Wow, September is Right Around the Corner

Can't believe how time is flying by.  We have watched the smoke waft in and now thankfully it is mostly gone.  We had a big fire only 15 miles away that brought in a fire fighting team that set up across the road from us, but luckily we had a bunch of pouring rain that put the fire out and the team left for other sites.  The smoke in the air made for a neat sunrise.

We've been fishing like crazy, and doing fairly well, always makes it a bit more fun.

Warm enough to wet wade

Got him!

Just being out here is worth it.
Mom and her fawn moving through in the morning

We've had some awesome coffee spots, both high up on some overlooks and also right down on the river.

We replaced our sewer dump valves, it seems their life is about 5 years before they start to leak.  A fairly easy job, a little messy, and a little challenging to hold everything in place while getting the bolts in so the gaskets line up.

The new valves

One in and one to go

All done, black on the left and gray on the right

We got our replacement flag pole and quickly got our flag flying again.

I wanted to share some artwork present in the campground.  No, we don't understand it, but all this was done with spray cans of paint in no particular order that we could detect.  And it seems to be a work in progress as each day something else gets painted, a step stool, a trash can, etc. If you know what this is or means, please let me know.  No we didn't ask the artist:-)

Impressive, right?

I have been thinking about the different responses to the virus.  I read several forums and several blogs and there is a contingency of folks that have shut down all their travel plans this year due to the virus.  I have shared some of our observations as we go into different states as to how they each have responded.  Here in Montana there is a state wide mandated mask policy so if you go into a building you must wear a mask.  It actually makes it easy in my opinion.  And I would say participation is about 90%.  Montana allows dining in, which I am not ready to do personally, but it seems to be fairly distanced.  We still try to get take out a couple times a week.  But what I am getting to is all the RV parks we have seen and visited are Packed!  I have been reading where RV sales are off the charts, funny, on one hand I read people aren't traveling, but then we see all the parks full?!?  In actuality RV's are perfect social distancers, you are "quarantined" in your own rig, anyone you interact with is outside, and you usually distance anyway.  We have read where certain places and states are quite vocal in keeping outsiders and out of staters the heck out of their areas, but we haven't experienced any animosity or gotten any strange or hostile looks with our out of state plates, don't know if that would be true in all places though.  And there are lots of out of state plates here.  Also reading the paper and the news online, I read where house prices are rising everywhere, sellers markets everywhere, but unemployment is off the chart, people are hurting economically, yet buying houses everywhere ???   Just poking around here in little Ennis, property is expensive and selling like crazy, I'm sure here it is mostly retirees, but it can't be everywhere.   How does this add up?  Each person has to find their own comfort zone in this unsettled time.  We have definitely altered our normal activities, and I guess you could say saved money from not eating out constantly:-)  Just some Bill musings.

But all is good with the smoke leaving and the fish biting.

We got our view back

And even if we aren't eating out so much,
we are eating well.
Bison ribeyes, it's what's for dinner!

One Week Down

 We've completed our first week here in Ennis, MT, and are loving it.  We have been able to slow down and take care of a few items and not feel we need to get cracking to see what we want and do what we want.  We took care of a few repairs, replaced our Fantastic Fan lift motor and replaced the under cabinet vents, no more smell:-)  We even took the time to wash the motorhome and truck.  Mostly been relaxing and enjoying being here.

Jan says, "Cheers" from our awesome site with the incredible views

We've gone fishing a couple of days, no luck unfortunately, but we aren't alone with slow fishing. The neighbors we've talked to haven't been having much luck either.  Seems we are in the dog days of summer and the fish are a bit warm, should pick up in a week or so.  But fishing out here is reward in itself, the scenery is fantastic, it is peaceful, not crowded, and we've had some nice picnics all by ourselves on the side of the river.

The Madison near Three Dollar Bridge

These 2 pics are "Between the Lakes" on the Madison
Between Quake Lake and Hebgen Lake

We have been enjoying exploring the area and loving the stellar weather.

Looking down on the town of Ennis

A cool shot of our campground with our flag flying proudly!

Which brings me to a sad moment.  We had a line of significant weather come through last night, thunder, lightning, rain, and wind, but it didn't seem all that bad, but this morning I heard a hello at the door, and a lady asked if I knew about my flag?  The pole has broken and it's fallen down! Sure enough the pole snapped right at the top bracket, I couldn't believe it, seemed like we hadn't had it that long.  We looked it up and it turns out we have had that flag pole since 2011, and since we fly it almost every day, I can't complain.  I ordered a new one immediately and it should be here soon so I can get the flag flying proudly once more.

Then in an email with Jan's cousin-in-law, Sandy who lives in Idaho asked if we were getting any smoke?  I said no and showed him a picture similar to what I have posted here.  Clear as a bell. Well thanks Sandy, today we can't see anything, the smoke is thick!  Every region of the country has natural events that impact your life, may they be hurricanes, blizzards, tornados, thunderstorms, floods, but out here it is fire.  7 million acres burn in the states each year.  We have been very lucky this year with no real signs of fire, but this late in the year with the dryness, now is the peak of the fire season and there are many burning.  I'll show you 2 pictures of the exact same view, the first is a few days ago and the second is today, right now.

Amazing, isn't it?  It's thick enough you can smell it and you
can feel it while breathing

Hopefully the wind will shift and we'll be clear again soon.  We are planning much more fishing next week, and will probably make a trek to Bozeman for some real groceries:-)  It's really not that far, 40 miles.  There is a store here that's okay, but it is a little bleak with a town population of less than 1000.  Jan is looking forward to a real nice grocery store.  With the lack of eating out all the time, it's become more important.

Ah Montana!

We have always liked this state, but we are enjoying it more and more as we spend a greater amount of time here.  We left Bear Den in Grangeville, ID for Missoula, the long way around as I mentioned to avoid Rt 12, and we were so glad we did, the drive was fabulous, wonderful scenery, no where near the amount of curves, and it only took an hour or so longer, worth it!  

We got a great site at Jim and Mary's RV Park, one of our favorites, settled in and took care of some business and errands, grocery shopping, Costco, and a pharmacy.  We hadn't been to a Costco in about 6 weeks.  It's funny, a lot of our time and enjoyment used to come from eating out a lot, mostly lunches, but now with the virus, we hardly do.  We do try to get take out at least once a week, but the good news, I guess, is we are spending a lot less now:-)  So we do splurge every once in awhile.

Costco had them on sale,
and yes, they were yummy!

So we took a few day trips mainly to fish.  We went where we had good luck last year, the Blackfoot, and this year, not so much, as in nada.  The next day we took a break and drove to Rock Creek for a picnic.  We were joined by this inquisitive guy.

Then on the way out the road, we found a short hike through a new conservancy and gave it a whirl.

Jan setting the pace

A gorgeous day!

An original log cabin where a homesteader lived

Then we went south to the Bitterroot near the town of Darby to fish.  Did a little better there, I caught one, had several bites, and unfortunately Jan only had one bite. 

Even if the fishing wasn't stellar,
how can you argue with the surroundings?

 

Fished a few more hours after our picnic on the shore, very peaceful.  I should mention that even though Missoula has 3 rivers through it, the Blackfoot, Bitterroot, and the Clark's Fork, the fishing is quite a drive.  For example, when we fish the Blackfoot it is 65 miles away, the Bitterroot near Darby is 75, and Rock Creek the closest is only 45.  But who cares when you have the scenery like you have here?

Of course Murphy had to find us, things had been going too smoothly.  We noticed that our bathroom vent fan lid sounded like it was opening, but nothing was happening.  The lift motor splines had worn out, so we helped it up, and ordered a new part for our time down the road in Ennis.

The offending part

Then as if that wasn't enough, after our showers one day, we opened the cabinet door under our bathroom sink and wowser, did it stink!!!  What?!?!  Our coach like many have under cabinet vents to cut down on the holes through the roof, that way when you dump, or drain gray water, you don't suck the water out of your P-traps.  These vents are mechanical, like a check valve, built to open with negative pressure and close with positive.  It is certainly not unexpected for a vent to fail after 13 years of constant use.  And to be proactive we will replace each of our vents, this one, the one under the galley sink, and the one in the toilet compartment sink.  Easy job, screws in and out.

The black item is the vent

Then while we are on the subject of equipment, I can report that the first several drives went very well with our new tow bar.  It is a much cleaner operation and look as compared to the old one.

All hooked up

So after our week in Missoula we moved over to Bozeman.  Unfortunately Bozeman is one of those places where there are very few acceptable campgrounds.  In fact about the only one that will fit us is the Bozeman Hot Springs Campground, which was a bit of a mixed bag and very expensive.  Part of the expense problem is included in your overnight fee, whether you like it or not, is admittance to the hot springs facilities.  The site was fairly nice with a patio, but they aren't real big, they have a ton of rules, and they don't really keep the place up like they should for a $100/night site.  But, it is the only place in town, and we wanted to be close to Bozeman for a few days.

A little tight but not bad

This is the area at the rear of the sites, not impressive

I'll leave you with a few pictures to give you some idea of why we like the area so much.  Big Sky Montana!

Awesome, right?  Today we drove down to Ennis to do something we don't often do, we are going to spend a whole month here.  It is absolutely gorgeous, the Madison Valley is one of our favorites, we plan to do a lot of fishing, exploring, enjoying town, taking day trips, enjoying our drop dead view from our site, and of course helping the awesome meat market in town stay in business:-)

Not too shabby, huh?

Tow Bars and Loyalty (Warning! A Long and Mostly Technical Post)

I've been contemplating this post for awhile and finally decided to write it.  I have begun to see a deterioration in customer service at a few of my favorite companies, and I don't think it only relates to things RV.  I'm sure in your own daily life you have seen established and respected companies either become too big, too confident, too complacent, or set in their ways, and have their customer service, and possibly their quality suffer.  If you are anything like me, I tend to ignore little signs and stick with them until finally something happens which is big enough or rises to the level where I just can't ignore it anymore.

Let's talk tow bars.  There are basically 2 big names in four down towing, Blue Ox and Roadmaster, think Ford and Chevy.  Yes there are many other respected manufacturers, but these are the big names and both made in America.  We began this adventure into motor homing over 25 years ago, and my in-laws who were very active in RVing influenced our decision positively, to get into a motorhome after we sold our sailboat.  They even lent us their motorhome and towed so we could get an idea of whether we liked it or not.  Vern, my father-in-law was a Roadmaster guy.  He had one of their baseplates on that vehicle we borrowed and used an early tow bar that stayed connected on the toad instead of the motorhome.  Almost all now stay on the motorhome.  Of course we loved our experience and decided to get a motorhome of our own, a Bounder in 1995.  I researched tow bars and baseplates and preferred Blue Ox at the time as their base plate was unobtrusive on the front of the toad, at that time a Honda Civic, which started our relationship with Blue Ox.  

On our very first trip with our Bounder while caravanning with my in-laws, Vern and Viv, we were transiting the Badlands in South Dakota when a car came up beside me, no easy feat on the winding road and shouted the motorhome behind me lost their car!  What?!?  We managed to pull over, thinking the whole time that if Vern lost his toad it was a goner as the Badlands are a particularly unfriendly place with steep drop offs and straight up cliffs, and hoping no one was hurt.  We ran back and sure enough at the rear of his motorhome was his tow bar securely fastened to half the base plate which had sheared off with his safety cables fastened to the piece that was still there.  We looked back and saw no vehicle.  Oh no, it must have dropped off a cliff. We walked back along the road until we found two tracks going off the road through a high field, but could not see his toad!  We walked down the tracks thinking we would see his vehicle at the bottom of a cliff, but instead we found it sitting perfectly fine in the bottom of a swale, yet the tracks ran up to the edge of a drop off, but amazingly stopped, and it rolled back to where it was sitting.  We all were stunned, and it was fine.  But no one had a good feeling about the Roadmaster tow bar and base plate after this.  They were so lucky it happened the way it did, because we had been on the interstate previously and then did the loop road through the Badlands and were going right back on the interstate.  It could have be so much worse.  So Viv drove their vehicle separately up to the visitor center to evaluate the situation.  Vern called Roadmaster who immediately said they would repair everything, provide a new baseplate, have it installed, a new tow bar, and set up a convenient place to do it, and had the service center open up with techs on a Saturday to take care of it all.  The way they handled it all wasn't lost on anyone, they stepped up and took care of everything, and had the tow bar and base plate sent back to them for evaluation.  This is the only catastrophic failure that I have personally been involved with, and when my in-laws decided to get a new motorhome and a new toad, I helped convince them to switch over to Blue Ox.

Since then, through 3 motorhomes to our present coach and 9 towed vehicles, including 6 Jeep Grand Cherokees, and 2 full size pickups to our present 2019 Ram 1500 4X4.  That is 9 baseplates installed by me and at least 3 others installed by me on other vehicles.  And 6 different Blue Ox tow bars over the years for various reasons, one example, we got an aluminum bar when we had a motorcycle lift on our coach, since the tow bar had to be removed so the bike lift could be lowered and the aluminum one was so much lighter.  No failures in all that time, and believe it or not, that includes 325,000 miles towing!

After this long epistle, you could say I was quite the loyal Blue Ox fan.  Two tow bars ago, after we had gotten rid of the motorcycle, I switched back to a steel tow bar, the Aventa, it was a new design at the time with a big ball that would allow you to more easily connect and disconnect when the terrain wasn't level.  It worked well, but the ball wore more than it should have, and Blue Ox agreed and sent me a replacement ball which turned out to wear in the same manner in the same amount of time.  I had the tow bar serviced and made like new, sold it, and bought their newest model the Avail, a 10,000 pound rated steel bar that seemed even more rugged, that was just 2 years ago.  After one year, I noticed what seemed to me quite a bit of play in the part that rotated, and questioned Blue Ox about it.

Our brand new Avail tow bar

I sent some pictures to Blue Ox, and they agreed there was more play than they wanted, and they sent me a new replacement part that I installed.

This where the play was found to be unacceptable

So only a month or so ago, one year after the new part, as I was hooking the truck up, I noticed there seemed to be the beginning of a little slop at the same point as before, nowhere near as bad, but since we were planning to sit in one place soon for a week, I figured it would be a good time to address it.  I called Blue Ox expecting they would send me a new part again like they had before, but this time I was told I needed to send it in and have it serviced.  I said I was planning on having it serviced per their requirements when I got back to Florida this winter.  They do recommend servicing their bar every 2 years, it costs a flat fee of $150 and they clean, lubricate, and replace washers, etc.  I said I needed them to send me a replacement part like they did before under warranty.  They repeated there weren't going to send me any part, it wasn't considered a warranty problem and I needed to have it serviced.  I asked why it was a warranty item last year and not this year, and I was told that is how it is, and send it in and get it serviced and if the part had to be replaced I'd have to pay for it since it wasn't considered warranty!  I reminded them of my loyalty and past history of many, many bars and baseplates.  The broken record continued, send it in.  I said I was not interrupting my trip to do that unless they felt it was unsafe.  I got a supervisor on the phone who repeated the mantra, then asked for more photos which I complied with.

As you can see this joint is still tight as compared to the previous one

The supervisor said the bar was perfectly safe, and I should send it in to be serviced at my earliest convenience and this winter would be fine.  Okay, this was the event that caused my loyalty and support for Blue OX to disappear.  How can a company that had such superb customer service and products evolve to where they are today.  I had 2 consecutive and different tow bars wear excessively which is the first alarm bell, these bars are about $1000 each,  both of these bars are rated for 10,000 pounds, our truck weighs 6000 pounds, way under the rated poundage, and then to have to hear a mantra about servicing, in fact the first person said I needed to service the bar once a year, when their literature is extremely clear and says 2 years, and if you could have heard the absolute disrespect I was receiving on the phone after being an exceptional customer for 25 years.  I'm done.  Right now they are dead to me.

So moving on, I am now a Roadmaster user.  I researched and bought a Blackhawk 2 All-Terrain 10,000 pound tow bar.  It can, with a set of adapters connect to my Blue Ox base plate.  It seems very rugged, releases very easily, and has the added ability to run the safety cables in channels along the arms making for a clean set up.  Now I have several friends that are staunch supporters of Roadmaster and my research shows a few more supporters of Roadmaster than Blue Ox right now, and it seems their customer service and tech people are superior.

The new bar folded on the rear of the motorhome

You can see the Blue Ox adapter on the end of the arm

Arm extended and safety cables in the channels

Now we have just made the switchover, so it will be some time before I can give a substantial report on the use, ease, and day to day operation of the new bar.  But we are very confident it is going to work out very well.  And already, with a couple of calls to tech support and then to customer service, Roadmaster is already light years ahead.

I was going to go on and mention a couple other RV companies that seem to be on a downhill slope, but I think I will wait that for a future post.  Thanks, if you've made it this far, for letting me vent my frustration and join me in our quest for future success.