Nick Russell

The Days Dwindle Down

Posted by Nick Russell at 3:17 am Nick's Blog

May 252013

To just a precious few. Yes, it won’t be long until our visit here in our old hometown is over and we’ll be heading down the road again. It’s always bittersweet – we love visiting my daughter and her family, but we love our life on the road and could never be happy living here again.

It’s always hard for us to find the time to get to visit everybody we want to when we come here, and Terry and I have had to set priorities. We’ve decided that in this day of cell phones, Facebook, and e-mail, if people don’t make an effort to stay in contact with us at least once in a while, we will give priority to visiting with those who do when we come to town.

Yesterday we spent part of the afternoon visiting our friend Lyle Worman at his Pinetop Sporting Goods store, and then drove a short distance to Pinetop Book Exchange to see Jim Lewis and his wife Shar. A new pizza place called Johnnie D’s recently opened in Lakeside, and after the bookstore closed, the four of us went there for dinner. Due to a snafu in the kitchen the service was a little slow, but that was okay, it gave us more time to visit. And when we did get them, our pizzas were delicious.

Jim and Shar have been thinking about the fulltime RV lifestyle for a while now and they picked our brains about types of RVs, what options were useful and what were frills, and life on the road in general. We always love telling folks about RVing and hope we gave them some food for thought.

This area is a major tourist destination, and the traffic was hectic with campers and visitors who have fled the hot desert to hide out in the cool mountains for the three-day weekend. The strong winds didn’t help things much either and I told Terry I was glad we weren’t traveling this weekend.

As I wrote in yesterday’s blog, we had heard secondhand that the Elks lodge manager had rented the site we are in and that we might have to move. Yesterday morning the campground host came by and left us a note saying that he had our site rented as of June 1^st. That’s no problem, we plan to leave next Tuesday or Wednesday, depending on the wind that is always a part of life in northern Arizona this time of year.

In the meantime, we plan to cram as much time as we can in with my daughter and her kids and Terry’s mom and dad in the few days we have left. It’s all about building memories to hold us over until we get back to Arizona in early November.

Thought For The Day – Remember, if somebody is talking behind your back, it’s because you are ahead of them.

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Holiday Weekend

Posted by Nick Russell at 3:01 am Nick's Blog

May 242013

As fulltime RVers, there are three holiday weekends every year when we try to plan ahead and be settled in at an RV park by midweek to be off the road ahead of the holiday crowds. We learned this lesson our first summer, when we found ourselves on the Washington coast at Independence Day with no reservations and every campground in the area full.

Of course, we still have to deal with crowded campgrounds, and the occasional inconvenience like barking dogs and smoky campfires, but we know the weekend campers will go back to the real world come Monday afternoon and things will get back to normal.

We’re parked at the campground at the Show Low Elks lodge, with a pull through full hookup 50 amp site, and hopefully we won’t have to move. We paid for two weeks when we arrived, and due to the power problems with their electric pedestals, we are on our third site since we arrived last week. But we’ve been told second hand that the manager has this site rented to somebody else and we may have to move. We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.

Supposedly the entire campground is rented for the next four months. That’s going to be interesting since the power at three sites, at least, is bad. I did some quick math in my head, and at $20 a night the lodge stands to lose $7,200 in revenue (based upon 30 day months). But the guy who runs the place doesn’t seem to care; every time I’ve tried to talk to him he’s busy slapping backs at the bar. I need a job like that.

Holiday traffic is always a hassle, but a lot of folks in Washington state are going to have some real difficulties. Yesterday a bridge on Interstate 5 over the Skagit River north of Seattle collapsed. News reports said several vehicles and their occupants were in the water. And people tease me about my fear of driving over bridges!

I worked on the new issue of the Gypsy Journal yesterday, getting seven pages done before we left in mid-afternoon to go to Tiffany’s house. We had a good time playing with the grandkids and visiting with Tiffany and her husband Scott, and Miss Terry made a delicious dinner of pork loin, mashed potatoes, gravy, homemade rolls, and lots of other extras. Yummy!

Yesterday I also reviewed the first six chapters of the audiobook version of Big Lake and Terry and I were both extremely impressed with what narrator Bruce Miles has done. The guy’s really good!

Today we’ll visit some friends and probably stop and check in on Terry’s parents, who keep their motorhome at the RV park at the Hon-Dah Casino. We’ve only got a few days left and we never seem to be able to get to see everybody we want to when we’re here. Where does the time go?

Thought For The Day – Be a good listener. Your ears will never get you in trouble.

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A Working Day

Posted by Nick Russell at 3:26 am Nick's Blog

May 232013

Yesterday was a stay at home and work day, which was just as well because I was a bit under the weather and didn’t really feel like going anywhere. I managed to get quite a bit accomplished on the new issue of the Gypsy Journal, which will occupy most of my working hours for a while until it’s finished.

While I was busy with that, Miss Terry was busy with the never-ending bookkeeping chores. Sometimes I think it takes as much or more effort to keep track of our customers and their orders as it does to actually write the books and guidebooks we publish, and the stories for the paper and putting it all together. For years I did that chore, and got further and further behind on it. Last year Terry took it over and worked very hard to get everything up to date and keep it there. This truly is a team effort by the two of us, and believe me, I may be the fat guy, but I know who really carries the weight around here.

Speaking of our guidebooks, in answer to customer demand, a couple of days ago I formatted our Guide To Free Campgrounds & Overnight Parking Spots for the Amazon Kindle and within 24 hours it had risen to the number one spot on Amazon for Kindle e-books in the Travel/Parks/Campgrounds category.

On the subject of RV publications, the RV Business website has announced that the Good Sam Club will stop publishing their Highways magazine on a monthly basis and instead include it as a quarterly insertion in Trailer Life and MotorHome magazines.

The narrator for the audiobook edition of Big Lake has uploaded the first six chapters to Audible.com, and I downloaded them yesterday so I can start reviewing them. If everything goes as planned, the audiobook should be available sometime in mid-July. I’m looking forward to trying this new avenue of distributing my books.

About 6:30 we drove over to my daughter Tiffany’s house to visit with her and the girls before their bedtime, then made a quick stop at Safeway on the way home. Why do stores have a dozen or more employees on duty, but only one or two checkout lines open, while customers stand in line waiting to get out of the place? It’s always been a mystery to me.

I had been sniveling because, after making a delicious batch of her cinnamon rolls the other day, Miss Terry made me share them with her parents and our friends Jimmy and Lyle. I only got two out of them! Folks, I’m just not that generous. But never underestimate the power of positive sniveling; when we got back home she made up a new batch to bake this morning, and I’m going to guard these puppies with my shotgun!

While she was doing that, I posted an interview with RV and romance author Charlie Minshall to my self-publishing blog. Charlie is one of my heroes, and when we were researching the RV lifestyle we read all of her books about her adventures as a solo fulltimer. Check out Charlie’s interview and get to know this fun lady yourself.

Thought For The Day – Never make a decision when you are angry and never make a promise when you’re happy.

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Cool It!

Posted by Nick Russell at 3:47 am Nick's Blog

May 222013

In June Terry and I will begin our fifteenth year of fulltime RVing, and we love it just as much now as we did the day we drove away from our old hometown. That means that we have been living this wonderful lifestyle for almost 1/4 of our lives!

And while we may not be experts, we’ve learned a thing or two along the way about how to enjoy the RV lifestyle no matter where we are or what the weather is like outside. With summer weather right around the corner, and already here in many areas, I thought I’d share some ideas to help keep your RV cool without sending your electric bill through the roof.

If you are on the road in mountain country in a motorhome, consider turning off your dashboard air conditioner and running your generator and rooftop (or basement) AC. It places less strain on your engine when climbing steep grades in hot weather, and your coach will be comfortable when you arrive, instead of having to cool it down once you’re plugged in to shore power.

It’s easier to be comfortable if you can keep the heat outside of your RV in the first place. Awnings are your friend. You can easily reduce the temperature inside your rig by ten degrees or more by using your patio and window awnings. An added benefit is that if your refrigerator is on the curb side of your RV, using the awning to shade it will help keep things colder in your refrigerator.

We also use mesh type solar screens on our windshield and side windows, which helps block the sun while still allowing us to see outside. Some RVers we know also hang a piece of the same mesh from their patio awning to further shade their home on wheels. If the solar screen isn’t enough, and you are willing to forfeit the view, closing the privacy curtains over the windshield and cab area of a motorhome will help even more.

Sometimes you find yourself stuck someplace where the sun is particularly brutal and that mesh windshield screen just won’t do the job. That’s when a roll of reflective foil over the windshield can be a lifesaver. It does a good job on the inside, but the glass will still get hot and produce a lot of radiant heat. Putting the foil on the outside, under the wipers and secured so it won’t blow away, keeps that glass cooler in the first place, and your RV as well.

You don’t always need to run your air conditioner to be comfortable. Knowing how to get the most from your roof vents and windows can be an asset in keeping your RV comfortable. Close the windows and blinds on the sunny side of your RV and open those in the shade, then turn on your roof fans and you may be surprised at how much cool air flows in.

One summer several years ago, back when we were teaching for Life on Wheels, we found ourselves boondocking on an asphalt parking lot at a college in Pennsylvania for a week. It was bloody hot even at night and the RVs around us were running their generators all night long. Not us; we closed all of the windows in the front of our bus conversion, opened the bedroom windows, and put all of our roof vent fans on high. This created a strong airflow that worked almost like an evaporative cooler over our bodies. By morning we were pulling covers over us to warm up!

Thought For The Day – What we see depends mainly on what we look for.

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Mountain Driving Tips

Posted by Nick Russell at 3:05 am Nick's Blog

May 212013

After reading my blog last week about mountain driving, several readers have asked me for tips about how to safely drive an RV in the mountains. I’m not a professional driver, but I’ve been driving a big rig all over the country for over fourteen years and haven’t wrecked one yet, so I’ll give you what advice I can. But please keep in mind that my experience has been with Class A motorhomes, both gas and diesel pushers, and I don’t feel qualified to give you a lot of advice if you have a truck and trailer combination.

The first suggestion is to take an RV driving course. I don’t care how long you’ve had a driver’s license, even a Class C motorhome is a lot bigger than your minivan. The best investment you can make in your safety on the road is to call the RV Driving School or some other recognized school and take a class.

The second thing I consider essential is a good auxiliary braking system for your towed vehicle. We have used both the BrakeBuddy and the SMI Air Force One, which is my personal preference.

But no matter what you drive or what braking system you use, the number one rule is to slow down! Nobody ever went over the side of a mountain by going too slow. Call me an old fart if you will, but I always err on the side of caution. Don’t get halfway down a grade and realize you’re going too fast. Slow that rig down before you even start your descent. The exhaust brake on a diesel works best at high RPMs. On a steep grade, 7% or so, I shift our Allison transmission into fourth or even third gear and get my engine RPMs up around 2200 – 2300. I apply the brakes firmly and slow down when needed, and then get off them. Riding your brake pedal is guaranteed to get you into trouble!

In a gas rig, downshift before you start downhill and let your transmission hold you back. Be careful not to over speed your engine! Use that brake pedal when needed, then let up on it.

Yes, there are a lot of people in a hurry, and the truckers are some of the worst. But none of them are going to replace my Winnebago if I wreck it. I get over in the right lane and stay there, put on my emergency flashers if needed, and let them pass me if they want to.

If you find your brakes getting hot, find the nearest safety pullout and stop and wait until they cool down again. It’s not a race, the goal is to get where you’re going in one piece.

Forewarned is forearmed! Knowing what you’re getting into is always good. Any time we’re going to be driving in mountain country I check Mountain Directory East or Mountain Directory West to find out what to expect.

Somebody asked me if I’ve ever had to use one of those runaway truck ramps we see in mountain country. No, but I’ve seen a couple of trucks do so over the years and it’s not something I want to experience! I’d much rather start out safe and stay that way all the way to the bottom.

Thought For The Day – Stop looking back on your mistakes. What’s done is done. Learn from them and move on.

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Life As We Knew It Is Over

Posted by Nick Russell at 2:57 am Nick's Blog

May 202013

In the words of country singer Kathy Mattea, “I loved life as we knew it. But life as we knew it ended today.”

That’s right, life as we knew it is over. My granddaughters have gotten me hooked on Duck Dynasty. I think they have almost every episode of the last season recorded, because they made me watch them in the last couple of days.

In case you are unfamiliar with this reality TV series, it is based upon the Robertson family of Louisiana, who have turned making duck calls into a million dollar a year business. Basically, think a modern day version of the Beverly Hillbillies with a platinum American Express card. Just so you know, rednecks should never have a credit card.

The show has launched an entire product line that includes Duck Dynasty DVDs of the earlier season episodes, books, a cookbook, shirts, and even bobble heads!

Much to my chagrin, it’s actually a fun, goofy show and a couple of the characters grow on you pretty quickly, especially Uncle Si. Even if in one episode he bought a French poodle for a hunting dog! I think every family has an Uncle Si. Between all of the silliness and exaggeration, the show also has some good lessons about family values and working hard to be successful.

And the best thing about the show is that I now understand my buddy Greg White a whole lot better! Smile

Between working on our power issues for the first couple of days we were in town, and then visiting with family and friends, we’ve been on the go a lot since we got to Show Low. I had planned to get some writing done yesterday, but we stopped by daughter Tiffany’s house and had so much fun that before we knew it the day was halfway over.

Later in the afternoon Tiffany and husband Scott came by the campground and Scott helped me with a couple of little projects. I also gave him a portable solar panel a company had sent me to evaluate a while back that I wasn’t too impressed with. Then Miss Terry made a delicious pasta dinner and we had a good time visiting. By the time they left it was getting late so I just caught up on e-mail, sent out several orders for our new Hitching Post RV park review e-book, and we watched some TV until bedtime.

And yes, it was reruns of Duck Dynasty.

Thought For The Day – I contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle. – Winston Churchill

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Feeling Guilty

Posted by Nick Russell at 2:42 am Nick's Blog

May 192013

I want to share an e-mail I received yesterday from a couple facing a common dilemma for new fulltime RVers:

“Nick, we need advice! We started fulltiming in October, 2012 and it has quickly turned into a nightmare. It’s not because of the traveling or problems with our coach or because we can’t adjust to living in such a small space. It’s because we always seem to be making somebody mad or disappointing them because we can’t go visit them or don’t stay as long as they expect us to when we do. We have a son who lives in Minnesota with his family, another son in Pennsylvania, and a daughter who is married to a soldier stationed in Texas. Add to that Jim’s widowed mother who lives in our old hometown in Ohio, my parents who divide their time between a home in Chicago and a winter place in Florida, and various brothers and sisters in Ohio, Illinois, Arizona, and New Jersey. They all expect us to come visit them, to help with projects like reroofing a house, to be there for every family event, and on and on. And many times we are expected to be in two places halfway across the country from each other at the same time! When we were planning to fulltime we made a list of places we really wanted to see and things we really wanted to do. To date the only thing we have crossed off the list is visiting Washington, D.C. for a day. The rest of the time has been spent trying (and usually failing) to make other people happy, and in the meantime we are miserable.”

Many fulltimers find that the demands placed upon them by family and friends takes away the sense of freedom they sought when they began the RV lifestyle. Either they don’t do the things they want to, like the folks who wrote me above, or else they feel guilty because they do.

The thing to remember here is that it’s your life and you need to live it in a manner that makes you happy. Because, as this couple pointed out, sometimes you can’t keep everybody else happy no matter how hard you try.

We train people how to treat us. If we allow them to dictate what we will do and when we will do it, the only people to blame are ourselves. On the other hand, if we set limits on what we will do and how we will live our lives, they will come to accept it, even if they don’t like it.

It’s okay to be selfish. It doesn’t make you a bad person. Just because you may be retired and mobile doesn’t mean you have an obligation to become everybody’s babysitter, construction helper, or whatever.

It’s okay to say, “I’m sorry, we have other plans. But we do look forward to getting together sometime when it works for all of us.”

Thought For The Day – There is no such thing as perfect, there is just me, and I’m okay with that.

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We Broke Grandpa!

Posted by Nick Russell at 2:57 am Nick's Blog

May 182013

We managed a day and a half plugged into the 30 amp outlet on the pedestal for the unoccupied RV site behind us, and then yesterday it started tripping over and over again, even though we had 120 volts and were only drawing eighteen amps. When I went out to reset it, the breaker was so hot I could not hold my finger on it. Well that’s not going to work!

All of the pedestals on our row are old and obviously in need of service, but the folks at the Elks lodge don’t seem to understand that. They think if they stick a multimeter’s test prongs into an outlet and get a voltage reading it’s okay. They don’t seem to understand that when you put any load on a circuit and it blows there might be a problem, and insist it has to be the fault of the RV.

Fortunately, there is one row of RV sites they just put in last year, so I went to plan F and moved over to one of those sites, which have shiny new electrical pedestals with shiny new breakers. Guess what? We now have strong 50 amp power coming in with no problems.

Once we were moved and set up, we drove over to my daughter Tiffany’s house to check in on granddaughter Hailey. She was asleep when we got there, but woke up after a little while and said her broken arm wasn’t hurting too much.

Do you realize that if we could figure out a way to harness the energy that just two little girls have, we could end our dependence on foreign oil within an hour or two? I know this because after just a couple of hours those little girls had worn me out completely! We wrestled, played magic tricks on each other, told knock-knock jokes, and watched cartoons. And that was all in the first fifteen minutes!

Fortunately, Tiffany and Scott have a very comfy sofa with a built-in recliner, so I didn’t have far to fall when they wore me out. Terry took a couple of pictures while I snoozed and first Hailey and then Destiny kept me company. By the looks on their faces, I think they are thinking “Uh-oh, we broke Grandpa!”

And there’s nothing better to get the blood flowing again after an afternoon nap then a puppy fix. Here is Nola, the girls’ beautiful brindle boxer, giving me lots of loves. A grandkid and a puppy fix all in one day! Life is good. Smile

Back at home, and after one of Miss Terry’s delicious dinners, I finished a project I’ve been working on, another one of our RV guides. This one is called Hitching Post and is our reviews of RV parks where we have visited over the years, both the good and the bad. The printed version will be $7.50, and the e-book PDF version is $6.50. But as a special limited time offer, you can order a copy of the e-book for just $5 with this link. Order today and save yourself a buck or two.

Terry’s folks keep their motorhome on a permanent site at the Hon-Dah RV Park and will be coming up to the mountains today to settle in for the summer, so today we’ll go help them get settled in. The air is a lot thinner at this elevation and it’s easy to overdo it and get yourself in trouble until your body has time to acclimate, but I know my father-in-law well enough to know that he’ll be going at it full speed ahead until the job is done.

Thought For The Day – Nobody on their deathbed ever said "I wish I had worked more overtime."

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A Tough Little Girl

Posted by Nick Russell at 3:11 am Nick's Blog

May 172013

It sure is nicer here in the White Mountains, where daytime temperatures are in the upper 70s and overnight lows in the mid-40s than down in the desert, where it’s over 100 degrees. What a difference an extra 4500 feet in elevation makes!

We spent yesterday morning relaxing after the difficult day before, reading e-mail and blogs, making a couple of phone calls, and filling some orders that came in with our last mail.

Then in the early afternoon we drove to Pinetop-Lakeside to visit with my friend Lyle Worman at Pinetop Sporting Goods for a while, and then to Pinetop Book Exchange to spend some time with Jim Lewis and his wife Shar. The characters who own the book store and gun shop in my new Big Lake Blizzardmay be loosely based upon these two guys, who’ve been like brothers to me for over 25 years. Jim is also a part time bone cruncher and he gave Terry and I both adjustments that alleviated our back aches.

A little after 5:30 we went to dinner with Jim and Shar at Lotus Garden, an excellent Chinese restaurant that we discovered when we visited our old hometown last year. About halfway through our meal my daughter Tiffany called to tell us she was in the Emergency Room with granddaughter Hailey, who had broken her arm. Ouch!

As soon as we finished eating we drove to the hospital to check in on Hailey and to help Tiffany by keeping an eye on her younger daughter, Destiny, age 6.

This was like a déjà vu experience; at age 10, Hailey is definitely not a girly girl and she usually has the scrapes and bumps to prove it. For as long as she could walk she has been climbing trees or bringing us handfuls of bugs to admire that she caught. While we were here in April, 2010, Hailey and her sister were wrestling and goofing off and Hailey fell and broke both bones in her left arm. And that was the second time! The first time she fell out of a tree. This time around she was riding her bike and crashed, breaking both bones in her right arm. I guess she has grown bored breaking the left one!

If I had suffered an injury like that, you’d be able to hear me whining all the way to Paducah. Heck, I need Novocain for a haircut! But not Hailey. She’s a tough little girl. We were in the ER with her for a couple of hours and she was laughing and joking around all the time. When the nurse came in to give her a shot and start an IV because they would have to put her under to set the bones, she never winced.

Tiffany’s husband Scott works at a copper mine in Morenci, Arizona, about 175 miles away over very twisty mountain roads, but he made it to Show Low in about three hours. Once he was there the staff shooed us out because they were going to set Hailey’s arm, so Terry and I came on home. An hour or so later Tiffany called to say they were done and headed home. Hopefully Hailey won’t break anything else while we’re here.

Thought For The Day – One of the best ways to stay happy is to walk away from the things that make you sad.

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Plan B, And C, And D, And….

Posted by Nick Russell at 2:42 am Nick's Blog

May 162013

When I went to bed Tuesday night, I was trying to figure out what my next step would be if we could not find an electrical receptacle for our shore power cord. And just as I was drifting off to sleep, it hit me. Plan B!

The shore power cord plugs into the receptacle and from there a short cable goes to our Progressive Industries Electrical Management System (EMS). If the RV parts place here didn’t have the receptacle, I could just hard wire the shore power directly in to the EMS. That’s the way I did it on our MCI bus conversion and it had worked fine.

Well, as it turned out, they had a receptacle that probably could have been made to work with some creative engineering, but it was $99, and the key word there was “probably.” Since electrical components usually cannot be returned, especially after you have Mickey Moused them to make them fit, I decided to just go with the hard wired option. That would eliminate the plug inside the bay altogether, which was just one more thing to go wrong.

We took the new plug off our power cord and noted that the wiring was blackened, a sign that it had gotten pretty hot. We cut off a few inches of the four wires (hot 1, hot 1, neutral, and ground) and wired it into the EMS, then sat back to gloat when power started flowing. But it didn’t. Nothing, Nada, Zip. Just like we had the night before.

We called all of our tech support guys (Greg White, Ron Speidel, and Daryl Lawrence), and not one of them answered their phones. Yeah, they had all read the blog and knew what was coming. Next, I called Charles Yust for his input. I hesitate to call him too often, because he has a fulltime job on his hands just being at his wife Chris’ beck and call. She’s as high maintenance as I am.

Then I called Progressive Industries, and the lady said that Tommy Fanelli was on an airplane that was just landing in Portland and she’d have him call me back, which he did within minutes.

At one point it had been suggested that the other end of our shore power cord was bad; the plug that goes into the campground electrical pedestal. Tommy said that was a good possibility, so we had a Plan C. We set off like a herd of turtles for All Mountain RV to buy a new plug. Along the way, Ron Speidel and Daryl Lawrence both called back and agreed that it was probably the cord. They get pulled and flexed a lot as people hook up and unhook.

Fortunately the plug was only $29 instead of the $99 the other receptacle cost. Back at the campground, my hands were so sore I couldn’t manhandle the heavy gauge wiring, so Miss Terry cut off about two feet of wire, which we noted was also blackened in places, and wired up the new plug. We plugged it in and sat back again to gloat when power started flowing. Well, not exactly. We had 123 volts on one leg and it bounced between 11 and 49 volts on the second. Hey Tommy, answer the phone! It’s me again!

We went back and forth trying a thing or three, and decided that maybe the whole darned cord was bad, since I was getting a power reading on the pedestal with my voltmeter. Okay, Plan D, we’ll replace the entire cord. The RV supply place didn’t have one in stock, but I called a wholesale electric supply place here in town that I knew from my days running the local newspaper. $155 later we had a new cord, which we wired to our new plug on one end and the EMS on the other. Then we sat back to yada, yada, yada. Nothing, Nada, Zip once more. I tried another pedestal that I could reach and the same thing. Or same nothing, I should say.

Somewhere along the way Greg White called me back, but I really think he was just as happy that he was playing tourist in Nevada instead of being here doing my RV repairs. If I paid him at all, I’d dock his next check.

I was afraid to call Tommy back, but he assured me it was no problem, he was just as mystified as I was. Then he had an idea, he asked if I had dog bone adapters to go down from 50 to 30 to 20 amps. Sure, what fulltime RVers doesn’t? Tommy had me start our generator, then plug our shore power cord into a 20 amp outlet on the motorhome. I did and voila, we had 120 volts on both legs! Tommy said that eliminated the EMS system, the new power cord, and the new plug as the problem. It had to be bad campground power.

After fumbling around, I was able to reach another pedestal (and was glad I ordered an extra long piece of power cord), where we could not get 50 amp but we could get 30. Okay, I can live with that for now. Especially since we had been working on the problem for over eleven hours. Tomorrow I’ll talk to the manager at the Elks lodge and let him know he needs to get somebody out here to look at their electrical system. Whether that will happen or not, I don’t know. I’m not optimistic.

Thanks to Ron, Daryl, and Greg for getting back to me to offer advice, and a huge thanks to Tommy Fanelli and Progressive Industries. They have always gone the extra mile for us, and even though we’ve had this EMS for over four years, he was happy to help and stayed patient while I fumbled around attempting to try the things he suggested. And thanks to Miss Terry, who did all of the hard work because my hands would not cooperate. I know she’s hurting even more than I am at this point.

I lost count. Where did we end up, Plan E maybe? If the power keeps acting flakey here, I may have to go to Plan F and go someplace else.

Thought For The Day – Worrying does not take away tomorrow’s troubles; it takes away today’s peace.

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