Good times, but Murphy Strikes!

We took a beautiful ride up north with Sandy and Kris through Horseshoe Bend and Banks up to the cute town of Cascade, of Boise Cascade fame.  It was very scenic as it follows the winding Payette River through a narrow canyon.

Looking downstream

Gorgeous view

Rushing water

Jan takes all of our photos I show on the blog with very few exceptions, therefore she is seldom in any of the pictures.  We were fortunate to have along with us serving as tour guide and historian, the Photographere Extroidinaire, Sandy using a real camera, in his words, a Canon instead of the "junk" Nikon Jan uses to prove and show Jan in her photographic mode.

Even though the watermark shows Jan, this is a SS exclusive

We had a great lunch at Sandy and Kris' cabin, and then took a drive over to a reservoir that had been drained for the winter.  I drove us out into the dry reservoir for the heck of it.

We encountered the strangest thing while out in the dry reservoir.  In front of the Jeep you can see where a bit of water is flowing, and since it was so dry the ground was cracked.  As we walked around, we started noticing tiny toads swarming out of the cracks!  It was bizarre!  These Idaho Crack Toads were everywhere, evidently the vibration from us walking was causing them to come out.  There were literally hundreds of them.

A representative group

Just coming out

It was strange to say the least. 

As it turned out Karen limped in on Saturday late afternoon.  She is having problems with the air on her coach.  The suspension and most importantly the brakes work with air.  Air brakes are a lot different from the hydraulic brakes in your car.  There is what is called a spring brake in a vehicle with air brakes, it very firmly holds the brakes ON in the absence of air.  So it takes air pressure from an engine driven compressor to release the brakes so you can move down the road, and it takes air to activate the brakes. It also takes air to inflate the air "springs" for the suspension.  When you lose air pressure or it goes down to an unacceptable pressure, you get an alarm, this is your indication that the brakes are having an impending failure and it is imperative you move off the road, as very soon as the pressure lowers further the brakes will lock up!  She had problems getting the air to rise that morning and the pressure fluctuated greatly as she drove, yet luckily it recovered before she had her brakes lock up.  Unfortunately, we worked on the problem yesterday and were unable to find a leak, what I hoped it would be, so we are waiting for a service person on Tuesday.  I believe it is the air dryer or the compressor on the engine, but I'm leaning towards the air dryer, but we'll see.  The air dryer is a device that removes the water from the compressed air.  Anytime air is compressed, moisture is formed.  Hopefully they can find and fix the problem promptly and we'll be on our way.  If not, no big deal, we'll just alter our plans and go with the flow as they say.

Meanwhile Jan and Karen were able to get a ton of stuff she needs for her motorhome, and I was able to do some repairs and maintenance on her coach. Karen and I will go this morning to get a few more items she needs at Camping World.  We are having fantastic weather which we are enjoying, 80's in the day, and low 50's at night, and a lot of the smoke we had been seeing is dissipating.  

Karen contacted Coach-Net, an RV emergency service organization, similar to AAA, but for RV's.  They sent over a Mobile Truck Repair team to take a look.  We all were very hopeful they could take care of the problem.  Well, our hopes were dashed when this old 1965 big old diesel Ford service truck came belching black smoke and making a racket with tow guys from Deliverance got out, each with a cigarette hanging from their lips and 7 teeth between the two of them!  But looks can be deceiving.  They got right on it, determined it was a bad air dryer, not an expensive compressor, pulled it out, and announced they would be back this morning with a new one!  So in theory, we will be on our way to White Bird, ID for our jet boat ride on the Snake River tomorrow!

A New Month

We have been having a great time visiting with family here in Boise!  We haven't seen Kris and Sandy and their family in a long time, so it's nice to catch up.  We've learned a lot about Idaho while here that make it a very desirable place to live, reminds us a lot of NH way back when we first moved there in 1978.  Hope this state can hold onto it's independent attitude better than NH did.

Best news, my Mom seems to be doing fantastic!  It's amazing, and I don't want to jinx it, but it's almost as if her visit to the hospital was an omen.  Her medication has been changed significantly with wonderful results, and I think enlisting hospice has lowered her anxiety and given her comfort.  Whatever it is, she sounds and is doing great for the time being.

We have been using our new modem and cellular amplifier for internet access while we've been here and are happy to report it has been working super!  We don't want to jump the gun, but it looks like we may have solved our internet issues!

We've received our first mail packet from our new mail forwarder and have changed all of the addresses we could remember, so it looks as if another issue is solved.  We are pleased with our first mail delivery and coordinating with them is easy and painless.

We are anxiously awaiting Karen's arrival today.  She flew into Denver two days ago, picked up her motorhome, had to get her windshield replaced, there's always something, huh, and is now more than halfway here.  It'll be a nice get together tonight.  

It's amazing another month has gone by.  The time is really flying by.  We are having a blast living out our dream of traveling around this beautiful country of ours.  We have been lucky to have had great weather for the most part and few problems.  Hope the folks in LA, MS, AL do okay as they tackle the clean up from Isaac.