Oct 24, 2010
FIRE….Snow….and stuff!
We crossed into the US about 3:15PM Saturday with no problems, just the usual human and dog food check. They never even asked where we were going or for how long which surprised us. We spent that night at the Walmart in Moses Lake. It was 56F, the warmest first night we have ever had.
We had such a great sleep that I’d like to say we slept through the alarm but I actually made an error setting it so instead of driving at 8:00AM we were just opening our eyes. No worries! Turned on the generator to heat up the place for the kids and to make coffee for us. Put the curbside bedroom slide in (don’t usually open the living room slide in a Walmart ) and hit the store button for the jacks. Back to the kitchen and then back to the front to see if they had stored yet so I could turn on the engine! I saw a very tiny faint wisp of white smoke and smelt a bit of an odor. I quickly shut off the generator and the jack pad and called for Colin who was shall we say otherwise occupied in the lavatory. He came running, called for a fire extihguisher as he headed out the door. Sure enough there was a four inch flame and white billowing smoke coming out the front of the RV. He put the fire out as I was preparing to evacuate should it become necessary. During the next 90 minutes Colin diagnosed the problem as a jack pad fuse that had failed but caught fire. After a few trips to Walmart he completed the repair including replacing wire, connectors and such.
In the 'heat' of the moment I never got a photo of the fire!
The current problem was that the final jack had not yet retracted completely and when we started the engine an extremely loud high pitched whining noise filled the coach, telling us we had a problem!! However each time we tried to retract the hydraulic jack we blew a fuse. Finally we decided to hit the road despite the whine. It is Sunday and there was nowhere to get any repairs done. We would deal with the situation eventually. After an hour we stopped for fuel—-what a relief to our ears and I image the poor girls ears also. While fueling Colin had an idea which I agreed with but not the method so between us we got the jack retracted and were able to continue down the road in peaceful quiet.
We crossed into Oregon, where we were assulted with lots of rain & heavy winds and just south of Pendleton we experienced our first and hopefully last snow flurry of the season. Not sure what we will do tonight but likely we won’t be putting the jacks down or slides out. To our knowledge there is no Camping World until Las Vegas so we hope o find and RV Dealer on Monday and check it all out. Good thing we left home half a day earlier. The snow stopped, the wind picked up and we drove through numerous tumbleweeds. We have never seen so many at once.
Tumbling, tumbling tumbleweeds...
Before I could connect to the internet and post this we ended up in Boise, Idaho “camped” in a parking lot in the rain. We are at an RV repair shop, that I found in a 2006 Trailer Life Directory. The book just fell open to that page. Yeah!! They open at 7:30AM Mountain Time (we are living on 6:30 AM our time) so hopefully we will get some help. As we are parked right in front of their door they can’t ignore us. I really do want to be able to put the jacks down & open the slides for the rest of the trip. So tonight we will be very very cozy in our lovely little home. Thanks to my wonderful guy who stayed calm and handled everything….thanks to whoever’s internet signal I am stealing and thanks to whoever invented wine…time for some of that and dinner…8:45PM Mountain Time..Sunday the 24th.
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Hi Contessa & Colin,
Sooooo very glad to hear that all is well but what a scare!!!!
Hope all is successfully repaired today and you will be on you way.
Never a dull moment for you two!
Safe travels.
Bob & Marjorie