Fridge Trouble, Again

 You pay almost twice the price hoping for a better quality. Yet ICECO breaks just as fast as cheap Chinese ones. In fact, Iceco JP40 is exactly same as several Chinese ones except for the Sepco compressor they use instead of Chinese one. But 5 year warranty on the compressor is no good if something else fails. And something else fails it did.

The fuse blew not because of the cigarette lighter adapter that I installed. It blew because the fridge drew inordinate amount of current. It also blew the fuse on the Tesla's socket which is rated at 250W when it's supposed to draw 50W. When I directly connected the 12V source, the voltage dropped to 2V. All that means the fridge has a short somewhere in its 12V circuit and it is no longer working off 12V, fused or unfused.

I've been talking to ICECO since yesterday. They will ship the replacement for it, but it would normally take 10 days. I've been working them to ship it express but I haven't heard from them yet. Meanwhile, I'm staying in Escalante for 2 more days I planned because of it, hoping that the replacement fridge will arrive in that time. 

I needed more rest to recover from Coyote Gulch anyway, so all is not lost. I did a short hike to Zebra Canyon today, a rather anticlimactic one after Coyote Gulch I have to say.  I'll rest tomorrow and then do Calf Creek Falls and  move on to Capitol Reef NP as planned. Hopefully, the fridge will arrive before then. If not, I'll have to move on. Maybe I'll come back from Capitol Reef to pick it up.

Life in Bryce

It's been raining just about everyday since I arrived in Utah. It's the monsoon season in this part of the country and they are getting more rain than usual. It's cooler than normal too. Which makes my sleeping bag and skin sticky and cold inside the sleeping bag at night. But I have an electric blanket and it turns cold dampness into dry warmth in an instant. I'll have to pat myself on the back for carrying it with me. 

The mornings are stunningly refreshing around here. The sun comes out, the shrubs and grass glisten with morning dew and the cool air fills your lung to jolts you back into life. I haven't been to Pine Island, MN, but the backyard of William Duffy's farm can't be much better than this.

After the coffee and serial or oatmeal, I make daily commute to Ruby's Inn. I plug in the car, use their bathroom and then do the Internet thing on their free wifi. It is the best inn I've never slept in. I'll have to pay them back someday by staying in. Actually, I did. In 2017, we stayed on one of their RV campsite. Back then, they didn't have Tesla chargers. So we had to buy an RV site to charge the car over night.

In the afternoon, thunderstorms roll in like a clockwork. The hours may vary. It's an opportunity to lather up your hair and scrub dirt off your skin on your day off. You can put a couple of half gallon bottles on the top of your car to warm them up before the storm rolls in.  The temperature drops quite a bit when the storm arrives though; you might want to do the bath while the sun is out unless you have to conserve the water.

I'm no longer clocking my walking speed or pacing myself. I haven't measured it, but I'm sure it's over 100 steps/min. I'm not taking breaks between the tasks either. Now I just do what I need to do like normal people do and then take a break when I feel like. Before, every task felt like a mountain to climb; now, nothing feels like that. And the recovery from hiking takes only a day or two, not days or weeks. It took 2 days after Angel's Landing. Yesterday I did 4 miles and 1500 feet elevation on Peekaboo route, and the 8 hours of sleep was enough for recovery. It feels like a complete recovery from CFS. Will it last? I could well slip back into CFS and PEM sickness when I return home. For how, I'm enjoying the recovery here in Bryce. 

This trip was all about the recovery from CFS and I said I'll return when I'll have recovered when I started the trip. But the recovery came much faster than I expected. The trip now will have to be about travel and experience, like a normal trip for a normal person is. I guess I'll finish the trip as planned, at least till Colorado, and decide whether to proceed to NYC or return. 

With strong breeze, it actually feels cold here in the shade. I'll now move to the sun.

Fridge Power Repair

It must've been out of power for a few ours at least. When I finally noticed the warm lettuce yesterday evening, it was at 64F. No way I could fix it after hiking Peekaboo Loop. I plugged it into the car's cigarette lighter instead and left a door open. The lighter power goes off when the car is off and leaving a door open keeps the car on. The car still goes off after about 30 minutes, so I had to come out and close and reopen every 30 minutes. It went on for 7 hours without power over night, but it was still in the 40s, thanks to cool nights.

I was thinking that all that vibration from driving on dirt roads must've shaken the the splicer clamp off the 12V line. The vibration did shake the rear window loose, enough for it to come unhinged from it's motor mechanism, after all. (The nearest Tesla service center is in Denver, so I duct taped it for now so that rainwater won't get in.) It was at least 30 miles of dirt road from Lava Point to Cedar City and that must've done it. 

This afternoon, I finally ripped the car's lining off and accessed the 12V wiring. The clamps seem to be intact to my surprise. It was the 10A fuse on the 12V cigarette light adaptor that blew. I'll have to take back all the cussing for it being cheap Chinese splicer clamps and instead cuss out the 12V cigarette lighter adapter for being cheap Chinese parts. To be fair though, the fridge could've been working hard in the hot car with one of the vent almost block by the wall.  

I didn't have a spare fuse. The cig lighter set came in a pair and I left one at home. Pretty dumb I should say. I should've installed both just in case one failed, so that I would have a spare power source without ripping the wall lining again in case one failed. Hindsight twenty twenty. At least I had all the tools to take the car apart and figure it out the problem. 

I found a tiny metal pin on the ground and McGyver'ed it into a makeshift fuse, a fuse that will never blow. Shoved it into the fuse tube and voila! the fridge was back in business. That'll do for now till I get to a hardware store somewhere and get a replacement fuse. 

Meanwhile, my $70k car is getting trashed left and right.. That's what I get for using a luxury sedan as an utility vehicle.

Peekaboo Loop

This was supposed to be  a 5.2 miles, 1500 feet hike, according to alltrails.com.  At the half way point, however, I got chased out of the canyon by the lightning storm. The search and rescue corralled people out of the canyon through Two Bridges trail. Apparently that was the fastest way out of the canyon since they closed Wall Street. Fastest for normal people maybe. All trails to lead to the same plateau, which means shorter ones are steeper.  It would've taken about the same amount of time to come back up through the rest of Peekaboo trail. No matter. I was doing the loop in the wrong direction, so I may as well come back in 2 days and finish up the loop in the right direction and then come up via Wall Street.

So, it turned into 4 mile 1500 feet hike. And I took only a few breaks. Climbing up Two Bridges, I sat down only once near the top. In 2017, I sat down every a few switchbacks going up Wall Street. So I made a tremendous progress since then. And my legs are just fine this morning, only with a minor fatigue. I'm sure I'll be ready to go again tomorrow. 

Another heavy storm on the way back. Water gushed into the shuttle bus through the ceiling opening and the slider window. I had to get up and close them all before we all drowned. It's the monsoon season here and it's been raining as much as it does in Korea during the monsoon. The difference is that there isn't much of humidity to speak of. Things all dry up and everything is sparkly and beautiful by morning as if nothing happened.

Dark and Stormy Night at Zion

Thirty some years ago I was on my way to Zion for the first time. I rented a car from a mom and pop joint in Las Vegas (or was it LA?) and it promptly went kaput after 30 miles. It took 2 hours for the rental company to come and rescue me. They gave me Honda Prelude in lieu of the broken Ford to compensate for my trouble. The car was so fun, I drove that thing through the desert at 120 mph. I no longer remember my itinerary, but by the time I got to Saint George it was late at night. A thunderstorm swept through. Dry lightnings went off every a few seconds while dead leaves rolled across the freeway in swirling wind. I'd never seen so many lightnings go off in my life.

The thunderstorm that rolled in the evening when I got here in Lava Point must be the same kind. Instead of incessant lightnings, however, hail dropped down. The downpour was so heavy and loud, it sounded like thousands of machine guns going off at the same time. And it went on for an hour. When it was all done, my tent was in a big puddle of water. My $35 Coleman tent stayed dry though. And my car was intact too with no pock marks.

The next day stayed dry. In the evening, some dumb rangers came by and told me to move the tent by the fire ring because where I was a vegetation site even though the site was clear of vegetation and many people have camped on it before. Several broken tent stakes said so. I wasn't in the mood to argue with guys with guns, so I moved. 

I left the rain fly off in the process figuring, what are the chances for another thunderstorm? Well, I was wrong. I saw the storm clouds moving east on the north side of the camp as I was cooking and eating on the picnic table. Just about when I was done, rain drops started falling. I pitched the rain fly in a hurry, moved some of the stuff into the tent and covered the rest with a tarp. Soon, it was pouring as hard as it did the day before. And it lasted just about all night long. It was one incredible storm, I tell you.

They say it is the monsoon season here in South East Utah. The thunderstorm develops in the afternoon and moves out in the evening, only to repeat it the next day. Apparently some of them stay on all night long if they feel like.

 

Eagle Has Landed

 On the way down from Angel's Landing, someone asked me how far it was to Scout's Outlook. I said about 15 minutes. Apparently that was too far for her. She said she's heart broken even though she was not going all the way to the Eagle's Landing. She meant Angel's Landing, of course. But the Eagle has landed the same and the milestone has been accomplished.

So I made it to the top of Angel's Landing. From Scout's Lookout, you are practically going up vertically on your hands and knees. When you are not, you are pulling yourself up with the chain. The end result is 5.3 miles and 1600 feet elevation gain, a little bit longer and a little bit flatter than Castle Crags. But it is also rated strenuous because you are going up vertically for the last half a mile after Scout's Lookout. It's also rated the scariest hike in America because you have to tight-rope the ridge of the vertical cliff. There are a few places that felt dangerous, but the trail overall was not as scary as it was hard. 

It is the first milestone of this trip. The next is the Coyote Creek in Escalante, which will be 6-8 miles but not as strenuous other than roping down 200 feet and then climbing back up out of the gulch. The 3rd one is Ouray Perimiter trail. It looked pretty on a YouTube video, but I'm sure there are more stunning trails in Colorado. I'll research some more and play by the ear.

I planned to get on the first shuttle at 6AM for Angel's Landing. I got up and 5:30 and ended up on the bus around 8AM. The drive to the visitor center took an hour and then I had to plug in the car, have breakfast, make a pit stop, fill up the water bottle, etc. The line for the shuttle actually got considerably shorter by the time I got in the line. Everybody apparently had the same idea of getting up early and starting out early.

Getting to Scout's Lookout through switchbacks and cool canyon was easy enough. I don't remember taking too many breaks. By the time I got back on the trail however, I was getting cramped all over. That got me worried that I might cramp in a hairy section and lose the handle on the chain. I slowed down and stopped twisting too much to grab on to the chain, and the cramp eventually went away. I was also worried about blacking out and falling off the cliff. Blacking out wasn't a problem though. Maybe Rush Creek trail in June Lake will have been the last episode of blacking out. Hope strings eternal.

It took about the same amount of time to get to Angel's Landing from Scout's Lookout as it took to get to Scout's Lookout, it seems. The one lane trail had to be shared and people had to wait for the traffic in the other direction to pass. People naturally organized themselves into packets and shared the bandwidth by alternating the direction.

The view at the top wasn't unlike Yosemite Valley viewed from Taft Point. The Angel's Landing juts out into the middle of the valley and affords the view of the canyon trailing off into distance in both directions. It's the best view of Zion canyon.

I got back to the visitor center between 1and 2PM, so the whole trip must've taken about 5 hours, I think. That's an excellent performance. I don't remember taking too many breaks either. I sat down whenever I felt I should rather than pacing by taking a break at every half a mile. I am making progress and this trip is unfolding just as envisioned.

Mesquite, NV

Alabama Hill was swell, but I wasn't going to camp there; it's just too hot. It felt balmy with wind blowing in the evening, but inside the car was still warm all night long and I had to get the AC going most of the night. With temperature approaching 100F and no tree to hide under, it would've been brutal during the day.

So I scooted over to an air conditioned room at Virgin River Casino in Mesquite, NV. It is the same joint that we stayed for 4 days and rested at when coming back from NYC in 2017. It's cheap, it's clean and it has a pool. What more can you ask? Well, I could ask for the same price as in 2017. It's now $32, not $24 we paid back then. It also no longer supplies shampoo and the rooms feel dated now. But I won't complain; hotel prices are now through the roof they say. 

I'll stay here for 2 nights, get the  photos edited, blogs written and the plans for the next a few days nailed down. I might stay one more night. It's pain to move the stuff up and down the room just for 2 nights and I could use one more day of rest before charging up Angel's Landing.