Monthly Archives: August 2017

Wishful Thinking

Yesterday I said I was feeling better in the morning. Better is a relative term – in this case, I no longer had a fever and I had enough of an appetite to eat a small bowl of cereal. By 10am, I knew it was wishful thinking on my part. The fever had returned and I recorded a temperature of 101.1. My plans for the day were dashed.

I spent the rest of the morning on the sofa – reading for about 40-45 minutes then napping for 45 minutes. Around noon, I moved to the bedroom an continued reading and napping. Donna made a BLT sandwich for me, but I could only eat half of it. I slept a lot but my condition was mostly unchanged.

Donna rode her bicycle to downtown Amana and checked out a few shops, She stopped at Millstream Brewing and had a cold one – a stout. She brought back some summer sausage from Amana Meats and Smokehouse. She also brought back some IPA for me. I told her the yeast used in brewing ale is full of B vitamins – that’s my story and I’m sticking to it. I managed to eat the rest of the BLT while she was out. Donna took a few photos along the way from the bike path.

Bridge on the bike trail

More of the trail along the Millrace Canal

Old Amana train depot

Lilly Pond – 170 acres of lilies

Millstream Brewing Co.

Around 6pm, I sampled the IPA. It wasn’t a good choice on my part, I could barely get it down. By 7pm I was out like a light on top of our bed. Donna went out for a walk, I vaguely remember her heading out. She found a theater that had a production starting at 7:30pm. She came home to change clothes and tell me she was going to watch the play. I was dead to the world. I wouldn’t have known she was out for the next two hours at the theater if she hadn’t told me this morning.

I had plenty of sleep – I’ll bet I slept for 15 hours between 10am yesterday and 7am this morning. I woke up feeling a lot better. No fever and my sinuses are clear this morning. I’m keeping my fingers crossed the fever doesn’t return. There’s rain in the forecast but the dire prediction of 80% chance of thundershowers yesterday has been reduced to 50% this morning. If all goes well, maybe I can get out and have a look around Amana today.

Trouble Comes in Threes

I mentioned the spacious grass area in our site at Lazy Acres RV in Center Point, Iowa. Our’s wasn’t the only one – almost all of them had plenty of room.

Lazy Acres site 42

While were at Lazy Acres, they had an issue with their water supply. On Sunday, the water pressure would drop and we only had a trickle. Donna heard the owner say he was having trouble with the pump on the well.

The water issue continued on Monday – in fact, the water was completely shut off for a while. We had used just over half of our onboard fresh water tank – I hadn’t refilled it yet. There was probably close to 50 gallons in the tank leaving us with about 40 usable gallons. The fresh water tank is a rectangular tank that’s flat and long and only four or five inches tall. The water pick-up is in the left rear corner. When the water level drops below the pick-up, it can’t deliver anymore water.

We were faced with this situation a few years ago and needed water when none was available to us. I manipulated the leveling jacks to intentionally have the driver’s side and rear of the coach low. This pooled the remaining water in the tank in the left rear corner and we got through another day before filling up the tank again.

I had intended to fill the tank at Lazy Acres but on Tuesday morning, I saw the owner going from site to site with a five-gallon bucket. He would run water at the spigot into the bucket and then dump it out. He did this several times at each site. When he reached our site, I went outside to see what was up.

He told me they had to replace the well pump. This was not so easy as the pump was at the bottom of the well casing 180 feet below ground. A well company had to pull casing tube and insert a new one with the pump attached. This left a lot of detritus in the water supply. I saw what was in the bucket and it wasn’t pretty. I decided to wait until we reached Amana to refill our tank.

We were checking out that morning – they have a relatively late checkout time of 1pm. We planned to travel about 40 miles to Amana, Iowa so we had a leisurely morning preparing to leave. I never like to push our checkout time to the last minute – you never know what might come up.

I went through my pre-flight checks and the last two items are to retract the jacks and disconnect the power cord. When I came back in to coach to fire it up, I saw the right rear “jack down” indicator was lit. This is not good. I went outside and took a look.

We have an HWH leveling system. Our jacks extend hydraulically and retract under spring pressure. Two powerful springs bring the jack back up forcing the hydraulic fluid through the solenoids and back to the reservoir. The springs are attached to the foot or pad at the bottom of the hydraulic ram. The foot had slipped off of the ram and hung uselessly by the springs. This happened to us once before in Hamburg, Pennsylvania a couple of years ago. At that time, our roadside assistance, Coach-Net sent a mobile tech out. Two strapping young guys attached it with pry bars and put it back in place.

I called Coach-Net a little before 11am. I went through the usual runaround – first you talk to someone who fills in the blanks on their computer, then they tell you a technician will call back. This took about 10 minutes plus five minutes of hold time. Then I got a call back 20 minutes later. After going over the problem again, he said he would find someone to help me out and call back. He called back half an hour later. He said he might be able to get someone out by the end of the following day, if not it would be three weeks! Unacceptable.

I started looking up mobile RV services and made a few calls. Two of them had to see if they could juggle their schedule and come out that afternoon – they would call me back. I went up to office to notify them of the problem. I talked to the owner who seemed to be mechanically competent and knew what I was talking about. He said, “How about we go down to the shop and grab a couple of pry bars and see what we can do?” I told him that sounded good with one caveat – we do it with pry bars only, no one sticks their hands anywhere near those powerful springs.

To give an idea of how powerful the springs are, the first thing we had to do was push the ram back up to force the hydraulic fluid through the solenoid. He applied pressure to the ram and I actuated the solenoid so fluid could flow. More than five minutes later, he had it halfway up, but I could see he was fading. I took the lever and heaved against it. Another five minutes and it was up. The springs usually retracted the jack against this resistance in a matter of a few minutes.

Next we levered the foot down trying to center it below the ram. This is easier said than done. After a few failed attempts, we decided the plan was for me to lever the foot down, then he would use his bar to tap it in place under the ram. Success! It was 12:45pm and time to hit the road.

Right rear jack intact again

We arrived at Amana Colonies RV Park around 2:00 pm. This is a fairly large park at 76 acres. They advertise 75-foot long sites. The problem for us is, they put the power pedestal at the far rear of the site so it could be shared with another site behind. We didn’t have a good option for dropping the trailer – our power cord and sewer hose would have to extend all the way back past our trailer. They offered us a solution – for $10/day additional they would give us the two back to back sites essentially making it a 150-foot pull-through. We went for it.

Before I hooked up our fresh water supply, I opened up the sediment filter canister assuming it needed replacement after the well problems at Lazy Acres. I’ve never seen such crud in the sediment filter – it looked like sludge. Before I installed the new filter element, I rinsed the canister thoroughly. The bottom of the canister looked like it was full of the dregs from an espresso machine.

Old filter element on the left – new polypropylene filter on the right

Donna wanted to take a bike ride and see the area. After getting her bike out, I was feeling punky and laid back on the sofa. I didn’t rise for about 90 minutes and realized then that I was starting to feel really bad. My head was pounding, my sinuses we plugged and my right eyeball had a stabbing pain. My joints ached all over. I was lethargic. Strike three – water, jack and now I’m ill.

After her ride, Donna prepared leftover chicken stuffed with feta and spinach. I could hardly eat. This is only the second time I’ve been ill during our four years on the road. I chalk it up to a healthy environment with plenty of sunshine and fresh air. Being in a crowded office all day or flying around the country exposes you to who knows what.

Last night was rough. I went to bed at 8:15pm. I slept for four and half hours then woke up with a fever. I was alternating burning up or freezing cold. I had a time of it getting back to sleep. Sometime later, maybe 4am, my fever broke. I’m feeling better this morning but will avoid any strenuous activity today.

We plan to get out and see the sights today. The forecast calls for a high of 86 degrees. Tomorrow should be upper 70s with an 80% chance of rain. On Friday, we’ll hit the road again for parts currently unknown – it’s supposed to be cooler on Friday.

Four Years Down the Road

I ended my last post as we backtracked to Waukon after the finish of RAGBRAI on Saturday. Team RV There Yet? went our separate ways.

Our destination was southwest of Waukon. I programmed our destination into Nally, our Rand McNally RVND 7720 GPS. She directed us on a route that took us south, then west in a stair-step manner utilizing mostly county roads. I trust the GPS most of the time – there have been a few occasions when I had to override her directions. The thing is, the RVND is an RV-specific unit. I entered our vehicle height, length, weight and other parameters such as how much propane we have on board. When the GPS calculates out route, low clearances or bridge weight limits, etc. are factored into the route.

We hit IA150 at Independence, Iowa and went south to Interstate 380. We were on 380 for about a mile and half and exited at Urbana where we found the Lazy Acres RV Park. The designation 380 for the north-south Interstate that runs from the Waterloo area to Iowa City seemed strange.

Primary Interstates have a one- or two-digit designation with even numbers designating an east-west route and odd numbers indicating a north-south route. Auxiliary interstate highways have a three-digit number with the last two numbers indicating which main Interstate route it’s attached to – in this case I-80. When the first digit is an even number, it means the auxiliary interstate is a loop. When the first digit is an odd number, it means it’s a spur. In this example, I-380 is spur from Interstate 80 to Waterloo.

The Lazy Acres RV Park is geared toward family use but it’s very quiet on weekdays. Even on the weekend, quiet hours are strictly enforced after 10pm. We were assigned to a long pull-through site – it has to be at least 100 feet long. The graveled parking lane is relatively narrow but the site overall is spacious with a large lawn area, picnic table and fire ring.

It was nice to find a quiet place to rest and unwind from all of the RAGBRAI activity that had us packing up and moving every day for an entire week. After we set up, we rode the Spyder about 10 miles into the countryside near the town of VInton where we found Donna’s nephew’s house.

Mark and his wife Jamie have about eight acres and a nice home of about 5,000 square feet – a big change from the 350 square feet we now call home. After the grand tour, Jamie put out some appetizers and then Mark grilled burgers and brats. It was nice to sit and talk with them.

On Sunday, we decided to extend our stay here until Tuesday. We’re in no hurry to be anywhere so an extra day of quiet time was nice. I even got my fishing pole out and fished the pond here. The office had photos of large mouth bass and catfish taken from the pond.

Fishing for fish

I didn’t have much luck. I had several bites, but they were small fish – not even big enough to take the whole bait in. They took nibbles and stole my bait. It was relaxing anyway.

Today we’ll move on a short distance to Amana. We’ll spend two or three nights there. We’ve been told there are interesting historic sites to see and they have a brewery!

The weather forecast calls for 80s there today, cololing to the mid 70s for the rest of the week. Thundershowers are likely on Thursday, so maybe we’ll stay until Friday.

By the way, I neglected to mention that the first day of RAGBRAI, July 23, marked our four-year anniversary on the road. And in case you’re wondering, we feel like we’re just getting started.

 

*Just so you know, if you follow one of my links to Amazon and decide to purchase anything, you pay the same price as usual and  I’ll earn a few pennies for the referral. It’ll go into the beer fund. Thanks!