Fulltiming Road Runners

I haven’t been writing lately because there’s not much to talk about… until yesterday.  It was a really good day for me.

Thom had to go to the college to get them to start withholding for federal taxes.  His “stipend” is too small for taxes to be withheld so we had to have them manually enter withholding.  On the way to the college he dropped me off at my old office.  I spent two wonderful hours visiting with my ex-co-workers.  It was so nice to see and talk to all those wonderful people who took my special requests in stride and almost always came through to satisfy the customer’s needs.  I was given lots of hugs and made to feel missed and loved and appreciated.  I was even asked if I wanted a job.  My answer?  “NO WAY!!”

I didn’t realize until I was there how much I would enjoy seeing and spending time with Paul, my ex-boss, and Jim, my other ex-boss.  Jim couldn’t stay though so I missed catching up with happenings in his life.

Paul took me to lunch and it was so special to spend the hour or so catching up and seeing how we’ve both changed since last Sept.  Paul said he would come up to the campground sometime while we are there.  I sure hope he makes it.  It’ll be fun. 

On a not so happy note…
I’m getting frustrated with the dealer and repair schedule on our trailer.  We HAVE to be at our campground next Monday.  Today is Tuesday.  We were scheduled to go into the shop tomorrow (Wed) for the final work.  Parts didn’t come in, so now it’s Thursday before we get into the shop.  I don’t understand why they are holding back for parts.  They have the flooring, they picked it up on Monday.  Why don’t they do the floor while waiting for shades & track for drawer?  The time required to replace the floor is 2 days for 1 man.  If our service tech can’t get help, we are up against the wall for meeting our obligation.  To top it off, after the dealer is done with our trailer, we have to stop at a tire repair shop to have one of our tires repaired. 

I’m not letting my frustrations spoil my joy of spending time with my co-workers though.

Well we are still at the dealers getting stuff done. They have done all they can without the parts and authorization that are in rout or in the works. We did however get lucky, well kind of. Our Motosat dish went freaky and scratched up our front cap some and would not stow anywhere near where it belonged so we left it up and called Motosat. Wouldn’t you know it we are beyond the we come to you part of the warranty. I told The Motosat techncal service rep our situation and that stowing the dish could cause more damage, they decided to just come to us and instead of trouble shooting the dish would replace the whole thing except for what was screwed to the roof( that would have caused a whole new set of problems). They came this afternoon and got the job done in a little more than an hour. Ardells even let us use one of thier forklifts and driver to get the new one up there and the old one off. I guess there are still a few company’s that believe in customer service left. Now we just sit and wait for parts and authorization to replace the tile lino in the kitchen. We just might get lucky and be done in time to get to our jobs in Ogden canyon on time.

Mo later Thom

It SNOWED today. It’s cold this evening. I’m thinking of what it’s like 1000′ higher in our campgrounds. Don’ wanna go there yet! Thank heavens we have a couple of weeks yet.

The techs here at the dealers couldn’t plumb our propane for the heater we want to install due to liability issues. They gave us the name of a guy who will come out tonight or tomorrow to do it. He’s coming out to check it out to give us an estimate.

We are also having problems with our MotoSat satellite dish. Don’t know what the problem is but it’s stowing wrong and has gouged our fiberglass cap on one side and scratched, marred the roof on the other side. They are coming out tomorrow to replace the whole unit (under warrenty). I really would like it if silly things would quit happening to us! I am quite impressed with MotoSat and their desire to keep their customer happy. These days customer service is almost unheard of. They’re bringing it back.

We went to see Coen yesterday afteron. You can see all the pics I took by clicking on the link to his album to the left — “Coen Russell Tucker”

While the service department is waiting for approval from the factory to do the warranty work on our trailer, we are having them plumb propane to the place we want to put an infrared heater.  It looks like I’ll be getting a new kitchen floor… assuming the factory approves.  We had a bolt under the floor unscrew itself until the head cut thru the floor.  The rest of the stuff is pretty simple stuff.  We had three 12 volt outlets put in the trailer and one of them has quit working.  We have drawer and cupboard latches that have broken.  Three Day/Night shades that broke (people are really complaining about those things).  I’d just as soon have blinds put in and I’ll make curtains.  The brackets that hold the electric wires under the slide up have broken and need to be replaced.

One of my biggest pet peeves with my trailer is the idiots at the factory put the pantry shelves in upside down so the lips that help keep items from falling out are hanging down and do no good whatsoever!  We’re not going to make the service dept. here fix that though.  One day when the pantry is getting low on goods we’ll empty the shelves and turn them right side up… probably adjust their heights as well.

I’m sitting in the lounge at the dealers working on their wifi (unsecured).  It’s a bit boring here, but too cold outside to take a walk, so when I finish this blog I’ll get my beads out and finish the necklace I worked on all morning.  If my boredom gets too bad, I can always play solitaire.

‘ Nuff ramblin’ for now.  Wishin’ ya’ll wonderful days!

Toodles

In a 24 hour period we went from this:

to this:

It is 9:30 p.m. and 28F.   Up at the campground we’ll be working at, it is currently 22F.  We’re hoping it gets warmer before we are done with our warranty work here.

I don’t know when I’ll be able to see my grandson, Coen.  While they are working on the trailer, one of us has to be with it.  If they are still working on it by next Sunday, we’ll try to get up to see Mike & Tiff & Coen.  It’s a 50 mile drive one way, so it will cost us about $40 in fuel.  For me, it’ll be worth the raid on the savings account to do it.  I’m dying to see all 3 of them.

We drove out to Thom’s daughter’s to pick up a package we had delivered to her house for us.  We need it for the work they are doing on our trailer.  We just don’t trust the meters we have on our batteries so we ordered a Xantrex meter that is like a fuel guage for the batteries.  It will give us the true reading on power usage, etc. on our batteries.  We are going to have our dealer’ techs install it for us.

I’m not looking forward to tomorrow and the days they’ll be working on the trailer.  We won’t be able to be in our “home” during the days and will mostly be living in the lounge at the dealers.  I guess I’ll just take my beads and my wire and my computer to the lounge with me to keep myself busy.  This is one of the drawbacks with fulltime RV’g.  When they have to work on your home, you can’t be inside it.

Will post again when something interesting happens or when we move on down the road.

In the meantime… Toodles!

Just a quick note to let everyone know we are safe and sound (mostly) at our dealer’s in Salt Lake City (actually Draper, a bit south of SLC), and will be here until the warranty work is done. If they don’t have to order parts, we should be done by Tuesday afternoon, if they do, we’re here for a while. Either way, no big deal. We don’t want to be free too soon because we don’t have a place to go that won’t cost money we don’t have.

It was a 6 hour driving day and we’re both bushed. We don’t handle hours on the road like we used to. When we got here we had to wait a couple of hours for Camping World people to clear out a spot so we’d have electricity. All of their hookup sites are now reserved for delivery staging, they were just nice enough to let us have one because we’re here for warranty work.

I’ll share more another time. I’m too tired to think clearly now.

Toodles.

We really like it here. The current camp hosts stopped to talk to us this morning and gave us more info on what’s involved in camp hosting here. We think we’d like to get in touch with the BLM to see about hosting for a winter. I’d like to have more time here, but we have to hit the road tomorrow.

I promised more photos in my last post so here they are. I hope there aren’t too many, but I do want to share the beauty.  I went back to the Silver Cholla and the flowers that I shot yesterday (photo below) are all spent and gone.  Like an overnight sensation.

The beaver tail cactus are just beginning to bloom. They are all in varying shades of pink.

Closeup

This is the Joshua Tree with fruit. It is a member of the Yucca family.

This is the flower on the Silver Cholla

I kind of liked the contrast of colors with the apricot globe mallow and the yellow desert marigold

I shot this view through my “dining room” window

The river is running pretty good, thus the brown water - taken from just across the road. If it’s not too hot, we may take the trail down to it today. On the bottom right is a buckhorn cholla, which hasn’t started blooming yet, darnit! It’s flowers are a beautiful scarlet red.

And last is a better shot of the Mariposa Lily. Yesterday’s shot had early morning shadows which made it look unreal. The little red beetle is a bonus.

That’s all for today, it is now time for me to go out and play before it gets too warm.

Toodles!

Well we done did the packing thing and it took the better part of two days. I can’t believe that we now have more stuff than when we left last September. I guess the hardest part was figuring out where we had stuff put last time. I only had to redo the truck rack twice and then even did not get every thing I wanted to up there. We wound up putting both of the extra internet dishes and the l & b’s on the bed. Oh and of course one of the bottom bedroom drawers wouldn’t close so on the bed it went as well. Judy already described the ride north the first day so I will leave that part out. We did spend the second night in our favorite casino parking lot and I was able to get some sleep, but not until after going for a walk down to the liquor store around 8 pm to get a bit of rum but alas the rum store was closed so there be no booze till we get to Salt Lake I guess, I should live through it though, its only gonna be three more days.

We drove for all of a half hour to our next camping spot in the Virgin River Gorge. It is a nice little campground. No hookups but bathrooms and the spots are pretty level. Now if only the wind would quit. We walked around a bit and checked out the Host site, not bad, but only 30 amp, but water and sewer were there and there is a shelter to park under. Might be worth looking in to for a winter hosting position later on.

It’s supposed to get windy again this afternoon, so I’m blogging now.  We may have to bring down the dish later.

We left Mesquite at 8:00 a.m. this morning and arrived at the campground at 8:30 a.m.  Loooong trip, huh.

It’s beautiful here!  When we first arrived it looked like all the sites were too small for our monster rig, but we found a site we could squeeze into.  Here’s a shot of the Clampett Mobile.

View from behind our rig.

Pretty area, huh.

This is the view from my front room window.

And here are two of the many flowers here in the Virgin River Gorge.

Wild Onion

This is the Mariposa Lily, this flower in it’s white form is Utah’s state flower and is called the Sego Lily.

We’ll be staying here through tomorrow night and then head north for Salt Lake City and the warranty repairs on our 5th wheel.

I checked the 10 day forcast for Huntsville (8 miles from our campground in Utah) and it’s supposed to be quite variable, some days the high will be down to freezing and others up to 65.  Here we go!  From 96 to 30 in 4 days.  I guess a lot of snowbirds are facing this same thing.  Drag out the winter clothes!

Hopefully I will post tomorrow with some photos of the area here.  I want to take the trail down to the river.  Until then…

…Toodles!

Monday was a killer day! Due too difficulties taking the porch apart as well as a few other things, we didn’t get on the road out of Quartzsite until 6:30 p.m. Monday night. It was 90F INSIDE our trailer by 10:30 a.m. that day and the heat was a killer.

We were going to stop in Lake Havasu City, but it was dark and as we learned, the BLM camping area was not marked with signs or anything else. We drove right by it and didn’t want to spend the gas (at $4.09/gal) to backtrack. We spent the night in a truck stop right at the I40 junction after we received permission to park overnight.

Today we were going to go to the Virgin River Gorge Campground and spend a couple days, but the wind was really blowing through Vegas and the rest of Nevada on I15. If it’s bad in the valley, you can bet it’s ferocious in the gorge. Soooooo… we are spending the night in the parking lot of the Casa Blanca Casino in Mesquite, NV. That’s just as well. I get a restaurant dinner in the casino and we’ll be back on track for arriving in SLC on Friday. Not stopping in Havasu put us a day or two ahead of schedule.

The wind is picking up again so I better get my satellite dish down. Will write again if we get a signal in the gorge campground.

Toodles