Time at the farm for repairs

I had intended to keep more of an ongoing blog of our repair activities this last month+, but we were just so busy!  So here's just one big wrap-up post.

We spent about six weeks parked at our lovely parking spot at the family farm in West Virginia.  My dad had prepared some old plywood siding boards for our backing-in so we could avoid tearing up the front lawn, and they worked quite well.

Moving the boards into place

Parked!  I had to help Aaron with backing up so I didn't get
and 'in-progress' photo, but you get the idea.

Unfortunately, when Aaron went to plug in, we encountered an unexpected repair need...somehow over the winter one of the old wires running through the pasture went bad.  So our first project (and by 'our' I mean Aaron's and my dad's...) became re-fixing the electricity to the parking spot.  They did this in short order and had us up and running within a few days.

Diagnosing the problem

Setting up the tractor to lay another new wire
under the ground in the pasture

Everything was freshly in bloom in West Virginia, quite a nice setting for our work!

Apple trees in bloom

With the electricity out of the way....this repair session our main focus was on making the RV easier to drive - the stress of the driving experience is getting to Aaron a bit.  So we replaced the rear shock absorbers (we did the front last time) and the front air bags (tried to do the back as well but - thanks COVID - we couldn't find the part in stock anywhere), tweaked the steering adjustment to make the steering 'tighter', fixed the wiring for the rear view camera, and cleaned the interior of the driver side window (between the glass) so Aaron can actually see the mirrors.

Aaron had to contort himself in all sorts 
of ways to get the air springs out

The new air springs

Cleaning the window with distilled water and ethanol through a 
hole drilled in the rubber seal

In other repairs, Aaron took off the basement door that we dented at the gas station in Texas, fixed the dent, and repainted the door.  It looks great!  You'd never know that we damaged it. 

Hammering the bent frame piece straight

Fitting the fixed frame piece back in place

Sanding in preparation for paint

All done!

While we were painting, we also repainted two areas whose paint didn't look so great from last time - one other basement door and the black part of our bedroom slide.  I didn't think to take a picture, but after repainting the bedroom slide, the clearcoat and top layer of black paint peeled off like vinyl when we tried to polish it...so we'll have to do that AGAIN.

Painting the basement door

Makeshift painting booth

Painting the bedroom slide

Aaron built a little shield for our tow hitch to help protect it from scraping bottom as we went in and out of the steep driveway at the farm.

Testing the fit

Close up of the shield

We tried to straighten our front door, which catches in the wind on the highway and vibrates a lot and makes lots of noise.  We couldn't do much to straighten the frame without breaking the glass, but Aaron did tighten up all the hinges and whatnot and as a happy side effect the door is a lot easier to open and close now!

Somewhat futile attempt to straighten the frame

And just for fun...Aaron finished my little doorside shelf that he started on last time we were here.  I love it!

Installing the shelf

On a personal note, we had a few adventures.  My Uncle John's ash spreading was right after we arrived - a small outdoor affair.

The small gathering included mostly Uncle John's descendants
and my parents' descendants.  Aunt Jane is in white in the 
center; we are gathered around Uncle John's memorial bench.

We managed to get both doses of our Moderna vaccine, which makes me feel MUCH better about continuing our travels!

Goofy selfie station at the vaccination clinic

We went up to my sister's place (for the last time before they move to Florida!) to help out for a week while my brother-in-law was out of town on business.  We celebrated Star Wars day in style!

Fruit lightsabers!  Photo courtesy of my 6-year-old nephew Luke!

Finally, I started the long process of getting my loose and painful baby tooth replaced with an implant.  For those who don't know, I'm missing 6 permanent teeth (and all 4 wisdom teeth!).  Four of my baby teeth survived to adulthood, but one started wiggling around 6 years ago and I replaced it back then with an implant; this past December, another one started hurting and eventually wiggling, so it's time for it to go as well.  We ultimately decided to go back to my all-time favorite dentist (Dr. Eric Seitlin), who did my first implant, and I should be able to finish the process this summer while we're in and out of my hometown just 3 hours from Charlotte (where he's located).  Seriously, this dentist is amazing, if you're near Charlotte and looking for someone...  I have a photo of my extracted baby tooth that I thought about posting, but I don't want to disgust anyone, so I'll just post this photo of Latta Park where I ate lunch before my tooth extraction...

Latta Park in Charlotte

So that sums up our repair trip!  We're heading to Tennessee for a month-long trip around the state, so we'll have some more exciting photos soon!

Camping in West Virginia

We just spent about a week on the road camping in West Virginia.  This let us get back out exploring a bit without straying too far in case pandemic things went haywire.

Our first stop was Battle Run Campground, a Corps of Engineers campground on Summersville Lake.  This was a beautiful campground, and would be especially good for boaters (they had anchor points for boats right next to many of the campsites).  Unfortunately I booked this so late that I think we got the absolute worst spot on the campground (site 109, right behind the check in building), but even so we could still see the lake.  

See?  Lake is visible in the background :-)

There were several things to see in the immediate area - first we went to Carnifex Ferry Battlefield State Park, a Civil War battleground just around the corner.  It has one of the most beautiful overlooks we've seen in a while - visible without even having to hike!

Overlook at the picnic area parking lot

We took the Patterson Trail along the edge of the park and learned about the battle (which, honestly, seemed mostly unremarkable).  We saw a couple more beautiful overlooks and witnessed a 'stampede' of some very noisy cattle.  

After the state park, we drove down to the Summerville Lake dam.  This dam was put in place for flood control and provides additional benefits of low flow supplementation for the river downstream and hydropower at a small facility.  

This is one of the original turbines that failed

Sitting atop the dam looking down at the hydropower plant

We hiked the Long Point trail to see another view of the lake from some rocks Aaron enjoyed risking his life on.

Contemplating how much farther he could go

Panorama from the overlook we eventually reached

After a couple days in the Summersville Lake area, we headed south just a little bit to camp at Little Beaver State Park.  This was a nice, mostly wooded campground near a small lake with a dam with a pretty outfall.

While we were here, we went to several sights in the New River Gorge National River park.  We went up to the main overlook for the New River Gorge Bridge, the longest steel span in the Western hemisphere.  Although most of the visitor centers are closed due to COVID-19, they did have a ranger stationed outside the main overlook to answer questions, hand out park maps, and (most importantly!) provide stamps for your National Park Passports.

At the main overlook

We decided to take the 45 minute drive to the bottom of the gorge and back out, which was WELL worth the trip.  This route traced the original route all travelers had to take before the famous bridge was built.  The bridge, according to the signs, reduced a 45 minute trip to 45 seconds.

View from the bottom - we were standing on the replica of
the original bridge looking up at the new bridge

Later we visited the Sandstone Falls, still in the very large New River Gorge National River's park.  The overlook for the falls is easily accessible just off of I-64, and the falls look rather unimpressive from that height, so we almost decided not to take the 40 minute drive down the gorge and across the river to see them up close.  Thank goodness we did go though!  They were much more impressive up close.  The observation boardwalk is nice, but of course Aaron had to go 'off-roading' a bit to get the full up close view.

Midway through our exploration for the path to the best view
of the falls

Panorama of the falls from our ultimate vantage point

The photos really don't do the falls justice, they were beautiful and quite impressive stretched across the entire width of the New River.

Our final stop in the New River Gorge National River was the Grandview overlook.  We first tried early in the morning after an intense rain and had NO luck, but came back later in the day to a beautiful view.

Nothing to see here!

A beautiful view later in the day

Back at our campsite, Aaron came up with an innovative bellows to help our campfire grow...I just had to share.

My hair dryer is only slightly worse for the wear.  Of course while you're RVing the maintenance is ever-present, and while we were out Aaron installed a backflow preventer on our shower after seeing it recommended on Fate Unbound's YouTube channel.  We have a cutoff on our shower head to quickly turn the water off while we're sudsing up while we're not on sewer, but because the higher pressure cold water seeps back into the hot water line while the water is off, cutting the water back on always causes a burst of cold water before the temperature returns to normal.  Installing the backflow preventer (aka check valve) on the hot water feed to the shower stopped this!

Installing the valve via the handy panel
in our bedroom.

Aaron also finally fixed the slow leak in our propane tank before we filled up at U-Save Propane near Summersville Lake.  This is the first time we filled our propane tank, and we were amazed at how quick and easy it was!  We left with a full tank of propane not even 30 minutes after driving on the property.

It was so nice and refreshing to get back on the road!  We returned the RV to the family farm after our adventure, with a renewed commitment to get back on the road permanently as soon as we can.

More Repairs & 20th Anniversary!

We had another couple of sunny days! 

First up: recaulking the windows and awnings on our driver's side and installing gutters on the main awning.

Window awning recaulking

Aaron had actually built the gutters way back in the fall when we were first getting ready to start this adventure, but he didn't get them installed before we left.  We figured we'd install them on the road, only to figure out that we didn't have a tall enough ladder with us to really do so safely.  So they made a trip untouched in our cabinets until we got back on the farm!  Some glue and a couple zip ties later and they're up on the awning and *hopefully* will help keep the running water off the side of the RV.

New gutters before and after painting

Installing the new gutters

We also reglued the facing to one of our basement doors.  Aaron banged the doors pretty strongly getting the facing back in place and accidentally broke one of the door strut attachments (these things were falling like flies in the fall when he was doing repairs, so no big surprise there).  Our next sunny day he fixed this with a new steel plate, epoxy, and a few rivets.

Adding rivets to the new metal plate

All done!  The gray is JB Weld epoxy, Aaron's
go-to for small gluing jobs

Our final and MAJOR project was lubricating the 40ish lubrication points underneath the RV.  This took a LOT longer than we expected, mostly because it took forever to locate all the grease fittings.  Fortunately we had a list of what we were looking for...as Aaron lubricated the various points, we discovered that the ones that were easy to find appeared to be well lubricated...but the ones that were harder to find seemed like they hadn't been lubricated in a LONG time...which suggested to us that the previous owners did NOT have this list and just lubricated what they could see.  Everything should be in good shape now though!  One of the lubrication points was a two person job - you had to hold a finger over a release hole while pumping grease into a fitting so it would go out the other end of the joint - so I even had to get up under the RV to help!  Unfortunately we don't have a picture of that rare event.

Trying to locate grease fittings

Aaron and (mostly) my dad have a slowly ongoing project of trying to figure out how to straighten or support our front hydraulic jack.  It's at a bit of an angle - we think the previous owners ran over something - and when the jack is extended a lot it just looks precarious.  My dad has fabricated an impressive looking bracket out of steel, and we went to a Fastenal location to get some extra long threaded rods to support the process.  So far we're still in the preparation phase for that so I'll have more details later, but in my ongoing reporting on the impacts of coronavirus on our lives, I thought I'd share this picture from shopping at Fastenal.

Social distancing

That's Aaron in the neon yellow shirt.  They wouldn't let you in the shop except to pay - an employee met you at the door, noted what you were looking for, and went inside the shop to try to find it.  Social distancing was going great with just us and this guy, but then another person walked up and stood right at the door and encroached on everyone's space.  So it was halfway working?

Finally...it's our 20th anniversary today!  Staying home/staying safe this rainy (and sleety??) day in Blacksburg is a far cry from our planned 2 month cruising trip in Europe, but we're doing our best to celebrate nonetheless.  I made Disney's Chocolate, Peanut Butter, Banana French Toast this morning for breakfast, which was quite a hit.

Chocolate, Peanut Butter, Banana French Toast

Sun at last! Some real repairs!

We finally got 3 consecutive days of sun, warmth, and low winds on the family farm!  We were able to get some work done on several RV projects.

We have a pretty great view from inside the RV on the farm.

With rain ever on the horizon, Aaron decided patching the skylight over our shower was top priority.

View from inside the shower

The skylight is a 2-layer deal with an inner clear flexible layer (you're looking through it in the image above) and an outer semi-opaque harder plastic layer.  Both are shaped (a shallow hump along an irregular edge), so replacing the whole shebang wasn't an easy option.  The outer layer had numerous cracks and leaks in the seal.  Aaron managed to delicately extract the shell without damaging it further, scrape off all the gunk resulting from various individuals' various attempts to patch the cracks, fix the cracks, and reattach the skylight with fresh sealant.  Whew!

Patching the cracked edge

Adding foam between the inner and outer layers

The inner layer surrounded by cleaned up foam and a new
bead of sealant

All done!

While he was on the roof he also added fresh sealant to many of the seams - this is a regular maintenance activity for RV owners.  Over time the sealant cracks and lets water in.  Our favorite sealant for the roof is Self-Leveling Dicor.

Fun on the roof

We attempted to get our ice maker working - we'd never really tried to before so we weren't sure whether it worked or not, but we had to cut the feeder line while fixing the refrigerator, so at a minimum THAT needed to be fixed.

Installing the feeder line extension

Re-installed

After hooking everything up properly and waiting several hours for the freezer to cool back down, we still had no ice.  It took some creative searching but I finally found the manual for our ice maker in our Norcold 1200LRIM refrigerator.  We ran all the tests except the one that had to be run while everything was warm and dry, and so far everything has checked out.  We managed to accidentally turn off the water pump after re-securing the wiring, so after we got everything put back together we didn't end up actually testing it out.  Fingers crossed it will work soon!

Next up: fixing the damage to the engine compartment from when we accidentally backed over a post.  At the time we thought we had only bent a bit of the back grille, but when Aaron pulled it off to repair it we discovered things were a bit worse...we had broken the sunken bolt holes in the plastic case around some kind of wiring box.

Those four screws were supposed to be holding
the plastic box on...

Close up of the plastic box with the mounting
holes sheared off

Neither of us was very surprised at the damage - it seemed miraculous at the time that we hadn't done any more damage than the grille - and we were lucky that even this damage wasn't very major.  Aaron fixed this by running longer bolts through the apparatus and using washers on the outside of the plastic box.

So what was I doing during all of this you might ask?  Well, a lot of the time I was monitoring the ladder, grabbing tools, etc.  But my one main accomplishment for this time was to staple up insulation inside many of the cabinets at the ceiling of the RV.

Insulation installed

As you can kind of see, many of these cabinets act as a pantry for us, and got unhappily hot when we got any kind of sun.  We've seen from other RV channels that adding insulation like this can help, hope they're right!

One thing I don't have a picture of but did want to mention because it took us FOREVER to find this video...we have a Winegard Togo Roadlink to provide internet via AT&T.  It has been a fairly constant headache for us, though when it's working it's great.  Our latest error was a "no SIM installed" error, and no amount of restarting was working for us.  Aaron found this video on YouTube.

This actually worked!  I'm linking it here just in case it can help someone else...  Now, unfortunately, about 12 hours later the same error popped up, but we did it again and again it worked immediately and lasted until we left the farm the second time.  If nothing else this gives us something that seems to be reliable that we can do when we get these errors on the device.

And FINALLY...since it is Star Wars Day … once we finished working on the RV I went back to the kitchen and baked up some fun sugar cookies!

Happy Star Wars Day!