#62 – Coveys Great Adventure – Nov 2019 – Salt Lake City, Aguanga CA

Nov 2019 – Salt Lake City and Aguanga CA              

Last month ended in Bend, Oregon, where we had the main engine starter replaced. From Bend we made our way across Oregon to Salt Lake City to spend a week with Liesa. There are two routes across the state that don’t involve interstate highways. We picked US 20 and stopped for the first night in Burns at the Burns RV Park, a place we have stayed before and like. We just made it, though. We arrived Friday afternoon and they were closing for the season on Sunday. The friendly, hands-on owners said that they have been sold out since they opened in April.

The next morning we began to smell a strong ammonia-like odor when we hit the road,. Strangely, when underway we could only smell it up front, and when not moving we couldn’t smell it at all. That was a real puzzle and led me to think that mice had built a nest in the dash air box during one of our long stationary periods. We stopped for the second night at Walmart in Mountain Home, Idaho. As soon as we parked the smell stopped, reinforcing my mouse-nest-in-air-box theory. The next day the smell returned and lasted all the way to Salt Lake City.

We set up camp and opened the fridge to discover that it wasn’t working. A quick check of the possible systems issues didn’t help, it was dead. The smell was the refrigerant slowly leaking away through a corroded cooling tube. I still can’t explain why we could smell it so strongly in the front of the coach while underway but not next to the refrigerator when we were parked.

Most RV’s use absorption-based refrigerators that use either AC power or propane to generate the heat that turns the refrigerant from liquid to gas. These fridges do not use compressors like residential units because of the power drain. When working properly, ours switches automatically from electricity to propane as needed. Until it died it worked great.

Not a DIY project!

Many people don’t replace failed absorption units because they have a nasty habit of burning up the coach and killing the occupants. Instead, they get scrapped and replaced with residential fridges. That is a popular “repair” when folks don’t do much dry camping and are hooked up to power every night.

There was a mandatory federal recall to install over-temp safety shutoff devices on these fridges about the time our coach was built. I made sure that ours did have the factory safety device before we bought the coach, and I had an additional one installed four years ago. Both of them worked.

We like dry camping and didn’t want to replace the current fridge with a residential model. Doing so requires bigger batteries ($$!) and changing the interior woodwork ($$$!).

This fridge was clearly installed before the roof was put on, because it won’t fit through the door. Many coaches (ours included) have to hire a fork lift and remove a window or the windshield to get the current one out, or to install a new one. You can see where this is going: $,$$$. A replacement fridge like ours costs over $3,500, plus freight from Texas.

About 6 inches of clearance!

Cooling unit failures are common enough that a couple of suppliers offer replacements. These arrive fully charged and ready to install onto the current fridge box. For $1500. Via truck freight. Plus installation. Careful measuring showed that it could be done (just barely) on the living room floor without having to remove the whole unit from the coach.

So that’s what we did. Given our schedule we couldn’t get the new cooling unit shipped to Salt Lake City before we had to leave, so we arranged to get it done when we arrived at Jojoba Hills SKP Park in Aguanga, California. That meant a couple of weeks without refrigeration, but we bought a few coolers, lots of ice and dry ice and managed to get by. Despite the breezy YouTube videos showing "easy user installation" I was smart enough to hire the pros this time. 

Sand Hollow State Park

We pulled out of Salt Lake on November 13^th bound for Aguanga, about 750 miles away. A few years ago I might have driven that in two days, but not now. We made it to Sand Hollow State Park the first day, a place we have always said we wanted to try as we drove by on our way to Willow Wind RV Park, also in Hurricane, Utah. I wouldn’t want to stay at Sand Hollow in warmer weather because there is no shade whatsoever, but in November it was terrific. The site was huge, the roads were easy to navigate and the facilities were very clean. It’s a little pricey for an overnight stop, but we’ll certainly return.

Our second stop at Desert Springs RV “Resort” in Daggett California had nothing to recommend it except electricity and water hookups. Next time we need a place to stay near Barstow we’ll dry camp in the parking lot at Peggy Sue’s Diner, an institution on I15 just a few miles away.

We were on a fairly tight schedule to get to Aguanga because Ted and Judy Anderson’s daughter, Amanda, was getting married and we really wanted to be there. We’ve known Amanda since she was born, so we made sure that our plans and reservations were in place months ago. A small problem like a broken fridge wasn’t going to delay us. It was a beautiful wedding, Amanda truly was the belle of the ball, and Ted gave a terrific speech. We even liked the groom, too.

Attending the wedding meant we couldn’t be with Liesa on Thanksgiving. That’s the first big holiday that we haven’t been together, ever. I think it was difficult for all of us, but Liesa and Cory had dinner with his mother and we spent the day with Paul, Brenda, Katie and Chris in Hemet. As usual, Paul and Brenda outdid themselves and dinner was delicious. While we certainly missed Liesa, it all seemed to work out.

We really like Jojoba Hills

Jojoba Hills is one of our all-time favorite places to stay, and we had been looking forward all year to our third visit. The park has about 300 sites that sprawl across several hundred acres of semi-desert terrain. Individual sites are quite spacious and there is lots of open space to walk the dogs. No weekly or monthly discounts, though, so it isn’t cheap, but it is good value for money, especially if you use the pool, spas, library, pickle ball courts, etc. Like our SKP Saguaro Co-op in Benson, Arizona, the members here are exuberantly friendly. On December 3 we headed north to Simi Valley to catch up with friends in Thousand Oaks and Pasadena.

The dogs love Jojoba!

We’ll be splitting our time in December between Simi Valley, Perris and Hemet, 
California. Right after Xmas we head east to spend a couple of weeks in Puerto Peñasco,
Mexico, then on to our lot at the SKP Saguaro Co-op for several weeks.  

Books I enjoyed this month featured The Whole Town’s Talking by Fanny Flagg, and Dog Songs by Mary Oliver

Noteworthy wines included: Columbia Crest H3 Cabernet Sauvignon 2016, and J. Lohr Paso Robles Syrah 2017

More soon,

Bob