We spent Sept 3-11 in Yakutat, AK fishing this year. The weather was horrid, but we caught a lot
of fish. It was raining when we landed
and it was raining when we left. There
was only one day we saw blue skies. The
rest of the time was wind and lots of rain….in fact the back of the lodge had
standing water most of the time we were there.
The weather was so bad that a barge heading for Yakutat had to be turned
around because of rough seas. However,
we were out every day (thank goodness we have great rain gear) and caught a lot
of fish. The fish were smaller this
year, but more abundant. We came home
with four full boxes of Salmon Filets (about 175 pounds). Still had great fun, and yes, we are already
booked for next year.
One week after we got home from Alaska, we took our coach in
for its annual service and maintenance check (Sept 19) then we spent the next
four days (19-23) camping at South Beach State Park in Newport, Oregon. Our friends Rod & Lynda joined us for a
fun weekend. The weather was fairly decent,
and we had one nice day where we walked from our campsite to the beach and
back. We even found a geocache during
that walk. It was wonderful to spend a
lot of our time sitting around the campfire and visiting. Of course, we had to have dinner in town
several times and even drove up to Lincoln City to do some shopping at the
Outlet Stores.
Once we got back to Salem, we spent many days getting the
coach cleaned out and repacked with what we would need in Arizona. Our plans were to head to Arizona on Oct 11,
but we still had too much to do, so put it off till Oct 13. Good thing we did because the refrigerator in
the coach suddenly quit working. We have
a neighbor that is a Norcold Rep, so we called him and he discovered the
cooling unit died. There was coolant
everywhere (ugly). Thankfully, it
happened while we were home and not on the road somewhere. Once again we were fortunate to find a place
that we could take it in and get it fixed.
The coach was taken in on Oct 15 and was scheduled to be finished on Oct
17 late afternoon. Needless-to-say,
everything we took out of coach had to be put back in, so the plan to leave
Salem for Arizona was delayed until Oct 19.
Saturday, Oct 19, we left Salem and drove south to highway
58 where we had a colorful drive across the Willamette Pass into Central Oregon. It was so nice to have no rain or snow! We crossed into California and made our way
through Alturas and ended our drive at a little town called Likely on highway
395. There we stayed the night in a
large open parking lot next to the volunteer fire department’s building.
The next morning (Sunday) we had an uneventful drive through
Reno, Fernley, and Fallon to a rest area just north of Tonopah, Nevada. This is a nice place to stop and spend the
night because they don’t allow any large trucks to pull in there. We arrived early enough to spend some time
out in the sun having a nice glass of wine.
Up to this point, we had no problems and all was going well.
Monday, we were up early and prepared for the drive to
Laughlin, Nevada. We made it through Las
Vegas with no problems and ended our day at the Avi Casino and RV Park just
south of Laughlin. Since we got there
early enough, we got cleaned up and walked over to the casino for a wonderful
dinner and drinks. Again, this was another
wonderful day with an easy drive.
Tuesday, Oct 22, we were up early and headed into
Arizona. Our drive south was getting
warmer as we got closer to our destination.
We pulled into Queen Valley RV Resort about 2 pm and quickly got set up
and turned on the AC because the temperature was in the 90s. Not long after we got set up, Ken noticed a
propane smell and discovered the regulator was leaking a little (not
good). He quickly turned off the gas and
decided we would have to have the regulator replaced again (this has happened
before).
The next day (Wednesday the 23rd) Ken noticed the inside of
the refrigerator was in the 50s. It was
another hot day (90-95) and the sun was beating on that side of the coach, so
we pulled the slider awning out to shade it, but the temperature didn’t go down. Ken then opened up the outside panels and
noticed the fans weren’t working….. That really wasn’t good because we just spent
$2,300 to have the whole cooling unit replaced.
Thankfully, we have an extra freezer in our shed, so we pulled stuff out
of the coach freezer and put it in the shed’s freezer. We weren’t worried about stuff in the fridge
because there really wasn’t much in there that would spoil. The temperature did go down after the sun
set, but not to where it should be. The
next morning (Thurs), we called Norcold and they gave us a name of someone in Apache
Junction who could work on our fridge.
We then called Apache Junction RV Sales & Service and were told they
could come out, but to run a couple tests first. We ran the tests, which took 4 hours, then
called them back with the results. They
then said they could come out the next day (Friday), but we would have to pay
the travel cost ($50) and the diagnosis cost ($94 an hour) because Norcold would
only pay the warranty on the cooling unit IF it was bad. We had no problem with that because it would
be more trouble to pull up stakes and drive the coach all the way into Apache
Junction (24 miles one way).
Friday was another hot day (88) and with the fans not
working on the fridge, the inside temp never got below 50. Freezer was barely freezing, but that was not
acceptable. We were thrilled when Tom of
AJ RV Service showed up and took one look at the unit and said Roberson RV
Service wired the fans wrong. Tom had
the fan wires fixed and working in less than five minutes (whew). Tom also noticed that with our fridge on the
slider we have two outside vents. Well,
the fans are at the lower portion of the unit and the upper part of the unit
should have a baffle to move the air into the cooling unit (it didn’t)……SO, he
quickly got one made and installed (yay).
Tom then looked at our propane regulator and replaced that ($23). He had everything back to normal in just a
bit over an hour. We were thrilled to
not have anything more serious wrong.
Total cost of the repair was $178.
What a relief!!!
We have now been in Queen Valley almost 3 weeks and have
seen many residents coming back. We had
our first official coffee social on Nov 4 and enjoyed seeing so many of our
friends. The weather has been fantastic
with only a few days in the 90s with the rest in the 70s & 80s. The evenings have been wonderfully cool. Yes, we did have one night of rain, but it
passed through quickly and didn’t leave too much of a mess behind. There wasn’t much dust in the air, so didn’t
have the mud residue we normally get after a rain (yay).
