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Zion National Park – Friday September 15, 2017

Today was shopping day in St. George.  We went to FedEx to get some things for the Balloon Festival printed @ 69 cents per copy, PETCO for Hank’s tic medicine, Walmart for milk, Lowes for new microwave,  GOODWILL for shorts, COSTCO for steak and Ford for truck part.

At COSTCO the tailgate handle broke on the driver’s side.
Here is where the latch broke.
I don’t carry a lot of tools however I happen to have the tork T30 screw driver head I needed.  Had to take the middle shelf of the pickup’s storage system out of the back and then I could get to screws to remove the inside panel and unlatch the tailgate.  Didn’t take too long.

 

Zion National Park – Monday September 11, 2017

Notice the pickup is gone.

Monday morning September 11, 2017 we towed the pickup into St George to get the Neutral Tow system I screwed up fixed.  It turned out strange.
Since I didn’t know exactly where we were going and I needed to find a place to park the motor home while towing the pickup we left early and arrived at 8:45 for our 9:45 appointment.  The service writer I talked to came out to the pickup when he started  it the dash still said the transfer case was in LO 4X4, he moved the transfer case selector from 2 wheel to 4 wheel to LO 4 wheel and back to 2 wheel.  The transfer case came out of neutral and the pickup was able to move on its’ own.  This is great.
I asked the service writer what I owned him and he said nothing.  I thanked him, said I was going to unhook the pickup and drive it around the shop to ensure it was really working.  I did this, hooked the pickup back up to the motor home and we drove a couple of blocks down the street and stopped for breakfast.
After breakfast I went back to the pickup to check one more time that everything was working.  This time the pickup stayed in neutral (LO 4X4 was displayed on the dash) when I went through the steps to engage the transfer case.  I moved the transfer selector switch from 2 wheel to 4 wheel to LO 4 wheel and back to 2 wheel, this time the transfer case made a clunking sound.
We went back to the dealership and I talked to the same service writer.  This time one of the shop people was walking by and the service writer asked him what he thought might be the problem, the shop person thought it might be the transfer case selector motor.
I unhooked the pick ( it is now 10:15 ) and we left the pickup to be looked at.  We drove back to Zion and about 2:15 the service writer called and said the pickup was working just fine and I could pick it up anytime.
We drove the hour back into St. George and the pickup was still parked in the incoming service vehicle area ( not the serviced vehicle pickup area ).  I went inside and the service writer said the pickup was working fine and when I asked him how much I owed him he said “Nothing”.
I went out to the pickup and tested the steps to put the pickup into towing neutral and then out of towing neutral twice and everything worked just like it is supposed to.
The more I thought about this the stranger it seemed.  It looks to me like dealership reprogrammed the transmission because the light on the neutral tow indicator is working like it should the transmission is making all the right sounds as it has made all the previous times I have engaged and disengaged the transfer case.  The question is why not change me for the work they did because they surely had to have done something and the Ford dealership in Enumclaw told me they don’t do anything for less than one hours labor.  They never made up a work order, never had me sign anything just had the pickup for 4 hours and returned it fixed.  After think about this it just doesn’t seem to be the way a dealership would be operating if everything was up and up.  I think the service writer found out he should not have moved the transfer selector switch so they reprogrammed the transmission to cover for his mistake after my mistake.

Life on the Road.

 

Zion National Park – Thursday September 7, 2017

Thursday and yes the pickup  is still hooked up to the motorhome.  Yesterday when we got here I was unhooking the pickup so we could go dump and fill with water I got into a little bit of a hurry.  Note I have hook and unhook the pickup maybe a hundred times and I have already unhooked and hooked it up at Safelite in St. George when I got the motorhome window fixed on Wednesday.

Anyway I got into a hurry and when engaging the transmission I moved the ignition key to fast and the transmission is now stuck dis-engaged.
The steps are:
Foot on brake peddle
Turn ignition key to ON from OFF but steering wheel not locked
Pause = while the transmission engages
Move the shifter into Drive position
Move back to Neutral and start the engine.

I went from ignition key in OFF to START and then shifter to Drive.

I’ll be making up a new checklist. 

Pickup is not happy, the dash saying it’s in low 4X4 and in fact the transmission is still dis-engaged.   We have an appointment at the St. George Ford Dealership at 9:45 Monday morning to fix my mistake.

Oh well, as they say it would have been worse.

 

Zion National Park – Wednesday September 6, 2017

Today was travel day to Zion National Park for two week.  It is really a beautiful place.
On the way we made three stops, Lowes, Safelite Auto Glass and Walmart.   Lowes was to look at microwave ovens the microwave convection oven was acting up for a week or so my not working, we threatened it and has worked for the past week.  If it quits again it’s gone.  Safelite to get a motorhome window chip fixed and Walmart for groceries.
Watchman campground.
We are in site B44 for the next two weeks.
This picture was taken with my Ipad, not a bad picture.

CATHEDRAL GORGE STATE PARK, NV – FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 1, 2017

We ventured out today exploring two state parks northeast of here.  Echo Canyon is 12 miles off the main road Hwy 93 and Spring Valley is 19 miles.

Echo Canyon has a new area about 2 years old which has water/electric/and sewing.  Looked to have three bars of cell service however I don’t know if has the same data problem that Cathedral Gorge was having (this is being written on Thursday September 7) will we were there.  We could get a data connection for 10 to 15 minutes in the morning and a couple minutes in the evening.  Jean was only getting about 20% of her daily Jack pictures.

Here is new campground area.

Than we drove onto Spring Valley State Park, it has zero cell service.

Most of the campsite were small for our motorhome, but there were a few good sites.  

Solar Eclipse – Monday August 21, 2017

We went to the Solar Eclipse today at latitude 44°26.1009′ just north of Redmond, Oregon.  As many have said before a total solar eclipse can not be explained in words.
I wanted to show the difference between the way things looked before the eclipse and then during, however I was not prepared for the change in light levels.  I took this before picture with ISO 125 and shutter speed 200.  This is the back yard of the truly great people who offered up their beautiful home so we could see 1 minute 38 seconds of the total eclipse.
This is the same picture with the same camera settings during the total eclipse.

Here are the pictures I got of the sun during the total eclipse.

If you’d like the original picture you can click on these thumbnails.

This is what an eclipse can do to a rabbit, this one now has three ears.

Truly a great moment and impossible to explain.

Big House Fishing – Monday August 8, 2017

Went fishing this morning.   This sunny dry summer has been nice of outside activities.  Got five nice trout, in the 12+ inch range.  The five fish weighed in at 4 1/2 lbs.
When I was a kid the fish were in the 6 to 8 inch range.
I also have this posted over at harrylange.wordpress.com at this point I don’t know what I am going to do the blog on this site versus the blog over at wordpress.com.  

Big House Projects – Wednesday August 2, 2017

Here are the big house motorhome projects I have completed:

Wash coach
Wax coach
Empty Dust Buster vacuum cleaner and clean out motor area
Clean BBQ base, grease build up.
Restring two window blinds
Change battery in LevelPro
Add 12 volt expansion plug to pickup, need more 12 volt plugin in the pickup when using cellphone and laptop in pickup
Design and install bracket for 12 volt power gauge in the pickup, use when towing pickup to ensure battery is staying charged.
Clean carpet, in motorhome and house (long day)
Design and install a bracket in front of the WeBoost roof antenna, so tree limbs don’t knock it off.
Look into adding 2 – 6 volt AGM batteries, will need to purchase 4 new AGM batteries, decided to wait.
Add third fan to catalytic heater.
Fix cabinet door support over the sink.
Captains chairs squeak when turned, fix.
Locate better place for the satellite TV antenna switch.
Fix fishing wading pole, does not lock when extended.
Vacuum all the dust out of the pickup engine compartment.
Install new larger water filtering system.
Fix furnace, installed new PC board and electrode, have sail switch to install before we leave, furnace starts on first or second cycle.
Design and install a bracket to support the broken plastic wheel cover on right rear dual tires.
Change oil.
Lube chassis.
Clean ceiling fan blades and inside of both A/C units.
Get new flexible water hose.