And Today Makes Seven!

What a whirlwind.  Today makes seven consecutive days of travel covering 1845 miles from Lubbock to Buffalo, NY.  And if you start in Durango, 2465 miles.  We don't normally do this, but we were on a mission.  

The poorly draining galley sink turned into a not draining galley sink issue.  I found a clean out, opened it up and tried to see what was blocking it, no joy.  Finally had to go to Lowes and buy a plumber's snake, 25 feet long.  Snaked it a few times through the clean out, tried it out, thought we had beaten it so filled up the sink, and.......it wouldn't drain at all!  Now what?  Had to carefully loosen the trap and drain the water a bit at a time, finally tried the snake again.  I fed it it and out while Jan turned it, we went the whole 25 feet until we were sure we had reached our gray tank, then in and out all the way back, and yes we finally got it clear:-)

Draining the full sink with the trap

Yeah, a bit disruptive:-)

Then after a last get together with our daughter Kelly and son-in-law Brian, we bid Lubbock goodbye.

First stop and second stop both in Oklahoma.  First stop was a nice full hook up, all paved overnight.  Second stop was underwhelming, a very poor KOA on Lake Eufaula, not kept up, trash around, and even our grill had old food and pans in it.  Not recommended.

A little rainbow along the way

From this angle it looks okay, not true

Then a stop in Arkansas at a neat campground, just an overnight place, although with full hookups and paved sites, and only $30 cash, Lower White River.

The next day we went to the Indianapolis KOA, actually in Greenfield, IN east of the city, our aim here was to treat ourselves to a steak dinner at the famous St Elmo's in Indianapolis, where we had celebrated our 25th anniversary many years ago:-)  Since it was a Thursday, we never gave any thought to the fact it might be difficult to get a reservation.  They were fully booked.  Oh well, next time...  But the KOA was nice, again huge but nicely situated in shady woods with huge sites.

Then we pushed up into Illinois and found another interesting campground, Ucamp.  It was a true kiosk, like a parking kiosk, with long pull throughs and concrete patios, and something we have never seen, 24 hours for your site.  We pulled in at 3:30, and our receipt showed us having the site until 3:30 the next day?!?

Then a long pull up into northeast Ohio, we had a real time trying to find an open campground on a Friday night, with the season waning away.  We ended up with a reservation at Willow Lake in Geneva, OH.  It is a huge campground divided into 2 sections, one seasonal, and the other shorter term, daily, weekly, and even monthly.  It was packed, amazed we got a site.  But what a time we had getting there.  After driving 350 miles we left the interstate and headed into Geneva, you have to go through the town to get to the campground, and both of our GPS's started giving us warnings, possible groundings ahead!  The warning means there is a possible spot usually a very high and steep RR crossing on which you could high center, we sit quite low and with our long wheelbase, we have to be careful.  We eased through town and then passed a sign warning us of the high crossing.  We arrived at a ridiculously steep and high RR crossing, and had no option except to turn blindly down the only street there was, and of course by that time we had a line of cars behind us.  We poked down the street okay and came out to a larger road, and then started looking for a way around.  We found on Google Maps what looked like a fairly level crossing 5 miles up the road, so that's where we went, the crossing was fine, then we drove the 5 miles back, and then found yet another RR crossing that we barely managed to get over, finally into the campground.

Nice, once we finally got there

The next morning after we had spent some time planning our departure route to get around the bad RR crossing, we pulled out, and turned into our first road around the crossing only to find the narrow road closed and blocked by a fire engine and utility truck!!!  The only turnoff was what we thought was a subdivision, but was actually a cemetery, we crept around the cemetery and just managed to get turned around without disconnecting or falling off the tiny road into a drainage ditch, yehaw!  Then the final leg, only 160 miles to Buffalo, actually North Tonawanda to a very conveniently located motel/campground that is adequate, paved pull throughs, run down, messy, but very close to our son Jason and his fiancé Joanne's home.  And that is why we are here.

I should say that one of our members is quite perturbed with all the constant traveling, can't relax, can't sleep, can't eat when he wants, quite disrupted.

Bert is pissed!

Goodbye Montana, Goodbye Idaho, Goodbye Utah, Goodbye Colorado

It's early in the year for us to be saying goodbye to the West, but it is what it is.  The smoke and fires did us in as well as the wind, dust, and heat.

Durango was a nice visit, hardly any smoke at last.  We had to move sites once which took up part of one day, and we managed to get many things done while we were there.  Jan got her hair cut, and we finally hooked up with some fresh vegetables!  We don't understand, but we have never seen any roadside stands or any fresh veg in the west except at a sporadic farmer's market.  But there is a small stand in Durango that had wonderful Olathe corn, delicious tomatoes and green beans, and we made a feast of them!

Settled in to our second site

Oh yeah!

We ran some other errands while in town and tried to tackle a small problem we have been experiencing for some time now.  We have a braking system on our truck that works off the air from our coach's brakes, and there is a small light at the driver's seat that indicates to me when the truck's brakes are applied.  When we were in Florida, we lost the light and after tearing through the whole system and replacing the switch, we found the light had burnt out:-(  But after we hit the road in the spring, we keep blowing the fuse in the truck that controls the light system.  Sometimes it will work for days and days and other times one brake application will pop the fuse.  We talked to the brake system company and they suggested a larger fuse as the run from the truck all the way to the driver's seat of the motorhome is a long way, 55' plus.  We did that and got a day out of it before it blew.  So I decided to rewire from the truck battery, install a new inline fuse holder, and new larger wire to the air actuated switch.

The switch and we replaced the bottom wire, the other wire goes to
the electrical plug at the front of the truck in which we plug our cable
into that also controls the lights on the truck when we tow

Update, it worked for a whole day and half of another until it blew again?!?!

Anyway, back to Durango.  We went up to Molas Pass, just short actually, to Andrew's Lake to take a hike around it.  It was a beautiful cool day.

We had a great time!

Went out to lunch a few more times and sure enough our time came to an end.  We had a lovely last evening and then said goodbye early the next morning.

Now we are on the move with a couple short stops along the way.  We have made our way to Lubbock now and are visiting our daughter and her husband for a few days then we will diagonal northeast up to Buffalo to see our son and fiancé.  Lots of miles:-)

I do want to mention a very cool little campground we visited in the northeast corner of New Mexico called Coyote Keeth.  It is an overnight stop, reasonably priced, 50 amp full hookup park with a kiosk to check in, and you can even make a reservation.  It has 15 pull through sites, first come, first serve, so if you have made a reservation, you pay at the kiosk and go find a site that has an orange cone, easy peasy.  

There is a real need for these quick, easy, reasonable overnight parks, and hope more of them pop up, in fact we'll let you know about another we plan to stay at in Illinois on our way north.  So now Jan and Kelly are off doing stuff and I am trying to figure out why our sink in the galley isn't draining, especially since we just replaced the drain hose.  Grrr.

Over 800 Miles and a Change of Scenery

We had a few more things on our list in Ennis.  I mentioned way back in the spring that our tag axle pressure valve had broken and was leaking and our travails of getting a new one installed.  This valve determines the amount of air pressure directed to our tag or 3rd axle.  So we have a steer axle, a drive axle, and a tag axle, each with a maximum carrying capacity or rating, in our case the steer can go up to 15,160#, drive 23,000#, and tag 10,000#.  The idea is to set the tag so each axle is carrying an optimum weight, realizing it is kind of a teeter totter.  The more weight you put on the tag the less weight on the drive, BUT it also pushes down on the steer, so it is kind of a balancing act.  When we put the new valve in we set it to match what the old valve was set at 48#, and since we weren't near a scale we called it good.  We did find out it is a very sensitive valve, a very small movement causes quite a change.

Just south of Ennis, 12 miles is a permanently set up DOT scale that is rarely manned.  We have used it a few times over the years to weigh ourselves, and we did a quick weigh when we came into town and found we had a little too much weight on the tag.  I adjusted the valve ever so slightly down and since everything we could do to the generator had been done, we ran down one morning to see how things looked.  We ended up spending almost an hour adjusting and readjusting to get the weights where we wanted them, and then headed back.  When we left town we stopped one more time before we hooked up the truck and readjusted it again, mainly because the valve is so sensitive.

We also found that this gauge needed closer to 55# to make it right

Our direct neighbors left and we found one more thing we could do with the generator.  We had decided with all that we had done, we would do everything.  That one thing was clean the spark arrestor.  It is scheduled to be done every oil change, every 250 hours, but we had never done it before, I had read where most everyone has never found any soot in the muffler.  You have to take the top cover off, something by this time we had become very proficient with:-)  Then reach way down in and remove a brass plug, leave it out, put the top cover back on, run it loaded for 5 minutes, let it cool and replace the plug.  Straightforward.  But I couldn't get the brass plug out at first, it is way down in and I couldn't get leverage on the wrench, so I went to a socket with a PVC extension and finally got it out, I managed to burr it pretty badly so ran down to the hardware store for a new one.  Well we ran it and got maybe a gram of soot out.  Pretty worthless, and then I couldn't get the new plug in, so we ended up putting the old one back in, and I'll tell you I have no intention of pulling it out again, a worthless endeavor.

You can see the hole way down on the muffler where the plug lives

So we were in Ennis a total of 7 days, all but 2 were so smoked filled you could barely see the mountains, so no pictures.  We left a day early even, and went south hoping to get out of the smoke, it got better, but it was still around when we arrived at our first stop in Tremonton, UT to Aspen Grove RV Park.  It is a beautiful park all paved street and concrete sites with patios, BUT, they have a pricing policy that we have never seen before, as their booking go up and you reserve closer to when you would arrive, the prices keep ramping up.  We checked one day and then made up our mind to go the next day and they had raised the prices another $5/night, and it is fairly expensive to begin with, I questioned them on it when I made the reservations and they were completely oblivious to my comments, didn't think they were doing anything wrong or unique.  It's a nice park, but you make up your own mind on this.  

But it was a little less smoky there

We ran the generator 2 1/2 hours on the way there without issues.  

Then on to one of the nicest parks ever, Mountain Valley RV Resort in Heber City, UT.  We would spend 2 nights there.  This is a large park, well taken care of, all paved, sites are huge all concrete at least 80' long and over 30' wide, it has adult only areas to stay and adult only amenities and areas where kids cannot play or ride their bikes, etc.  Don't get the idea that this encroaches them though, the park is huge.  

I do want to get something off my chest, I should say both of our chests, lights at night for no reason. One of Jan and my pet peeves is bright lights, especially the LED's that are so popular these days, left on all night long.  Mountain Valley as I said is a gorgeous park, very quiet and very dark, absolutely wonderful except when you are subjected to these inconsiderate idiots, excuse my language that have to screw it up.  Here is an example of our neighbor's coach that we put up with for 2 nights, and keep in mind all the while they are doing this all their blinds are pulled tight so they never even look at their pathetic light pollution!

And yes these beautiful obnoxious lights are from under his rig.  Okay, I'm done.

We ran the generator 2 hours without issues.

A discussion came up the other day, do you tip your coach when you fuel to get in more fuel?  Our 150 gallon fuel tank goes from one side to the other with a fuel cap on both sides.  With our air leveling, it is very easy, a quick push of a button to lay it over, and yes we do, we can get another 20 or so gallons in and it is very useful when we are trying to get a little farther to take advantage of price, especially this year, since starting out $2.50/gal and now we are seeing it over $4/gal!

Tipped for fuel

Then we took off for Durango, 400 plus miles, and pulled in yesterday, we will be here for 6 nights, getting a few things done.  Then south to Lubbock, TX to see our daughter, and then believe it or not to Buffalo, NY to see our son.  Yup, crazy.

We ran the generator for 4 1/2 hours with no issues, is it fixed?????

More Changes and Is It Fixed?

We left you in Bend after our quick turnaround in Junction City.  We determined the exact fittings for our generator fuel line and went into Bend the next day and had an 18' new line made up.  While there we, of course, had to find lunch and we did at a small pizza chain called Cibelli's.

Delish!

A neighbor in the RV park who lives in Sisters, actually building a house so is in the park was telling us about a great fishing river nearby, the Metolius, so we decided even if we didn't have time to fish, we'd go over and take a look.  It is quite unique in that it just starts as a spring coming out of the ground.  It was so smoky, we didn't spend any time out there.

This is right at the start

 

We then continued to Burns, Oregon is a big state!  Spent a quick overnight there with a welcome reprieve from the smoke.

Clear skies from our site at Happy Hour

Then it was off early the next morning to push all the way to Picabo, ID.  Part of our push was we had a month long reservation in Ennis over the holiday weekend, and the other is, well, we just want to get eastbound.  We found out diesel is very expensive in the fair state of Idaho, the highest we've seen this whole summer.  

Picabo was a quick overnight as well, as we still had quite away to go to get to Ennis.  The smoke came back as we went east.

Hints of smoke

Smoke!

We arrived in Ennis and told them about our change of plans, instead of a month long stay, we are only staying a week, in fact we weren't going to come up here at all with our revised plans, but we could not find one decent place to stay over the Labor Day weekend, so to Ennis we went.  We are in a primo site in the back which usually has killer views across the Madison River Valley, but we couldn't even see the mountains at all, and the wind almost blew us out of our site.  Yeah, we are even more than ready to leave our beloved Ennis.  

We had several projects, the biggest is trying to solve our generator issues, so installing the fuel line was on the top of our list, but the next day dawned with so much smoke and wind and heat we said we'd postpone it a day and go into Bozeman for several errands and lunch.  We got our Petsmart, Costco, hardware store, grocery store, and even the pottery store visits out of the way and went to one of our favorite places, Dave's Sushi and had a delicious lunch!

Now as you can imagine my frustration with our generator has been building and I have been researching everything I can find about it.  Studying the service manual, conferring with other owners with similar problems, searching the forums and posting for info, and just doing a lot of fretting about it.  It seemed that a few people with similar problems had replaced their control boards and solved the issue.  Even the troubleshooting in the manual had finally got to the point where replacing the board was next on the list.  No one likes to just keep plugging expensive parts in hoping you'll finally hit the right one, but it seemed to be logical that after replacing the fuel filter, air filter, fuel pump, and governor actuator, the control board would be a player.  Researching control boards found that Cummins offers an OEM Onan one for $930, but none were available at this time:-(  More research uncovered a company named Flight Systems that specializes in electronic boards as replacements for many electronic items across the industry and have better warranties than OEM.  I called them and yes they had a board for our gen, and it was $585.  Sounding good.  Now we hadn't replaced the fuel line yet, but I wasn't convinced that was going to be our answer, and the many comments such as having a new control board in hand was probably a better investment than gold made me go ahead and order the board even if we didn't end up using it:-)

What a turnaround in temps, we awoke to 37 degrees and no smoke as the wind had changed!  And after it warmed up a bit, we tackled the new fuel line.  I want to say Jan actually did 95% of the job.  I certainly am blessed to have a small wife with great mechanical aptitude and ability, and is eager to help and get involved in all of our projects.  First thing we found a suitable hole in the firewall between the fuel tank and the front of the coach where the generator lives.

The very convenient hole with the new line through it

I fed the line through and Jan took it from there.  She crawled under and was able to run the new line right along the old line, removing the old and fastening the new at the same time.  It was good we decided on 18' instead of the 15' we originally thought, we ended up having maybe 18" extra!  

The back of the gen, supply, that we replaced on the left, and return on the right.
And the new line in the foreground

And I think just to make us feel a little better, this was happening right behind our site!

Smiling Jan working away underneath

New fuel line connected

New line connected at the tank

Anti-abrasion measures taken, we'll get some more foam

Finished up, crossed our fingers, and since we didn't have any neighbors at the time fired it up.  Started perfectly, and proceeded to run for over an hour when it started stumbling and surging again. Damn!  But conveniently the control board showed up a little while later.  We had to wait awhile to let the gen cool down enough to go back in.  I had even ordered an endoscope that ties into our iPhones, something I had thought about many times previously and it arrived at the same time.  I wanted to look up into the air intake to be sure there were no obstructions, another thing to look at according to my research.

The air intake underneath, and no we didn't find any obstruction

When it cooled off, I went in to replace the board.  

The coolant tank has to be moved out of the way first

This dusty place is where the board lives,
yes, we got it all cleaned up

The new board on the left, the old on the right, the bracket
that it mounts in, and our new endoscope

New board in bracket

At this point we got neighbors, but we did run it for a bit more than an hour with no stumbling, not going to call it fixed yet until we run it for several hours, and that won't be until next week.