridge to see if there's something to eat, goes back and finally gets the strength to lift up the bed to look at the engine, crawls around on his hands and knees looking for his cats and then later, when the episode has been resolved, drives away with a cookie in his mouth. Meanwhile, Michaela has done all the hard work. She's done all the sensible stuff. I just wanted everybody to see this because even if you think that you look quite competent when an emergency happens, take a look at yourself sometimes. That's what this video making does. It makes you realize how stupid you can look. Fairness to me, I'm a different personality than Michaela. She's a take charge, get on it. When an emergency happens, when I'm stressed, my blood pressure drops, my actions go very slowly, I think about things, I don't talk. It drives her nuts so she just jumps into action. I love this woman. Another less important thing that I noticed is that I'm wearing the same shirt that I left Mexico in about a week before. I know that we typically don't dress for the camera but come on, I can do better than this. We were finally able to conclude that Mahdi was not burning, that Lola, our tow car, was okay too, and that the smell was likely coming from what appeared to be an asphalt plant on the opposite side of the highway, which could have had some relevance to another RV that we noticed just before we pulled over, taking off into the weeds off the highway. Perhaps he thought he was on fire as well. But you know, even though this did not turn out to be a bad event, it really was an eye opener as to what you would do should you have a real fire, which is highly likely in an RV. Although you'd never know it from the way I appeared to act, a fire aboard Mahdi is one of our biggest concerns. We have four fire extinguishers aboard and we're always careful to have them checked annually to make sure that they're ready for use. We have two fairly large fire extinguishers, one beside the passenger seat and the same size extinguisher outside in the bay closest to the rear wheel, and we always travel with this bay door unlocked so we can gain quick access to it should we need it right away. Michaela knew exactly where this was when she went outside and she knows how to use it. We have two remaining smaller extinguishers on each side of the bed in the aft cabin, making up the four extinguishers. And you never know when you might come across a fellow RVer who's in desperate need of an extinguisher, you want to be able to help them out. Well with cookie in mouth and this episode behind us, we carried along the highway and eventually turned a little bit northerly at Kramer Junction in search of the Sierra Nevada mountain range and Bishop, which is about 180 miles northwest of us. We love these wide open highways. Life was good again. Well we woke up and the tempo picked up as we drove along the base of the Sierra Nevada mountain range, and the world's largest ant hill, and then passing through the cool little town of Lone Pine, which I'm sorry there's no footage, something went wrong. We found ourselves approaching one of our favorite towns along the 395, Bishop, California. After a visit to the tourist information center where the staff kindly suggested an RV park on the outskirts of town, a little bit north of the main center, with Lola unhooked, we made our way to a very comfortable, well-serviced RV park just minutes away from where we wanted to return, which was the Eric Schatz Bakery that I showed you earlier with the blue awnings. Please, if you're going to give me any credibility about what I say, make it this one, please. If you have never been to Bishop, California, you need to go there, if only just to visit the Eric Schatz Bakery. It is amazing. So come on, let's go along for a short ride and get really fat.