Last Saturday we made the 170 mile drive from Batesville to Huntington with no problems. The sun was out, and it was fairly warm, but a bit windy. We decided to just dry camp at Wal-Mart for the night, because our reservations at Camp Timberlake did not start until Sunday May 1st.
We pulled in around 4:30 pm and parked in the far gravel lot. This particular Wal-Mart has a huge gravel lot adjacent to their normal parking areas. It is usually full of tractor trailers and a few RV’s. This is only the second time we have dry camped at a Wal-Mart.
I was relaxed a little more this time I think, because I new the area and have seen plenty of RV’s parked here in the past. I keep waiting for someone to knock on the door at 1:00am telling us we have to move. Different cities have different ordinances about dry camping in parking lots. I am just not quite comfortable about doing it yet, but I am getting there.
We had dinner at Pizza Hut then we went into Wal-Mart to buy some non grocery items we needed. We would save the grocery items for Sunday morning. We spent the rest of the evening quietly reading and then went to bed early.
Sunday, we got up and Max made a grocery list and then we headed for breakfast and then went to get groceries. We ran into some good friends of ours, Kent and Martha Fites. They are also Rver’s and also ride Honda Goldwing's. We visited for awhile and then promised to meet up later in the week when we had more time to catch up.
We got our groceries put away and was getting the RV ready to travel the 5 miles to the campground. When Max went to pull in our door side slide it would not budge. The pump just whined. Uh! Oh! I had her try the off door side and it pulled in okay. Then she tried the door side again and then it came in properly.
I think the fluid in the reservoir tank was too low and it was sucking air. Back in March the Lippert Hydraulic engineer added bypass hoses to try to help with the issue of the landing legs coming down. He stated that when we got back to Indiana that he needed to put in a larger tank to offset the larger fluid volume.
This and the fact that I am still seeping a little fluid at the manifold, led me to believe the fluid level was getting too low. I have tightened the fittings but they still seep. I am afraid of over tightening and causing a bigger problem while on the road. I have an appointment on May 16th to have it all looked at.
We got checked in at Camp Timberlake and got all set up. We relaxed in the evening, and had to start our fasting around 8:00pm. We had to get our blood taken for our physicals on Monday morning. To help in our fasting we went to bed fairly early.
Monday we got up and headed to the lab to get our blood taken. From there we went to IHOP for breakfast, then to Max’s doctor appointments and to my dentist appointment. We then stopped by our son’s house to get to see him and Emma as we were so close. We visited for awhile then headed back to the campground.
When we pulled into the campground, I noticed that the trailer was sitting low in front and that the landing legs were all the way in. They had slowly collapsed. I raised them back up and they would slowly collapse again.
We mad a trip into town to get some transmission fluid to refill the reservoir tank. I put a quart into the tank and raised and lowered the legs a little to get the fluid in the system. I thought I had it but while we were watching TV the rig would slowly start to sink in the front. I finally went outside and decided to pull in the slides and the leveling jacks and run the front legs up and down a bunch of times.
This finally got the air through the system and then the legs held their position. We definitely need to get the larger tank and get our leaks or seepage fixed.
Tuesday I will go get the oil changed in the truck while Max works on our financials. We also have the monthly meeting of our Goldwing Chapter and will get to see a lot of our friends there. Next Saturday they will have a maintenance day at a members house where I will be able to take the motorcycle and cargo trailer over to their house and change the oil and other much needed maintenance. Plus! It’s a carry in food kind of thing!
Enjoy Your Day!
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