We rolled down the remarkably empty highways towards Carlsbad Caverns, where we spent a night at an incredibly unremarkable campground right outside the gates.

In the morning we were up the hill early for our 8:30 am reservation. I’m not sure how many people they let in at a time, but it was nice that it was not the least bit crowded.

I’m not going to say a whole lot about Carlsbad. I’m sure it’s all been said a million times. It’s far and away the coolest cave we’ve ever visited. One of the few that really felt like it was growing and changing as you walked through. They must have every single cave formation that there is, right there in one spot. We spent the entire morning walking along, pointing at things, and starting every sentence with, “That one looks like…” We’re not super into caves, but Carlsbad is pretty epic.

From there we took a right and headed west along Hwy 62 towards El Paso. The bus is running terribly, and a sign like this really should have raised some red flags, but as a wise man once said, “If anything’s gonna happen, it’s gonna happen out there.”

Counting down each mile.

I kept my foot on the gas and we made it into Rockhound State Park just after dark. We got a rousing reception from another Blue Bird who was literally screaming and hollering some sort of Blue Bird chant. The park host followed us in, then stopped me to give us the whole rundown of the park while I idled just in front of our spot. That’s not a great time to chit chat. I finally went to back in and the engine died. It would restart instantly, but if I took my foot off the gas to shift into gear it just died. Even the two foot shift and feather wasn’t working. We were coughing up clouds of black smoke, and couldn’t get the last thirty feet off the road and into our space. With a headlamp on I opened the engine compartment and took off the air filter hoping I’d somehow spot a culprit in the dark. Somehow I did. I started the engine again, hit the gas, and watched as a geyser of gasoline shot straight up in the air out of the carburetor. Well, now, that doesn’t look quite right.

I quickly discovered that if I just barely pressed the gas it wouldn’t blow fuel and flood the carb. I inched us into our spot, and not long afterwards the family was asleep. Meanwhile, I was googling, “Gas shooting straight up out of Holley carb.” I had my answer almost immediately. The needle and seat. From the description, this had to be the problem. I could hardly sleep I was so excited to look in the morning.

Sure enough, I pulled out the needle and seat (which fortunately is located smack dab on top and is super easy to access) and found the o-ring completely disintegrated, meaning fuel was just blowing right past it into the overflow tube. This was almost certainly the root cause of our rich running, stutterer of an engine. A simple twenty cent part. Hmmm, easy. Now I just need to find one.

The town of Deming is about ten miles away and is decent sized, so I got on the phone and called Napa. They didn’t have a replacement needle in stock, and they weren’t sure if they had the correct size o-ring, but they did have a random o-ring pack. I usually count on Napa for actual gearhead employees, but that wasn’t happening here.

I called O’Reillys and got more or less the same story, but from a guy who at least seemed to know what he was talking about.

I called a couple of local auto repair shops, but nobody had the part or seemed very knowledgeable. They only seem to work on things with computers connected to them.

I brought up Uber and Lyft. Nothing. I looked up taxis. Nothing. I found a limo service, and seriously called them because I thought it would be a funny story for the kids, but just got a recording. Once again we were stranded. It was about nine o’clock and thanks to the packed campgrounds everywhere we needed to move from our spot by two.

I called the guy from O’Reillys back to see if he could help me figure out a solution. He had known immediately when I told him the carb was shooting fuel that the problem was the needle and seat. When I got him on the phone this time he said, “Well, I rebuild cars all the time. I’m sure I’ve got a bunch of those sitting in my garage. I could run home and get you what you need during my lunch break.”

At this point it seems like every person we meet is selfless, and awesome. I told him I’d see if I could figure out a way to get into town.

I wandered over to the Blue Bird folks and asked if they had any o-rings. Super nice people who were totally new to RVing, and seemed to be loving life. They had a few small o-rings, but nothing that would work. I told them a guy in town had the part we needed, but I didn’t have a way in, and they immediately offered to swing by and pick it up when they ran to do laundry a little later. Boom. I tried to give them $20 for gas, but they wouldn’t hear of it. So I just gave them $40 to give to the guy at O’Reillys.

A couple of hours later they pulled up with three clean needle and seats (these are a $10 part) and a few new o-rings. They also handed me back $38.82. The guy wouldn’t accept the money and just charged me for the o-rings from the store. Man, people are so awesome.

I popped an o-ring on and fired up the engine. It idled beautifully, and a few minutes before two we were pulling out of our space, and driving up the hill a bit further into our new spot. I couldn’t stop raving to the kids about how amazing this week was, despite all of our problems. They’ve seen this sort of thing countless times in their lives, and every time it just reinforces how good people are.

I’m feeling like our karma well has to be running low, though. Definitely going to need refilling soon.

The gearheads out there will be curious, I’m sure, so let me just point out that the shredded o-ring is now in the float bowl and I’m fully aware that this is likely going to cause me headaches at some point, but I’m weighing that against trying to remove the bowl without breaking anything, and also without a new gasket in hand. Seems like the lesser of two evils right now is just to hope the gunk doesn’t clog things up.

Rockhound is a beautiful State Park. Nice campground and facilities, an interesting visitor center, great views, and that never-ending New Mexico blue sky. The clearest blue anywhere, I’m certain. Ali and I have always loved New Mexico.

I was practically floating along the trail I was in such a great mood. It’s that feeling I get every time I think I’ve finally solved a problem that has been nagging at me.

Rockhounds is full of geodes and other interesting rocks. Lowe didn’t care too much about the end product, but he really liked cracking rocks. Took a while to smarten up and find some eye protection.

Out of Rockhounds and southwest we go. There is nothing out here other than Border Patrol agents with a gazillion dollars worth of high tech equipment and way too much time on their hands. I won’t get going on that subject.

While I have indeed isolated the cause of the engine’s problem, I haven’t permanently solved it. That will require a total removal and rebuild of the carb (or replacement). In the meantime, those o-rings keep tearing (maybe the fuel pump’s pressure is too high). I’ve got a handful of o-rings, a screwdriver, a wrench, and can “fix” it in about a minute. Sometimes it keeps running good for hours, sometimes it’s gone again at the next stop sign. All I know is the carb’s float bowl is chock full of garbage at this point.

We made it to Bisbee, where we suddenly felt like our big 31′ bus was a mere toy. We’d hoped to visit The Queen Mine RV park years ago, but hadn’t been able to get a reservation. This time we got lucky. Nice spot overlooking the town. And we’re so close to Grammy’s now that we can smell the banana bread. Looks like we’re going to make it on time after all.