Triple play

Here comes the huge update to catch up on the stuff that's been happening.  It's a three part post.  One, our internet travails, two, some of our travels, and three, our incredibly frustrating leak.

The internet issue is the most recent so I'll start there.  As you know we've been having problems getting online when we need to get online.  When you have a big deal, a bill to pay, or an issue that concerns finances, time is often critical, and driving to who knows where to find reliable internet is NOT how we want to spend our time.  Some of the places we've been require 20-30 miles one way to find internet.

  As I told you, we decided to tether my iPhone with AT&T as a possible solution, and it was working okay, except when there is weak or no cell coverage.  The straw that broke the camel's back was while we were in Ridgway.  The cell coverage was very poor or nonexistent, but every once in awhile I would be able to tether for a few minutes just to get a few things done.  Good deal, we thought!  Well, the second morning, we are awakened at 5am to a text message on my phone.  We figured it was just somebody who had forgotten the 2 hour difference from east coast time, but no, it was from AT&T saying I had exceeded my roaming data amount.  What the hell is that, we wondered?  I called AT&T and they explained even though I have a 5GB data plan I was only allowed 24MB of data roaming on towers other than AT&T!  That is a minuscule amount.  They said if I continued to do this several months in a row they would restrict me to use only AT&T towers.  I asked how would I be able to tell if I was roaming, they said there was no way to tell, but because of this they would activate that feature on my phone, and sure enough my iPhone now said OFF NETWORK.  Now I'm sure you'll get a smile out of this but we are died in the wool loyal to AT&T, we have been with them forever, and I know this sounds strange but their customer service, at least to us, has been extraordinary, in a good way.  Well, if we have to worry about when we are roaming, and whether we have service or not all the time out west, this is obviously not the answer to our internet issue, and raises the question of whether it is getting to be time to switch away from AT&T to Verizon??

So after a ton of research, and juggling the pluses and minuses, and the cost, we think we have stepped along the way to solving our internet problem.  We have two major goals, one, getting internet when there is no WiFi available, and two, what to do if the cell signal is too weak to give us internet, or voice for that matter.  We found a company, Millenicom that offers several different data plans, all without a contract, and large enough that you can actually use the internet.  Most of the big carriers limit their plans to 5GB which we have found is not nearly enough.  So we just ordered a USB modem/air card, and a 20GB/month plan that will cost us $59.99/month, and we can put it on vacation for up to 3 moths every 12 months without cost or penalty, all with NO contract.
Secondly, to deal with the weak signal issues mainly for data, but also for voice, we ordered a Large RV Wireless Dual Band Amplifier from a company called Maximum Signal .  The kit includes an exterior antenna that runs to an amplifier, then to another interior antenna which wirelessly "connects" to our phones, and the new USB modem to boost the cell signal.  We expect to get these items early next week, and will get them installed and report back how well they work and how satisfied we are.  To recap, we will have an exterior antenna and amplifier system for WiFi signals, that creates a wireless LAN so we can use the wifi with our phones, iPad, and computer wirelessly, and will also have a cellular exterior antenna and amplifier to boost cell signal that will help our phone signal, as well as be able to get online with Verizon wirelessly with all our devices as well.  So we are approaching a total high tech machine bristling with antennas and electronics:)

I would like to say I figured all this out on my own, but this is a continuing problem for many full-timers, so there are several good resources that I used, Jack Mayer's excellent site is one of them.

Now on to a little travel around stuff.  We stayed at a very pretty state park in Ridgway, actually a little north of town on a nice lake.  The campground was excellent, huge paved full hookup sites with tons of privacy, and concrete patios.

Ridgway Lake

There is nice hiking and fishing as it's right on the Uncompahgre river, with lots and lots of deer.  Here's a little guy buzzing by.

Where did Mom go?

Ridgway State Park is about 17 miles north of Ouray, a cool mining town which connects down the Million Dollar Highway to Silverton, another mining town 23 miles south.  Now the Million Dollar Highway is quite famous, and challenging enough to a person(Me) that for years I would not drive it.  We would drive all the way around through Cortez from Durango to visit Ouray.  I would not drive north out of Silverton to get to Ouray.  Let me pull a quote from Wikipedia describing the road so you don't think I'm making this up.

Though the entire stretch has been called the Million Dollar Highway, it is really the twelve miles (19 km) south of Ouray through the Uncompahgre Gorge to the summit of Red Mountain Pass which gains the highway its name. This stretch through the gorge is challenging and potentially hazardous to drive; it is characterized by steep cliffs, narrow lanes, and a lack of guardrails; the ascent of Red Mountain Pass is marked with a number of hairpin curves used to gain elevation, and again, narrow lanes for traffic—many cut directly into the sides of mountains. During this ascent, the remains of the Idarado Mine are visible. Travel south from Ouray to Silverton allows drivers to hug the inside of curves; travel north from Silverton to Ouray perches drivers on the vertiginous outside edge of the highway.


Now for the last 3 years, I have been driving the road.  We started on the motorcycle first, now have graduated to driving the Jeep, but I would NEVER take the motorhome on it, but many people do.  We went to Ouray, had lunch, then headed to Silverton.  A couple views of the rugged terrain surrounding Ouray.

As we proceeded, we noticed a sign for the townsite of Ironton.  Ironton is now a ghost town, but used to be a town with over 1000 people and 300 buildings, just a few left now.

You can still see one of the suspended rail bridges for the ore cars.

It was a good day.  We talked to several shop owners in both Ouray and Silverton and they echoed the same opinion we had experienced all around, that business was very slow this year, even slower than last year.  They all said there was enough to keep going, but they weren't seeing the turn around everyone is hoping for.


It's a long post, but a lot to catch up on.  On to our leak!


As you know we don't boondock too often, that is, camp without hookups, water, sewer, electric.  We were going to Blue Mesa Reservoir for 4 nights which doesn't have water or sewer, only electric.  No big deal, but we wanted to make sure our fresh water tank was full, and our gray and black tanks empty.  We normally keep about 30 gallons of fresh water in our 100 gallon tank.  This is important to explain the thought process we went through, so bear with me.  I filled the water tank up and off we went to Blue Mesa, got in our beautiful site.  We had a nice day, but the next morning I went outside to look around and under our Aquahot was a wet spot.  Our Aquahot is a large hydronic unit that is used for domestic hot water and space heat.  It can be diesel fired or can use electric.  It also can preheat the engine and conversely use the engine heat to provide hot water and space heat.  It is a big unit, holds about 25 gallons of antifreeze and is very expensive.  Whenever you see a leak around it, you expect a loose fitting, and pray it has nothing to do with the heat exchanger itself.  So Jan and I look around expecting a loose fitting, but find after removing the cover, no leaks and no moisture.  What?  There are two holes underneath the unit, the only holes that go through the bottom of the motorhome, the intake and the exhaust for the Aquahot.  I should also mention that since this is the wet bay, all the plumbing, water pump, tanks, hoses, manifold are all in this area that goes from one side of the motorhome to the other side completely lined with a thick plastic floor which is completely dry I might add.  On closer inspection we find it is wet in the holes BETWEEN the plastic lining and the floor of the motorhome bottom.  Huh?  Well all we can figure is the overflow pipe which comes out of the top of the water tank must have a leak.  It goes through the side of this compartment through the plastic lining and although we can't see any evidence of a leak there we figure where else could it be.  We even call a Monaco service center who agrees with our finding.  So we figure it should just dry up on its own as we use the fresh water and since we rarely fill the tank full, we can deal with this much, much later.  Cool.  Not so fast.  So I grab a cup of coffee and sit outside while Jan goes into shower, and as I'm sitting there feeling pretty smug about solving this, I notice there is water dripping out of the hole!  That can't be, we solved it and there is no way that the vent can be leaking now!  So we proceed to look at the entire wet bay, opening compartments, pulling access panels off, crawling into the basement with flashlights to find our leak, and what do we find, NOTHING, dry as a bone.  We figure it has to be a fitting on the Aquahot so we tear off all the covers and nothing.  We can't figure how the water could possibly get between the plastic lining and the floor.  When Jan finishes showering and turns off the water the drip slows and stops!  We find it only leaks when running water.  So we don't run much water, which we are doing anyway since we are conserving our water to last 4 days.


Well, I am stymied, so I spend a lot of time worrying about it and trying to come up with some idea of how this is happening.  It doesn't leak at all when we aren't using water and overnight it dries up almost completely, so we figure it has to do with using our own water with the water pump as opposed to using campground water through a hose.  So I work it around and around in my mind, but can't come up with anything.  We decide to wait and confirm by checking it again when we get to the next campground which has city water. 


 We get to the new campground, hook up the water and NO leaks.  Yippee, we were right, we'll deal with this much later when we can really get into it or maybe have a professional look at it in Florida.  Good to go.  No.  The second morning after 2 showers and dishes, etc and no leaks, I go outside and see a wet spot under the motorhome!  Oh no.  I have been thinking of little else, so we watch it again and it only leaks when the water is running.  Okay it must be a leak somewhere in the gray water or drain side since it only leaks when the water is running.  Now our drain system is fairly straight forward.  The two lavatory sinks combine and drain into the gray tank, the kitchen sink has its own drain into the gray tank, and both of these are on the curb side; then the shower and the washer have their own drain into the gray tank on the road side.  All we can figure is there must be a small leak somewhere up in the motorhome that is allowing the water into the wall of the motorhome and around and underneath the plastic lining.  Pretty bizarre, but it's all I can come up with.  Okay, lets analyze and troubleshoot.  So like a house, some of the plumbing you can see and a whole bunch of it you can't.  No visible pipes have any leaks.  Let's determine which side of the motorhome causes the leak, we run the shower, no leak, we run the washer no leak, okay must be on the curb side, we run the kitchen sink, leak, we run the two lavatory sinks, leak.  Alright, we're getting somewhere, it must be somewhere on the curb side.  So we rip out cabinets, access panels, cabinet and vanity bottoms, even pull out a Corian shelf in the toilet compartment, and what do we find, absolutely nothing!
I am at my wit's end.  I have always subscribed to to the KISS principal, keep it simple stupid, and we had looked and looked at the easiest stuff first, but we just can't just keep going with a leak in the motorhome that has the potential to rot out floors or walls.  What the hell??  We had been doing all this with the hot water turned off, not producing hot water that is, but running both side of all the faucets and now for whatever reason we are not getting a drip when we run water??  Now I'm really about to go mad.  Jan and I talk and figure the only thing that makes this different right now is no hot water, okay lets turn on the diesel burner and make hot water.  We both sit outside while it heats up, and as it gets hot, guess what, DRIP, DRIP, DRIP!
I commend you if you've made it through this long, long story.  What did we finally find?  A tiny leak just where the hot water comes out of the Aquahot that only leaked when it was hot, and was so small it went under the metal box around the Aquahot and out through the intake hole in the floor of the motorhome!  A new fitting and it is fixed, meanwhile the motorhome inside is torn apart, but it gave us an opportunity to clean in places we had never even seen before.
I just had to share this long frustrating story with you so I don't go stark raving mad!