Friday, June 06, 2008
RV Repair and the Omaha / Lincoln Area
[Be sure to click on the photos for larger versions.]
This installment covers Monday (June 2) through Thursday (June 5).
Monday was a travel and maintenance day. We left Hannibal and immediately crossed the Mississippi River into Illinois. Our GPS then led us in a stair-step fashion on a series of state and county roads until we finally joined up with US 67, a major north-south highway. The speed limit for trucks, RV, and campers is 55 on the major highways and freeways in Illinois, the first state where we have faced a lower speed limit.
We arrived in Davenport, Iowa, back across the Mississippi River, about 11:30 and took the RV to Ace Marine & RV to have our air conditioner repaired. The owner and his helper worked on the A/C for about 6-1/2 hours. The A/C unit is hard to remove from the RV – it took about 2 hours to get it disconnected and out of the motorhome. They then replaced a burned wire, a bad relay, repaired a refrigerant leak, and recharged the unit. The reverse process to reinstall the A/C took about another 2 hours. If this work had been done behind the scenes in a shop, I would never believe that it actually took this long to repair. However, I watched the whole time and they did a professional and efficient job. The owner only charged 5 hours of labor (at $65 an hour) plus parts – so the cost was eminently reasonable.
After the A/C was finished, we drove another 50 miles to the HWH factory in Moscow, Iowa, where we spent the night with an electric hook-up adjacent to their service facility. We drove to nearby Muscatine, Iowa, and had dinner at Applebees. When Carol’s chicken was served, it was not completely cooked. They promptly fixed the problem, and then took her meal off the bill.
The word for the day is “evitable.” I ran across it in Discover magazine and deduced from the context that it was being used as the opposite of “inevitable” and was intended to mean “avoidable.” Despite my doubts about its validity, the dictionary confirmed that it truly is a word.
At 7:00 Tuesday morning, we pulled the RV into one of HWH’s service bays where the factory service personnel fixed a leak in one of the hydraulic cylinders that extends the bedroom slide, tuned-up a slow leveling jack, and adjusted our leveling sensor. This 4-plus hour job totaled only $75, another real bargain. (In Tallahassee we would have paid $105 an hour for labor, and they would have replaced parts rather than repair them.)
While the RV was in the shop, we had a good breakfast in nearby Tipton. During breakfast we chatted with a couple of local farmers and with another couple who were having their RV serviced at HWH. After breakfast we did a week’s worth of laundry in a local laundromat, then returned to HWH and visited with other RVers in their customer lounge until our unit was ready. It rained hard most of the morning, though the worst was over by the time we got on the road.
Today we drove about 300 miles on I-80 to Pine Grove RV Park located about halfway between Omaha and Lincoln, Nebraska. Southeastern Iowa is mostly rolling farmland, the southwestern part of the state was also rolling, but seemed to have fewer large farms. The interstate had frequent rest areas, all with free WIFI access. Other states would do well to follow Iowa’s example.
Near Des Moines, our RV hit a significant milestone – 66,666.66 miles on the odometer. We recorded the latitude and longitude of this event on our GPS in case anyone is interested.
Pine Grove has good TV reception and free WIFI access. We spent the evening in the coach watching TV.
Wednesday was a sightseeing day. After sleeping-in, we started the day at the Strategic Air Command (SAC) museum outside Omaha. The museum featured a variety of bombers and reconnaissance aircraft in two large indoor hanger areas. They also had an SR-71 supported on a couple of concrete pillars with landing gear retracted, so it looks as though it is in flight.
After the museum, we visited a nearby antique mall and had lunch at Cracker Barrel. We then drove to downtown Lincoln where we visited the Nebraska History Museum. The museum had exhibits that tracked Nebraska history from the Indian days, through pioneer days, World War II, and into modern times.
We learned that due to a problem in the mid-1800s with “jayhawking” or “land piracy,” the Nebraska territorial legislature enacted legislation that, among other things, made it lawful for “any person or persons to kill, slay, and destroy, by all and every means known for taking of life, any armed person or persons who shall at the time of the killing be engaged” in plundering, stealing, etc. Guess legislation allowing guns in workplace parking lots is not so extreme after all.
We also learned that during WWII it was patriotic to share a 32-ounce beer with your gal instead of drinking two 16-ouncers -- it saves the aluminum in the avoided bottlecap.
We decided not to visit the state capitol building, but did get a photo from a couple of blocks away.
We visited two more antique malls before having dinner at La Paz, a crowded Mexican restaurant. We made what was intended to be a quick stop at a grocery store, when they announced over the public address system that there was a tornado warning for areas north of Lincoln (we were south of town). When we returned to the car, we tuned into a station that was reporting constant weather updates and learned that the worst weather was within about 10 miles of our RV park. We stayed put in the grocery store parking lot for about an hour, until the weather had moved on, then set out for “home” to see if any damage had been done.
En route back to the RV, we were stopped by a local policeman for having a burned out headlight. After he took about 15 minutes back in his car – presumably to assure himself that we were not serial killers and had no outstanding warrants – he gave us a written warning and sent us on our way. Back at the RV park it was raining, but apparently we had not suffered any hail or damaging winds. The TV shows another line of weather that is moving through the area south of us, so we may not yet be in the clear. We’re currently watching Jay Leno – in the Central time zone, he’s on an hour earlier here – and the occasional interruptions for weather updates. We awoke in the night to some hard rain, but luckily the high winds and hail stayed south of our campground.
Thursday was a long driving day. We continued on I-80 through southern Nebraska and into western Wyoming where we are staying for two nights at the Rest Away RV Park. Iowa had rolling hills; Nebraska is flat. There were more thunderstorms in Nebraska today. We saw a lot of black sky and spent a large part of the day tuning into weather radio. Our CB receives the National Weather Service weather channels. Whenever there is power to the radio – turned on or not – and a new severe thunderstorm or tornado watch is issued, the radio emits a long, loud, high-pitched warning tone that alternatively attracts your attention and annoys you. Fortunately, the storms stayed either just north, just south or just east of us as we headed westward across the state. At the end of the day we had a little light rain, but missed all the severe thunderstorms and tornado watches.
We stopped to buy diesel for the RV at a station which had two operating pumps and two that were out of order. When we started pumping at the first good pump, the in-line fuel filter on the pump’s hose spewed about 3 gallons of fuel on the ground before I was able to get the pump shut down. While Carol went inside to tell the attendant about the problem, I moved the RV to the last remaining pump and used it to refuel. I then successfully resisted the attendant’s attempt to charge us for the $14 of diesel that their defective pump placed on the ground.
This evening in Cheyenne we bought a new headlight for the CRV, had dinner at Olive Garden, and stopped at Michael’s to let Carol shop for crafty supplies. It is very windy here and we have learned not to open two doors to the car at one time, else the wind rushes through and blows light objects hither and yon.
We have both cable TV and WIFI at this park, so I will use the opportunity to update the blog.
This installment covers Monday (June 2) through Thursday (June 5).
Monday was a travel and maintenance day. We left Hannibal and immediately crossed the Mississippi River into Illinois. Our GPS then led us in a stair-step fashion on a series of state and county roads until we finally joined up with US 67, a major north-south highway. The speed limit for trucks, RV, and campers is 55 on the major highways and freeways in Illinois, the first state where we have faced a lower speed limit.
We arrived in Davenport, Iowa, back across the Mississippi River, about 11:30 and took the RV to Ace Marine & RV to have our air conditioner repaired. The owner and his helper worked on the A/C for about 6-1/2 hours. The A/C unit is hard to remove from the RV – it took about 2 hours to get it disconnected and out of the motorhome. They then replaced a burned wire, a bad relay, repaired a refrigerant leak, and recharged the unit. The reverse process to reinstall the A/C took about another 2 hours. If this work had been done behind the scenes in a shop, I would never believe that it actually took this long to repair. However, I watched the whole time and they did a professional and efficient job. The owner only charged 5 hours of labor (at $65 an hour) plus parts – so the cost was eminently reasonable.
After the A/C was finished, we drove another 50 miles to the HWH factory in Moscow, Iowa, where we spent the night with an electric hook-up adjacent to their service facility. We drove to nearby Muscatine, Iowa, and had dinner at Applebees. When Carol’s chicken was served, it was not completely cooked. They promptly fixed the problem, and then took her meal off the bill.
The word for the day is “evitable.” I ran across it in Discover magazine and deduced from the context that it was being used as the opposite of “inevitable” and was intended to mean “avoidable.” Despite my doubts about its validity, the dictionary confirmed that it truly is a word.
At 7:00 Tuesday morning, we pulled the RV into one of HWH’s service bays where the factory service personnel fixed a leak in one of the hydraulic cylinders that extends the bedroom slide, tuned-up a slow leveling jack, and adjusted our leveling sensor. This 4-plus hour job totaled only $75, another real bargain. (In Tallahassee we would have paid $105 an hour for labor, and they would have replaced parts rather than repair them.)
While the RV was in the shop, we had a good breakfast in nearby Tipton. During breakfast we chatted with a couple of local farmers and with another couple who were having their RV serviced at HWH. After breakfast we did a week’s worth of laundry in a local laundromat, then returned to HWH and visited with other RVers in their customer lounge until our unit was ready. It rained hard most of the morning, though the worst was over by the time we got on the road.
Today we drove about 300 miles on I-80 to Pine Grove RV Park located about halfway between Omaha and Lincoln, Nebraska. Southeastern Iowa is mostly rolling farmland, the southwestern part of the state was also rolling, but seemed to have fewer large farms. The interstate had frequent rest areas, all with free WIFI access. Other states would do well to follow Iowa’s example.
Near Des Moines, our RV hit a significant milestone – 66,666.66 miles on the odometer. We recorded the latitude and longitude of this event on our GPS in case anyone is interested.
Pine Grove has good TV reception and free WIFI access. We spent the evening in the coach watching TV.
Wednesday was a sightseeing day. After sleeping-in, we started the day at the Strategic Air Command (SAC) museum outside Omaha. The museum featured a variety of bombers and reconnaissance aircraft in two large indoor hanger areas. They also had an SR-71 supported on a couple of concrete pillars with landing gear retracted, so it looks as though it is in flight.
After the museum, we visited a nearby antique mall and had lunch at Cracker Barrel. We then drove to downtown Lincoln where we visited the Nebraska History Museum. The museum had exhibits that tracked Nebraska history from the Indian days, through pioneer days, World War II, and into modern times.
We learned that due to a problem in the mid-1800s with “jayhawking” or “land piracy,” the Nebraska territorial legislature enacted legislation that, among other things, made it lawful for “any person or persons to kill, slay, and destroy, by all and every means known for taking of life, any armed person or persons who shall at the time of the killing be engaged” in plundering, stealing, etc. Guess legislation allowing guns in workplace parking lots is not so extreme after all.
We also learned that during WWII it was patriotic to share a 32-ounce beer with your gal instead of drinking two 16-ouncers -- it saves the aluminum in the avoided bottlecap.
We decided not to visit the state capitol building, but did get a photo from a couple of blocks away.
We visited two more antique malls before having dinner at La Paz, a crowded Mexican restaurant. We made what was intended to be a quick stop at a grocery store, when they announced over the public address system that there was a tornado warning for areas north of Lincoln (we were south of town). When we returned to the car, we tuned into a station that was reporting constant weather updates and learned that the worst weather was within about 10 miles of our RV park. We stayed put in the grocery store parking lot for about an hour, until the weather had moved on, then set out for “home” to see if any damage had been done.
En route back to the RV, we were stopped by a local policeman for having a burned out headlight. After he took about 15 minutes back in his car – presumably to assure himself that we were not serial killers and had no outstanding warrants – he gave us a written warning and sent us on our way. Back at the RV park it was raining, but apparently we had not suffered any hail or damaging winds. The TV shows another line of weather that is moving through the area south of us, so we may not yet be in the clear. We’re currently watching Jay Leno – in the Central time zone, he’s on an hour earlier here – and the occasional interruptions for weather updates. We awoke in the night to some hard rain, but luckily the high winds and hail stayed south of our campground.
Thursday was a long driving day. We continued on I-80 through southern Nebraska and into western Wyoming where we are staying for two nights at the Rest Away RV Park. Iowa had rolling hills; Nebraska is flat. There were more thunderstorms in Nebraska today. We saw a lot of black sky and spent a large part of the day tuning into weather radio. Our CB receives the National Weather Service weather channels. Whenever there is power to the radio – turned on or not – and a new severe thunderstorm or tornado watch is issued, the radio emits a long, loud, high-pitched warning tone that alternatively attracts your attention and annoys you. Fortunately, the storms stayed either just north, just south or just east of us as we headed westward across the state. At the end of the day we had a little light rain, but missed all the severe thunderstorms and tornado watches.
We stopped to buy diesel for the RV at a station which had two operating pumps and two that were out of order. When we started pumping at the first good pump, the in-line fuel filter on the pump’s hose spewed about 3 gallons of fuel on the ground before I was able to get the pump shut down. While Carol went inside to tell the attendant about the problem, I moved the RV to the last remaining pump and used it to refuel. I then successfully resisted the attendant’s attempt to charge us for the $14 of diesel that their defective pump placed on the ground.
This evening in Cheyenne we bought a new headlight for the CRV, had dinner at Olive Garden, and stopped at Michael’s to let Carol shop for crafty supplies. It is very windy here and we have learned not to open two doors to the car at one time, else the wind rushes through and blows light objects hither and yon.
We have both cable TV and WIFI at this park, so I will use the opportunity to update the blog.
