Ahrens Adventures

Easton Pond

john — Sun, 30 May 2010 00:10:29 +0000

Today we went up over the hill behind the RV Park, through the no hookup campground in Lake Easton State Park, through Easton, and across the freeway to Easton Pond.

Easton Pond is a nice fishing lake on the north side of I-90 between the freeway and the Yakima River.

The photo above is from the lookout at the top of the hill, overlooking Lake Easton. The dam is to the left, just around the edge of the hill, past the orange barrier markers.

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Yakima River near Easton Pond.

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Easton, WA, Lake Easton RV Resort, Lake Easton State Park, Yakima River

Lake Easton to Yakima River Bridge

john — Fri, 28 May 2010 01:26:03 +0000

View John Wayne Trail, Lake Easton to Yakima River in a larger map

Today we walked from the Lake Easton RV Resort through the Lake Easton State Park to the http://www.parks.wa.gov/parks/?selectedpark=Iron%20Horse, John Wayne Trail. Then we followed the trail up to the Yakima River Crossing.

The funny straight line on the map is a case of the MotionX GPS application not playing nicely with the inCase battery case on my iPhone. I removed the case and the application suddenly discovered the satellites again, and started tracking our position.

The images below are taken looking from the bridge over the Yakima River.

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Easton, WA, Lake Easton RV Resort, Lake Easton State Park, Iron Horse State Park, Yakima River

Hike around Lake Easton

john — Wed, 26 May 2010 00:25:26 +0000

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.

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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.

RV.net Northwest Spring Rally

john — Sun, 16 May 2010 18:46:10 +0000

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

Spring is on the Way!

john — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 00:02:30 +0000

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RVing

Fun with DC Power

john — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 23:38:31 +0000

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

Walla Walla WA

john — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 00:15:58 +0000

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We’ve been in Walla Walla at the Fairway RV Resort for the last couple weeks. It’s a nice place, with good wifi internet access.

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Tomorrow we’re packing up and heading up the hill to Lake Easton Resort in Easton WA.

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Walla Walla, WA, Easton, WA, Fairway RV Resort, Lake Easton RV Resort

Toppenish WA

john — Sat, 16 May 2009 20:44:22 +0000

We’re in Toppenish for our annual NW RV.net spring rally. Toppenish is known for a few things. One is the number of wall murals all over town. Another is that one quarter of the world supply of hops, used in beer making, is grown here in the Yakima Valley.

We toured the town murals in a horse-drawn wagon. When we got to this one mural, we got the chance to view the mural from the angle that showed the wagon like we were about to cross the bridge.

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Toppenish WA, RV.net

Steam Train in Lodi

john — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 02:04:42 +0000

While at the Lodi Stockton RV Park over the weekend (actually Friday morning) we got to see a steam train on the Union Pacific tracks outside the park.

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steam train

The neighbor’s kids

john — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 01:28:29 +0000

Yesterday, I included a photo of the momma owl we see out our front window. Today I’ll show the babies:

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Apache Junction, AZ, Carefree Manor RV Park, owl