We’ve taken a 3-night motorhome vacation to Cedar City, Utah with our neighbors, the Carnicellis.
Galen and Sherri Carnicelli just recently bought a 2018 38’ Coachmen Mirada rig. It has a Ford V-10 powerplant and all the modern fixins’.
They paid $93,000 for it and everything seems to work. It appears rather puny inside compared to ours, and the materials used for flooring, cabinets, etc. look inexpensive. The Carnicellis aren’t large people and, with their one dog, there is plenty of room. It is their first motorhome and they asked us if we would do the 3-day trip to help them through the freshman jitters.
The place we’re staying is called Iron Springs Resort. It is about ten miles from I-15 (Cedar City), out near some old mines and just down the road from the city dump. We have water and sewer hook-ups but no cable, no picnic tables, no BBQs, no restrooms, no showers, and no groundcover other than gravel. Cell service is marginal.
Camping here is basically boondocking, as far as I am concerned.
Galen asks a lot of questions about RVing and I’m happy to give him all the information that I know. He is an ex-Navy electronics guy, so he is going to have a much easier time diagnosing and fixing the little annoyances that come with traveling in a motorhome. The Carnicellis are going to do a big road trip this Summer and, in fact, are going to stay at some of the same places we are (Coos Bay and Brookings, Oregon). It will be interesting to see how they like the lifestyle.
We just recently got The Beast shipshape in terms of air bags and (compressed) air lines: the RV rides nice and levels fine. Of course, there are always things that crop up as soon as the rig leaves storage. On this trip, I realized that the horn doesn’t work, and the thermostat that runs one of our automatic ceiling fans is not functioning. Galen may help me troubleshoot those items today.
Something that really panicked me was the Norcold refrigerator, which wasn’t working right when we left town. The freezer bays were ice cold, but the refrigerator compartment was not cooling, for some reason. When we got to Cedar City (a two-hour drive), the refrigerator bay was still room temp. This had us highly annoyed for the rest of that day. However, by the next morning, everything was working correctly. I don’t know what the problem was: I’ll have to research it.
We’ve been here in Iron Springs for three days now and the wind has howled each day for most of the day. We can’t put up our awning and sit outside in camp chairs like we normally would, so we’re hunkered down in the RV, reading and watching TV.
I also did some Web research on a lady who is the great-great granddaughter of “Uncle Dick” Wooton, a pioneer mountain man in the Old West. I believe that I may also be one of his great-great grandchildren (on my father’s mother’s side), so I’m going to send the lady (Janelle Wootton McQuitty) a letter inquiring about potential common genealogy. She’s a writer and historian, so she probably has some stuff that would interest me. I hope we can connect.
Last night, the Carnicellis had us over for dinner (delicious meatloaf, mashed potatoes and corn) and we later played a board game called Sequence.
Tonight, it is my turn to cook the meal. I’m going to grill a marinated pork tenderloin and serve with scalloped potatoes and spinach salad. And, then, we’ll probably play some more Sequence, which they liked.
Tomorrow morning, we will head back down the I-15 to Mesquite in the morning and stow the rig. In a little over two weeks, we will pack it up and head off toward the Oregon coast for Summer. I can hardly wait to enjoy the cool climate and the beach sand in my feet.
As far as Iron Springs Resort is concerned, on a 1 to 10 scale (with 10 being excellent), I would give this place a 2…something to avoid unless you are desperate for an overnight stay. In that case, you’d be better off parking at a WalMart and saving $65.