Plomosa Road December 26th 2017

Sorry, folks – from sheer laziness, I may have saved this excerpt up too long since the last e-mail. To speed up the process, I have eliminated a few non-essential bits of grammar (such as pronouns and verbs)

 

Back in mid-November, you may recall that I had made it in one piece as far as Boardman Marina and RV Park on the Columbia River south shore.

 

From Boardman to 7 Feathers Casino at Canyonville, OR took about 7.5 hours. Arrived just at dark. 7 Feathers Service station across from the casino offers easy access for fuel. Camp in “RV Dry Lot” (follow signs turn right at Burger King). Big spaces fit me and Jeep without unhooking. Short walk to the casino though there is a free shuttle.

Buffet excellent (prime rib + everything else) for $17.99 after a half hour wait. First, one waits in the “wait” line to register as “one who is waiting”. Then, they text you (if you remembered to bring your cell), or give you a pager gizmo that vibrates when they are ready. Meanwhile one sits on a bench and chats with other “waiters”.

Dry roads from 7 Feathers over mountains to Rolling Hills Casino at Corning CA (about 5 hours) where temps were quite a bit warmer (68°). Fuel Station at Casino handy so I topped up tanks – getting about 7.5 mpg (US).

 

2 miles north of the casino is the town of Corning, famous for the “Pit Stop” a shop that sells all sorts of olives. Also at Corning is a Blue Beacon Truck Wash (signs on Freeway) where I went to get the muck cleaned off the CC and Jeep for $39.50

Rather than camp in the parking lots with the semis, I opted for the RV Park where I stayed before – walking distance to the casino and very attractive.

Even though this is an optional cost, there are some advantages. Plugged in, I use mostly the electric heater rather than diesel for warmth and hot water and, since I connected to the sewer dump, I was able to do laundry in-house The Park had good Wi-Fi and there was no noise from the trucks. When I camp without power and use the heater, it can draw .35 gallons of diesel/hour, though this depends on how cold it is and could easily be less than that as the heater circulates according to the thermostat.

 

Rolling Hills buffet right up there with the best, as it should be at almost $20 with tip. I tried to recover this expenditure on a slot machine and, after dropping almost $10, had a big win of nearly $12 (not exactly a jackpot) to come out ahead by $.0.46. This is my system of gambling on the slot machines, which I don’t really like. Play for high stakes ($1 per spin) to a maximum bankroll of $20 and quit if ahead (even on the first roll) or lose the entire $20. I think that I might be slightly ahead over the two years that I have been playing by this principle. In any case, the system gets me out of the casino after only a few minutes of gambling and back to the coach to watch TV.

 

Nov 24^th 2017 Tachi Palace Casino. Quite an adventure from Rolling Hills to Tachi. Started out smoothly but at Stockton on I-5, warning lights and alarms sounded to indicate high temperature and the temp gauge shot up to near max. I was able to pull off the freeway and park on a street in Stockton. A check revealed that all coolant had leaked out. Used my Good Sam Roadside Assistance to get Ernie’s Mobile Truck Repair out (took an hour or more) He diagnosed a cracked cylinder head (bad news). We filled with 7 gallons of water and I made it to Delta Truck Center at French Camp CA, about 8 miles south of Stockton. This is a huge place with over 15 service bays, and caters mostly to Freightliner semi-trucks. They were closing early for the Thanksgiving holiday but took me in on compassionate grounds. The mechanic discovered that a coolant supply hose had rotted out at the fitting. There was no cracked cylinder head, for which I was thankful. Apparently, this was caused by having had a gas line hose in place rather than a proper hot water hose. Gas line hose is not designed to take the high temperature of circulating coolant. This was my second instance of losing coolant (a different hose last time in Bakersfield) but, at least the job got done, the part was cheap, labour expensive) and I got on the road again in the dark about 6:30.

First I had to hook up the Jeep and fell subject to one of my most frequent hook-up errors – that is to connect jeep to coach and forgetting to put the transfer case into neutral. This locks up the jeep transmission so I skidded a few feet in the Delta lot before discovering the issue. Bumper to bumper traffic all the way (several hours) to the Tachi turn-off at Hwy 198. I discovered on arrival at Tachi that my brake in the Jeep had been on the whole time because I had somehow connected it too tightly to the pedal. Lots of brake shoe dust but no real damage, I hope. As the brakes and brake lights were on the whole trip, the Jeep battery was dead the next day. This I jumped using the battery charger and generator from the coach – not sure if the battery is punched but will find out – the Jeep seems to run fine but time will tell – did a test milk run into the Harlan Walmart and all seemed well.

I arrived at Tachi after following my GPS about an extra 15 miles (at least) through the surrounding countryside in the middle of the night, even though I knew the actual route from having been there before. I thought that, in the dark, the GPS would give me good warning of the turns – another error in an error filled day/night! I think that it did not recognize that highway #198 was new and decided to send me on a secondary route. For such a huge place, the road signage was pathetic. I can imagine the surrounding farm fields filled with RVs, endlessly circling.

In the parking lot, I pulled in beside another motorhome on fairly level ground, set up the slides and went to bed. My neighbours, Gerry and Linda, were on their way to Pasadena and had a coach similar to mine so we inspected each other’s premises. Gerry also helped advise on the brake and battery situation.

 

The buffet at Tachi was excellent, a Thanksgiving theme with turkey along with everything else imaginable. Gerry and Linda were there at the same time so I sat with them and discussed the state of the world. After dinner, I went and found a slot machine to play, was up a dollar in a few minutes and returned, victoriously, to the coach to watch TV. I decided to stay over for a third night as life in the parking lot was quite pleasant and stress-free. I also wanted to take out the shelves in my fridge and reverse them so the small raised bar sat at the front to prevent things from sliding out. Security and shuttle carts passed by every few minutes and everyone was quite friendly.

 

Next on the list – Orange Grove RV Park outside west-Bakersfield. The trip started slowly as my run of misfortunes continued, even before I started the engine. The large slide-out on the passenger side of the coach would not budge when I pressed the switch to retract it. After about three hours and checking the manual, I found that I could crank it in by using a crescent wrench on the main shaft that holds the pinions that move the two racks in and out. I made it to Bakersfield and a Camping World there, where they discovered that the “slow-blow” fuse had blown so no power was getting to the mechanism. This fixed, I headed to Orange Grove RV for a couple of days of stimulating orange scents from trees that line each site in the park. Driving in to town, I looked around for some spare fuses but discovered that these are as rare as hen’s teeth.

 

The Tehachapi pass is just east of Bakersfield and is known for extremes of weather. One time in the past, I encountered a violent snow storm on my way west. This trip, nothing too violent, though winds were strong and rain was sheeting down near the summit. I had decided to make an on-line booking at Lake Havasu State Park that night, which was lucky as the Park was full. A couple of nights there, my first stop in Arizona, plus one trip to the Golden Corral buffet nearby and I was ready for the desert.

 

Bouse is about an hour and a half from Havasu, through the town of Parker en-route, so I managed to get to Plomosa Road in good time. There, I met up with Susan and Walt Brugger who were camped at the top end of the trail. I found some free ground about half-way up and settled in. After having extended my slides, I discovered a bolt sitting in one of the compartment trays. Turns out this was a shear pin that had snapped but not completely disconnected. It would, no doubt, have fallen out at the first opportunity. Having some spares that I managed to find in Havasu, I changed this one out for a new one. Walt came by the next day and discovered another one in similar condition so that got changed as well. Why these pins break is by design but can often be traced back to a factor such as misalignment or overweight on one side of the slide causing the rails to twist.

 

My other main preoccupation since arriving at Plomosa has been a circulation pump on the Aqua-Hot heater. Suddenly, it stopped delivering hot glycol to the zone 1 registers located in the living area These, in turn, blow hot air inside the coach. In the end, I discovered that wires leading to the pump motor were the cause of the problem. Walt came over sprayed WD 40 on everything and, so far, we’re back in business.

The weather has been mild enough (75/40) that I haven’t really needed any heat but it is nice to know that I could get some if global cooling returns to the desert. Days are mostly clear and sunny despite the fact that wildfires are raging all over southern California – I guess smoke is going off-shore with Santa-Ana winds

 

Another looming threat is that the Aqua Hot heater may have a split copper water line inside. This has been leaking into the coolant tank. I'm being told that there may be no way to fix this other than replacement. These things are north of $10000.00! I don't understand why, if they can build the device in the first place, they can't take it apart to repair one component (copper pipe coil that may have frozen back in Canada). The water system, and even the heating system, still works fine but the expansion tank for coolant was filling up by itself, presumably from water leaking from the copper line. This has stopped for now since I unhooked from "shore" water back at Havasu S.P. Maybe the pressure there was higher than what my water pump delivers and that is the difference?

I could probably use another solar panel for November/December - particularly now that I am charging the bike battery (7.5 amps) on top of everything else. Come late-January, longer days and higher sun angles, I can stop using the suitcase as I then have plenty of power. My roof panels are 24V/250W, so I would have to coordinate the MPPT controllers with anything new. The alternative and possibly the simplest solution is to run the generator for an hour every few days . Handy Bob would not be proud but I suspect that he doesn’t nuke his potato and morning latte – or have an e-bike battery to charge!

Meanwhile, back at the slide-out, Walt and I changed out 2 shear pins. We discovered that one, additional to the one that I fixed, had broken but was still hanging in with half the pin - it would have gone, so good that we found it. Each of the big slides has 3 pins, one of which is very hard to get at. Weight could be the issue (probably is) but each big slide has two sets of four bogey wheels that the rack passes over - none seemed to be stuck so it should move easily. Anyway, Walt re-lubed everything so all I can do is hope for the best.

I have opened up the back of the water compartment to find a heat register and thermostat there. This seems to work well as long as the bedroom (zone2) is activated. The water pump itself, however, is on the floor and in front of the panel so does not seem to receive much heat, if any. I bought some insulation in Parker and covered the gap – hopefully, this will work.

 

Walking around the coach and reinstalling the wheel covers that blew off in a high wind, I found a flat tire on the outside rear passenger wheel. Several calls to Good Sam Roadside Service got me to C & S Tire out of Salome, AZ. A truck arrived about two hours later and the man jacked up the CC with an air jack, took off the tire and inserted a patch. I was quite nervous about this guy crawling around under the coach placing his jack under the axle because I have heard horror stories about  air-bag systems occasionally self-releasing, coaches dropping down with consequent injuries and even a fatality of some mechanic with his head stuck in the wrong place.

 

Good Sam told me that they would not pay for this service as the repair had involved a patch. Had this been a simple valve stem replacement, they would have paid the whole bill. Needless to say, I was disappointed with this and told them so. In any event, the tire was fixed and will hopefully remain so

 

Dec 24^th Breakfast with Darch and Catherine at Bad Boys in Quartzsite. They are on their way to Palm Springs for a family Xmas.

Am going to drive over to Why (4½ hours) on Dec 28^th and meet Ted Webber at Gunsight Wash on the 30^th. Will check in to Hickiwan Trails RV Park for a couple of days to replenish water etc. and do laundry.