October 8, 2021
It's raining hoodoos
A driving tour of Bryce and the continuing saga of the fritzy furnace
This morning dawned cloudy and cold, although it was in the mid-40's at least for now. The forecast we found on-line called for rain starting in a few hours and continuing all day.
That didn't sound like ideal biking weather, so we decided to drive into the park and do a short hike. I've always wanted to walk down into into one of the canyons among the towering hoodoos, taking pictures from a different perspective.
So after breakfast, we headed toward Bryce. Unfortunately by the time we reached the entrance kiosk, it had started to rain with the temperature dropping like a rock. Ok, no hike today :(
We opted to continue our drive deeper into the park to the end of the road to see if the rain was bringing out the colors in the rocks.
There were lots of overlooks that we stopped at to admire the fanciful hoodoos. But by the time we got to the dead end, the clouds had dropped down into the canyon, nearly obscuring the views. We were at over 9000 ft elevation at this point and it was very cold.
It was also raining much harder - nearly snowing, so I had a challenge keeping the camera dry while I snapped photo after photo. You truly can't take a bad picture here! But my hands were so cold, I could barely hold the camera.
Reversing our steps, we continued stopping at other overlooks. I saw several hikers setting out, but we weren't wearing proper gear for a rainy/cold walk. Although we both had on our rain jackets, you would also need waterproof pants, shoes and gloves.
The road continued to drop down in elevation and the rain turned to just sprinkles by the time we reached Bryce City. We stopped in the gift shop at Ruby's Inn to see what they had for sale, hoping for an 'end of season' clearance. Nope, no sales today, just a lot of overpriced tourist stuff.
Exiting the park, we drove on to Panguitch to get a few groceries at the their market and look for a new switch for the furnace at the hardware stores. No luck on the switch and we were really disappointed in the high priced items in the grocery.
We had thought that they would have been cheaper here than at Ruby's Inn, but even bananas were more expensive! I was equally frustrated when I tried to find their coffee/tea. I searched up one aisle and down the next, but nothing! What the heck?!
Don said it was probably because the owners were Mormon and many of them still adhere to not drinking caffeine. But that didn't make sense as they were selling Coke etc. (which was in its own little room?!). Weird and annoying since you would think they would be catering to tourists.
So we just selected a few things for now and headed home.
We spent the rest of the afternoon and evening inside the trailer watching the rain pour down. Don had put out our big side awning in hopes of keeping the area in front of our door dryer But a BIG gust of wind came up and nearly ripped the awning off Tango! He had to hustle outside to quickly take it down for now.
The entertainment for the evening was watching a large RV bus try to back into a site literally driving off the pavement with the front end. It was leaning precariously and the wheels were dug into the mud - stuck for sure! Eventually a worker at the campground came over and towed it back out so it was upright again. One more thing to learn!
Since we have no TV reception here, we watched a dance instruction video on EC swing (look for some new moves when we get home!). Then we put on a movie and settled in for a warm and cozy night.
HAH! Well, that wasn't going to happen as our furnace failed several times. Poor Don had to go outside in the rain to access the panel over the motor. He would try to wipe the area out and wiggle the switch which would make it work for a bit, then stop once again.
He was able to order a new switch on Amazon and is having it shipped to our next campground in Kanab. Hopefully replacing it will permanently solve the problem!
The furnace also failed one more time around midnight. Don was already up and had it working once again. We are pretty stressed out and worried as the forecast is calling for overnight temps in the 30's which is too cold to use our heat pump. Right now I don't know what we're going to do!
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50 some years ago, I worked in a TV shop for a few years. I learned that intermittent electrical problems are often due to a poor connection somewhere, and I would often be misled to think a component was bad, when it was a poor solder joint. You might check all the electrical connections in the area of the switch. A poor solder joint, for instance can work fine till things warm up or cool off resulting in expansion or contraction that eventually breaks the connection.
Then again, it could be a bad internal switch component.
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