Feels good to be on the open road again!

We’ve seen our share of trouble on this trip but we’ve become practiced at making the necessary fixes (all tools courtesy Paul Mitchell…). Discovery continues to morph into Hindy – Kade’s cantankerous RV from the Fort Black Thrillers.

Pre-trip we had the massive expense of installing a new turbo and actuator on the engine. Then, on a practice run before making the long haul, one of the jack motors went bad. Yes, again. I replaced the brake (not the entire motor) and it worked fine until the protective boot filled with water.

A hair dryer and punching a few drain holes fixed the problem. Or so I thought…

I’ve also replaced the house batteries (four golf cart batteries) with a single lithium one. The four flooded cell batteries must have weighed a couple hundred pounds altogether. This single battery provides more amp hours -and- weighs maybe thirty pounds total with no need to constantly monitor water levels.

The fancy battery doesn’t quite integrate with all the old inverter and battery charging components. But the solar I previously installed seems to handle charging most of the time.

I guess our rig’s a bit Hindy, a bit Bride of Frankenstein…

Day one, we had to wrestle with an off-kilter slide. Not long after, the check engine light flickered. None of this bode well but we kept trucking.

First major stop was near Niagara Falls. We spent a week far outside Buffalo surrounded by corn fields and quiet copses of trees. Then we shot south for Smoky Mountains National Park.

In Tennessee, I volunteered for several days with a local Hurricane donation distribution center about fifty miles or so west of Asheville, NC. The job didn’t entail visiting the actual disaster zones. Clean up there was progressing quickly -but- it’s going to be months before any sense of normalcy is restored. Plenty of families were still in need of basics from food to shelter.

We managed to visit the park several times in breaks from a busy schedule. We saw a bear. Wandered the hills awash in fall color. I’d heard it is the most visited National Park in the country and the traffic even on off-days confirmed this.

The Smoky Mountains is a beautiful place, especially in Fall. But all the visitors only made me long for the sparsely populated wilderness waiting for us in the West.

We breezed through Hot Springs next, a quick stop on the way to visiting family in Oklahoma. I’ve been to Arkansas many times in my life but never seen this quirky little place. A resort town with a deep history stretching back before the Civil War, it’s fascinating. The art deco buildings nestled against rock cliffs. Soldiers and mobsters and MLB players and entertainment icons from another era…

Yet another intriguing American city in need of a thriller treatment, perhaps.

Home, for my wife and me is Broken Arrow, Oklahoma. Our parents still live within ten or fifteen miles of each other in the exact same houses they did when we were in high school. With every visit, the city changes. Tulsa and its suburbs are beginning to look more and more like Dallas – a downtown merged with mile after mile of neighborhoods and strip malls.

Progress, I suppose. But on our travels, we’ve learned we prefer smaller, more remote locations. Convenience isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

While in Broken Arrow, my nephew stopped by with a computer to check those engine lights. Nothing but temporary blips from the EGR Valve – another component in the problematic turbo/exhaust system for our older Cummins diesel.

Since the light wasn’t staying on, we continued on our way.

Of course, it flared back on less than twenty four hours later. I’d since learned I could display the codes on the in-dash display. So I looked up the code and, you guessed it, EGR valve.

While the light is staying on, the occurrence count remains at one. So I think it’s an isolated thing because the engine is actually running better than it has in months. Solid power, decent gas mileage, and the ability to cruise at highway speeds and tackle hills with steady engine temps.

We’re continuing to ignore the light for the time being while closely monitoring gauges. Later in the trip, I might pop the hood (or the bed in this case – another long story) and take a peek.

From Oklahoma, we were off to a brief stop in Santa Fe. Only there a few days, we were able to squeeze in walk around the historic downtown and a drive into the nearby national forest.

On our final morning, the temperature dropped well below freezing. When we went to leave, the leveling jack I’d recently fixed with a hair dryer, failed. A quick check and the protective boot was full of ice. Apparently the drain holes I made weren’t big enough.

So, once again, Paul Mitchell to the rescue (Yes, honey, I’ll buy a proper heat gun soon…).

Driving into the vast deserts of the Land of Enchantment, I started to finally see what we’d driven all this way for. At the helm of a big diesel pusher with a broad, flat windshield in front of us, it’s very much like driving into a Old West painting.

Endless, gorgeous sunsets and expansive vistas.

Also nuns. At a scenic pull out. Kept waiting for them to take flight in formation…

Our next stop was Holbrook. We were travelling on the Thanksgiving holiday so we decided to make it a day trip and visit the Petrified Forest National Park and the adjacent Painted Desert.

After a long drive through the striped, alien landscape littered with the headstones of a once thriving primordial rain forest, we reached the historic inn now maintained by the park service. Wandering the grounds, I spotted an informational sign about backpacking the wilderness.

Turns out they’ve got thousands of acres of desert scrub and canyonlands behind the inn. Our nations’ first designated Wilderness (Pictured in the photo at the top of this post)! Unlike the National Parks, wilderness areas are rarely crowded and often remote. Of all the public lands, I’ve grown to love these spaces the best.

But the road was calling. We were due in Arizona the next day for our first wintering location outside Sedona. Backpacking the Painted Deserts will have to wait. (Big, heavy sigh.)

During all this, I’ve been hard at work on the first novel in a new thriller series for Inkubator Press. I’ll be putting on the finishing touches this week and launching into book two right after.

For Fort Black Thriller fans, I’ve got release dates for the audiobook versions due out starting March 2025. Links are below:

Devil’s Churn: https://rbmediaglobal.com/audiobook/9798331904845/
Death Bed: https://rbmediaglobal.com/audiobook/9798331904869/
Mineral King: https://rbmediaglobal.com/audiobook/9798331904883/
Death Toll: https://rbmediaglobal.com/audiobook/9798331904906/

Before that, a special project I worked on a couple years ago will finally see the light of day!

In 2022 was invited to work with the writing team at Blur studios on a new project made for Amazon Prime. The same team behind Love Death and Robots and led by Deadpool director, Tim Miller! Like, who says no to that???

The new limited series, Secret Level, is all about celebrating the world of video games and the amazing universes they’ve created. I pitched for several different well-known titles and my entry for Crossfire, a military shooter, was selected for final treatment.

I’ve since seen one of my pitch ideas pop up in of those studios’ game trailers, which is amazing. But I’m anxious to see how much my short story for the Crossfire episode made it through the final scripting process!

Secret Level launches December 10th on Prime!

More from outside Sedona when I get the chance. For now, back to the keyboard!

Russ

Categories: Author News, Journeys

Tags: america, author, deserts, fiction, fort black thrillers, nomad, road trip, rving, secret level, self publishing, southwest, thriller series, travel, Writing