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| Our site |
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| Cooking dinner and watching the sun go down |
As I have mentioned many times for us full-timers, holidays can be a challenge, especially with the crowded campgrounds we are experiencing more and more. So long ago we made a reservation at the Centennial RV Park, south of Montrose for the Labor Day holiday. It's a park we have been to many times, large, huge sites, dark, full hook-ups, easy to maneuver, and has no amenities. That is a big deal especially over holiday weekends. No families, kids, crowds, a perfect place to hunker down over the weekend. But it's different this year, feels like we are just waiting around. We had a very scenic and enjoyable ride down from Carbondale to Montrose, read no problems:-)
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| Our lunch stop |
One of our main goals while here in Colorado was to get our truck fixed, and we decided that it would be best to get a week's jump on it and do it from Montrose, a week before we were headed to Durango. So Jan and I drove the 170 miles one way out and around, bypassing the Million Dollar Highway, yes, out of the way by 63 miles, more to follow, then rented a storage unit, unloaded all our stuff out of our truck, got a rental, turned our truck over to the body shop, had lunch, and then drove the 107 miles back, this time across the Million Dollar Highway, to our campground. The section of that road between Ouray and Silverton is my weakness. For years I would not drive it all, then decided when we had our motorcycle to give it a try, and since then I have driven it numerous times in a vehicle, never have nor will I ever drive it in a motorhome. It has many scary spots, no guard rails, no shoulders, huge drop offs, but is absolutely worse going south than north, even though there are a few nervous spots going north, the really bad areas going north are on the opposite side. Hence the long detour around to get to Durango. And we had to leave early, at 6am to get it all done. And we did.
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| A nice view for coffee |
Now we are here until Sunday, and have planned a few things to do, but now we are without our truck and a lot of our stuff that we use, so we are kind of in limbo. We have already had lunch at a very good pizza place in town, Colorado Boy, still have a few other places where we want to eat, we have finally been able to get fresh farm vegetables, read corn and tomatoes, weirdly not available the whole time we were in Montana, are going into Ouray to walk around and have lunch, and a few other errands, but mostly we are just waiting to move down to Durango.
We are thinking and praying for the folks in Texas and Florida, makes our smoke here seem not so bad.
6 comments:
I have the twin coach to yours. I had emailed you once before and now I just had an air conditioner go bad where did you get yours and do you remember how expensive it was? Did you have any problems with using your old five button thermostat or did you have to change your thermostats as well ?
Hi,
I got my AC/heat pump unit from American RV at the best price I could find at the time. It was about $1200 including shipping. I have dealt with them before and like their service. Also don't forget to either get an extra gasket kit, or a Drain kit....Dometic 3107688.016 Penguin II Low Profile Air Conditioner - Drain Kit. You need two gaskets to accommodate the drains. If yours is about the same age as mine I think it is smart to get the whole drain kit, I got mine from Amazon as yours is probably pretty brittle. You have 2 choices with the thermostat, you can get a new 12 button which is very nice by the way, it is programmable, or you need to get a circuit board kit so your thermostat can talk to the new AC. I had my front and rear AC go out several years ago, my middle was okay, so what I did was get a new 12 button therm for the front, and then got a circuit board kit for the rear so it could continue to talk to my rear therm which controls both the rear and the middle. Later when the middle one crapped out, I reinstalled the original circuit board in the rear one, and bought a new 12 button to talk to the new middle and the rear AC. If the front is the one that went out it's better to just get the 12 button. If it's the rear or middle and you only want to replace one of them, you need to get the circuit board kit, as the old AC unit will not talk to the 12 button, only the 5. Hope that makes sense. Feel free to contact me if I can help in anyway.
Thanks for the quick reply Bill! It is my middle AC so will get the updated board then. Mine is an 07 Navigator, even the same color as yours. I enjoy your threads and I too had to replace my hydraulic cooler a little over a year ago. Thanks again!
Small world! Good luck and don't forget the extra gasket.
Safe travels.
Thanks again for your help Bill!! We are in the Black Hills of SD and the mobile repairman located the exact replacement A/C at Camping World in Rapid City. They had ordered it for another customer and it was the wrong unit and they were stuck with it and the computer board for making my thermostat work. Must have been meant to go out that we were able to have it fixed almost immediately. Our tech didn't believe me about the extra gasket that you mentioned but I insisted he bring one anyway. He was surprised I knew what I was talking about because of you. I even showed him your pictures to aid him in swapping over the drain tubes and cutting out for them. They didn't have a new set of those and mine were still in great shape. Just wanted to Thank You guys again for posting about your adventures as well as your upgrades and repairs. It sure helped a fellow RVer out. Randy
So glad to hear everything came together for you in a timely fashion! It is so nice when that happens on the road. Sounds like it was meant to be. I'm happy I could be of help in a small way.
Safe Travels!
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