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For those of you following the adventures of Donn and Rebeca, you may recall that on our last trip, I managed to dismember or destroy at least five pieces of our essential gear.

I鈥檓 happy to report that Donn Friedman and Rebeca Zimmermann, i.e. DnR, managed to return from our trip to without damaging a single piece of gear along trails from Flagstaff and back through the White Mountains of Arizona to the Gila in western New Mexico.

But all the news from this intrepid outside recreation team is not well.

Good food was destroyed once again as the 12-volt cigarette lighter plug came loose from our power station. We are looking for alternatives beyond duct tape and rubber bands, which this time did not seem to hold in place when we hit giant bumps on Interstate 40 somewhere on the Arizona side of the border.

With gear piled all about, the sad, warming refrigerator escaped notice until it was registering over 60, so turkey sandwich meat was deemed too suspicious to eat. We talked to vendors of portable refrigerators who couldn鈥檛 offer us a commercial product to solve this disconnection issue.

On return, rolling back into sa国际传媒官网网页入口 from the south, all seemed well until Google Maps alerted us to a backup on Interstate 25. We detoured off the freeway onto Gibson Boulevard and the normal journey of 20 minutes took more than an hour. Arriving wrung out at our home base, I opened the garage door and rolled in. I did not pull all the way into the garage. I didn't notice that disaster loomed. I pushed the down button for the garage door, and then, screeeeeeeech, the sound of crunching metal.

I was able to lift the garage door enough to free the vehicle since it is our only working means of transportation. Enchantment Garage Doors came to the rescue the next morning within hours of our plea and fixed us up using their technician鈥檚 skill and mettle. Like a piano tuner, he fine-tuned the springs, greased the works, and for far less than $400, put in reinforcements to get our garage door moving up and down quietly.

Meanwhile, our sa国际传媒官网网页入口mobile Ram Promaster diesel camper van has been waiting in since March 24 for a new transmission and sundry parts to get back on the road. Supply chain issues have delayed the arrival of parts after the transmission stopped shifting and started burning somewhere between Roswell and Snyder, Texas, to one of the few shops that said it can work on this 2017 diesel-driven oddity. It is still a story in progress, and we are not biting at the bit to pay the large repair bill or return to 100+ degree days near Abilene to retrieve this member of our team.

We are lucky enough to have a Nissan NV200 Recon mini cargo van, a gas-powered tiny miracle of design with a pop-top roof to take us out, although our organization of gear inside leaves something to be desired.

The journey to OverlandExpo West in Flagstaff was a success. I visited with members of the Overland New Mexico Facebook group, who had set up in the premium camping areas. They had secured the premium lot with reservations, arriving early on Thursday morning to line up to grab spots within feet of the event where they celebrated with homemade ice cream on Friday night. Other New Mexicans camped in national forest locations within 10 miles of the event.

In the coming weeks, I will be detailing some of the 323 learning experiences and 400 product vendors, 28,000 lovers of big rigs and more than 1,100 registered pets, according to stats from Overland Expo. As always, the temperature in the pine trees of the campground at Fort Tuthill, Arizona, was perfect, steps away from the events, with campers stationed feet away from each other rather than our normal New Mexico dispersed camping style of wide-open spaces.

A bit of sadder news from DnR: Ora, our Shiba adventure dog, who had been with us for more than 14 years since her gotcha date at sa国际传媒官网网页入口鈥檚 Fetch-a-palooza adoption event, took her last trip, this one over the rainbow bridge near the end of spring. She had a seizure while we were fueling in Aztec last fall after a visit to Aztec Ruins National Historic Park.

Her seizures worsened, and after months of love from her vet and an emergency 24-hour veterinary clinic in sa国际传媒官网网页入口, she was able to spend the last few weeks at home, eating specially prepared chicken and beef and taking a 24-hour-a-day regime of antiseizure medicine in pill-pocket treats.

The adventure will continue, but our times on the road are a lot less magical without Ora in the passenger seat.

Share your New Mexico adventure channel, rigs and panorama photos with us at go@abqjournal.com.  It could appear in an edition of The Sunday Journal in the GO New Mexico.