Table of Contents
What is this?
If you come to this website, you might be wondering what is going on here. Well first off, welcome to my site. It is a collection of stuff about two primary things, our travels in our RV and about my Role-playing Game hobby, which at this point I am attempting to do some stuff while we traveling.
Last 5 Travel Journal Entries
June 22, 2021
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.
June 17, 2021
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.
June 15, 2021
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.
June 14, 2021
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.
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.
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.
June 11, 2021
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.