The Beast is Back!

Yes, the Beast is back in our hands, as good as new - we hope.

I wrote on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving that Ford was telling us that they hoped to have the Beast back to us by the end of this week. Well, we got a call last Friday (the day after Thanksgiving) that the Beast was ready to go! It turns out that they got the new transmission in on Friday and put it in the same day. (My impression is that someone who knows what he’s doing and has the right equipment - like a Ford mechanic - can do this job in just a few hours.)

Lisa, our rep, was well aware that we were in SoCal. She was also aware that Ford corporate was footing the bill for the car rental. She told us that she wouldn’t let them know until Monday that the truck was ready, so we didn’t need to head to Carson City until Monday or Tuesday.

So, we made plans for the dogs and hit the road bright and early yesterday morning. We hit Carson City a little after 1PM, turned in the rental car, picked up the Beast and were at In-N-Out for a well-deserved lunch by 2. Everything was going so smoothly we decided to head south for Bishop, some three hours away.

We got to Bishop right at 5PM, checked into a motel and treated ourselves to a nice dinner.

Today, we hit the road early (again!) and drove to Long Beach to pick up the dogs at Sherry’s house. We arrived back at the trailer about 12:30, safe and sound. We covered right at 950 miles in a day and a half.

So, if you recall, we were told on the 13th that it would take roughly four weeks to get the truck back. It took them ten days.

Would we have paid to have our trailer hauled to SoCal had we known when the Beast would be ready? Probably not.

Would we have made the same decision we made, based just on what we knew at the time? Yep. Like so many decisions we make in life, we made the best decision we could, based on what we knew at the time. We ended up in a good spot for us, and enjoyed a great Thanksgiving with family. Had we stayed in Reno, we’d have had Thanksgiving by ourselves, endured some really crappy weather, and saved ourselves a few bucks in transport fees.

Here’s what made it all worthwhile:

No, Madeline is not naked; she’s got underwear on. This is her standard indoor attire. I am teaching Teddy “I’m a Little Teapot” - important stuff for a grandpa!

The Sierras are beautiful in the wintertime. Cathy snapped this shot of Mt. Whitney from the highway in Lone Pine, right after sunrise. Whitney is right in the center of the photo. At 14,500 feet, it is the highest point in the continental US. There is a trail to the top from both sides. It is a bitch of a climb from either side; ask me how I know.

Thanksgiving

Well, we managed to arrive in SoCal today. It was a long but actually rather uneventful day.

Our guy Jason texted us at 7:15, while we were out walking the dogs. He was in the parking lot of the RV park - could we go sooner? You bet!

We hustled around, forgoing breakfast and showers, and left at 7:55AM. We were very pleased to get a good early start. It’s 475 miles from Bordertown to the RV park in Redlands, CA.

I can’t say enough for our driver, Jason, of J&S Transport Services of Hemet, CA. He was fast, courteous and professional. Highly recommended1

We stopped for breakfast at McD’s in Reno and hit the road. We were fortunate to get to have lunch with Sherry in Bishop. She, Heather and Dan were headed to Mammoth Lakes for the weekend, and Sherry came up a day early and spent Tuesday night in Bishop. We spent a half-hour or so with her over lunch, then hit the road to catch up to Jason, who passed us while we were lunching.

No sooner did we hit the road than Heather texted us. She and Dan were on their way to meet Sherry in Bishop… could we meet on the road and say hello? We ended up meeting in the small town of Independence, some 40 miles south of Bishop. While they were waiting for us to show up, Heather watched our trailer pass by on the highway, four minutes before we got there.

We had a quick, five-minute get-together then hit the road to catch up to Jason. We didn’t want him to get to Redlands before we did. We figured we were about ten minutes behind him.

It took us about 70 miles to make up that ten minutes. We passed Jason, then stopped for gas about 15 miles later, then caught and passed him for the last time another 20 miles or so down the road.

All in all, a long but otherwise uneventful day. The Sierras were beautiful; smoke from the Camp Fire was filtering over the crest and added some depth and color to the always beautiful vistas.

We are thankful to be here, nearer to the girls - and to warmer weather. We are also thankful that we got to see Sherry and Heather today, even if just for a few minutes. We’ll see a lot of both of them in the days to come. Tomorrow its off to see Jill, Joe, Madeline and little Teddy for Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving is always a special day for us, and this one is especially so. We were just about resigned to spending it alone, in Reno. To have transportation come together at the last minute, then to have such a smooth trip south, will make Thanksgiving 2018 particularly special. I hope it is for all of you, too.

Maybe?

We had two very good bits of news today.

First of all, Joe the dispatcher found us a truck! We talked to Jason the driver, and he’s good to pick us up at 9AM tomorrow. He believes it’ll take him 12 hours or so to get to SoCal. (Towed vehicles in CA are limited to 55mph.)

Secondly, we heard from Ford. They have torn down the transmission and determined that it needs to be replaced - under warranty! Work’s in progress to get a transmission to them, but it probably won’t be in until next week. They are cautiously optimistic we’ll have The Beast back by the end of next week!

Irony

Recall that in my last post I stated that we were planning on leaving Reno today, but we needed to hear from the driver over the weekend.

Well, that didn’t happen. On Sunday evening I let Scott know that we hadn’t heard from anyone; I had to let him know because we had no other points of contact. He promised to reach out to the Joe, the dispatcher, first thing Monday.

About 11:30 this morning Joe called me. Paraphrasing, Joe said, “I’ve got some bad news. I just heard from my driver. It sounds like HIS transmission just went out!”

Seriously. I am not making this up.

Have you ever noticed that truth is always stranger than fiction. No one would ever write this into a novel.

Joe committed to seeing what he could do to get us out of here on Wednesday. He also committed to calling me back in a few hours - which he did not.

So, I will reach out to Joe first thing Tuesday morning to see if we might still get out of here on Wednesday. If not, realistically the first chance to get out will be next Monday.

We had, and still have, a possibility to drive down to Mammoth Lakes, which is about three hours away, for Thanksgiving. Heather and Dan have rented a two-bedroom condo for the weekend to go skiing. They have friends coming on Friday, but they have a spot for us on Wednesday and on Thanksgiving.

The only problem is the weather. The forecast along the eastern Sierras is for snow Wednesday night. Mammoth is fairly high up (7800’) and there are a couple of passes between here and there that might be problematic. We’re going to keep an eye on the weather here, keep in touch with Joe, and see what happens.

We’re kind of used to having Thanksgiving by ourselves. We’ve done it more than once when we lived in Ohio. So, if that happens here, it’s not the end of the universe.

To cheer ourselves up, Cathy took me out shopping for Christmas decorations for the trailer.

Plans

Since our last post a lot has happened.

We talked to our Ford customer service manager, Caitlin. She told us that:

1) Capital Ford has to tear the transmission apart in order for Ford to determine the next steps. As we had already known, Capital Ford is saying this will take 2-3 weeks.

2) Then and only then, Ford will assess what went wrong and what the best course of action is - that is, repair or replace the trans. This will take 1-2 weeks.

So, we are looking at our truck being out of action for at least a month. Both Caitlin and Lisa, our service rep at Capital, said they would try and expedite the tear down, but can’t make any promises.

We really don’t want to stay in Reno for another month. We spent the better part of Wednesday looking for a transport company to move the trailer to SoCal. We found several outfits that would do it: in mid-December, for a couple of thousand bucks. That doesn’t do us any good.

We had just about resigned ourselves to staying here when Scott called us and said he might be able to help. He is in charge of a big manufacturing project at Tesla’s Gigafactory in Reno, and he has engaged a rigging company that regularly transports equipment for him.

He reached out to them and it appears that they can and will transport our trailer to SoCal, hopefully for a reasonable cost. Although we still need to speak with the driver from the rigging company over the weekend, we are cautiously optimistic that this will happen - this coming Monday.

A previously unforeseen problem: the holiday season in SoCal causes just about every RV park, especially those near the coast, to book up solid. After reaching out to 15-20 different parks, we finally landed in a park in Redlands, CA. Redlands is well inland from where the kids are - probably an hour or 90 minutes away depending, as all things in LA do, on the traffic. By an odd coincidence, Cathy went to school at the University of Redlands, so we are well acquainted with the area.

When the Beast is fixed, hopefully by mid-December, we’ll simply drive the rental truck up here and swap it for the Beast. Although we are not at all pleased with the amount of time Ford is taking on the repairs, we are determined to make the best of things.

Today, we took a drive north to Susanville, about an hour north of here in the foothills of the Sierra. We stopped for lunch at the Mt. Lassen Ale House, which is located in the Pioneer Saloon, which has been in business since 1862. We had a delicious lunch, accompanied by a flight of even more delicious malty beverages.

“Catastrophic Damage”

The title of this post is the answer to the question, “What are the two words you don’t want to hear from a service place about the transmission in your truck?”

Yep, that’s right. The two phrases we heard from the service advisor at the Ford place are “catastrophic damage” and “tons of metal”. To make things even worse, they told us going in that they were booked a couple of weeks out on service.

What’s next? I had to call Ford Assistance. The guy there told me this looks like a warranty repair, since we only have 24K miles and 14 months on it. We are waiting for a call from the Regional Customer Service Manager, who needs to talk to the Ford place. On top of everything else, we have rented a vehicle (a Ford F-150, actually) and want to speak to them about payment for the rental and trip interruption compensation. We are told he will contact us in one business day - so, noon tomorrow.

We are considering options, including having the trailer hauled to SoCal to be nearer the kids and grandkids, as well as being in warmer weather. We obviously won’t make any decisions until we hear from Ford.

Most of you know that one of our children was diagnosed with brain cancer a couple of years ago. After surgery, radiation and a grueling round of chemotherapy, he has resumed a normal life. We are hopeful and confident that he will continue to live a long, happy and productive life

After that grueling ordeal, our mantra when faced with a difficulty or problem has been. “Oh well, at least it’s not brain cancer.”

Having a broken vehicle is small potatoes - at least, we keep reminding ourselves of that. Here in Reno, we are only four hours from the nearest family, and only 8-9 hours from everyone else.

We decided to do something positive, so Cathy and I went out this afternoon and donated blood. If you haven’t done it recently - why not? Make an appointment and do it.

More About Our Home

While we are sojourning in Reno, I thought I’d share a few more things about our home with you.

Immediately after my earlier post on our home, Cathy reminded me that I should have included a very important purchase. We replaced the door lock with this one:

There are several good reasons for this:

1. All RV manufacturers use the same standard lock. There are only a few different lock sets used. When you take your RV in for servicing, the service guy usually tells you he doesn’t need your keys - he’s already got a set! This lock has its own unique lock set.
2. We can set a unique 5-digit code to lock or unlock this. We always lived in fear of losing a set of keys and being locked out. (Actually, one can lock this just by pushing the lock button.)
3. Not shown, but this also comes with a remote control key fob. That’s really handy if it’s raining, or your hands are full of stuff.

Here’s a look at what I think of as the utility side of the trailer:

The box at the bottom of the picture is a surge protector. While most parks do a good job off maintaining their electrical, some do not. This guy protects against all kinds of electrical bad things. We’ve got as many electronics as anyone else, and they all need protecting.

The black cord at the very bottom is a 25’, 50A cord that came with the trailer. It’s not always long enough. While we were in Salt Lake City, we bought a 15’ extension cord, which is the blue one with the yellow end. These cords are expensive, and hard to handle. A 50A cord has four 6-gauge cables in it; think of it as being two heavy-duty jumper cables bundled together. After we bought the cable, we ended up using it in Winnemucca and here in Reno.

The big corrugated hose on the right is our sewer hose. It’s 20’ feet long, and we have another 20’ extension that’s stored away. The trestle-looking thing holds the hose up and (usually) allows for a constant slope from trailer to the fitting in the ground.

The white water hose at the top is just a standard 25’ hose. We’ve got another one stored away; again, 25’ is not always enough.

The dark gray water hose is connected to a separate fitting on the trailer that, when activated, flushes what’s called the black water tank - that’s the one that drains the toilet. As you might imagine, one takes all kinds of precautions, including using a separate hose for this task, to avoid some relatively unpleasant contamination issues.

Also barely visible is a black coaxial cable that connects to the RV park’s cable TV.

Related to that, here’s a shot of the portable Dish network antenna that Scott gave us:

The Dish works just about anywhere we can see the southern sky. Right now, we are enjoying 15 or so TV channels from the basic cable provided by the park, plus fifty bazillion channels through Dish (courtesy of Scott).

Elkharting Again - The Beast is Ill

We’ve coined a new verb: “to Elkhart” means to involuntarily stay someplace because of mechanical problems. Well, we are Elkharting in Reno!

The Beast is in the shop. For the last couple of days, it has been upshifting and downshifting roughly. Yesterday, driving into Reno, it was getting worse. At our last rest stop, maybe 30 miles outside Reno, when starting back out, the transmission gave some weird noises and we got an icon of a wrench pop up on the dashboard. Cathy pulled the manual and found out that indicates some kind of power train malfunction - in other words, a transmission problem.

We ran on into Reno. At speed, the truck ran fine. Only when accelerating or decelerating or downshifting to climb a hill did we have problems.

We ran through Reno and started north on US 395. We stopped for diesel, and to make some decisions. I checked the transmission fluid level - it seemed OK. When I started the truck back up the wrench icon went away. So, we decided to continue; we really wanted to get over the Sierras and into warmer weather. It was about 180 miles to Red Bluff, CA.

We got maybe ten miles up the road and the transmission started making really bad noises; we got the wrench icon back and immediately got the check engine light. That was enough. We turned around and decided to put the trailer into an RV park and take the truck to a Ford dealer.

The nearest RV park was Bordertown RV, which is where we stayed when we went to the Reno Air Races back in September. We dropped the trailer there and headed to Jones-West Ford in Reno.

NEVER take your vehicle to Jones-West Ford. We were treated like crap there. First, we had to scrounge around to find a service adviser. Then, the guy didn’t have the time of day for us. They were booked a couple of weeks out for service appointments! We got nothing from him whatsoever. Rather than leave the truck there over the weekend, we checked Google Maps and found there was another Ford dealer in Carson City, about 20 miles further south.

We headed there and were treated as you would hope for: fast, courteous service. They, too, are booked solid but they did commit to doing what they can to squeeze us in - this after much pleading on our part.

Right now, our forward plans, including Thanksgiving, are very much up in the air. We figure we need to leave here no later than this Thursday or Friday to do what we need to do for Thanksgiving. We won’t know until Monday, at the earliest, what’s wrong with the Beast. They have not promised any kind of schedule for fitting us in for repairs.

We were picked up at Capital Ford by a guy from Enterprise car rental. While he was driving us to their office, we told him our story. He immediately told us that they hear those kinds of stories about Jones-West Ford all the time. Our service adviser sort of said the same thing, but we discounted that a little because they’re competitors.

Palisade

We’ve spent the last three days in Palisade, Colorado. Palisade is a town of some 3,000 people approximately 15 miles east of Grand Junction, on the western slope of the Rockies. Palisade is noted for growing grapes and fruit trees, primarily peaches.

We spent the night here in mid-September. We thought then that this looked like a nice place to spend a few days. Since we’d been driving for three full days, with the last day being a semi-stressful day driving through a snowstorm in the Rockies, we thought we’d take a few days off.

We had picture-perfect weather. Highs were in the mid-50’s, with zero cloud cover. We couldn’t have asked for nicer weather.

The RV park we stayed in, Palisade Base Camp RV Park, is right on the Colorado River. At this time of year, the cottonwood trees that line the river are turning color. Right now, they are a brilliant yellow-orange; highlighted against the dark bark of the tree, the leaves make for spectacular pictures.

Palisade is a good place to visit if you like to drink. This little town has maybe a dozen wineries, a brewery, a distillery, and a meadery. What’s a meadery, you ask? A place that makes mead! I’m not much of a wine drinker, but we did manage to visit both the distillery and the meadery - as well as a lot of other stuff!

This photo was taken from the RV park. I cropped this picture slightly, but did not in any way alter the colors.

I took this photo at sunset today, out the living room window of our home…

We’re headed out in the morning. We’re planning on Salt Lake City tomorrow, Reno a couple of days after that, then on to California.

Over the Rockies

Here’s the latest…

We spent Halloween night in an RV park run by Hollywood Casino in Joliet. We were one of two campers in the RV park. Needless to say, we didn’t get any Halloween action that night!

It was there that we discovered an unpleasant fact: many RV parks in cold climates shut down, either partially or completely, for the winter. The place in Joliet had already shut down the water to the campsites. (There was water available at the dump station onsite.)

With that in mind, we decided to make sure that: a) our destination park was still open, and b) that it had whatever amenities we needed. We don’t need water and sewer every night, but every 2-3 days we need to fill the water tank and dump the waste tanks.

Our next night was in Newton, IA, which is a few miles east of Des Moines. Our plan was to follow I-80 to Salt Lake City and spend a few days there sightseeing and regrouping. The Newtown KOA had full hookups, so we took care of business.

November 2 found us in Omaha. We took our two nieces, Amber and Nichole, along with Amber’s husband Jake, out to dinner. Here’s a shot of our campsite:

We left Omaha on I-80 and traveled all day, ending up in Sidney, Nebraska. Nebraska is a BIG state if you go east-to-west. The last hour or so was headed directly into gale-force winds. We ended up slowing down to 55mph, and the last 50 or so miles into Sidney we were only getting 5.5mpg, about half our normal fuel mileage.

Sidney is still 60 miles from the Wyoming border. Sidney is where Cabela’s, the big sporting goods chain, was founded. We camped in an RV park run by Cabela’s, on the site of their store number 1.

Our plan for today (November 4) was to continue on I-80 to Green River, Wyoming. Well, we woke up with snowflakes on our truck! That prompted us to take a look at the weather forecast for the road ahead. The forecast called for 3 inches of snow and 30-40 mph winds in the afternoon.

We chickened out and headed south, intending to pick up I-70 in Denver and cross the Rockies that way. We ended up doing that successfully, but not easily.

In making our decision to bail on I-80, we neglected to actually look at the weather on the southern alternative. Turns out that I-70 through Vail was forecast for 6 inches or so of snow starting mid-afternoon. We found that out as were heading into Denver, late in the morning. We decided to put the pedal to the metal and - hopefully - get through before things got bad.

We did. We hit snow flurries from the Eisenhower tunnel down nearly to Glenwood Springs, but had no serious problems or delays. We ended up in our goal for the night, Base Camp RV park in Palisade, CO, about 4PM. We stayed here in September and loved the place. We’ll spend two or three nights here, catching up on groceries, laundry and other chores, and decide where to go next!

UPDATE: Watching the news this morning, we see that I-70 through the Eisenhower tunnel is closed intermittently because of the snow. The weather forecast is calling for another 12 inches of snow today. GLAD we got through there yesterday!