Well, We Finally Did It!

We had a situation here that we've never encountered before, an invading chicken.  After we had gotten ourselves all situated in our site, along came a visitor.

 

More inquisitive than actually friendly, and she stayed in a general area centered on a 5th wheel across the street, but for some reason our motorhome called out to her.  No one seemed to know where she came from.

She decided to lay her eggs directly under our coach, 4 in total before the park asked her to leave, and as far as we could tell, she only laid her eggs under our coach.

The new circulation pump for our AquaHot system arrived just in the nick of time, as the night time lows were forecast to be freezing.  And since I needed to get the burner out of the way to replace the pump, we did a complete annual service on it at the same time.

Completing the pump replacement

The burner with its new nozzle

Jan's sister Karen arrived in her beautiful new motorhome to spend a few days with us before meeting us in Maine next month.

But, it was bittersweet, as she was unhooking her truck, we all noticed a drip under the engine, turned out to be fuel, and after a week of a mobile tech working on it to no avail, she had to be towed, never a good thing.

But a happy ending, she is back here now after only 2 nights away after the shop found a couple crushed gaskets in a very challenging spot causing the leak.

One thing we desperately needed to do was give the coach a bath, it hadn't been washed since November!  Jan got the roof and we got the rest, of course, she went on to wash the truck as well.

I'd say the roof really needed it

Then a small rant about lights in the campgrounds.  We do not understand what the proliferation of lights is, from intensely bright LED porch lights, to under side lighting and under slide lighting that if you're real lucky change color, and the fact that people use these is fine, AS LONG AS YOU SHUT THEM OFF AT A REASONABLE TIME, 10, 11 PM.  But now lots of folks keep them on all night long, and the irony is they usually have all their blinds pulled so they don't even see their own lights, GRRRRR.  We are right now experiencing this neighbor with incredibly brilliant lighting that has been on every night for the last week.

You could perform surgery under these lights they are so bright

When we last replaced our microwave in 2016, the new then GE required a different mounting system that the Sharp we took out used.  It was necessary to access the top of the unit so 3 bolts could come down from above to hold the unit in place.  In our coach there was no access to that spot, but since we did it ourselves we figured we'd drill the smallest hole that Jan could get her arm into and then with me holding it up she could insert the bolts.  Worked great, we covered the hole with a round tile and no one ever even knew it was there.  

That's velcro around the hole to hold the tile,
and yes the cord was pushed inside

But since we were having it professionally installed this time, we didn't figure they'd be able to insert their arm in the hole so we opened it up in preparation for our replacement.  And we plan to cover this bigger hole with tile as well.

We just got back from having the new unit mounted, and what a time we had.  Once we got there we opened the slides and emptied the nearest cabinet to be ready.  In came the tech and right off the bat he had a lot of trouble getting his big arm in our new hole, and then we couldn't get the plug out, it was like the hole in the cabinet wall was too small, weird we have no memory of this.  He fought it and finally got the plug out and then as he struggled in the hole, I brought out our multi-tool and cut off the points giving him more room.  He got the old one out and did it all himself, it is heavy and unwieldy.

And although this was supposed to be an exact replacement, it turned out that the mounting bolts had gone from 3 to only 2 and in a different spot.  He quickly took care of that.  I had to help get the back of the new one inserted on the tabs, very little help by me, and then he got it all bolted in, but we couldn't get the new plug through.  With much frustration in the air, we told him we wanted to be sure it worked, but we'd take it from there.  So we drove back with the cord hanging out.

Once back Jan and I did a little cutting and a little fishing and got the plug through.

I have the receptacle off the wall to get the plug through

Jan feeding it through

All done and only the hole to cover, more on that to follow.

And on to the biggest news!  After looking and looking at houses and land for over a year, we can report we are now proud owners of a 2 acre lot in Dallas, GA.  We are very pleased and will take our time to figure out exactly what we will do with it as far as building.  We are in no rush, don't even have a plan yet, only ideas, and even with this, Maine is still calling:-)  After our closing we went over to have a little celebration with some fine libations and fine cigars.

Overlooking our lot

Happy campers, and, yes, that is a pond in the background

Back To North Georgia, Ellijay

We had to move sites for our last week in Cartersville and when we did after parking we noticed a leak under the steps, yeah another leak:-(  The hydraulic pump, tank and manifold that operate 3 of our 4 slides lives under the steps.  Sure enough we found the leak, tried to tighten the fitting and when we did we found out it wasn't loose, but that the fitting was failing instead.

So after much research and talking to various hydraulic repair companies, then contacting the manufacturer, HWH, we found out that virtually all hydraulic hose repairers and fabricators are happy to replace the hose, not just add a new end.  What complicates this somewhat is there are perhaps 8 hydraulic hoses, numerous air lines, and tons of electrical wires that are all tied up in a huge bundle that goes rearward, over and through the wheel well and into the coach itself, so to try to find one hose and track it to its end is more than we want to do.  So our new plan now it to visit an HWH specialty shop in Elkhart, IN in August where they say they can put a new end on it.  It means limping along with this leak until then, but it is only under pressure when actually activating the slide outs. 

We tried a new to us sushi place, Sushiology in Kennesaw that we enjoyed.

Awesome Korean pork belly Bao buns

A shrimp roll and a soft shell crab roll

Masago on top, a chopped California roll and interesting tuna poke "tacos"

Then as if we didn't have enough issues with our leaks, we woke up on a 35 degree morning and it was absolutely freezing in the front of our coach!  I switched the heat source over to our front heat pump which did okay, but at 35 degrees it really can't do too much until we could take a look when the sun came up.  I figured it had to be a stuck check valve on our AquaHot.  So after it warmed up to 45 and the sun was up, out I went to take a look.  Amazingly the circulation pump for the forward area wasn't working, so to make sure it wasn't the board I took the electrical plug out of an operating pump and stuck in it in the offending pump and still nothing.  So at least it is a pump and not a much more expensive board.  But what is really irritating us is we replaced all of our pumps in December of 2023, and already one is dead!!  You can review if you want HERE.

I have the offending pump circled

So we ordered a new pump to be delivered to Ellijay and as soon as it gets there we will install it as we are anticipating more 30 degree weather in the upcoming weeks.

On one of our many house and land searches we found a new restaurant, Downtown Eats in Dallas, GA, that was excellent, in fact we even went back a second time.

Incredible shrimp and crawfish hushpuppies,
and Korean BBQ

Fried green tomatoes with whipped goat cheese and onion jam

Pork belly tacos with blue cheese slaw

So now we have moved north to Talona Ridge, one of our favorites for a month.

We did make one decision though.  We decided to have the microwave/convection oven installed and the old one taken away.  We learned Lowes and Home Depot won't do it, seems odd, but they use third party installers and for liability reasons, I guess they will not install an over the range microwave unless there is at least 30 inches of clearance.  Our coach and I would venture to say any other coach doesn't have that much room and never has.  Seems weird, but they wouldn't budge.  So we made numerous calls to see if someone would deliver and install here in Ellijay, price isn't an issue because it is fair traded so everyone charges the same for the unit.  Finally we found a place in Blairsville, about 40 miles away that could do it and thought we had it all set up until they called back and said, whoops, we thought you were closer, we'll still do it but we'll have to add another $175 to the deal.  We compromised and we have it set up to drive the coach over to them and they will install the new one and take the old one in their parking lot.  So that's happening in a week or so.  That's all for now:-)