Tuesday, February 7, 2012

Bumpy Start To California

 

Monday morning we took our time getting ready to leave Quartzsite. Our first time boon docking trip was successful. We managed our holding tanks well and only had to dump and take on water once in our three weeks in the desert.

Using the generator, I thought was going to be pretty straight forward. While on one generator, it was enough to charge the batteries and watch tv and a few other appliances. If we wanted to run the microwave I needed to start up both generators.

They are hooked together by a couple of cables and should generate around 3800 usable watts of power. For some reason when I used the microwave it worked fine one time but not in another. I was perplexed because it all looked like it was hooked up properly.

On our last morning I decided to try to run some tests to determine why I could not run the microwave with 3800 watts of power coming into the rig. I thought that maybe the refrigerator was running electric at the same time I ran the microwave causing an overload. I turned the refrigerator off and went out to start both generators.

It was then that I noticed that one of the cables was pushed into the port farther than the other end into the other generator. I also noticed that it was the same on another cable. I pushed all four cables all the way in (which was very hard) and told myself that it would work better if it was plugged in right.

I went inside and was kind of laughing at my foolish mistake of not getting everything plugged in all the way and was getting ready to test the appliances. Maxine just looked at me and my face and said “Okay what foolish mistake did you make this time” Does she know me or what!

I fired up both generators and the microwave, hair dryer and all appliances worked properly. Sheesh! The few times we ran the microwave thinking I was using two generators, I was in reality only using one. If the refrigerator happened to be running at the time it would shut down the microwave and kick the breaker on the generator if it wasn’t running the microwave would work. Sometimes it is the obvious things.

We got packed up and was ready to hitch up the truck and the front jacks would not go up or down. Uh Oh! I thought we were going to spend some more time in Quartzsite until we could figure it out.

All other hydraulics worked. Just the front jacks would not go up or down. I could hear the pump running, but nothing was moving. Last year when we had so many problems with the jacks I got to know the engineer pretty well. In fact I have him on speed dial.

I called Bob from Lippert and told him my issue. He talked me through it over the phone. It ended up being a loose wire that pulled loose when closing the bedroom slide. The harness caught another wire and unplugged it. This all took about 5 minutes to diagnose and fix and we were ready to hit the road.

We only had about a 140 mile trip to get to the Thousand Trails Resort in Palm Desert California. Getting into the campsites here is a challenge. There are Date Palm trees on each side of the narrow sites. After a few attempts I got it backed in. There is another tree just outside the view on the right. The sites are also very short so we had to park the truck in another area.

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Down our street

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The pool area

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It is a nice park and very close to all the things in Palm Springs. We plan on catching up on laundry and a few other things after boon docking for three weeks before we explore. There are tons of things to do here in the park. Already we have been invited to play water volleyball, cards, horseshoes and take some line dancing lessons.

Thursday I have an appointment to get the truck serviced with an oil change, new fuel filters and rotate the tires. We will take a day or two to checkout Joshua Tree National Park, and maybe the tram in Palm Springs. We will also see if we can find a nice road or two for the motorcycle.

Enjoy Your Day!

 

 

 

3 comments:

Tom and Marci said...

I can see where those trees would be troublesome, but they look cool!

owensontheroad said...

Never been to Palm Springs, but I hear it's a terrific place. Enjoy your time there :)

Catherine, Jo Beth and Grace said...

That looks like a beautiful drive. I am glad you are getting a chance to enjoy the bike.