We came to Lake Easton RV Resort yesterday, planning to stay here until June 3. Interesting to note that the park has quite a few long term people in it, working on a some construction projects on I-90. This is going to upset some of the regulars here at the park, but times change, and things change.

Today we went for a walk around the lake.

View Hike around Lake Easton in a larger map

There’s a tunnel on the south side of the lake, where we followed the John Wayne trail. That tunnel is closed due to the risk of falling concrete.

Tags: Hiking, Lake Easton, Motorhomes, RVing by john
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The rv.net Northwest Spring Rally is almost over for another year. This year we’ve been at Brookhollow RV Park in Kelso, WA.

It’s been a great rally. David and Laura did a fantastic job as wagonmasters, making this one of the smoothest and most relaxing rallys in a few years. The weather cooperated too. Sunny all weekend, with some breeze every afternoon making it a bit cooler than we’d like, but still enjoyable.

Looking forward to next year. Tomorrow we leave here for Kennewick, and Nikki’s Mom’s place.

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RV.net, Kelso, WA, Brookhaven RV Park

Tags: Full-timing, Motorhomes by john
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The last few days, the power level shown by the meter on the power panel always read low, even though we are plugged into shore power.

Then yesterday the power started to briefly blank every time the furnace kicked on. Finally, last night, the DC power completely died. Actually, most of the DC power died. No lights, no heat, no hot water. But the refrigerator still worked.

Time for a trip to Fred Meyer to get a heater. With the darkness outside, I wouldn’t do much troubleshooting until morning. But an AC heater could keep the coach warm.

Troubleshooting the problem, this morning and reading the limited information in the user’s manual, I determined that the problem is with the disconnect relay.

The rig has a battery switch on the panel by the door. This switch turns off some of the DC power systems. According to the manual, it is to reduce the drain on the battery when dry camping and you leave the coach for a time. Since we are not dry camping, it seems that we could function without that relay for a brief time. Since RV dealerships aren’t open on Sunday, and probably don’t have the part in stock anyway, removing it from the equation seemed a good solution.

So I tied the input and output together. Now the power level is as expected, and the lights are bright, as they should be. I may not get in too big a hurry to fix that thing.

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Holiday Rambler, RVing

Tags: Full-timing, Motorhomes by john
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We spent the day Friday touring around the Minneapolis/St. Paul area. We went to the Minnehaha Falls.

There’s an outdoor art museum near Minneapolis.

Squirrels are everywhere.

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Minnesota, Motorhomes, Minnehaha Falls

Tags: Minnesota, Motorhomes by john
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We left Kennewick Tuesday morning. As we passed Sprague Lake, west of Spokane, we got splattered by a rainstorm of bugs.

Overall, we travelled 415 miles, including crossing the Continental Divide, and ended the day at Indian Creek RV Park and Campground in Deer Lodge MT.

Wednesday we travelled on to 7th Ranch RV Camp in Gerryowen MT.

Thursday morning we visited the Little Bighorn National Monument, the location of Custer’s last stand. Out in Washington, we never had any serious fighting, so we have no battlefields. It was interesting traveling the battlefield and seeing where the action took place, to see how the land itself played a part in the battle.

The rest of the day we travelled, through grey skies and rain showers, through Wyoming Mystery Mountain Resort in Rapid City SD.

This morning we visited Mt. Rushmore National Memorial.

After that visit we travelled on to Camp America Campground in Salem SD.

So far we’ve stayed in Good Sam campgrounds, and we’ve been very pleased with the quality and service. I think that we will continue to prefer Good Sam campgrounds as we travel.

Tomorrow we travel on to Apple Valley MN, our destination for this leg of our trip, where we have reservations at the Lebanon Hills County Park.

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Little Bighorn National Monument, Mt. Rushmore National Memorial, Good Sam

Tags: Minnesota, Motorhomes, RVing by john
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My contract at Boeing ended yesterday. Today we left home in Puyallup, Washington for the first stage of the new adventure that takes us east to Burnsville, Minnesota to see our oldest daughter and her husband.

Today we travelled from Puyallup to Kennewick, Washington to spend the weekend with Nikki’s mom.

It started out cool on the western half of the state, but once we got as far east as Cle Elum, it started getting warm. At the Selah Rest Area on I-82, we had perfectly clear views of both Mt. Adams and Mt. Rainier.

Once we got here, we realized we forgot our passports. Since we plan to be living in the motorhome for six to nine months, partly in the south near the Mexican border, we need to have those passports. So our son is sending them ahead to us.

Tags: Full-timing, Mexico, Minnesota, Motorhomes, Mt. Rainier, RVing by john
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RV.Net blogger Lug_Nut posted on the possibilities of improving the fuel economy of motorhomes today. He asked for comments, so I suggested the following (This is a cut and paste of my comment):

Here’s my thought. Let’s look at using fuel cells. They’ve already done trials with fuel cells on city busses, so the size issue doesn’t exist here. Let’s take this to the ultimate. Put a fuel cell drive system on board, and a hydrogen generation system. Input is water (with a water filter, could use gray water). When you’re plugged into shore power, or with solar panels and/or wind turbine, whenever your producing more power than using, use the excess to generate hydrogen for the fuel cell. When dry camping the fuel cell could also provide power for the coach, when the solar panels don’t produce enough.

Seems like a winner, although it will take some more R&D expenditures, and the first vehicles won’t be cheap. But then most good ideas start at the high end and work down the value chain.

Maybe the RVIAA could put some research money into this type of effort to help jump-start it?

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Motorhomes, RVing, RVIAA, Fuel Cell

Tags: Motorhomes by john
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The traveling to work part of this first week is over. I work from the motorhome tomorrow. Last evening we got our bikes out for the first time this trip and rode around the lake. Then stopped at the little store in Easton for ice cream cones. Yumm! My first ride on my new bike. Very nice.

The weather has been mostly fairly comfortable this trip. Hot when we arrived, but it’s cooled down to normal temperatures. Nikki had the AC on for a while today because it got stuffy inside.

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Lake Easton, Motorhomes, RVing

Tags: Destinations, Motorhomes, RVing by john
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Came up to Lake Easton yesterday. The weather isn’t the best. Rained all day yesterday, and cold. About 52 degrees yesterday, more like 49 and breezy today.

The Admiral is still comfortable regardless, and I got quite a bit of work done here.

Update 8-June, 10:50 am: Had a plugged toilet. First time I’ve had that kind of problem in an RV toilet. Don’t know what happened there, but something got stopped up in the drain pipe. Used a stick to push it through into the holding tank. All clear now.

Update 4:07 pm: Just came back from about a seven mile bike ride. Went west on the John Wayne Trail a few miles, then came back down the south side of Lake Easton and through the town of Easton. Then back home.

Update June 14: 5:00 pm: Been a while. After the rediculously cold start, Tuesday was the first time in history that they had snowplows out on Snoqualmie Pass in June, we got pretty nice weather this weekend. Sunny all day today, and made it into the low 60’s. A group went bike riding today. Nikki went, but I stayed back so Matt could go. They had a good time. Also saw our latest great nephew. Well, sort of. His mother is the daughter of Nikki’s brother’s wife, so she’s not really part of the clan by marriage, but she does claim us.

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Lake Easton, Motorhomes, RVing

Tags: Motorhomes, RVing by john
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Some people don’t seem to remember the lessons from history. According to RV News Service, via the RVTravel newsletter, a trucking group wants Congress to set a national 65 MPH speed limit to reduce fuel consumption. While this sounds good, let’s look at the best general practices.

Highway engineers know that the best speed limit is usually to speed that 85% of drivers would not exceed anyway if there were no speed limit. If you set the speed limit at that level, most drivers will not exceed it, nor undershoot it by very much. If the limit is too low, everyone will exceed it. Remember the double nickel from the 70’s and 80’s, which was pretty much a joke, at least anywhere west of the Mississippi River.

I can tell you that most truckers exceed the 60 MPH truck speed limit on Washington Freeways considerably, many more than five MPH over. I drive my motorhome at no more than 60 MPH, and the trucks nearly always pass, unless we’re going uphill.

In short, I don’t think we need Congress or any other national body telling us what speed limits we should have. We should leave that with the states.

Let me add the one thing that will add more than any other to reducing consumption, and helping business. Let Congress provide tax breaks to businesses and employees to promote telecommuting. Less fuel used to get to/from the office. And greater productivity from ultimately happier employees.

Technorati Tags:
business, Motorhomes, Transportation History

Tags: Motorhomes, RVing by john
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