May 26, 2013

We went a little backwards with all the problems and stopped off at the Antelope Valley RV Park. The price is not bad at $25 for a 50 amp pull thru spot. Since we are staying in the area for awhile we put in an application at a trailer park. There are several trailer parks that do allow RVs to hook up and park there as long as you sign an application and stay for at least 3 months. You are allowed to go ahead and take off but they do like to know if you are going to be there for a few. With a trailer park you can also usually get cable or fios for internet and/or tv.
We have found out that we will probably need a new alternator and/or voltage regulator. The cost will be any where from $300 to well over $1,000 and it depends on whether it needs to just be rebuilt or a new one. We will need to fix that before we start taking vacations again thou.
Since we did not take our trip cross country we did decide to go ahead and use that money instead to replace the old TV's with LED ones. We also replaced the microwave convection oven. It's the same one but 2 years newer. With the problems we had with the inverter/converter not being big enough in wattage to handle the old one we already had to replace it. The microwave stopped being able to cook things as fast as it should case in point it the water that it should have taken 30 seconds to heat up was now taking over a minute so yes it needed to be replaced. We did find one that was almost exactly the same that is considered brand new since it was only a floor model that we could just pull the old out and put the new in.

Now why did we just not go back to the Acton KOA that we were at for almost a year? Well that takes a bit of telling so here goes. Well when we got there almost a year ago Frank was the Manager and had been for 4 years, Chelsea worked in the office and Erica did several things including the kids activities both had been there for almost 4 years. Things were fine as everyone did their jobs well and were very friendly and took care of people well. Then Frank took a different job and left. Chelsea left for a couple of months for personal reasons.
The owner hired in a couple that only lasted about 2 weeks and ended up with only having 24 hours to leave the property so that tells you how bad they were.
The next set was a couple that said they owned and took care of a campground for 2 years. Over the couple of months that they were there they could not get a hang of the computer system nor did they understand how to do things in a campground. Well the guy ended up getting a different job and they left.
Next person the owner hired in a guy named Jose and Chelsea came back to work. The first month things were ok but then things just went real bad. Jose has started to document who in the park talks to who and how long and using the camera's in the office, office lodge and game room to spy on people for hours at a time. He has had warrant's out for his arrest and was asking for money to help pay them, I still don't know if he's taken care of them. Any time the police come thru to keep on eye things and stuff he runs off property. All in all we left as soon as possible and there is no way we will go back. Chelsea is now working someplace else and is now the assistant manager there.

May 21, 2013

Wow the last few weeks have been stressful and today was no exception.

Short story with most of the last few weeks is Thom has a new job. Funny thing is it is at the same place and doing the same job but with a different company. That's the short of it but it was long in that it was a bidding war with several companies and whether we would stay in California or move to Texas. It was almost Texas but just a few days before vacation was supposed to start on Monday it ended up with us now staying in California.
Now onto the last 2 days of packing and getting ready to go. On irv2.com I read about where a couple's TV fell out of the slot above crashed in between the driver and passenger's seats and just missed hitting their 3 dogs. Needless to say Thom had to make sure that ours was not going to do that. Well we did not get to pull out on Monday and finished up getting ready to pull out on Tuesday. We were going California to Florida to Alabama and then back to California all within 2 weeks.
Well as we started to pull out the brake controller started saying that first it was connected to the trailer and then it said it wasn't so checked several things and unconnected and reconnected several points and viola it worked. So down the road we go about 15 miles and all of a sudden the volts on the engine start to go down. The power going down is never a good thing. So off to the side we pull over and check the voltage regulator since the last time it did this it was coming half unplugged. It was not that. So we tried a few things including putting the invertor on standby/off. That seemed to help the power stay up. Then about 10 miles later we go to stop at a stop light and there are almost no brakes. We end up going thru the red light, luckily there was no opposite traffic coming and we did not hit anyone. Finally got stopped and after a few minutes they started to work. And then about 15 more miles down the road the volts again started going wonky. You would think something was saying to NOT to go on the trip. Well since the only real reason for us going all the way across the country was to see the youngest where he was stationed we just decided to turn around and stay at the Antelope Fairgrounds for a few days.
Needless to say we are not going to Florida or Alabama. We may need a new alternator and/or voltage regulator. Then we need to replace all the brake lights and change them out to LED in the back since that seems to not help the voltage stay up when we put them on. Then trace a short back on the front passenger lights.

Wow again on what's happened over the last few days.

I will try to keep posting over the next few days and weeks to let you all know what happens next.