We woke up to wind and pouring rain yesterday morning, and it didn’t look like it was going to let up anytime soon. But we had an appointment at the Camping World in Mesa at 11:30 a.m., so I went outside and slogged through puddles of water to empty and flush our black tank, top off our fresh water tank, and disconnect our utility hookups. By the time I was finished, I was soaked.

With everything ready to go, I fired up our Cummins diesel engine, retracted our slide rooms and HWH leveling jacks, and we were ready to go. Well, almost ready to go. The indicator light and warning beeper said the right rear jack had not fully retracted. Sure enough, it was down about two inches. I hit the automatic leveling button to deploy the jacks again, and this time when I retracted them, they all came up fine.

It was only twelve miles to Camping World from Patio Gardens, so Terry drove the van behind me. After six weeks of sitting still, it was good to be back behind the wheel of our motorhome. 

I don’t think I have ever seen any Camping World as busy as the one in Mesa was yesterday. The entire parking lot was jammed, and Terry could not even find a place to park the van, let alone me the motorhome. I finally left it double parked and went inside to check in with the service department, and they pulled it right into one of the work bays.

I have been shopping for tires and batteries for our Winnebago Ultimate Advantage, and had narrowed the tire choices down to the Michelin X7A3 and the Goodyear G670 RV. In my opinion, there really isn’t any real difference in quality between the two, and I have had a lot of RVers recommend both tires.

In the end, I chose the Goodyear tires, even though the price for all six, mounted, balanced, and out the door, was $200 more. My reasons may not make sense to a lot of people, but I have hated the Michelin Company ever since Vietnam, and Goodyear is an American company, as opposed to Michelin, a French outfit.

The only French things I like are fries, toast, and kisses. My not buying their tires will not affect Michelin’s bottom line one iota, but it was worth the extra money to me not to give them my business.

We also needed new house batteries, because the previous owner of our motorhome had installed regular starting batteries instead of deep cycle RV batteries. We went with Interstate batteries, which many RVers use and seem to be happy with. Since we don’t plan to do as much dry camping as we once did, we could not justify the price of absorbed glass matt (AGM) batteries like we had in our bus conversion. 

It had rained hard off and on all day long, but it finally started to clear up about 2 p.m., and there was quite a bit of blue sky showing. Of course, by the time they were finished working on the motorhome about 3:30, it had started pouring again. That lasted until we got the van hooked up to our Blue Ox tow bar, did our light check, and were ready to take off. Then the rain stopped. Go figure.

We had planned to boondock in the Camping World parking lot if it was getting close to rush hour when they were finished with our work, but the lot was still packed, and there wasn’t anyplace to park. So we drove 86 miles to Gila Bend, where we spent the night dry camping in the huge gravel parking lot at the Elks lodge. It was a windy trip, but we made good time, and at last the rain had stopped.

There were half a dozen other RVs at the Elks lodge, and when I went inside to register, we ran into longtime readers Bob Parker and Donna Huffer, who are also on their way to Yuma for our rally.

We will continue on to the fairgrounds in Yuma today, and get settled in so we can start working on the final details for the rally. It won’t be long now, folks!

Thought For The Day – I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I intended to be. – Douglas Adams  

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It’s time to go shopping for house batteries for our Winnebago motorhome. For those armchair travelers or newbie RVers, I’ll give you a quick explanation, keeping in mind that I am not a technical person.

Most motorhomes have two separate battery banks. One bank is called the “coach” battery bank, and is used to start the engine and power the headlights, taillights, etc. on a motorhome. Depending on the size of the motorhome, this bank usually consists of one or two 12 volt batteries.

The second battery bank are the “house” batteries, which power the 12 volt interior lights, the fans for the furnaces, supply power to start the refrigerator when operating on propane, and provide spark to light the water heater, among other tasks. Again, depending on the size of the motorhome, the house battery bank can be anything from one battery to as many as you can carry.

House batteries can also be 12 volt batteries connected in parallel, or 6 volt batteries wired in series. Connecting two or more batteries in parallel keeps the same voltage of the individual batteries, but doubles (or triples) their capacity. Connecting two or more batteries in series doubles the voltage, while keeping the same capacity, as I understand it.

Anyway, when we bought the Winnebago, the previous owner told us that he had put three new deep cycle house batteries in a couple of months earlier. Terry and I have noticed that the batteries do not hold a charge very long when we have done any dry camping, so while we were visiting with Mike Steffen a few weeks ago, we pulled out the battery tray and discovered that the house batteries in the motorhome are actually starting batteries, which do not hold up to RV service.

In our bus conversion, we had three huge 8D Lifeline Absorbed Glass Mat (AGM) batteries, which provided a lot of power and served us very well. The Winnebago cannot accommodate such large batteries, it has the smaller Group 31 size.

As with all RVers, our needs have changed over time, and we do not expect to do as much dry camping as we have done in the past. Back when we did a lot of boondocking, we once spent over seven straight months off the grid. But these days we may spend two or three nights in parking lots as we make a trip, or at an RV rally, but that’s about it. We prefer to be in an RV park, so we do not feel that we need to spend the extra money for AGM batteries. We will probably go with regular deep cycle RV batteries, which cost much less than AGMs.

I stopped at a battery store yesterday, and they carry Deka batteries, in both standard RV style deep cycle, and in AGM. I’m not familiar with the Deka brand, but in looking online, I see a lot of good reports on them. I think they are better known in the eastern half of the country. Does anybody here have any experience with Deka batteries?

Once we get the batteries replaced, we’ll be tire shopping, but that’s another day, and another blog.

While I was out battery shopping, Bad Nick was home posting a new Bad Nick Blog titled The Tennis Ball. Check it out and leave a comment.

Thought For The Day – God grant me the senility to forget the people I never liked anyway, the good fortune to run into the ones I do, and the eyesight to tell the difference.

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It’s cold here in Show Low, Arizona. Last night the thermometer dipped down to 25 degrees! We were sure glad that we put so much effort into insulating our bus conversion when we built it. With just a small cube style electric heater, we kept it about 65 degrees inside the bus overnight.

We don’t have a furnace in our bus. We installed one early in our conversion project, but quickly realized that the typical RV furnace blows more heat outside than it does inside, so we pulled it out. We have an Olympian Wave 8 catalytic heater that keeps us toasty warm on cold nights, and when we have an RV site with a 30 or 50 amp electric hookups, we use the cube heater to save on propane.

Several people have written to suggest that instead of replacing our bus, we just put in a rebuilt engine. We debated that, but the 8V71 Detroit Diesel engines like we have were prone to overheating on steep climbs even when they were new, and they were never very powerful. We want to get away from the overheating problems and the long, slow climbs here in the West.

We could upgrade to a more powerful engine, like an 8V92 turbo, but that would also require a transmission upgrade, and a pair of larger radiators. I talked to a bus garage we trust and for the price he quoted us to do the job right, we could spend just a little bit more and have a newer coach with a slide out or two.

We’ve reached the point where we’d like to have some more living space. Yesterday my daughter and her family stopped by, and with the two grandkids in here, it was just too crowded.

There is no perfect RV, even when you build it yourself. Our bus meets a lot of our needs in a home on wheels, but if we were going to do it all over again, there are some things we would do differently. We’d install an instant-on hot water system, we would not put in a residential size bathtub, and we would try a different floor plan, probably a side aisle design.

Some things we would definitely do again would be the residential style refrigerator, the stainless steel apartment size range with oven, and the separate apartment size washer and dryer. We’d also still spend the money we did on large holding tanks, our solar system, Magnum Energy inverter, and large bank of AGM batteries.

Some things I’d like to see in our next RV are a bigger engine, at least a living room slide, and preferably a bedroom slide too, a rooftop automatic satellite TV dish or dome, and leveling jacks.

What options do you wish your current RV had, or that you will demand in your next rig?

We know the right coach for us is out there, and we’ll keep looking until we find it.

Thought For The Day – You can do something in an instant that will give you heartaches for a lifetime.

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