Finne's Follies: May 2019

Thursday, May 30, 2019

What's Up?

Beaver Lake at Lost Bridge North Campground

What's up with Finne's Follies? you may be asking.

I haven't posted anything in a while. The truth is I've been a bit out of sorts lately. With all the issues that come with buying a used motorhome hitting us ever so shortly after we were finally getting all the problems fixed on the first one... well, it can be a bit disheartening.

But, the light at the end of the tunnel is in sight...at least it seems to be.

Our week in Louisiana was a good one. Ronnie Wolfe's Alfa Shop took out our old Norcold RV refrigerator and put in a Samsung residential refrigerator. I need a step ladder to reach the top shelf, but the temperature is a steady 38 degrees no matter what. And that is a huge plus. In addition, he installed our TV lift in the living room and a retractable TV mount in the bedroom for us. Now we can travel without worrying about stowing a loose TV. And when Mark wants to watch something that drives me crazy, I can chase him into the bedroom 😀-- it's a win win.

Ronnie & Dale taking out the old RV fridge...through
the window

The beautiful new residential
refrigerator, fully installed

Our TV is finally mounted

We now have a bedroom TV
(first time in 11 years)

New seals all around

We also had all our seals replaced. They were shot. And, Ronnie put in a ProFill system for Mark to make filling the batteries easier when it needs to be done. There were a few other minor things on Mark's fix-it list that were completed as well, but these were the major items.
We left the Alfa Shop and camped for a few nights to wind down at one of our very favorite places-- Lincoln Parish Park in Ruston, LA. We love this park for its beauty and affordability. The roads are smooth, the sites are spacious and well-kept, and the ambiance is quiet and restful...not to mention it has full 50 amp hookups--all for $25 a night. If you're looking for "resort" amenities, this isn't your park. But for a good spell of quiet tranquility, it can't be beat.

From Ruston, we headed north to the RV Fog Doctor in Searcy, Arkansas, where we had four windows defogged. We would have done them all, but the cost was prohibitive. Eventually we will get them all done, but that darned budget rules everything we do! The Fog Doctor provided a 50-amp plug in for us and we were able to come in the afternoon before our appointment and stay in our rig while they worked on it. They were pretty busy, working on multiple RVs, but it only took one day to get the four windows done. We stayed that night again and left in the morning for our next stop in Garfield, Arkansas.

Foggy windows

No more fog!

Finding good campgrounds is always a challenge. There is so much to consider-- Do they have water? Sewer? Is the power hookup 50 amp or only 30? In mild weather it doesn't matter, but if we have to run our monster air conditioning unit to keep from dying of heat, then 50 amp is a must. What about road conditions? We often take that for granted, but driving your very expensive forty-foot home-on-wheels over potholes and rutted roads is not a pleasant experience. We're discovering that too many parks have overlooked the importance of good road maintenance. This has to be, in my opinion, the number one concern for all campgrounds that wish to attract RV campers. For us, if the roads are barely traversable, we put them on a "do not return" list.

There is a system of campgrounds across the country built by the Army Corp of Engineers. We found one near Garfield, Arkansas, called Lost Bridge North. (There's also a Lost Bridge South park, but it was full.) The park was obviously never designed for 40-foot motorhomes, but of course we didn't know that until we got there. With assistance from the very helpful staff, Mark was able to back into our assigned spot with only a slight bump of his side mirror against a tree. Getting out was a bit more nerve wracking, which I'll detail later. It was a very lovely park, but the road getting to it was so narrow in places that we found ourselves driving down the middle of the double yellow to keep our wheels out of the ditch. The park has two, and only two, 50-amp full hookup sites. Thank God, we got one of them. And the best part about it is the price: with a US Parks Senior Pass, camping was $12.50 a night.

Lost Bridge North Campground, Garfield AR

Once in the spot, we did what we always do, we put down the jacks. Only something was very wrong this time. The jacks were not deploying properly, and the front driver's side jack was spewing out hydraulic fluid all over the ground. Fortunately, our spot was more or less level and we did without them just fine.

I'll make this long story short. In the end, it was determined that we had blown a seal on the errant jack. Before we left Lost Bridge, Mark refilled the fluid reservoir (it took about two gallons!) Then he was able to pull up the jacks and secure the bad one so we could head out for our next location.

Now for our exit experience. We had two choices. We could either jockey the coach back and forth between the trees to turn it around enough to point it in the right direction. Or, we could drive a short spell to the end of the road where there was a turn-around. That would not have been an option a few days before, because the turn-around was packed up with campers in every spot (Memorial Day weekend). But it was Tuesday now, and all the campers were gone, so we were pretty sure we could get around it just fine. What we failed to take into consideration were the trees that grew, in many places, right along the paved road. Even without pulling the car & trailer, the turn-around proved to be very tight and required a spotter (me), a bucket load of trust in the spotter, and a good measure of driving skill. We did it, though, with no mishaps.

Rutts

Today we are in an RPI park just east of Kansas City, Missouri, called Lake Paradise Resort. This "resort" has all the amenities--pool, lodge, laundry room, playgrounds, etc--but absolutely horrible roads. Inside the park, for the most part, they are rutted gravel roads. The park is grown up with grass and weeds, and the sites are not nearly as level as they should be (especially noticeable when the jacks don't work).

This word, "resort," gets overused in the camping world. Perhaps it's just me. When I hear the word, I think of luxury. Maybe that's not really what the word means. In any case, don't make any assumptions when the word "resort" is tacked onto a campground. You're liable to be disappointed.
In short, Lake Paradise "Resort" is going on our "do not return" list.

We're here for three days. At $37.50 a night for weeds and rutted roads (and an empty swimming pool), it's significantly overpriced.

Our next stop is the Joel & Beth Pettit Resort 😉 in Isanti, MN. While we're there, we'll be working on getting our jack fixed. By God's grace, we're hoping to get a break from breaks for a while.

Safe travels to all!

Tuesday, May 14, 2019

Planning and Hoping

The Mississippi River at Natchez

"The best laid plans of mice and men oft times go astray"...or something like that. That could be the theme of 2019, at least for us. Just about every one of our plans so far has gone astray.

Mark lost his drivers license during the trip he made to pick up our car from the repair shop in Miami, which has turned out to be a multi-level problem. He left it on the counter at the hotel where he stayed the night before. Of course he called right away once he realized it was missing, an hour down the road, and they promised to mail it to his daughter's address in Valdosta. We extended our stayed in Valdosta waiting for it, but it never arrived. We suspected they may have mailed it to the address on the license--our old mailing address in Texas--but so far it hasn't shown up. After waiting longer than we probably should have, Mark went online and ordered a replacement license from the Texas DPS. In order to get a replacement card remotely, he had to mail his original social security card, a proof of Texas residency, and a sample of his DNA...along with a check for $11. Okay, maybe not the DNA. He asked them to mail the replacement card to my sister's in Lake, Mississippi, where we were going after Valdosta.

Texas cashed our check on April 14 and as yet we're still waiting for the license. Fortunately, he was at least able to get a copy of a temporary license online while he waits for the card to arrive.

It turns out you can't register your vehicle without a drivers license, and all the delays with the lost drivers license put us over our thirty-day grace period for the the temporary license plate that came with the RV when we bought it. We couldn't go anywhere until we had those plates. But once Mark got his temporary license, he as able to register both our vehicles in South Dakota by mail and the new plates finally came a couple days before we were scheduled to leave Mississippi.

Today we finally arrived in Chaudrant, Louisiana, where we'll be getting some work done on the motorhome at "Our Alfa Shop"--Ronnie Wolfe's establishment. He did all the repairs to our previous motorhome before it was demolished in Florida. Among other things, he'll be replacing our fridge.

We've been back and forth on the idea of replacing our RV refrigerator with a residential unit, but we finally pulled the trigger and made a decision, primarily because our RV refrigerator quit working. We don't know exactly why it quit working. It was working beautifully before we had it "fixed" in Valdosta. Suddenly we were getting a "no co" error message. Mark looked it up in the trouble-shooting section of the manual--"no cooling"--and found instructions for resetting the unit directly from the power board on the back of it. But it refused to reset. We think the power board was damaged during the previous repair, or it just plain fell apart from old age. It would be $250 to replace the power board, plus labor to install. We had just spent $600 to fix the leaky water hose and replace the ice maker. Combined with this new expense, that's almost the price of a residential fridge. Do I love this refrigerator enough to keep fixing it? No. Easy decision.

Fortunately we purchased back the basement freezer that came with the RV. (The dealer we bought the coach from had taken it out when we negotiated the price down.) We moved all the frozen foods into that freezer and turned the fridge into an "ice box." I've moved everything that needs to be cold into three large bins and filled them with ice. The insulation in the fridge keeps the ice from melting too quickly. Every couple days we buy a ten pound bag of ice and refresh everything.

Such are the exciting adventures of full-time RV living. It's a good thing we sold our house. I might have given up a long time ago if I had a house to go back to. But necessity is the strength of endurance. And (on most days) I wouldn't trade my chosen lifestyle for one that ties me down.

The Longwood House, Natchez MS

We enjoyed our stay in Mississippi. Doreen and Joy took us on a day trip to Natchez where we toured a couple house museums and had lunch. The Longwood House was particularly interesting. The Civil War interrupted the building of it and it was never finished. With its unique octagonal design and five floors, it would have been an impressive structure completed. Unfortunately, only the basement level was finished, and that is where the family lived until the house was turned into a museum (no picture-taking was permitted).

Natchez is an old pretty town on the Mississippi River. In its heyday, it was the largest port town on the Mississippi between St. Louis and New Orleans. It never really recovered from the Civil War, though, and today is a struggling tourist town.

Doreen took me on a little tour of Newton the last week of our visit. Newton is the closest town of any significance to Turkey Creek-- that means it has phone & internet and a Walmart. I didn't realize what a historic little town it was.

But, most of our time was spent just hanging out with the family. We got in a movie and went "balling" (bowling) to help Micah celebrate turning seven. Hannah has the potential to be quite a good bowler, as you can see by the scoreboards.

And we had a couple cookouts at our campsite, complete with roasting of marshmallows.

Our next big plan is saying hello to our new grandson, Adam Edward Knab, born April 22 to Joshua and Nicole, who live in Spokane. We plan to show up there sometime in July after a month (give or take) in Minnesota.

I've learned not to cling too tightly to my plans, though. One never knows what a day will bring.