Category: Traveling the hiways and byways

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Banff

Kathy wanted to get to Banff as quickly as possible to sightsee, so we left Calgary a day early.   That morning I called Parks Canada and was able to procure two nights in Tunnel Mountain II campground.   I was hoping for three nights, but since the sun stays up until almost 10:30 here, we could probably fit in everything we wanted to see by starting as soon as we got set up in the campground.

On our way into the campground we spotted a clone of our bus using the dump station.  I assumed they were on their way out, thinking that it would be interesting to talk to them about their bus.   There is a saying in the RV world that no one knows your RV better than someone else that has the same thing. To my surprise they weren’t leaving and ended up parking about 50′ behind us.  I had to go over and see them after one of our ventures out and about.

The town of Banff was about 5 minutes down the small road.   It’s beautiful but very touristy.  It was so nice it got me wondering if there was an ordinance to keep your exterior wood polished.  There are a lot of cars in the small town, so the going can be painfully slow.   Also, if you stick the nose of your car an inch into the crosswalk, you get a lot of angry stares from the passersby.

We went out for pizza the first night at a small place on Bear Street.   Pizza was Ok.  Can’t really expect too much in a tourist town.   After that I wanted to go for drinks at the big hotel in town.  It really looks like a castle and it’s huge!  But parking for nonguests was pretty lacking, so we left to look for Bow Falls.   We found it just a few minutes away.    They have a lot of water here with all the snow melt from the mountains that ring the town, so all the rivers are running full tilt.   Snapped a few pics of the falls and headed down the road to see what was there.

After a few minutes we came to a bridge where a gate was being installed, but seeing the arm hadn’t been put up yet, we took a drive out there.   I went along a 27-hole golf course that went for miles along this small roadway.   By this time it was close to 9 pm and we saw a few golfers playing the fairways.   Some of them would have a very long walk back to the clubhouse, and I bet most of it was going to be in the dark.  Hopefully they have their bear spray!  We saw 2 very large elk in the meadows, but no bears, luckily for those golfers!

The road turned out to be a loop.   We then drove around the town a bit more and ended up on a road on the other side of Bow Falls and up above it.  There was a large platform we climbed up to with Dusty pulling Kathy up the stairs.  Very nice view of that large castle-like hotel and the falls below.

By this time it was close to dusk and we headed back to the bus.   You cannot believe how dirty the bus is.  All the rain and subsequent mud has it looking like we were back in Quartzsite again.

The next morning we headed out early looking for a car wash, which we never did find.  Although we did find one we could have driven the bus thru; but it was supposed to rain some more, so I decided to wait a bit longer.    We headed out of town toward Vista Lake and found the overlook where we ate a picnic lunch and then headed out to find Johnson Canyon (JC).

On the other side of the Trans Canada highway was the Bow Valley Parkway.    On the way toward JC, we stopped at a small campground called Castle X .  It appears to be named that for the large mountain above it that looks like a fortress.

Not far past there where the parkway ended due to lots of road construction we found the parking lots for Johnson Canyon.   So far Canada parks allow pets on all the trails.  Way different than America’s National Parks, where if they are tolerated at all, it will only be on one or two designated trails.

We decided to do the short hike to the Lower Falls in Johnson Canyon.   It was a beautiful hike, about 1/2 mile in each direction, the temperature a nice 25c.

I think the Canadians were trying to pull a fast one on us Americans.   There was a sign for the falls that said it was 1/2 a mile…  and 1,500 meters to the Canucks.   1,600 meters is a mile..  I hadn’t looked at the meter sign till we hiked what I thought was half a mile and a passing ranger said we were  halfway to the falls.

It was a nice walk in the woods but mostly uphill heading to the falls.    When the canyon got narrow, they had built a walkway cantilevered into the cliff walls.   Again,  much, much nicer than anything I have ever seen in our national parks.

The falls did not disappoint.  They were awesome.  There was even a small cave that led right up next to the falling water.   It was a very low cave and I was glad I was wearing a hat as I bashed my head on the rocks.  Had I not had on the hat, I am pretty sure I would have been bleeding..

The hike back was mostly downhill, so it went quite a bit quicker; and at the end of the trail was a small ice cream stand which I was told we must stop for.   I think the ice cream negated the calories we had just expended.

After that we went over to check out the Banff Gondola.   We followed a large tour bus with a big sign on the back that said “Student Driver.”  I think it was real as we watched him drive over an orange cone making the turn onto the road leading to the gondola parking.

I headed into the building to see if the dog could come with us as we read he could, but the guy at the ticket booth said that changed late last year.   No more pets.   So I didn’t give them my $120 and we left.

Just then it started raining again.  So even if they would have let the pup on, it may not have been so much fun in the cold rain at the top of the mountain.   The sign had said it was 9c at the summit.

We headed on back to the coach, and on the way Kathy spotted some really nice wood carvings, so we had to stop and take a few of those pics.  We also spotted this unusually named street in Banff.  😉

After a bit I noticed the folks with our same coach were home and we walked over to introduce ourselves.   We met Roger and Helen, who had owned theirs about a year longer than we had owned ours and they were full-time living in theirs for at least the last year and a half.  Their home base is in Florida, so they were quite a bit further from home than we were.   They had a lot of great stories and Roger clued me into a few things that they’d experienced on their bus that we hadn’t experienced  “yet”.   We talked for hours until it was dark.  As we were probably leaving in the morning, we exchanged cards.

Since only two nights were available when I called the morning of getting there, I decided to ask if there was another night available at the kiosk on the way back into the campground.   Nothing, but said to come back at 8 am to see if there was more available then.   There wasn’t.  I had thought we would stay an extra day so that we would get to Lake Louise on Sunday morning instead of Saturday, thinking that Sunday is usually a better day to find a campsite at a crowded place.

Saturday morning we set out on our long trip of 57 km to Lake Louise sans any reservations as the only close campground was a first-come, first-serve.   No reservations can be made at that Parks Canada campground until after June 15th.

We had our fingers crossed the whole way there.

 

 

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to Calgary and beyond..

From Milk River we drove to Claresholm and stayed for one night.   It was a really nice community park in the middle of the small town.   Lush mowed grass all around,  a couple baseball diamonds and 22 RV sites.   It was Memorial Day in the States, but this little gem was practically empty.   The town provided the WiFi there, so it was pretty good till it dropped around 5 pm then showed back up at 8 pm.  I guess the AP’s needed a reboot or something.  Anyway, I was planning on staying there for a couple nights, but Kathy had a different idea.  She wanted to get to somewhere we could sightsee.  So the next morning we drove the couple hours to Calgary and are currently staying in a big grass field across the street from the Grey Eagle Casino.   We are boondocking in a pretty large field.  Lots of grass and practically no one here either.   Last night there was one 5th wheel trailer sans truck and two minivans.  This morning we woke up, only 1 minivan left and a Nissan SUV of some sort.   After touring the city, the other minivan is gone, so just the SUV and the trailer are here.

The first morning there, we drove downtown to check out the sky tower and Stephen Avenue.  Parking in downtown Calgary near Stephen Avenue is difficult.  We eventually got a space on the street only a block south and a block from the sky tower. The tower didn’t allow pets, so they weren’t getting our $36 entrance fee.  So we walked over to Stephen Avenue.  It is a few blocks long and mostly blocked off to cars. Oddly it’s not all blocked off though. One of the blocks in the middle had a car pass by us.

We arrived right at lunch hour and the street was packed with office workers heading out for lunch. There are lots of restaurants on both sides of the street and almost everyone had an outdoor patio.  Each one we passed had no empty tables and the food looked delicious!

We found this nice large park at the eastern terminus of the street.  There were lots of kids wading into the huge water feature/fountain.   After all, it was 25 degrees celsius  and everyone was walking around like it was mid summer.   One gal I talked to said we had just missed a snow storm.  (I’m thankful for that!!)

 

 

I did get to stop and talk to the local constable.  I noticed he was packing a Glock and a taser that also looked similar to his Glock.  It appeared to me he was carrying two pistols.  He said they all (the police) carry guns in Canada and are allowed to carry them off duty, but not really.  He mentioned if you do carry it off duty, you will get into all sorts of trouble with the bosses.  Sort of odd, I bet if they stumble upon a robbery while off duty and don’t have their service weapon, they would also catch hell for not having it..  🙂

All the highways in Calgary are under major construction.  At least that is how it seems.  It’s a real mess.  I guess due to the weather it all must happen the few months of the year that it’s warm enough to work outside, but this is over the top.   We were planning on spending tomorrow at the Heritage Park Historical Village, but Kathy just read no pets allowed there either.  Darn, another $58 I am not able to add to the local economy.   Geez, but we liked the free camping.   I really like Calgary… just not all the road construction and detours that go with it.

After we came back to the RV, I decided to get started on the rock guard I am making that goes between the rear of the RV and the front of Kathy’s car we pull behind us.   For today I just painted the 6′ x 1″ square steel tubing, and after that dried I installed a rubber foot on each end so that when it’s mounted and I bang into it, I won’t tear my clothes or legs..   Next I have to drill 7 holes thru it to mount the large U bolt that will hold it to the hitch receiver and 5 eye bolts that will hold down the nylon mesh via many feet of bungee cord I brought.

Drilling the holes is going to be interesting as I don’t have a vice to hold the bar to drill thru it.   Now I am thinking I need to replace my drop receiver with a double receiver so I could mount a vice on the second receiver.   (maybe when we get home.)

I then moved on to hooking the Raspberry Pi (RPI) to the coach’s network so whenever the coach has internet, the RPI will be able to upload all the solar information gathered to the web portal.

Speaking of solar..  Today was really sunny and the roof-mounted panels created all the power to charge the battery to 100% by 7 pm.   Last night the sun didn’t go down here till around 9:40 pm.   If the sun never sets in Alaska, I guess it will keep charging all night.  Now wouldn’t that be really cool!

 

 

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Helena MT and on to Milk River, Canada.

We were in Helena for 3 nights.   While there I visited the Lewis & Clark Brewery for a pretty tasty growler fill which came with a free pint!   I also found the most stocked hardware store I have ever seen the following day.  They had at least 5 long aisles filled with specialty hardware.  I had never seen that much in one place.  Reminded me of the McMaster Carr catalog in a store.   Lowe’s sometimes has about 20′ of those trays of special stuff.  This place had over a 150′ of them.   There was a bunch I had no idea what they were used for, and I am a “hardware guy”!

I was able to pick up all the remaining parts I needed to construct my rock guard for the drive to Alaska.  I previously had purchased the mesh and 50′ of bulk bungee cord, along with ends for them,  but not the hardware to hold it all to the rear of the RV and the front of the car, as I hadn’t totally figured out how to do that; but during the first night in Helena I figured out how to make it work.

We stayed at the Lewis & Clark Fairgrounds campground,  22 spaces with electric only.   There was water a few hundred yards away near the office building, so we filled the fresh water tank there prior to parking the rig.   What was odd is there wasn’t a dump station on the fairgrounds, so I started looking for one on the web and found three.  I checked them out in the car the day before leaving and only one would work for us to get in and out of without driving over curbs.   It was just on the other side of the 1-15, a few miles away, and it was our first stop on the way to Canada the next morning.

While in Helena we got to visit the locals’ laundromat.  Kathy got to hear the owner’s whole life story.   His dad owned the bar next door, which I popped my head into and it was truly a dive bar.   Right around even with the worst ones I had ever been in.   There was an odd painting on the wall inside the laundromat, so I had to take a pic.   Here it is:

 

Below are a few pics of the fairgrounds campground.

 

We got out of Helena before 10 am and proceeded north on Interstate 15 toward the Canadian Border.    Luckily the rain waited till we were finished filling the water tank and dumping the other tanks before it let loose on us.

It rained the whole day and only stopped once we crossed the border.   The crossing was interesting as they never asked about the dog or about food we were bringing in.   So throwing out all our fruit and produce was apparently not needed.   For lunch on the way we ate what was left in the fridge… not much..  but it still was a lot to eat.   Reheated a large potato and topped it with spaghetti sauce with meatballs and leftover hamburger meat and leftover chicken tenders.    It was actually pretty good, but the rest of the drive we had that over-stuffed feeling like you get at Thanksgiving.

At the border they only asked for Passports, the RV registration, if we had any alcohol, tobacco, cannabis or guns.    Nothing about food or pets.   He also asked where we were from, and really wanted to know how long we would be traveling in Canada.   He wanted specifics.

After the 8 minutes chatting with the Canadian border guard, we headed a bit further north to Milk River where I had spotted a campground on the map the previous evening.   When I had called, no one had answered.  When I got there, I understood why, really laid back place.  The office didn’t look like anyone had been in it for years.

We spent one night at Milk River, 8 Flags Campground. (I counted 9 flags!)  Right next to the not very busy highway,  ( a car about every 10 minutes) and of course there was a not very busy railroad track just on the other side of that highway.   I only heard a couple of trains go by the whole time there and no train horns were heard.   So a pretty good spot for the night.

There was a sign on the office to boil water, so I didn’t hook that up.  I just connected up to the 30 amp shore power that didn’t have a visible circuit breaker.   I really needed to experiment with that power to see what exactly we can run in the coach at the same time when only connected to 30 amp shore power.   In the states we always seemed to have 50 amp power.  But we can’t do it here as we have no idea where the breaker is and if I guessed wrong, we would be unpowered till I could find someone that had access to the circuit breaker..   (Can we run the heat pump and the micro, toaster or coffee maker? )  I am guessing we can run two of them at the same time, if they are on different circuits; but I currently don’t know which circuits anything is on.

This campground only takes cash; so after finding a spot, I asked around where the nearest ATM was located.   Went there to get Canadian money as you could pay either 30 dollars Canadian or US.   Canadian money is only worth around 75% of US money, so it is a much better deal to use Canadian money.  ($30 Canadian is about $22.50 US)  And of course, most folks probably know this, but the best exchange rate you can get is  from an ATM.   Those money exchange places really take a big chunk of what you convert from cash.   And of course, when you get home, deposit the foreign cash in your bank for a similar very good exchange rate.  Last time, my bank wouldn’t take coins, only the paper cash I had when coming back from the Med Cruise.

The first ATM (and only one I thought there was nearby) said my card was invalid.  I thought I was going to have a real problem in Canada after seeing that message on the ATM screen as Google didn’t know of any banks nearby, and who knows, maybe my ATM card wouldn’t work anywhere in Canada…

I headed off to replace the produce and buy some meat to restock the fridge.   Milk River is a very small town, which means a very small market.   I guess they don’t eat a lot of veggies here in MR as the selection was lacking, and the meat selection was extremely lacking.   We will know more once we hit a larger town or city.   But the best part of going to the grocery store was they had an ATM inside.  You know the ones,  just a small kiosk.   Funny thing I found out, its fees were less than the bank’s ATM fees.  I always assumed those kiosks you find in a 7/11 or other places would really gouge you.   ($3 at the bank vs $2.50 at the kiosk)  So I was able to get cash and pay the campground in Canadian dollars.  Yeah!!   Their money looks really odd.  It’s got quite a bit of cellophane in it, so you can look thru part of their bills.   I guess it makes it more difficult to counterfeit.

The WiFi at our campground was almost nonexistent.   I could see a lot of AP’s from my roof mounted WiFi antenna , Mikrotik Metal AC Router (CPE), but not actually connect to any of them.

I must admit the Mikrotik has the most complicated interface I have ever seen.   Looks like something from the early ’90s.   My laptop could connect to one AP and it had very low power, but it was just enough access to look for the next campground.   None of the other devices could connect.  (iPad or iPhones.)  They couldn’t even see the SSID’s to try to connect.

That next morning we were off to Claresholm, Alberta, Canada

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SLC to Helena MT

It was raining as we left Salt Lake City at 9 am Thursday morning.    As we go further out of town, the rain slowed and eventually stopped.   The rest of the northern drive was dry.   I like driving the bus when it’s dry!   Just prior to Dillon, MT, the wind really picked up.   Had to fuel up there, so it was a bit shocking how windy it was when standing out in it filling the tank.   I ended up filling up at the same Sinclair station we filled up last summer.   Back then it wasn’t on Gas Buddy so I added it.   Was glad to see it was still listed when I started to plan the next fill-up.  $3.12 per gallon,  almost reasonable for diesel.   I pumped in $400 worth.   We will top up the tank once we get closer to the Canadian border as I am seeing their prices are like California diesel costs.

We stopped overnight in Idaho Falls at an Elks Lodge for $10 a night with  50 amp power and water.    It seemed pretty nice until around midnight when we woke up to someone screaming (presumably into a phone) about a fight he had with his girlfriend,  and he was pacing the parking lot around us.  He finally walked away and I fell back to sleep, but Kathy stayed awake waiting for the nightclub across the street to empty at 2 am.  She told me there was a lot of yelling and cars screeching about.   There were houses right across the street also.  Not sure how those folks deal with all the noise late in the night.  (unless they are the ones drinking in the bar)   So far we have stayed at 2 Elks lodges.   Neither place were peaceful at night.

We headed out of Idaho Falls around 10 and drove the 250+ miles to Helena.   I called the fairgrounds and made reservations for a few nights just prior to heading out.   Now that we are here, $21 a night is a great deal.  It’s actually at the outskirts of the city but seems like we are in the middle of nowhere.  Trees and grass all around, extremely quiet place.   Dusty seems to really like this place.  No stickers in his paws so far.   In Montana it seems campgrounds near cities are few and far between.   I noticed this last year when looking for a spot in Missoula when visiting my Niece.

The ride to here was fairly uneventful except for the wind gusts in the mountains.   I think we saw at least 3 Continental Divide signs on the drive here from Idaho.  6000+ summits,  not too tall for the Rockies.   I remember driving to Denver a long time ago and the Eisenhower Tunnel on I-70 was close to 12,000 feet.   Mostly I just remember the Toyota I had was having a hard time getting enough oxygen to give me any power to climb to that point.   Thankfully it was mostly downhill after that.   I wonder what this diesel would act like at that elevation.

On to Canada…next Stop!

 

 

 

 

 

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Lost Wages to Salt Lake City

We drove from Vegas to Beaver, UT on Sunday.  It’s at about 6,000′ elevation.  Pretty cold for us San Diegans.  Was 33 when we got up that morning.  I haven’t seen temps below 44 in San Diego except once when it got down to 32 degrees and killed my Heliotrope plant in the front yard.  It was purple and red one day, the next morning it was brown and never revived.

Anyway, prior to leaving San Diego I had two of the three Air Dump valves replaced as they were getting stuck open occasionally and it was irritating to wait for the air bags to fill so we could drive.   I was just replacing the one that was leaking, but par for the course, as soon as that was replaced, another one could be heard purging air when it wasn’t supposed to.   I drove all around town to locate another valve and could only get one.  But I had the guy order one from LA so I could swing by some other day and have it on hand if needed.

All seemed well after the second one was installed till the morning we were leaving on the trip.   I hadn’t made time to pick the other one up, so as we were exiting San Diego I had to drive to El Cajon and get it.  (about 20 miles out of the way)

Monday morning in Beaver the rear bags were fairly slow to fill; so while I waited, I called Freightliner in Salt Lake City to find out about having the last one replaced.   They told me I would need to wait till the 30th., 10 days from now!

So I googled Diesel Mechanics around Beaver, UT.   There was one with almost five stars on Google’s Reviews.   I called them.  They said to bring it right over and explained to me they were 1,000 feet from me.   We drove over, showed the mechanic the part.  He crawled under the coach, said it would be a quick swap, and had me drop the air and raise the coach on the jacks.

He had it replaced in 35 minutes.   The last guy took 2 hours to do it.  Paid them $110 (1 hr minimum) and we were on our way in less than an hour.   That was utterly amazing to me.  I’ve got to make sure I write up a review of them!

So we headed across the mountains toward Salt Lake City and then the rains came.  Then they turned to sleet and hail to make it a bit of an edgy ride.   When it started to sleet, I slowed to 50 mph; but I was getting passed by lots of trucks still doing the 80 mph they allow there.   Seemed nuts to me as it was very steep downgrades and climbs thru long curves during all of it.   I never felt the coach slip, but I was waiting for it to occur.

Once out of the winter weather, it was smooth sailing into downtown Salt Lake City to a KOA we stayed at on our way to Yellowstone back in 2017.   It was one of Kathy’s favorite parks, lots of grass for Dusty! Thankfully it’s a lot cooler here than it was in June of that year and a lot less crowded.

Drove over to the big temple that’s in the middle of downtown and got pizza for dinner!   The next morning it was raining pretty good and continued all day.  So I spent a lot of the day redoing my playlists on my local pc in the front of the coach so we can have tunes in the great white north where an internet connection may be difficult to find.

We switched our cell phones to Cricket Wireless as it appears AT&T has more connectivity in Canada and we could get an unlimited plan that includes Canada and Mexico for $40 each.    Our current Verizon and AT&T hotspot plans don’t include any data outside the USA.   So we are good in Alaska, but Canada will probably find us looking for WiFi when camping.   I installed a new omni-directional WiFi antenna from Mikrotik Metal AC Router on my crank-up TV antenna.

I still have my NanoStation with us for longer range WiFi acquisition situations.

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Passing thru Sin City.

We were happy to leave the incredibly windy Barstow area and make the short trek to Lost Wages.   We dropped by the local Elks Club and they had open sites, so we are camping there for the next couple of nights.   We thought we would see a show while here,  Kathy’s choice was Celion Dion for tonight’s show, but neither of us want to sit in the audience and cough thru it all.   Unfortunately, both of us caught a cold just before leaving on the trip.

We took a drive down the strip this afternoon after checking out the local In-N-Out for lunch.   Had to pick up a Tee Shirt at the corporate store.   I had never seen one one of their stores before.  I didn’t realize In-N-Out sold so much swag.   

On the way back to the strip, we found a large sculpture made up of only boats.  Most looked like canoes, but there were a lot of them all wired together.

As we drove down the strip, I was amazed just how much more crowded it is. It’s like they just never stopped building in the 15+ years since I was last there.  It’s a zoo now.  But it’s all mainly down at the south end of the strip right around Cesar’s Palace.   Get much further north and it peters out till you get down to Fremont Street downtown.

On our way toward downtown, we passed the Pawn Stars shop and the little chapel a friend of ours got married in back in the early ’90s.  I sure missed that velvet Elvis above the alter.

We drove on down to Fremont Street so Kathy could get a gander at the spectacle that is “Las Vegas.”   It didn’t disappoint, even the rather plump almost naked gals posing for pictures wanted to pet our Dusty.  Unfortunatly I missed that picture..

 

 

 

A new to me thing on Fremont Street are the 4  ziplines overhead.   They travel the whole way under the FSE overhead structure.   Our hour parking space was just about up, so we headed back to the car and off to find a fill-up station for the car, Nevada gas is quite a bit less than home.   I filled the RV with 130 gallons at $3.15, probably 75 cents less a gallon than anywhere in California right now.   And the car gas was more at $3.34, still about 50 cents cheaper than the gas in CA.

Oh,  you San Diego folks will get a kick from this.  Last night I was able to stop at a local Roberto’s Taco Shop.   I never thought there were any outside of San Diego, but this one used the same TM Logo.    If you get here and need a fix, it’s at the corner of Pecos and Las Vegas Blvd N.

And yes while we were here I was able to fix the camera and GPS feeds.

 

 

 

 

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Alaska or Bust!

We set out for the great adventure Wednesday afternoon making it a ways north on I-15 about three hours to just past Barstow, CA.   To my delight right before the exit I saw the sign for Calico Ghost Town.   I had seen that on a map back in the 1980’s and wanted to go there since.   I guess I forgot about that till that sign reminded me I never made it there.

I had been planning on just an overnight, but I paid for two after the gal at the desk mentioned CGT was 3 miles away, and am glad we did.   The ghost town was way better than expected.   There is even a campground inside the park which turns out to be a county park.   From what I read, the guy who created Knotts Berry Farm restored that town back in the 1950’s then donated it to the county.   This is a must see if you have never been to a ghost town, but I would probably not go there in the summertime.  It’s in the middle of the Mojave Desert.  It was a beautiful 70 degrees and a bit windy while we were there.  I can only imagine what it would be like in July. (probably 120 in the shade)

That evening the winds were blowing so wildly I considered pulling in the slides to move in the center of gravity for stability.   Everything was howling that night,  not much of a restful sleep for either of us.

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Boondocking in Quartzsite Solar Notes

It’s the middle of January 2019, the sun is low on the horizon and we are dry camping about 10 miles north of Quartzsite, AZ on BLM land off Plumosa Rd.  We camped with quite a few others, hooking up with David Botts’ group.   Tuesday, the afternoon we arrived, was pouring down rain and the dips on Highway 95 were running rivers of muddy water.  When we saw that, I  knew we would be in for some fun pulling out into the muddy desert, and suspected the two washes we had to cross would be flowing pretty good.  You always have to wonder how deep they will be when they are full of water.   They weren’t too bad, but the next day I must admit, I had never seen the coach so dirty.   The skies cleared within a couple hours of us getting there and deploying the slides, carpet and chairs. 

The following morning turned out to be a gorgeous day, and amazingly each day afterward was very nice too.   Warm and sunny till we headed back to San Diego. 

On our first full day here, the panels put out a respectable 160 amp hours of power,  2.15KW.  Pretty phenomenal for 640W of panels lying flat on the roof of our RV in mid-January.   But as it turns out, only about 80 amp hours made it back into the batteries, and the other 80 or so amp hours produced were consumed real-time by the loads running in the coach during those 9+ hours of daylight.   We did get the batteries juiced back up to 87% SOC, so that was pretty decent, although not what I was looking for.    So It was time to set up the solar suitcase I built last spring to provide those extra 8 amps every hour the coach consumed during those 9+ hours.  Hopefully that will allow all the power being generated by the roof panels to go into the batteries. 

After building that solar suitcase last spring, I returned the small 15 amp controller and purchased a larger 50 amp model that would handle the load from 640 watts of panels.  Fast forward to now and I did not have a controller to use with those 200 watts of panels.   They run at a different voltage from the roof panels, precluding me from hooking them into that controller, meaning I had to go out and buy one before I could hook them up.   So that afternoon,  Friday, I drove around Quartzsite looking for a 15 amp controller that could handle the 44 volts my suitcase was wired to produce.   Discount Solar had nothing to work with that voltage, and Bill’s Solar had something they said would work for about $300.  I decided to wait till the show that was to start the next morning to search for a solution there. 

We hit the big show tent early Saturday morning, trying to get in and out prior to the crowds.   Parking there can be a real pain, but someone was pulling out of a spot as we were about to pass them, and we pulled right into that spot!  We wandered all around the tent and spotted a booth from http://www.offthegridrvs.com which had a  Victron SmartSolar 75/15 controller on their table, and the cost was within a buck of what they cost on Amazon.   I bought that one.  And while I was paying for it, Chris’s girlfriend’s parents greeted us and we snapped this picture!!

Afterward we headed back to the coach to install it.  Turns out I didn’t have enough wire with me to complete the install, so I had to head back in to Quartzsite to a hardware store I had noticed on the way back to the coach that afternoon,  picked up a couple lengths of 10 gauge red-and-black wire.   

That allowed me to complete a temporary setup at around 4pm Saturday afternoon, a couple hours prior to sunset.   I could see that it would really help the situation tomorrow, our last full day prior to heading back to San Diego.   

Saturday night was the potluck dinner, and the band showed up before 7pm and started a few-hour gig.  They were fabulous as they had been last year.  The band is Notes from Neptune,.  They play the clubs in Phoenix. 

Sunday, our last day in the desert, was hazy with high clouds most of the day, lowering the amount of solar irradiation.  Thankfully the suitcase helped by adding another 5-8 amps of power all day long.   One note about using a suitcase is you need to remember to reposition them about every couple hours to point toward the sun as it moves across the sky.  It makes a fairly large difference in watt output each time you move it.  

Now we will need to wait till our dry camping adventure in Tucson during March to test again.  Should be a lot more solar power available by then. 

We saw this little fireplace while we were there.  It’s a wood burner and had a small adjustable blower fan in the orange box on the side to adjust the amount of heat being produced.   It was kind of clever.    This other device was hooked to David’s Komodo Joe cooker.   It was a temperature and WiFi enabled air blower that will keep the temperature you program for cooking in your KJ.  David was using it to smoke some ribs at right around 200 degrees.   Now that’s some slow cooking  🙂  

It’s now the middle of February and I finished the permanent controller installation for the suitcase this week.  

 

 

 

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The General Patton Museum

We took a bus about an hour east from the Indio CA rally facility to the Patton Museum. I was surprised it was right off the 10 freeway. Turns out it is on the original spot of Camp Young, one of many camps spread out over thousands of square miles of California, Arizona and Nevada desert. The first thing you saw as you walked in was a huge terrain map of all the camps. Kind of helped give you a perspective of just how large an area they used for training. Turns out the the furthest east encampment was about 20 miles east of where we would be camping next week. And we would be camping over 2 hours drive from here at 75 MPH freeway speeds. That must have been one hell of a drive back then on dirt roads.

Anyway,  the museum was much nicer than I expected.  The really put in a lot of work to make it a nice place.   Lots of tanks to look at and some with cutaways, others with turrets removed and stairs allowing easy from the top.   They even had a Sherman tank and it had a lot of 50 cal holes in it.  No wonder why they were called Ronson’s by the Gerrys.   

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Issues encountered while going to the Balloon Fiesta

During our Tuesday afternoon drive from Silver City, NM,  we pulled over in a rest area near Socorro, NM, about an hour south of Albuquerque.   I did my usual walk-around prior to getting back on the road.   When checking the toad connections, I noticed some red fluid on the ground under the coach.   I was hoping it was from a prior vehicle parked in the spot; but when I looked underneath, I saw fluid dripping down.  I thought it was transmission fluid as it was red; but when I got a little between my fingers, I realized it wasn’t oily.  Ah Ha.. it was coolant.

I looked into the engine compartment and could not see where it was coming from.   I was hoping it was a hose leaking.    I found a bottle of extra coolant I travel with and poured it into the tank so it was high enough to see in the site-glass again.   Then I headed the hour north with my eye on the engine temp gauge while I called the ABQ Freightliner dealer who proceeded to tell me it would be days before they could get me in to look at it.

My second call was to the ABQ Cummins shop whom I was able to get them to say bring it right in.  I drove there, and Charley, the guy I had talked to, called over the service supervisor, Josh to check it out.  He immediately was able to see where it was coming from and got out his camera and snapped a picture.

We could see it was a hole in the radiator, not a hose as I had hoped.  They wrote up an estimate of $4,700 to replace it.  Holy Cow!   I called my extended warranty company who told me they needed to talk with the mechanic, not me.  Of course he was no longer in sight and I had to hang up as they wouldn’t hold.

Once they came back, I gave Charley the number to call and the account numbers info.   He called them and they wanted a quote for a re-core, not the new radiator I had specified.  (My radiator is likely 12 years old like my coach, so a new one was in order to make it less likely to happen again from metal fatigue)

Charley called them back, and the insurance company argued that a re-core would cost $500 not the $1,800 he was quoting.  (The new one was $2,000)  The claims adjuster appeared to be living in 1972 pricing land.   We left as the insurance company, which is in Florida, closed so Charley was going to rewrite it up with a re-core and submit it the next day.

We drove off to the RV parking at the Balloon Fiesta to wait knowing the part was about a week lead time.   Fast forward to the following Monday,  I called Charley and he said he hadn’t heard back from the Ins Co.  I called them and they said they were still waiting for the quote with the re-core.    It appears Charley never called them back.  I should have figured he might not and should have called him that next day to remind him.  So we were going to pay the price.

I called him back, and he then called and submitted the new quote.   Now we had lost about a week.  Charley called me back to tell me they were going to send an adjuster to look at the problem and they would write up the claim after they got his report.   The adjuster, an independent guy in the area, had 48 hours to be there.   So the next morning we packed up and moved the coach to the Cummins parking lot to camp for a couple of days waiting for him.   While there, I used their dump station and also filled the water tank since we had been dry camping for a week already.   That was good as the Balloon Fiesta had contracted with a company to bring trucks around to the coaches and pump them out for $30 each time and another truck for water refills for another $30.   So by taking advantage of the Cummins stay, we avoided paying that $60.

Around 2 that afternoon a tech knocked on the door and said the adjuster was there.  (Sweet!)

Mike was his name and I told him we needed to find Josh, the service mgr, who had diagnosed the issue and had pics.   He asked the tech to find Josh and send him out.   Josh came out a few moments later and he started discussing  the problem he had seen and showed Mike the pics.   Mike agreed there was a radiator leak, but he needed to know why the radiator was leaking,  was it corrosion or a rock.   That was an interesting conversation,  as Mike proclaimed he was an “expert” and I realized this was probably a hopeless issue for me.

After that I provided a couple rubber mats for him to lie on and he snapped a few pics with a small camera.   He was quite a character and kept repeating he needed to know why it was leaking for the insurance company.   It sounded like he expected the Cummins shop to remove the radiator first so he could inspect it.   That, to me, was a worst-case scenario as we would be “motorhomeless” for a long time and potentially miss the last week of the Balloon Fiesta.   Once the radiator was removed for inspection, the coach was an immovable object, stuck in the repair bay.   And we knew that getting the new radiator was a week afterward.

Mike left saying Charley should hear from the Insurance company before  10 the next morning.   We decided to pack up and go back to the Balloon RV parking lot and wait for the insurance company response.   At least our tanks were empty and the water tank was full again.

The following morning around 11 am I got the call from Charley.   He said the insurance company had authorized the repair for the re-core but would not pay the miscellaneous charges.   So they would pay a little less than $4,400, I authorized Charley to buy the new radiator, which was only $200 more than the re-core, and they ordered it.   I texted a buddy who has had a bit of coach issues recently and I said I should play the lottery after hearing they will pay.  He texted back that I had “already won”.

I called back the next day to see if it was ordered, and he told me it was now 7-10 business days away.  Previously it was 5 business days.   So that put our Halloween party bus night in jeopardy and also my academy training class for volunteering with the SDPD starting on the 29th.

Once the Balloon Fiesta was finished on Sunday morning, we packed up and drove back to the Cummins parking lot to camp there.   They provide 50 amp electric service to 4 spots in their parking lot.   It’s like luxury after two weeks of dry camping using the genny and our new solar panels to recharge the batteries.  (That will be another post about using the solar while dry camping there)

I had called around and there was no availability for camping near ABQ the day the event closed.    Around 800-1,000 RVs were leaving that Sunday morning.   We could have stayed one more day if we wanted to by paying a small fee, but the weather forecast was for snow on Monday.   I didn’t think it would be a great idea to be on the road if it really snowed that morning, so we packed up and headed to the Cummins shop hoping there was a space still available.

When we got there all the RV parking spaces were empty.  Nice!!

We parked it , deployed the slides and hooked up to the 50 amp pedestal, keeping my fingers crossed they didn’t power them down on the weekend.   I plugged it in, flipped the breaker and there were lights on my SurgeGuard.  Sweet!

That night we realized it wasn’t a great area.  Lots of homeless folks in the distance around us.     The next morning, Monday, I asked if there was a tracking number for the shipment.   They didn’t have one but gave me the number of the Freightliner dealer they ordered it thru.   I called them and was fortunately transferred to the receiving dock.  The guy there was able to find the tracking info and said it would be there tomorrow (Tuesday 16th)  Our repair was scheduled for Monday the 22nd, and I hoped to be able to push it up a couple days since the part would be here so soon,  to be able to make it home for the Halloween party; but as the week progressed, we could see how jammed they were.   Lots of RV’s were going in and out of the place.  We met one couple with a 2008 American Tradition coach that had just had their second engine installed at a cost of $33,000.  Yikes.. I asked if they had an extended warranty to cover that but he said no.   Double Yikes!!

We had been having intermittent air leveling issues since our Northwest trip and it started up again on the cold morning at the fiesta campground.   That’s when I realized the problem only occurred when it was below 60 or so degrees.   The cold morning leaving San Francisco,  a cold morning leaving Klamath Falls, then in Coos Bay, and Salem Oregon.  After that it hadn’t occurred till now.   After we left the west side of the Cascades and headed toward the desert of eastern Washington, we hadn’t experienced it again.

Fast forward to this week,  the wind really started to blow hard and a tree behind us started scraping on the roof, so I wanted to move the coach up a foot to prevent that, and the coach wouldn’t level up again and I could hear a lot of air leaking near the rear wheels.

I went inside the Cummins service and asked if they had time to look at it.  That was a negative, so I called the Freightliner dealer and this time they said to bring it right over, which we did.  I finally got it aired up to about 100 lbs, which aired up the bags enough to allow driving it there.  I could still hear the air escaping, but the on-board compressor was just able to keep up enough air pressure to let us drive over there.

After a bit they brought the coach in and were able to find a bad elbow joint, a $2 part was leaking big time.  It seems that when it was warm, the metal must have expanded just enough to lessen the leak so we didn’t notice it.   But it was really cold when we got it there, so they found it almost immediately.   Once that was fixed, the tech stayed underneath and sprayed soapy water on every other fitting he could reach to checking for other leaks.   None were found, and we drove back to the Cummins shop to wait..

It’s Saturday in Albuquerque and our repair work will be starting on Monday at 7 am.   We are going to rent a hotel  Monday night, hoping they will be finished by Tuesday evening so we can stay in the coach Tuesday night and get a really early start home on Wednesday morning.  Or maybe leave late on Tuesday to go up a steep grade to give the work a good field testing.   The camping spots started to fill up in earnest Saturday afternoon and by Sunday there were 5 coach’s plugged into the 4 pedestals.

Monday morning around 7:30 Daniel the mechanic who was assigned to R&R the radiator drove our coach to the furthest bay in the building and backed it in.   We stuck around in case there were any questions, and I asked Josh to let me know when the radiator was out so I could see in there.

About 8:30 the next morning I got the call that the radiator was out and I could come over to look at it.  I was glad I did as I had asked them to replace all the hoses while the radiator was out and they had said all the hoses were straight so nothing needed to be ordered.   When I popped my head under the coach that was high in the air I noticed a molded hose right away and pointed it out to Josh.   He found one other so we were going to need to order them.   Of course there were none in stock nearby so we had to airfreight them and they wouldn’t be there till sometime on Wednesday.  Oh well another night in the hotel would be required.

Wednesday afternoon we got the word that the hoses had arrived and they should have it all finished by 4pm.    Daniel pulled the coach out about then and we got all the paperwork done and headed out on the road thinking we could get a couple hundred miles south before sundown.  But within an hour I realized the sun was going down before we got the 80 miles to Socorro NM.   We tried calling a couple of places but all we got were busy signals.    We drove to one of the places as it was just about dark and the place was sparsely occupied.   I checked in and pulled into a spot with the car hanging out into the interior roadway as that pull thru was meant for something 20 feet long.   We setup for the night and were asleep by 9pm.   The next morning we rose early and were on the road by 8am (7am pacific)   I was planning on getting to Tucson for the night but when we drove thru there at 2pm I decided to try to make Yuma for the night.  We arrived at the campground Kathy called at 5pm checked in and setup for the night.  (Thursday)

The next morning we got on the road at 9am and were parked in front of the house at noon.  Success!    It was warm in San Diego, of course, we had to start unpacking as the coach heated up.