We moved from the SIsters location on July 20th and made it to south Bend, Oregon. Here we used Boondockers Welcome to get a place to be for 5 days. We did an RV dump at the Exxon station that is right next to the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockbuster_(Bend,_Oregon). It is pretty tight getting in and out of the Exxon but it was not too bad.

Yesterday, we spent the afternoon in The Old Mill district as I had taken the day off from work. It was hot here in the mid 90's. We mostly just went and had a little food at a dog friendly patio. Later around 5pm or so, the clouds rolled in and we had some light rain which made for a good evening.

Today, I am working and the wife is off doing a massive amount of laundry at a laundromat . Not looking forward to folding/sorting all that. Still, it needed to be done.

The outlook for pretty much everywhere within five or six hours of driving time is going to be hot for the next few weeks. We are going to try move for some eight to ten degree cooler weather. Seems like everywhere has higher than normal temperatures. Some places will even hit 100 degrees, which is hot but still about 20 degrees cooler than Phoenix.

Hopefully, the weather people are wrong. We will have to wait and see.

So far, so good on the fill hose repairs. We still noticed a slight drip when we filled. It seems that is from the connection of the fill hose to the tank. I tightened down the hose clamps but I'm not sure I have a 100% seal there and not sure if I ever will. I think at worst right now we might loose a gallon or so.

Found out yesterday that with the shade that the wife wanted that I have the tree blocking the solar panels. which means we are not getting full advantage of them and the charge is slow. Might have to run the generator today to bring the batteries up to full. I think because of use and the way they have been charging, we end up with about an 85% charge max when the sun goes down. Which mean we may have to run the generator a bit today to bring it up to full.

Also took a quick look at Cell coverage for T-mobile for the area we were just in. Of course it said it didn't have coverage, so at least that was truthful. Looking at other providers, AT&T and Version both said they had coverage at the 43.900374, -120.739466 campsite. So if we ever want to go back that way, going to need a different hotspot. Looking at the plans offered, I think AT&T is likely going to be the better of the two for price overall.

AT&T has three plans, 15GB for $35/month, 100GB for $55/month, and 20GB for $25 (which you have to pay 12 months in advance). Verizons are 1GB for $30, 6GB for $40, 16GB for $50, and 30GB for $70. The 20GB from AT&T is attractive on the price, but that one you need to prepay for 12 months, so If I did another hotspot, I would likely do the 15GB plan since after taxes and fees is likely about $40 a month. Since I average about 750MB to 820MB per work day, 15GB is about 15 to 18 work days.

We fixed the hoses yesterday evening. We were able to transfer water from our truck holding tank to the fresh water tank in the RV without issue. The wife noticed water dripping from the tank during the fill. Looking at it, It seemed to be coming from the drain value connector. That didn't quite seem right so I keep looking at it. It was hard to tell where it was coming from, I feared that we had cracked the tank near where i put back the drain value as we had taking it out and cleaned it and put it back.

Since the leak seemed steady, we decided to try to catch the water as not to waste it. We could not decided the best way to approach fixing this crack. We knew that the tank would have to be empty for any repair we tired. So we decided to use some water up by doing laundry and hung it up. Of course with the rain we had yesterday, nothing is really drying. As of this morning everything is still damp or wet. Heck because of early morning dew, I think the stuff outside is even damper than when we hung it up. At any rate that usage did seems to take some pressure off the area as the drip from the tank slowed down.

When we checked out fill container about 2 hours later there wasn't much water in. The drip had really slowed down to almost nothing. It was then that I think I noticed where the water was really coming from. It seems like it was the connector/stem for the water pump line. I gave it a little bit of tightening turn by hand, which I was sort of amazed I could do that. I would have thought since we did not remove that connector, it would have been super tight. At any rate, I think that what it was, that connector must of come loose when we were in there bumping around with the new water fill line and vent line. Going to keep an eye on it for a while and hopefully, things will be good.

On Friday we left our spot with our Boondockers Welcome hosts. We stopped and dumped at the Fair Grounds at Caldwell, ID. The dump was free, but no water. We tried to fill the water at our hosts but for some reason it just spit water back at us, at the time we didn't think much of it.

Saturday June 12, we made a stop about 1 hour outside of Bend, OR. This place was on BLM land but we could not get any Cell signal there.

43.900374, -120.739466

On Sunday, we moved out to Stop in Bend. We got some groceries and tried again to do a water fill, same result as before. The tank indicator did not say it was full at all. We finally got to our stop. It is barely in the national forest land and it looks like a lot of RVers are using it as we have a lot of neighbors. Not something the wife is happy with but it was one of the places I got cell signal, so this is where we landed for now. Next week we will be at a Boondockers Welcome spot for 5 days and then likely return here for another week.

44.248944, -121.495615

We did run out of water from the fresh water tank. It was not full. We tried to use our pump to transfer water from our truck tank but it spit out water. We spent the evening taking the houses off from the tank. Neither the water hose not the fill vent hose had any kinks or blockages. No idea what is going on there. Will have to take another look at it today. No other options as we need to get water in the tank.

Late June 9, we moved on from the Sportsman Access. The reports were for more wind that night. We head up the road a bit to different location that said it had signal but when we got there, no signal of any kind. So we had to go to plan be which was to head up to the rest stop outside of Boise, ID for the night. We stopped at a truck stop for a few hours to kill some time and we found another free dump there. So we dumped our tanks and then around 9pm or so moved on to the rest stop just 8 miles down the road. There it started raining in around midnight and it did so most of the day. We had to run the generator for about an hour to make sure the batteries were all charged up during the day, as I was working.

Later on June 10, We went to get our propane filled and found out that the cylinder was no longer certified, so it had to be re-certified. I'm sure our other tank is not certified either. I am not sure why the U-Haul person that filled it did not bother to look. We would have taken care of that before we left. Since it was still pretty heavy which meant it was at least half full, we did not bother to get that one certified. Once the other was certified, we found a fill station that would do it for 99 cents per gallon, which is crazy since it's normally about 3 dollars or so. Overall, I don't think we use that much propane. The only two things that run off it are the water heater and the stove right now. We haven't used the heater and the fridge is 120 volt only.

After the propane fill, we hit up a Winco to get some food. Afterward we hit up our first Boondockers Welcome spot. The married couple was really friendly and we went end and chatted with them over a beer that the husband made. I think they were surprised at how self-sufficient we were. They say they sometime get people that need pretty much everything, water, electric, and WiFi. They told us there is a free dump at the fair grounds nearby, so we might use that before we leave. We will likely fill up the water tank before we leave and we might use a little bit of electric when the wife uses the crock pot later.

No idea where we will head next.

Yesterday afternoon after I finished work, the wife and I moved down the road so more. We find a free dump in Wendell, Idaho. Seems the water department there has a free RV dump. It's nice because it has two dump stations. The water to fill our tank was free as well although the wife said she thought she read that you had to pay for that.

We then moved to where we are going to camp for the next few days we think. It's s place called Bell Rapid's Sportsman Access. According to the info there is only one real campsite. That was taken by a 5th wheel that looks like it has been here a bit. It looks like the person tows it with a semi truck and has a little tiny car that they tow as well. At any rate, we just pulled off in the gravel and found an okay spot. Had to level the RV up just a bit.

Not sure when the heavy winds came in but it was early this morning. I know I checked my phone early and it said 4am, I think it started at least an hour before that and it was still going at 7am.

SIde note : Need to secure the fridge just a little better. I must of not put down the screws well enough. One of the corners moved.

Bell Rapid's Sportsman Access

Spent a full day so far here in Idaho. It was pretty cool most of the day. Because of the sunset time of 9pm, the hottest part of the day is around 5pm. Even then I think it only got to be about 80ish and by 7pm it was cool again.

We decided to move a few things around the RV. We moved the fridge from where we had it to a location that we can get to without the slide being out. We also removed the couch we made. We just were not using it. Doing that really opened up the space. We now have a better place to put the dog bed.

We still have to decide where we are going next. I know the wife would like more trees but I just don't see that really in Idaho but I guess we will see. We will likely be moving before Friday.

Well we decided to leave the afternoon of June 4 to start heading for the Pacific Northwest and some cooler weather. Our first stop was Page, AZ for an overnight. I was certainly still hot. We just did a trucker's pull office there north of page. One thing to note was that the Maverick station in Page had a free RV dump and fill.

36.935524, -111.478853

On June 5, we headed down the road. We made a quick stop at Bryce Canyon, near the Losee Canyon Campsite we hit when we went to Yellowstone.

We continued down the road after a while and went to the laundromat in Beaver, UT that we hit on the way back from Yellowstone. What was nice was that there it still use quarters and no cards or anything to buy. We also brought the dogs inside and no one even said a word, they just sort of accepted it as normal. I guess small towns still have something going for them.

Finally, we ended up just south of Holden, UT for the night. This was near where we camped before on our way back from Yellowstone. The wife didn't think it was the same place, but I'm pretty sure if we had detached and went further down the road, we would have found the one campsite we had seen before. Guess she thought we hadn't gone so far down the road or not.

39.071056, -112.221967

On side note, we traveled too long this day without stops.

June 6, got up around 9am local time, which was good we needed the rest after the previous days travel. Went and got cheap gas in Spanish Fork, that we found on the Gas Buddy app. We then stopped at a Smith Grocery Store (which to our delight was part of the Kroger brand of stores). After that we traveled a bit to Park in Farr West, UT.

On the final leg of our trip we had to find water and gas. We bypassed a few options, which might have been a mistake. We ended up stopping in Burley, ID. We got gas and then looked to water. We found a water at a Smith's store near the Air station. We filled up everything and then a little more. We didn't get more drinking water thought, which was not good since on the way to our final camp site the Oakley Reservoir, we didn't find an open store (to be fair it was Sunday night around 730pm). We did finally find a spot to camp out and we finally parked at 8pm. It was still light out since the sun didn't set until 901pm (to be up again at 6am).

42.197195, -113.924858

Had a lot of cloud cover yesterday evening and a lot this morning. Plus used the laptops pretty good last night, so I wasn't surprised by low battery of around 49% when got up. I thought well nothing too crazy it should still charge some. So I went about my work business. Now an hour or so later, the battery is down to around 44% and since it's still clouding I don't think it's charging too fast. I shutdown my secondary monitor and am running the laptop off it's battery for now. Am going to need to run the generator for a few hours to charge up the batteries I think.

A lot has happened since my last entry. Hopefully, I can remember.

May 30, 2021 - Since we find that are grey and black tanks are full and it is getting hot in Prescott, we decide to dump and move up to Flagstaff. At the dump station we watch some people have some sort of issue with emptying their blank tank. They were trying to rock their travel trailer from side to side while putting water in their toilet. Needless to say we switch to our hose when we went to do our fill. After the dump we headed up towards Flagstaff. We found a rather nice little spot just off the I-17 at exit 315.

34.855118, -111.606302

May 31, 2021 - Decided to go Sunset Crater as our National Park Pass we got to go Yellowstone last year was still good until August.

Sunset Crater

June 2, 2021 - Due to cloud cover, we decided to run the generator for about an hour around 6pm to make sure the batteries were charged for the night. I ran it in Eco mode for 400 watts supplied to the RV, which is enough to run the fridge, the TV, and Converter to the charge the batteries.