All settled in

Wow, we've been here over a week already!  The weather has been magnificent, highs in the 70's, low's in the low 40's.  Skies are crystal clear, no sign of smoke.  We have even seen a dusting of snow on the higher elevations already.  

We got our truck back from the body shop much sooner than we had hoped for, and it really looks good.  We are very pleased.  And man, is it nice to be back in our own vehicle again.  

We haven't been up to Silverton yet, they are doing construction on the side of the cliff just south, reinforcing and building cribs to hold up the road.  There are 20 minute delays north and south, so we are holding off a bit, they are nearly done, but the weather was clear, so we ran up to Molas Pass and Andrews Lake for a peek, yes, there are signs of color already, to have our afternoon coffee.

Coffee beside Andrews Lake

We had a few items on the motorhome to take care of, so no time like the present.  We replaced the engine air filter, and then when we were taking off our shades from the front in Montrose, we noticed that our windshield wiper blades were shot!  Wow, how did we miss that?  Anyway I ordered a couple blades and put them on when they arrived here.  So one of the biggies was the generator slide that didn't work.  I contacted HWH and after quite a wait finally got some troubleshooting info back from them, so Jan and tackled the project.  The pump, reservoir, hydraulic lines, and solenoids are all under an access panel in the entry steps, which puts them right in front of the right front wheel, to say it was dirty is the understatement of the year.  So first I spent 30 minutes, lots of scraping and brushing and 3 cans of brake cleaner to get them to a point where we could see and actually work in the area!  

The solenoids, pump, and reservoir
Look closely, that is Jan underneath getting the wires loose and then
rewiretieing them together 

We followed the very specific directions for troubleshooting which involved releasing solenoids, changing wiring from one to another, in and out with the slide, until we found out we had a wiring problem, not a solenoid issue?  When this initially happened, I had checked all pertinent fuses, all good, and since we could hear the pump run, never thought it could be a wiring problem.  I had noticed the switch that operates the gen slide had about 10 wires coming out of it, so I decided I would pull out the switch and with my meter determine first if the switch was working.  I should interject one thing in here.  When you move the switch to extend the slide, it does several things, it starts the pump, pressurizes the line to push out the piston to extend the slide, and also releases the opposite solenoid to allow fluid to come back to the reservoir, and vice versa for it to retract.  What we were experiencing was we had to manually release the solenoid for the return in order for the slide to move, when we switched the wires around it was apparent the switch was not sending the signal to release the solenoid.  Mumble jumble, I know.  So when I go over to the switch to check it out I look a little closer, sure, I had already done this, but OMG, is that a loose wire?  And an empty connector?  Sure enough.  Evidently, the bumps and vibration had loosened a poorly installed connector.  A simple fix, frustrating that I didn't see it initially, although I believe that when I first looked it hadn't fallen all the way out.  That's my story and I'm sticking to it...

The culprit, the yellow wire, and the empty
connector just above it

So, that project is complete and the generator slide works just as it is supposed to.

So we decided to treat ourselves and took our coffee up to a favorite overlook to walk around and admire the view.

The Animas Overlook
just north of our campground looking north

And since it was so clear we got a great view of Durango looking south.

Beautiful Durango

So since we got a few small projects done, we wanted to do one of our favorite hikes, Spud Lake, or more properly Potato Lake.  And yes, if you've been following my blog for awhile, you've seen other pictures of the lake:-)  Another gorgeous day, and decided to take my fly rod with me.

The beginning of the trail

A beaver pond on the way up

Spud Lake

No, I didn't catch anything:-(

And a few more pictures around the lake and back down the trail.

What a day!  Fantastic.