This will be a rather short post, with no photos. Our plans for the day included breakfast at the wonderful Capitol Reef Inn and Cafe, but when we arrived at 8am there was a closed sign on the door saying they were closed for the day due to lack of staff. glitch number one.
Instead we found a restaurant connected with a hotel east of Torrey, the Pioneer Kitchen, and in spite of the busload of tourists that were finishing up breakfast, we had a table in a short time. The breakfast and service were decent too, but it didn’t have the ambience of Capitol Reef Inn.
The next plan for the day was for Dan to install the brake pads that Mo and I drove to Loa to buy yesterday afternoon. Long story short, we knew the brakes on the MoHo were making funny noises and managed to get an appointment at Les Schwab to have them checked. They rotated the tires and charged us for checking the brakes. They said they were fine. We chose them because most other shops in Grants Pass had either no lifts big enough for a motorhome, or a wait of weeks to months for an appointment. Les Schwab said the brakes all checked out fine.
On the trip, the brake sounds were getting noisier than ever, and thought maybe it was blowing sand that was in the brake lining.Once we arrived here on Monday afternoon we had Dan drive the MoHo and listen. Yeah…worn out pads grinding the rotors. Sigh. Of course there was no one within 200 miles that could work on the brakes in less then two weeks. Lucky us, Dan agreed to put in the pads and said that if we didn’t replace the rotor we would just have to do the job again when we get home because the pad will wear out quickly. So we finally found pads in Loa and made the round trip to pick them up.
After breakfast, Dan started working on installing the pads. Our plan was to get that done, and then pile into his Suzuki for the gorgeous drive over Thousand Lakes Mountain to visit the remote Cathedral Valley portion of Capitol Reef National Park. Instead, Dan worked for hours on the brakes, with problems entailed by not having the right tools. He and Mo made two trips back to Bicknell for clamps and sockets that would fit. Not fun. It was mid afternoon when Dan finished the difficult job. We also had to try to camouflage the work site because in most parks it is a rule that you not work on vehicles in the park.
By the time everything was finished, Dan was exhausted, and we nixed the trip to Cathedral Valley. Hence no photos from this visit to Capitol Reef and Dan and Sherry will have to return to see it.
In case you have never been there, it is a must see that many people never bother to see. It requires scheduling and effort. This time we had a park notification that the Hartnet Road the crosses the Fremont River was closed. The only access to Cathedral Valley is over Thousand Lakes Mountain. The roads are high clearance and remote.
The MoHo and Other Traveling Tales 