Summer Vacation

Im so far behind on blogging. Blogging seems to have fallen to the wayside and facebook has taken over. At least for most of my blogging friends. But on a blog you can have more details and it easier to find information from the past than on facebook.

In July my husband and I took the RV up to New Hampshire. I didnt want to drive through Washington DC or NYC. So we went up through the west side of Virginia, pass my college RadFord, and then up to Maryland, West Virginia and Pa.  It was a long drive and I had made a reservation at a RV park and paid for it. So once again we were driving in the dark to get to the site.  The lights on my RV suck and thats putting it nicely. After this trip I knew I had to take care of this problem.
So when we got home I ordered new headlights off the internet.

The old headlight is to the left. Im not sure why its such a dark grey color.

I was so worried I wouldnt be able to install the lights. It took me a while to figure out how they were installed. When you look inside the rv, the light is in-cased in the RV.
This picture is taken on the inside.

I finally figured it out. There are this metal clips over these rubber stoppers. You pull the clips off and the headlights come out the front of the RV, not from inside the RV.
Anyway I got this one installed without any problems. I tried to put the other one in  and it wont go it. That is what the above picture is taken from. Its not sliding back correctly.  I think I figured out what the problem is.

See the rubber stopper on the top left? Its hitting the molded part of the rv hole, so it cant slide back. Im going to have to grind the fiberglass out of the hole and make it bigger. So as soon as I get my RV back from the shop, I will tackle that. I know I could have had them do it but it cost 105.00 for labor. So its cheaper for me to do it.

Anyway, on with the trip. We stopped at an RV park in Pa. I had read the reviews on-line and they werent very good. It said people were noisy especially the people who live there year round. They said the spots were very small and you couldnt really open up your slides.  But I decided to go anyway because it was a good meeting spot so meet up with my friend.
We got to the place in the dark. The campers, who were next to us and long term campers, we all very helpful. Offering to move their cars and help us back in. We got backed in and set up for the night.
The next day my friend came for a visit. She is the person who introduced Lou and I.  I worked with her at the children's hospital and Lou was her neighbor.  We became good friends and I was at their house all the time. She was married and had a kid. When I didnt have anyone to spend Christmas with, she invited me to spend it with them.

After being friends for 3-4 years they moved back home to Washington Pa.  It was so sad and I had a hard time for a while after they left. Lou and I were married by this time but we still missed them because we spent so much time together.
It was so nice to meet up and talk. It was like old times.  So now we are planning a trip together for next summer.
So the first part of the trip took us 10 hours. Then we stopped for 24 hours. The next morning I woke up with a horrible migraine. I couldnt do anything but lay there trying not to vomit.  Lou couldnt even start getting the RV ready to pack up because I hadnt shown how to do anything. I was worried we were going to have  to the Urgent care down the street. I felt so bad. I also thought we might have to spend another day at the RV park. But several hours later I was better and off we went.
So another 10 hours on the road and we made it to my sisters place. The reason we took the RV was so I could bring some of the dogs.  Most of the time is was cool in NH and I didnt need to use the air conditioners.  At the end of the week it was in the 90's but because there was no humidity, it felt great!!
Most of the trip was spent just  hanging out at the house. My brother and his family came. My daughter came for a couple of days at the end of the week. All of my sisters family was there. We had a good time.

 These Kayak boats were so cool. My sister bought them form a friend. They can be just a kayak, or a sail boat. They have these foot petals that you can make the boat move. So if you are tired of paddling with your arms, you can just use your feet.  But it way easier to use it as a sailboat, no paddling. LOL

They didnt understand why they couldnt go in the house. 

 The

All the dogs took turns going on the kayak's.  The first time I Zoey, she climbed to the front and fell off. Lucky, I just called her and she swam back to me.

My sister and my husband worked on putting these rocks in front of the dock.
My mom and my sister started last summer.

Lou would go fill the boat with rocks and then bring them over to the dock.

The dogs had lots of fun, I think.

There was a mink living under the dock. I saw it the first morning I was there. Lou was sitting on the dock and I was on the dock, that was on the water where the boat is. It gets light early in New Hampshire like at 5am.  Im mean light light. Crazy but good for someone like me who gets up early.  But there wasnt enough light for a good picture of the mink.

We think this was what was making the stinky smell when sitting on the dock.  It looks like a ferret but had a small white spot under its chin. Kind of cute but stinky.
The last day we were there, we went to the Castle in the Clouds. It was really close to my sisters house. There was tons of hiking trails. If I knew this place was so close , we would have taken the dogs there every day!!

 This was taken off the deck of the Castle where you can eat lunch.

To the left are my sisters kids and the lady next to Lou is my sister-in-law.

These pictures dont do this place justice. It was awesome. I loved it.

We started the 2 day drive on Sunday. This time we didnt stop for 24 hours, just over night. We stayed at the same RV place and there was hardly anyone there this time. So we got a nice big spot.
It was a lot of driving.  It was ok to me but Lou said he didnt ever want to do it again. He told me next year I could fly. LOL

Fixing things on RV

So Sunday, I worked most of the day fixing things on the RV.  It started with the refrigerator roof vent cover. I knew when I bought it, that the vent cover needed to be replaced. I just searched on google and found what I needed. It only came in white and the stuff on my RV is grey, so I just spray painted it.
This was the old vent cover.

Yea, the trees in the front of the neighborhood keep getting caught in all the cracks.

After I took the vent cover off, I found out that the vent underneath was messed up too. Ugh.

This I cant fixed because its part of the roof.  And I cant pay to fix it right now, because Im having some other stuff done. So I decided to just patch it with the epoxy stuff.

Then I put the new vent cover back on. I didnt spray the top  of the new vent completely because no one will see that part. The white spots are where the screws go in and I covered them with this roofing caulk stuff. Its so the screws dont rust and water doesnt get in around the screws.

I also cleaned the 2 vent fans that open on the roof. One is from the kitchen and the other is from the bathroom. They draw moisture out, when needed. I didnt take pictures of those. They were really dirty.
Next I tackled the toilet. It has a rubber seal, that keeps a small amount of water in the bottom of the toilet. This helps keeps odors down in the black tank, so that you dont smell anything in the RV. My toilet hasnt been keeping that small amount of water in the bottom of the toilet.  I didnt notice any odors but I didnt want to wait for that to happen. I had tried to clean the rubber ring with this cleaning stuff. It helped for a couple of days but then it stopped holding water again. I was worried about doing this job , but I didnt want to pay to have it done. RV labor cost 105.00 an hour. Yikes.

This was after I had taken the plastic ring off around the bottom of the toilet. Then you remove that metal band you see just above the black area.  Then the plastic ring, under the metal ring comes off.  Then the toilet lifts off. Once you lift the toilet off, you get to the rubber rings.

The rubber ring is around that big white ball. That brown stuff is mineral deposits that form from the water.

Here is the new black rubber rings.  There are two of them. The thin one goes in first and then the thick one goes on top.
The hardest part was lifting the toilet back onto the rings without moving the rubber rings.  But I finally got it in place and got everything back together.  So far the toilet has been holding water, so that's good. (I didnt take anymore pictures)
Next we tackled the hot water heater. I needed my husbands help for this.

This is the outside access to the water  heater.  I have a suburban water heater. It has an anode rod in it that protects it from rusting inside. But the rod only works if you change it regularly. Like every year or so. That roundish metal screw, that is all rusted, needs to come it. On the end of the screw is the anode rod. No one has changed this one in a long time but lucky someone did change it at one point because they put plumbers tape around the threads. If they hadn't done that, we wouldn't have been able to get it out. It required a large socket wrench and a 1 1/16 socket. I had to go buy a socket because the biggest we had was 1 inch.  Well we finally got it off. This is what was left of the rod.

Nothing is left. All the magnesium was gone. Hopefully the inside of the tank is ok.  You cant see inside the tank. I put the flushing tool, that you hook onto the hose and you put inside the tank. Then flush out all the sediment that was inside the tank from the rod falling apart.

This is what a new rod looks like. You want to change it when it starts having multiple holes in it. You dont want it to fall apart, like mine did.  So we got that done.
We also got the inverter mounted back on the wall in one of the bays. It had some how fallen off.  But since that happened, the front electrical outlets , by the TV dont work. I cant figure out what is wrong. We checked all the fuses, breakers and GFIs.  Nothing is tripped. So that will have to be checked and fixed when I bring it to the RV place next week. I already have an appointment to replace the front , roof AC unit and  I needed new shocks.
We took the RV back to where I store it. After I had backed it in, with Lou's help, he called me to come look at something.

Yup, a leak in the radiator coolant reservoir.  Well, another thing for the RV place to fix.  I hope that is covered under my extended warranty.