Sorry about the long time in between posts but alot has been going on.
First is the job situation for Thom. He had to choose between 2 - one was a yr long contract and the other to stay at his current job. He ended up taking the yr contract as that would have us sorta in one spot for a yr. His other job had him traveling all the time for the last 7 yrs and I was not able to go with and we did not have the RV at the time so being together was the deciding factor for us for this one.
We had an eventful 5 weeks of traveling around the US. Some of which is posted here. The rest is getting to the DC area and staying for a few days to not only get to see our adorable granddaughter but also the oldest son (her dad) and his wife. Then we also got to see the youngest son whom we had not seen in about 6 yrs. Yes military. He was able to finally able to meet his niece, she is 5 yrs old now.
After we left there we went to Michigan to finish up the house and give it back to the bank - very long story that is pretty much done - and Thoms last week at his now old job. We got back to MI and went to finish cleaning out the house and barns and found that someone had decided to do it for us. Cops and insurance company called and forms filled out. About $40k to $50 worth of tools and stuff gone. We did have alot in storage already so not as bad as it could have been but still bad. Because we only had a week here and we had now all this to deal with we could not go thru the storage and get the things out that we wanted to put into the RV so we are dealing with it and just waiting till we can get back to finish getting it the way we want and to sell everything else. There was just not enough time to do it then with the time crunch.
We then left MI and went on our way back to CA. Had a week to get there and almost did not get there, a problem with volts and electricity to run the coach while going thru the top of TX. We ended up needing to run the generator while going down the road to keep the volts up enough to get back. Our MPG went down half while needing to run that. It's just the way the rig is wired. Luckily we only had to do that for about 1 1/2 days. We did make it back to Lancaster, CA and stayed at the AV Fair Grounds for a little while waiting on a monthly spot to open up at a decent campground. That was $35 a day, no deals for a week stay or going monthly. It is just a parking lot basically with FHU so it works in a pinch. Remember that when traveling, most fairgrounds has an RV park that usually is not filled and also usually has nothing but FHU.
We ended up going to the Acton KOA and staying here as monthlies. The price (for 2012) is $520 FHU and wi-fi included in that too.
Problems found:
We did find that the solar panal was old enough that it did not have a "shut off" thing to stop it from charging the battery. So the batteries ended up needing to be replaced as soon as we stopped, we kept adding water to keep them going till we stopped. That was about $200 each and we have 3.
We also had an intermittent problem with electric that was mistifying. We added a Surge Guard inbetween the inv/char and the electric coming into the coach. Then Thom opened up the inv/char since it seemed while he was in there that it was working on and off. Turns out that some of the wires were barely touching. I would NOT reccomend anyone doing anything to those things unless you have some experience in wiring and electricity which Thom has. We are looking at replacing it with a larger one now. Reason below.
I like to bake and we have a rather large microwave/convection oven so I can do lots. Well as I was doing a batch of oatmeal cookies (I will post my receipe, lol) when I heard a pop and it stopped heating. I stopped it as soon as I heard the pop so not too much harm done. Thom did open it up and fix that. BUT we realized at that point that when the previous owners replaced the microwave/convection oven and the inv/char while they owned it that they (or anyone else) did NOT match up the elect use and elect output ability. The m/c oven uses/needs 1.62 Kwz and the inv/char is only 1500 watts (or 1.5 Kwz) so as you can see someone did not do their homework. We are saving money up to get one that is at least 3000 watts or 3 Kwz and pure sine wave instead of modified wave. They are not cheap but that means the newer things like an LED TV will work more efficiently and it will be able to handle the m/c oven and I can get back to cooking and baking more :)
We are also performing in a play right now too, A Christmas Carol. Thom is doing 3 roles and I am doing 2. There are lots of roles in the play and everyone is doing more than one except for the one playing Scrooge. We have our first performace tonight in front of an audience.
I will be keeping up with the blog more often.
