Fulltiming Road Runners

Well again it has been a few days since I have posted an up date so here goes the simplified version.

The generator folks are still undecided as to what could or might be wrong with the generator so we headed on out to California at about noon on friday the 21st. I had pretty much decided that Mesquite Nevada would be our first stop, but the casino we usually park at had closed the Rv parking area and we could not find anything else readily so, we kept on moving on. About the time we got to Vegas the winds were bad enough we decided to hunker down for the night. We stopped for fuel at the Vegas flying J and they said that it would be fine to park there for the night any where we could find a spot. We found one that was easy to get into and parked for the night. We had a couple of those famous vegas downpours during the night and headed out in the morning.

We arrived in Wildomar early in the afternoon and looked over the place we were going to park for the next month or so, a friend of Judy’s mom Marie, and found that it would be nearly impossible to get our trailer in there and headed over to Judy’s brother Eddies place to decide what to do.

After talking with Ed we decided to see if we could get it in his driveway and be able to get it level enough to be able to stay there for a while. With a lot of help from Eddie we got the monster parked and level enough to make it work, opened it up and set up shop.

And wouldn’t know it we were parked in front of the back yard access gate and just inside the gate was a trailer that Eddie’s sister in law had just sold but not set up to be picked up.  And as life goes a couple hours later a fellow shows up to pick up said trailer so we had to close up and pull out so he could hook up and pull the trailer out. Then move ours back,relevel and open stuff back up.

That night Judy’s mom invited us to dinner at her place so we went over and enjoyed a pretty darn good pot roast dinner.  Then returned to Eddies Driveway and visited with Eddie his wife and three children, oh, and the dog. To try to conserve tank space we used one of the bath rooms in the house for most of our bath room needs.

We had planned on testing and evaluating our boondocking methods at the parking slot at Judy’s mothers friend Maries place where we couldn’t fit so we decided to go ahead with the testing at Eddies and April’s place.

We spent the first night using battery power for lights only. Although Eddie and April offered us the use of a guest room while we were there.  We decided that we would be much less of an imposition on them if we spent time other than visiting in the tailer so we could get stuff tested. The origional plan was to not plug in to Eddies house power unless we really needed to. I decided that the floors really needed to be vacuumed and thought that it might pull too much from the batteries so I ran a cord and plugged into his garage outlet.  The vacuum really did not seem to be getting enough power ( it was plugged into a circuit that had a large freezer running and I guess it could not handel both ) I unhooked and thought I was quick enough to not have thrown a breaker and switched over to the invertor and walla it ran fine. I did forget to see if we had thrown a breaker and the next day April told me we had tripped the Gfi breaker for the garage. At this point I decided we would run off the inverter or generator for the rest of our stay.

The next project to try was the tv using the antenne. Fired it up and it was working fine, for a while any way.  The TV started to switch off and on and the controller would not work to shut it down so I went out and shut down the inverter.  It was showing an internal fault so I reset it and every thing started to work fine (for about 5 minutes) then the off and on started again. I decided to shut it down and play with it the next day.

The next day we fired it up again and after a while it started in again so I turned the inverter off.

I still needed to test the Kubota generator with the washer & dryer so I set out to do laundry. Did a couple loads with no changes from what it was doing in Salt Lake.

That evening we decided to just run the little Honda 2000 generator so we could watch tv in the trailer, it worked fine.

The next day I played with the invertor some more and got nowhere so I got out the books and tried to see where the problem was, no luck with a self fix and decided that it would need to be worked on by someone who had a clue, I did not.

The gray tank was full so I talked with Eddy about options to pump it to a drain in the house. Ed remembered he had a clean out in the garage so we decided to do it there. Before trying to dump into the clean out I decided to test everything with clean water to avoid making a mess and make sure the cleanout was not blocked. everything seemed ok so I hooked up the macerator to the dump and pumped the gray into the cleanout without making a mess (totally unusual to me). We setteled in for the night with the honda running and watched tv for the rest of the evening.

Now for today Wednesday the 26th.

This morning I decided to play with the invertor some more. I remembered having problems withthe onboard electrical system before and the cause of the problem was the water heater electrical switch being turned on causing an overload to the system. I opened up the panel and behold the switch was in the on position, not off as it should have been. I turned it off and started the tv to see if it would solve the problem and lo and behold it worked with little to no drain on the batteries, at least not more than the solar was providing. So I think the problem may be solved. Now to just remember this scenerio because it will raise its ugly head again for sure . Tonight we are going over to Judy’s moms place for dinner again then back to watch some tv without the generator ( I hope ).

I also called Gene, the kubota rep we bought it from, and told him the elevation change did nothing. After a long discussion he decided that he would call a distributer in Ca and see if he could set up a test run with another 7,000 and see if it did the same thing as ours was. Now to wait for his reply.

It’s amazing how rapidly things change.

We are not taking the generator to the shop today, they came out yesterday and tested the generator. They did find a possible/probable problem and will be getting back to us on what to do late this afternoon.

We have to be out of our space here at the KOA by 11:00 a.m. tomorrow or start paying the daily rate ($30+/day). So, whatever the generator people say, we will be pulling out in the morning (Friday, 9/21/07). I guess if they have to fix or replace the generator, we’ll just park the whole rig at their place and live there until they are done. Thank heavens we don’t have a set schedule.  Judy Gail

(Should we be??)

We are now committed to a day and time to hit the road…… Thursday, on the road by noon going all the way to the generator shop.

It will be no problem being ready by then. We could probably leave early in the morning on Thurs., but we seem to have made an appointment with the generator people here for 1:00 p.m on that day. We’ve been battling an issue since we connected the generator to the 5th wheel and the washer/dryer a year ago. It’s a long story and if you want to hear me (us) whine more, email us and we’ll go into the whole story.

We’re going south to Wildomar, California first. Usually when we go that direction, we go straight down I-15 and stop at the Casa Blanca Casino in Mesquite, NV for the night. I’ve heard they are redoing the parking area which used to be designated for O/Nite RV parking. Besides, I doubt we’ll get over the Virgin River pass before nightfall and both Thom and I decided we don’t want to do that one in the dark with the big 5th wheel (they always seem to be doing roadwork)….. it was bad enough with the little TT. We can probably find a wide spot off the freeway near St. George, UT for the night.

Lots of thoughts are going through my mind and lots of feelings happening. I wonder if all the full-timers go through these unsettled feelings when they first head out on the road.

I don’t know if I’m disappointed or just disillusioned.

Today was my last day of work…….. forever………. unless we take a Workamper job down the line somewhere.

I expected to feel a huge weight lift off my shoulders when I walked out the door of the office today……….. It felt like any other day.

I expected to feel FREE when I walked out the door of the office for the last time……….. It felt like any other day.

I guess it won’t all become a reality until we finish getting this 5th wheel all packed and ready to roll, and we hit the road, and I realize we aren’t just on vacation and we really don’t have to go back to Salt Lake City, except to see family and the new grandchild next spring. And then it’s not a “have to”, but a “want to”.

I am sooo looking forward to experiencing retirement and being on the road with Thom and seeing how we handle 24/7 with each other. I expect it to be wonderful.

Well, its been a few days since the last entry. We have been really busy finishing up things on our jobs so we can leave feeling good. My last work day is today, and it should be over before noon. Judy’s last work day should be Friday

I did manage to finish clearing out the storage shed so there is nothing to be left behind that our kids do not already have. I also finally got the carpets cleaned so all we need to do now is find places for all the stuff we are taking with us and head out next week sometime . Yeh right lol

We do have a friend (Kurt) who will be following us in about a month and he plans on spending the winter with us in Quartzite. He wants to see what fulltime rving is all about and if he likes it will probably go out and find himself a small motor home , probably a class c and do it himself

Wow! We made it to Sturgis, South Dakota Friday afternoon around 4:30 p.m. or so…. only approximately 13 hours to do 680+ miles. Thom did all the driving with about a 45 minute nap somewhere in the middle.

Every time we head out through Wyoming I think it’s going to be boring as heck and I’ll get a great long nap…… wrong…….There are always things to look at that catch my attention and make me want to stay awake just a little longer in case another super sight comes along.

*side note* There was a bathtub in the motel in Sturgis, but I was too tired to do anything more than chill a bit, grab a bite to eat, take a quick shower ‘n go to bed.

We got home around 11:30 last night. That’s after getting up at 5:30, getting to the Dept. of Licensing at 7:10, getting our licenses, hitting the road at 8:30, side-tripping to Devil’s Tower, ‘n me mis-reading DeLorme a coupla times. It amazes me that at his ancient age, Thom can still put in these kind of hours and not need 3 days to recuperate.

We came home a different way than we went, never like to backtrack if not necessary. I have some photos I will put up in a gallery and will link to it later. May be 3 or 4 weeks before you see it, we’re gonna be really busy preparing to hit the road! In the meantime here’s a quick shot of the Devil’s Tower.