The RV Life

Journey to Capitol Reef National Park

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16 July 2024 Trip day 107

As we get ready to head out from Bryce Canyon, the kids help me check the torque on the lug nuts. A few years back, we had an incident with broken lug nuts when moving the trailer. Ever since then, I’ve made it part of my habit pattern to check them each time before we move the trailer.

While I proceeded to the next campground, Meagan and the kids went to the Escalante Petrified Forest State Park.

Jarek and Arya stand amongst the petrified logs.

They earned their Junior Ranger badges at the Interagency Visitor Center. Then it was off to the ‘Hole in the Rock.’

Hole in the Rock is the place where Mormon pioneers carved a passage through rock to a very steep descent.

 Painting of the wagons going down through “the hole in the rock.”

“The Last Wagon”

 

 Jarek and Evan pose for a picture with the Escalante Valley behind them.

A view of the Escalante Valley. You can see the road on the right.

Another view of the Escalante Valley.

 Meanwhile, I arrived at our campsite outside of Capitol Reef National Park and set up. The views were not disappointing.

 It was a little interesting getting situated, but I managed to get tucked in. The site was a bit narrower than I would have liked, but it was a quiet campground and the kids were happy to have lots of gravel to dig and play in. They are big on making roads and other vast construction projects at our sites!

 Thanks for reading!

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The Mailing of the Post Cards

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May 4, 2024 – Trip Day 34

Today was a relaxed recovery day, which we might call a slack day or rest day. These days have no activities planned, but allow us to rest and recover from having too much fun.

Here is a selection of postcards that we sent to friends and family from Roswell, with a couple from Guadalupe Mountains National Park. The bottom left card is a holographic card.

If you would like to get on our list, please see the Patreon membership for tiers and we’ll add you. The higher tiers have the option to receive something else instead, such a magnet, sticker, or patch from the parks we visit. We will need a mailing address, of course.

I will have to work on my photography game, but it was very windy today due to a massive thunderstorm brewing to the south east.

I took care of the kids this morning, so that Meagan could sleep in. They had a fun time playing Stardew Valley, a game I like and they really took to.

I made a shopping run to get a few things before our drive tomorrow and to put more boom liquid into the cars. Tomorrow, we head out west towards Alamogordo and White Sands National Park.

The kids had a nice time swimming with Meagan at the campground pool.

 

Fixing all the things! (April 2024 edition)

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The Slide

Once we arrived in Texas, I ran over to my brother’s house and picked up the replacement slide motors that I’d ordered. I’d looked up how to replace the motor and it seemed fairly straight forward.

I had already removed the retention screw on the outside and popped it up out of the drive socket to push the slide in. I had Meagan drive the slide out while I pushed on the dead side about halfway out, to facilitate access to where the motor was, at the top right corner of the slide.

Slide Motor locatoin
The dead DC slide motor.

It took a little finagling, but I did get the motor out. I got the new motor in, but was having some trouble getting it lined up and seated. I had Meagan pulse the drive switch briefly. The motor spun and seated itself and then we were able to operate the slide normally!

I put in the retention screw on the outside and fixed the bulb seals and we were back in business!

The dead slide motor
The dead slide motor.

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So it begins… 2024 RV Trip Florida to Texas

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1 April – Day 1 – Departure (Jacksonville, FL to Lake City, FL)

Prior to leaving, my laptop had broken its hinges, and I had sent it back for RMA. I wasn’t sure that it would make it back in time, but, lo and behold, it was supposed to arrive in the morning on 1 April between 9 and 2. That would have been fine, as it allowed us to clean up and finish packing everything up. However, it didn’t show up until 6 pm, at which point we were discussing not leaving that evening. We decided to push, and started to bring the slides in.

As we brought in the slides, we found the front left slide would not go in. After some research, we found that there was a way to push in the slide manually. Meagan and I decided to give it a shot and stay on schedule. I popped the Schwintek motor, disengaged it and pushed in the slide. Had I been a bit more experienced with the procedure, I would have gotten the motor out and figured out which model it was.

On Saturday, I greased the bearings and discovered that one of them had some very dark grease. I came to the conclusion the bearing was running rough. Due to the holiday weekend, I wasn’t able to get parts for it. We made the decision to address the problem in Texas.

All in all, we got to the Lake City campground late that night, around 2230. The kids were exhausted and quickly fell asleep. We were going to be short on sleep and tomorrow we had a full five hours of driving. That’s not much if only adults are in the car, but for us, with all the kids and babies, we’ll be spending at least eight hours on the road.

Our spot at Lake City RV Resort.
Our spot at Lake City RV Resort.

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Maintenance Day

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Meagan and the kids went to the park for a home school group meet up. I took advantage of the time to get a little monthly maintenance done.

First up was cleaning out the lint on the washing machine. The model that we have, a Splendidie combo, has a procedure for washing out the lint filter. If you don’t do it periodically, it will block the dryer vent and throw an error code.

The maintenance cycle is to use an Affresh washer tabs (available at hardware stores or online), put the washer on cycle 11 until it stops filling, cancel the cycle, start it on cycle 12 until it fills (more) and stops spinning, then stop it, and drain the water out. There will be lint and other yuck left behind, which you wipe out.

The process takes 3 cycles to be done.

Wash cycle in progress.
Lint balls wiped out of the washer after two cycles. A fair amount of trapped lint was caught.
I also took the opportunity to remove and clean out the dryer hose. It’s not blocked, but there is a fair amount of buildup.
I washed out the dryer exhaust hose and got a fair amount of lint out. As a bonus, one of the kid’s Nerf darts came out, which is mildly concerning.

I also did black tank maintenance, which normally happens every 3-4 days with our usage.

I cleaned the AC return filters and the bathroom exhaust fan with the mini shop vac. The fan tends to collect a lot of dust/lint and if not regularly cleaned, will get blocked and not vent the humidity from the bathroom.

I also took the opportunity to replace a broken seat latch on the van (2016 Sienna). This is one of the rear seat latch handles, used for stowing the seats. Some time ago it broke, so when you pulled up on it to stow it, nothing would happen.

The part was actually fairly cheap, about $30 online and took about 5 minutes to replace – 2 steel cables and 2 screws.

The broken handle. I used a spudger to pop the access panel off to reveal the screws.
Close up of the broken handle. The two cams on the back had broken, so when you lifted the handle no force was applied to the cables, and thus the release mechanisms.

New Jackpads for the RV

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Parking the RV in the sand has always been an interesting prospect, as it tends to sink into the sand on one side or the other. This gets frustrating as the RV starts torquing itself as one corner sinks.

I had previously attempted to make a platform for the RV out of a 2×12, but it didn’t work out that well. Not to mention when we set it up, we were rushed at night after a long day of driving to get back to Florida. This led to a suboptimal setup. The boards weren’t really long enough or wide enough to accommodate the RV if it wasn’t perfectly lined up. Of course, as soon as I backed the RV onto the boards, they moved, and the RV was carving channels in the soft sand which complicated it further.

This was one of the metal feet for the hydraulic jacks that bent when the 2×12 board gave way under the weight of the RV. It was a less than stable platform.

I replaced the jack pad and placed my new footers for the jacks.

The new jackpads are constructed out of two 2 x 10 segments with a second layer of 2x10s running the opposite direction. This gives the rig a little elevation boost as well as greatly increasing the surface area the weight is spread over. This should, hopefully, reduce the sinking effect in the sand.