We have
arrived at our winter home, Shady Oaks Riverside, at Inks Lake Dam , Texas
The trip
down was interesting and we spent nights in several different parks on the way
to here. (See the video which is a compilation of the short clips I posted on
Facebook on the way down)
We did not
arrive unscathed. Hmm does that mean
we’ve been scathed? Now I’m gonna haveta
look up ‘scathed’ in the dictionary. Okay now back on topic.
We lost the
outside vent behind the refrigerator on the way down. We noticed that at our first stop for
gasoline. Ella stepped out of the truck
and said, “Tom, there is a big hole in the trailer where all the gas stuff
is.” That scared the heck out of me
until I saw that it was just a missing vent cover. Somewhere along the way, the force of the air
blowing into that open space also blew off the top refrigerator vent. (They are both on order at a local RV store)
Monday
night we spent a free night at a campground that we located by using the book “Free
Campgrounds”. There were sites with
water and electric. Unfortunately, I
didn’t realize that the site I’d chosen was not one of the ones with water and
electric. Oh well! We were only spending
the night so that wasn’t a big deal.
Most everything we have runs on 12 volts from the ‘house batteries’ or
on LP gas. We discovered that the house
batteries were weaker than I thought and ran out of power at night. Without the electric power, the furnace would
not ignite nor the furnace fan runs. It
was a cold, cuddle-up-close sort of night.
Tuesday
night we spent at Kaw
Lake Kaw
Lake. I had closed the slide out and then realized that the furnace was still
running (it had gotten down to the upper 30s over night). The furnace controls are on a wall that is
covered when the slide out is brought in.
So, that meant I had to send the slide back out. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen. In fact, nothing happened except the noise of
the hydraulic pump running. The pump is
supposed to open the slide, but it didn’t.
Nothing to do about it while on the road…so on the road we went.
Wednesday
night we spent in a Texas
state park (sorry, I don’t remember the name at the moment). We had a full hook up site (30 amps). It was $28 per night plus $5 per person per
night … $38 for those lacking math skills.
Thursday we
arrived at “Shady Oaks Riverside RV Retreat” at a few minutes to noon. We were introduced to the park and its rules
and then driven around to look at available sites. We chose site 34 and I had Ron park the Hitch
Hiker II on that site. The reason I had
someone else park the rig was because to get into the site it had to be back
down a hill and around a corner into a somewhat tight spot. I’ve been known to take half a dozen tries at
a pull through spot.
I plugged
in the electricity and attached the water and sewer hoses. Ella hollered from inside the trailer, “How
do you turn the electric on?” I told her
that it was on. She assured me that it
wasn’t. I double checked that the plug
was secure and that the switches on the power pedestal were in the on position. Then I checked the Hitch Hiker’s circuit
breakers and reset all of them. Nothing
worked. We hollered at Ron and he
brought his multi-meter to check the circuits.
Hot to ground showed we had power.
Hot to neutral showed we didn’t.
Terry came to help and took the plug apart and said it looked okay.
Next he took the pedestal apart to verify that everything
was okay in it. Then he opened the circuit breaker covers and checked all of
them. He determined that it had to be a
broken neutral wire somewhere between the pedestal and the breakers. We manually inspected all twenty five foot of
the shore line cord. Then after spending
some time trying to figure out the route that the wiring took from the power
cord to the breakers, He rechecked the plug. Yep!
That’s where the problem was … in the first place checked. The neutral wire had come loose from the
terminal. The terminal was rewired and
everything worked.
With that
problem solved, these two men, that I had just met, spent several hours working
to get the slide-out problem solved. Rod
had the phone number to NuWa (manufacturer of the Hitch Hiker) programmed into
his phone along with the name of the service manager. (I’d call that a God Sighting) I called and talked to R.V. (yep! He goes by is initials R. V. and works in one
of the largest RV manufacturing plants) He had us check several things to
determine if it was and electrical problem (it wasn’t). And then had us switch the hydraulic hoses to
see if pushing the “in” button would move the slide out (it didn’t). His conclusion was that it was a bad seal in
the pump.
Terry had
the name and number of a local RV repair and I called. No one was answering which was probably by
now an after hours call. The next day a
called and spoke with Larry and Ron at Hill Country RV. I was able to order the missing covers for
the refrigerator (remember those?). And
he is checking on the price and availability of a new pump.
Well, that
is enough for this posting. I’ll post
follow ups later.
