Projects are mounting up

Well, Jan and I are getting our energy up.  We've got a lot to do.  Our cellular amplifier kit arrived yesterday, and after a bit more info from the manufacturer and a couple questions answered we are almost ready to tackle installation.  Also, a big surprise, after checking the tracking numbers for our AC units and confirming their arrival for Friday, we took off for a very nice 10 mile bike ride.  We found a neat bike path that mostly follows a river, and goes through the woods.  It was super, mostly level and nice and quiet, we probably only passed 10 people.  Anyway, when we got back from our ride, guess what, our AC units were in front of the motorhome!  We're anxious to get going, but we are still waiting on a gasket kit necessary for their mounting.
We are also contemplating how we are going to get the units up on the roof and the old ones off.  We found at a nearby hardware store, a sort of stand alone manual fork lift that we could rent, but I have to admit I am leaning towards borrowing a ladder, leaning it against the motorhome, and pulling them up by rope onto the roof.  After all they are only 100 pounds.  We'll see.
We are expecting the project to be fairly straight forward otherwise.  I hope so.
While we are here Jan wants to tackle our grout issue in the shower.  As you know the grout that we did the repair with that we ran all over creation to get turned out to be the wrong color.  She picked up new grout today at a tile store, and is planning to remove all the grout in the entire shower and regrout.  That way all of it will be the same color.  Should look good.
We are enjoying our time here in Montrose.  It is a good size town, big enough to have most anything, and small enough that there is no traffic, downtown is clean and nice, and everyone we've met so far has been friendly.

Escape from AC problems ride

We had to get away from our AC issues, after all there is nothing to do now but wait until they get here, and then figure out how to get them on the roof, and the old ones down.  Plenty of time for that.  Our neighbors here in Montrose, also full-timers, told us about a neat road he found on his motorcycle, so we gave it  a shot.  Initially we headed east towards Gunnison and went south on a dirt road called Alpine Plateau Road.  It heads mostly south towards Lake City.  It was a very nice winding dirt road with awesome scenery, although a bit subdued with the weather all around.  We found a secluded peaceful stop for lunch.

Let's eat

For those of you who have not driven in the back country out here in the west, as you proceed along you pass from public land to private land all the time.  Most of the time you know this by crossing cattle guards.  These are slotted grates put into the roads that are attached to fences.  Most of the cattle are free grazing on public land, and some are on private land.  A cow won't cross these open slots in the guard, so it allows vehicles and people to pass on the road, but stop the cattle from using the road to bypass the fence.  There are thousands and thousands of these out here.

Cattle guard

So consequently, you see cattle everywhere and have to be careful as often times they are right on the road in the middle of nowhere.  It is amazing the ranchers can even find them, let alone gather them up and take them or drive them to where they need to go.  Here is a bunch grazing in the woods by the road, and just to put it in perspective, we are probably over 50 miles from the nearest town!

Lunch time

Even though the rain came and went, the views as we got closer to Lake City were great!

When we eventually came out on Rte 149, the road that goes through Creede and Lake City, we were about 80 miles from our campground in Montrose.  We saw a short cut that would save us several miles, and most importantly we had never driven it.  It is called the Blue Mesa Cutoff.  Rte 149 as it goes north from Lake City follows the Lake Fork of the Gunnison River.  149 veers away from the river right where we picked up our short cut road and we continued to follow the river.  We came upon a fork in the road with a sign saying straight ahead for Gate View, and watch out for landslides, and narrow road with washouts next 5 miles.  Sounds like our kind of road! Turned out this road was on the railbed of an old narrow gage railroad that runs north and now peters out into Blue Mesa Reservoir.  We saw the remains of a campsite used by some of the workers who built the railroad along the way.  It is a narrow canyon that follows the river and in many places solid rock had to be blasted out to make room for the tracks.  It was called the Lake Fork Spur of the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad.  It was constructed in winter (?) by men earning $1.75 a day for 6-10 hour days a week.  Let the good times roll, huh?  Only hand tools were available so it was slow back breaking work.  But now it makes for a very picturesque drive along the river.

We drove to the end of the road where they now have a small campground in the same place as one of the workers' camps along the river.  We then backtracked to the start of the spur and went up over Blue Mesa to work our way back to Montrose.

Bad news

As I said the front AC starting acting funny, weird sounds and what I thought was a funny smell, so I shut it down.  We have 3 AC's on the coach, so it's not do or die, although it is hitting the 90's during the day.  We took the cover off the unit, and it looked like the run capacitor was smelling burnt.  We ran it again with Jan on the roof watching it, but no cold air, and it sounded strange.
This morning we took the run capacitor off the middle AC and put it on the front AC to see if that was the problem.  No No!  The fan started running right away and sounded good, but when the compressor tried to start and didn't, concurrent with Jan screaming from the roof to shut it down since she was watching flames coming out of the circuit board, connections, and start capacitor, we decided we might need a new AC unit.
There are no service centers anywhere near us and I'm not keen on most of them anyway, so we went on line to find us an AC unit.  Called Dometic, the manufacturer, and of course, they are not making our unit anymore, but they have a bolt in replacement.  Great, now to find one and see how much it costs.  Roughly $1100 each!  And nobody has them in stock, and even Dometic has a backlog of orders.  We decided to look at all 3 AC's while we were on the roof, and it turns out for whatever reason our front AC and our rear AC are older than our middle AC, and that is exacerbated by the fact the front and the rear work harder than the middle.  So we decided, especially after talking to our neighbor who offered to help us with getting it on the roof and the old one off(they are about 100 pounds apiece), that if we could find 2 of them we would bite the bullet and order them.  After much looking online, and many phone calls, we finally found a place in CA that had 2 in stock and could ship immediately.  Then we find out since they are new units they are not compatible with our thermostats, so we need a conversion kit, actually 2.  So for a mere $2800, we have 2 new AC/heat pumps coming to us here in Montrose, and a big project of replacing them before we head out.

Funny, I've never been a fan of extended warranties in most cases, but when we bought our coach, they threw in an extended warranty for an extra 5 years.  We've never had an occasion to use it until today, so when Jan calls to get the details, they ask her the mileage on the coach?  She says what does the mileage have to do with AC units?  They say what is the mileage, she says 65,000, and they say your warranty expired at 60,000, have a nice day.  Nice, huh?

On the edge of your seats

I'm sure everyone was right on the edge of your seats with my long epistle about my leak. Well our front AC crapped out this afternoon so stand by for another rip roaring analysis and repair saga! :)

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!

Busy spending money and hopefully solving our internet issues

We have been super busy studying, investigating, researching different options as we are super frustrated with the internet issues.  But we think we have essentially solved it!  I have signed up for an air card or USB modem that will enable us to get on Verizon's data network without a contract.  We also ordered an exterior cellphone antenna and amplifier system that should boost both our voice and data signals when we are in remote areas.  the real proof will be in the results after we get all this installed.  This is a short post on what's happening and now that we have internet at our campground here in Montrose, I will put up a real post tomorrow morning.

Quick update

We are in Montrose right now, but no internet at the campground!  SOS!  I'm tethered for a moment to let you know I'll plan an update tomorrow and let you  know what we've been up to.  And what we are going to do about this internet issue.

Starbucks saves the day, catch-up post.

We pulled into the campground at the Ridgway State Park, and since it was still early we ran back up to Montrose to hit the Starbucks and get online for a bit.  We've been fairly busy the last couple days and the internet access that we thought we had solved bit us in the ass again!  At the campground in Blue Mesa, we had cell phone coverage on Edge, not super, but pretty good.  We tethered the phone and went online for a little while, but as it was so slow we gave up after we had cancelled our reservations at Taylor Lake.  Well, the next morning I get an email from AT&T stating that I exceeded my "roaming data limit".  I didn't even know what that was???  I called and found out that even with our 5GB plan, I am only "allowed" to roam on other towers for data for 24 MB!  That is a minuscule amount, my friends.  AT&T went on to say that if I continued to exceed my roaming amount for several billing cycles, I would be restricted to only get data from AT&T towers!  I was pissed, but decided to see what happens as we travel.  The other very interesting part of this is I have no indication when I am roaming or not!!

Anyway enough of that.  As I said earlier we decided to check out the Taylor Lake campground, and that we had cancelled our reservation there due to construction.  I wanted to show you Taylor Lake from the perspective of where we were supposed to camp.

Taylor Lake

"Our campsite"

Oh well, we'll get there another time.  We went over to Tin Cup, a restored ghost town about 8 miles from Taylor Lake, another spot we had missed.  It was pretty cool, lots of people living there, and most importantly, actually restoring and making it better.

One of our friends at Pagosa Springs, Fred, told us to be sure to check out the old cemetery if we got to Tin Cup.  First of all, it was tough to find.  Ended up north of town on another little tiny road.  But it was worth it.  It was on three different knolls on the other side of a beaver pond, Catholic Knoll, Jewish Knoll, and Protestant Knoll.  It covered many acres, graves were scattered all over a quiet, beautiful forest.  If you are so inclined it would be a fine final resting place.

Cemetery 

The next day we took a big loop north of Gunnison, up over Ohio Pass into Crested Butte, and back around, about 125 miles.  It was a beautiful day.  We passed some absolutely gorgeous ranches on the way.  This was one that really caught our eye.  The round top roofs were unique and the barn was sensational.

The road took us higher and higher up through an aspen grove.

Past Castle Rock.

Up and over Ohio Pass.

Crested Butte is a cool little ski town.  Seemed fairly busy.  We laughed as we observed Crested Butte must be down in the pecking order, Vail, Aspen, Breckinridge, Telluride, then Crested Butte.  Read, more affordable:)  Ski towns always look a bit bleak with out the snow.

Condos

Crested Butte

The town

Now I want to tell you about our unexpected and unwelcome visitor.  You know as you lie there asleep, you start to rise into consciousness when you hear or feel something out of the ordinary.  That happened to us at about 4am!  We became aware of Bert, our cat bouncing and leaping around the bed.  Now he sleeps with us for the most part and he might walk around a bit, but DOES NOT leap around.  Jan came to first, and as she started to kick Bert off the bed, felt another small moving lump on the bed!  She woke me completely, by this time Bert had screamed out front hot in pursuit of..........a MOUSE!  Now we have never had a mouse in our motorhome, or have we ever heard of anyone having a mouse in a motorhome.  Bert was being a normal cat, batting this creature around, but not killing it.  We were jumping around trying to get it, while Bert is running it back and forth in and out of the corners.  We kept missing it and finally it crawled up under the dash to disappear.  What a shock.  We were wide awake by now, needless to say, so made the coffee and started our day by heading into town and getting lots of mouse traps.  Set them here and there and expected to get a mouse certainly that night, but nothing.  So where did it go, out the way it came in, of which we really have no idea, it's not like the motorhome has holes in it.  Maybe it could get in the basements, but in the living area?  We sure hope it's gone, but the traps will remain for a week or so.  We'll see.

Still no internet:(

We still don't have any internet, even AT&T is messing with me about data roaming.  I'll tell you about it later.  We are in transit between Blue Mesa/Gunnison area and a state park in Ridgway.  We got a blast of internet passing through Montrose so I wanted to give you a quick update.  We'll look for some wifi in Ridgway or Telluride or Ouray and do a real catch up with what we've been up to.  We've done some interesting exploring, and had a not welcome, VERY unexpected visitor at 4am two mornings ago.  Til we meet again.

Short update, big change of plans

We are now at the Elk Creek Campground, in the national forest on Blue Mesa Reservoir near Gunnison with essentially no internet or phone.  We took a quick trip into Gunnison for a great lunch at Farrell's.  Homemade bread and rolls! Yum.
We were supposed to go next to a campground north of Almont on the way to Taylor Lake, then to Taylor Lake itself.  We decided since we were fairly close to go check out the campgrounds to be sure we could get in.  Turns out they are doing MAJOR construction on the road to Taylor Lake.  We are talking over 5 miles of the roughest, dustiest, muddiest single lane dirt you can imagine.  We both looked at each other and said no way are we taking the motorhome over this!  We cancelled in Almont and Taylor Lake.  So now we are going to stop in Ridgeway for 4 nights and extend in Montrose for 12 nights.  We'll update this for real when we get internet.  Bear with us, it will be soon.

Wooo, it's 45 degrees!

Chilly this morning!  Not to rub it in.  We did extend one day, so we're leaving early this morning to claim our unclaimed campsite at Elk Creek on Blue Mesa Reservoir up near Gunnison, before we lose it.  They will hold it automatically one day until checkout time so we've got to be there before noon.
I helped our neighbor diagnose his bad converter in his Class C, then after we packed a lunch and took a ride, initially to see the Rio Grande Reservoir.  On the way we went by a beautiful little lake, Rock Canyon.

We did finally get to Rio Grande reservoir, and if a lake can be unappealing, it was.  Steep, rocky sides, low water, pouring rain had us turn around and look for another road.  By on the way out, we found a beaver pond with beautiful red water lilies of some kind.  We had never seen red ones before.

Then out to the main road.  Jan found a little road into Seepage Lake that looked interesting, so off we went.  It was a narrow trail through some woods and then out into what must have once been Seepage Lake.  Bone dry now, and from the looks of it, dry for some time.  But it made for a lovely drive all by ourselves.

Seepage Lake?

Pretty dry

The road after it went through the meadow meandered up into the woods so we kept going until we couldn't go any further.  The trail just ended, but there looked to be kind of a path, so we took it to a small pond.

End of the trail

  It wasn't on our map, but later on Google Earth we figured out it is called Ghost Lake.  It kind of looked like it was formed by a big explosion or maybe a meteor impact.  I'm sure it was none of that but it was fun to speculate.  There was a family of ducks there, otherwise it was uninhabited.  The silence is awesome when you get into the back country.  We love it!

Ghost Lake

Another picture to prove Jan was here

Duck family

On the way out, we saw a little two track that headed over to a cliff face, so we went over.  It looked like someone had cut a hole in the cliff for what reason we don't know.

Hole in the rock

It ended up being a pleasant day.  We got back and got ready to go early this morning.  Had it absolutely pour just as we needed to grill, that's always the way, right?