Our Time in Missoula is Done

We bid Kelly and Brian good bye, got the new tires on the truck, and at this specialty grocery store here in town bought some amazing Copper River salmon for dinner, delish!

We have a continuing problem with our AquaHot, our hot water and heating system that runs either on two electric elements or on a diesel fired burner or both.  If you remember we had a leak that we think contributed to our problem.  We have a switch that controls the second electric element, but it was only working intermittently.  We did a lot of troubleshooting to try to find the problem including bringing in our AquaHot guru, Rudy.  Bottom line we couldn't really find any reason which led us to suspecting the control board itself.  It gets more challenging, on the control board is a low voltage reset button, the board is designed to cut off the AquaHot if the voltage, i.e. batteries get too low.  It requires you to reset or push the button to allow the AquaHot to operate again when you have sufficient voltage.  As we messed with this issue I happened to push the button, understand the first element and the diesel were working fine, only the second element was not, and for some unknown reason, the reset got the second element to come on!  There is no known correlation between the reset and the second element, but as time went on, anytime the second element wouldn't work, I found that if I went out and pushed the reset it would come on, kind of a pain though.  I related this unusual phenomenon to Rudy, he said in his experience he had never heard of anything like this, but in his estimation it confirmed the board had an issue.  I concurred, and broke down and bought a new board, as I was getting tired of going outside and resetting the button.  I installed the board, in fact I showed you the install a few posts back, and I can now say it didn't work:-(  I was still having to push the reset now and then to get the second element on.  I should explain, the operation of the second element allows us to take care of our hot water needs and heat the coach down to about 38, without firing up the diesel.  So it appears we spent a considerable amount on a new board for no reason, I guess we have a spare now.  So with more research and trying to read an electrical schematic the only other item in the circuit with the elements are two AC relays, one for each element, and they were hit with water from the leak.  Desperate, and since they are fairly inexpensive I decided to replace them both even though the first element has always worked fine.  Easy fix, although the are riveted in place so I had to drill out the old and rivet in the new, NBD.

Going in

The old relays

And the new

And what can I report, the second element is still intermittent.  We don't have any idea what is next, I guess I will put this out on the forums I frequent and see if some other guru has a good idea, otherwise I guess I will be continue going out to get the second element reset when and if it doesn't work.

Jan made a wonderful chop suey to cheer me up:-)

So fishing.  We had talked to a guy in Ennis about Rock Creek, a creek we have fished many times in the past without a tremendous amount of luck.  He asked if we had done any of the upper Rock Creek and we said no, he recommended us give it a try so we did.  It called for a 200 mile round trip drive, but it was a gorgeous day and we had a picnic packed and even if we hadn't fished at all the ride was worth it.  This next pic shows the loop we took clockwise and the area in question is between the Philipsburg school districts, why it came up with that title I don't know.

I had a little success, I caught one whitefish about 11 inches long, this has not been a stellar fishing season, but as I said, the ride, the scenery, and our picnic made it all worthwhile.

She's still smiling, and moi in the background

If we had volume, you'd be able to hear Jan saying,
"Here fishy, fishy, fishy"

And when we got back this guy was waiting for us.

We went out yesterday to do some errands before leaving today and stopped in for a great Chinese lunch and since we wanted leftovers for lunch for our travel day today we ordered two entrées, House Lo Mein and Mongolian Beef, and since we did we now have enough food for 6 people tomorrow:-)

We had a nice evening outside with a drink and cigar and made a crab stuffed flounder for dinner, turned out great.

See you down the road!

Missoula

We had a nice uneventful drive over to Missoula except for a bit of a backup getting on the interstate.  Turned out there was a cattle drive through the on ramp and that certainly comes before anything else:-)

We have been noticing a bit of wear on the front tires of the truck and had attributed it to towing it with not frequent enough rotations, but on the rotation we had done in Maine before we left they told me the alignment was out.  We couldn't fit it in right then, so now with even more towing and driving and looking we realized our tires were reaching the end of their time.  We have driven them 37,000 miles and towed them over 20,000, so we think we did okay:-)  We scheduled an alignment here and sure enough it was out a significant amount.  We went back and forth with thinking we'd wait until fall, but the more we looked and thought about the mileage on them, and the fact there is no sales tax in Montana, we ended up ordering tires.  We try to do most of our tire business with Discount Tire, as they are national and all over the southeast.  They have 2 places here in MT, one in Kalispell and one in Helena.  The one in Helena had the tires in stock so we set that up, it's only 125 miles:-)  With that taken care of, off to one of our favorite Irish pubs, Stone of Accord for lunch and a Guinness.  We each had a Guinness and we split a steak sandwich and the amazing champs!

Our daughter Kelly and her husband, Brian arrived later that day for their 4 day visit.  They have a unique setup on their truck where they stayed.

Kelly showing her mother their room in the sky

The next morning Kelly and Brian left early to go drive the Going To The Sun road in Glacier National Park and I left early for our windshield replacement on the truck.  Well, mine only lasted 5 minutes because when I asked to confirm it was an OEM windshield and was told no, I declined and had to make another appt the following week for the correct windshield.  So while Kelly & Brian were sightseeing, Jan and I went out for some Chinese.

We split this enormous bowl of delicious Hot and Sour soup,
and barbecued pork!  Superb.

We had a really great visit, together for the excellent dinners Jan made, and breakfasts I made, lunches out, and cocktails and cigars in the evening.

One of our lunches

We took a ride south to Hamilton, then Darby, and then a little farther south to show them the Yellowstone Dutton Ranch:-)

After a nice evening, we said goodbye, and both Kelly and Brian; and Jan and I left very early the next morning, they to head home and us to go to Helena for our new tires.

It was a pretty drive for us, and once we got there, we were in and out in less than an hour, visited a Costco across the street, had lunch out, and had a nice drive back.

We hope to fish this upcoming week, get the windshield finally fixed, do a few more errands and one little project, then we will be on the move again.