Back on the Road…

After a five month visit in Fairview, it was time to head south. Winter is approaching and I wanted to get to warmer climes before the Portland area began it’s famous 9 month rainy season (though that’s changed over the decades…it’s not as bad any more).

And this would be my first towing expirience beyond the 35 miles I’d put on the RV/Car combo a few days before in late September. I had everything set up, the car was all wired up, had the towing equipment ready to go.

Go here to read my lengthy towing write up: Towing a Saturn

One thing that changed a bit was I finally gave up on the LED replacement bulbs for the Running/Brake lights in the Saturn. They just did not work worth a damn and I was always modifying or repairing them. The last straw was when I noticed one was flickering! Gah! Enough!

So I jerked them out and reinstalled the incandescent bulbs that had come with the car. Since all the other bulbs needed for towing had been changed to LED, like the upper brake lights in the rear window, the side markers, the left and right turn signals, I knew I still had nice low operating current so no strain on the RVs alternator or towing wiring. The incandescent bulbs I put back in would bump up the operational current, true, but not enough to worry about since I had originally designed in some operational headroom. I had also wired for and installed a 50 Amp Schottky diode for isolation between the RVs 12 Volt system and the car’s battery. It will keep the car’s battery charged up while it’s being towed.

Anyway, off I headed towing southbound. Took I-84 West, then South on I-205, join up with I-5 south of Portland. Carefully checked the car in the monitor and rearview mirrors every few seconds for the first hundred miles or so. Really tracks well. Looks nice back there. No shimmy or shaking the RV, so that’s good.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA So there’s my electronics these days…a new accident recording video camera with sound (got one for the car too, only $25 at Amazon) with a continuous recording loop feature; an old used Garmin that cost me $12 at a yard sale; a nice gooseneck clamp and suction thingy to hold it in place on the dashboard; and the built in backup monitor. With sound! Only wish it was in color. But the sound from the monitor, I’d turned it up one time and forgot to turn it back down. Road noise was driving me nuts ‘cus I couldn’t figure out where it was coming from. Took almost 90 miles to remember.OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Nice suspension walkway. Down in Eugene…used by people heading for the Ducks games at Autzen Stadium. Lots of walkers, runners, bicyclers here in Eugene.OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERASo a few hours later, I pull into the Myrtle Creek area looking for a PassPort America 1/2 price park, and following camping signs, inadvertently pull into this city park by mistake. The manager came right out, I was tired of driving, it was only $20/nite here so I paid. The guy helped me unhook so I could back into my space. Turned out to be a little difficult because one of the pull pins on the tow bar was stuck, but only added a couple minutes to the procedure.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA Nice…Myrtle Creek RV Park, with surprisingly good WiFi.OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA The old mill and city park is off in that direction in the below pic.  And both the Umpqua River and Mill Creek over there somewhere. I visited them the next day. There’s an old time covered bridge there too.OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Ended up staying 3 nights as the price was right, had blazing WiFi, and one day was nice sunshine so I got the Eternabond applied up on my front and rear end cap seams (prevents future leaks because bouncing around on the highway can cause the seams to open up), and there were places to explore nearby. No OTA TV or cable though. So I had to stream. And it worked for hours at a time.

I did go visit that other RV park up the road, turned out they were remodeling and 6 of their short term sites were ripped up with heavy equipment sitting on them with the old parking pads all busted up. Because of that, they had no space for me anyway. Happy I didn’t bother to go up there the evening I arrived in town. I found an Abby’s pizza place in town too. I like those because the Abby’s chain restaurants always have a nice ‘make your own’ salad bar, and serve craft beers.  And pretty good pizza as well.

Next morning, did a little sight seeing. This is the old mill. Didn’t see any way inside.

img_20161011_093916347-resized Well, whatever, I went to this local cafe for b’fast. Pretty good food, but the coffee was sucky.img_20161011_094413197-resizedOne of those evil looking storm clouds rolled in while I was eating.
img_20161011_094545534_hdr-resized
Not a very big place, but comfy. img_20161011_094550547-resized

Starting to look like a big ol’ storms comin’…img_20161011_100614265-resized Headed back to the RV park, the storm held off for me so I could stop and check this out…this is one of the few remaining covered bridges in Oregon.img_20161011_101757646-resized Looking upstream from the bridge.img_20161011_101811741-resized img_20161011_101837506-resized Kind of a lazy creek now days. Probably dammed upstream a ways by a hydroelectric project. See that all over the Pacific Northwest. With the steep sides to this creek, seems it use to run lots of water most of the year…which explains the old mill here. Now it’s pretty quiet. It feeds into the Umpqua river to the west of here.img_20161011_101850398-resized Standing in the doorway of the covered bridge. Some of the town. I never did get a picture of the actual town of Myrtle Creek. It’s not very big, but it does have an old timey downtown section. Downtown would be quarter of a mile headed left in this next pic. Here’s a link to a street view: Downtown.img_20161011_101930446-resized Nice. But the pigeons have left their mark, that’s for sure.img_20161011_101939695_hdr-resized img_20161011_102045917-resized Over that way is the ballpark, and my RV is somewhere over there…img_20161011_102102502_hdr-resized img_20161011_102158282_hdr-resized img_20161011_102209900_hdr-resized img_20161011_102233885_hdr-resized img_20161011_102247242-resized img_20161011_102329039_hdr-resized

Here’s the Saturn being a PCC (Pretty Cute Car) after I got back from sightseeing.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA RV looks good too. Can’t see the Eternabond tape up on the roof but it’s there. Helps that the tape is a nice bright white color. Later that night and into the next day, had a yuge rainstorm, it was yuge I tell ya. I was running south to avoid the worst of it, which was suppose to mostly hit the Portland area, but here in Myrtle Creek I did get some of it. Winds weren’t as strong as Portland. The storm is rotating up from the south off the Pacific so I’m doing the RV’ers drive to avoid it. Just meandering south, la la la la la, taking my time, enjoying the trip. Dodging the worst of the storm. The weather reports had all sorts of warnings as it shaped up to be a damaging storm, mostly due to wind, and mostly along the coast. But with buckets of rain and slightly lighter winds inland too. They were predicting 5″ rain over 3 days with 40 to 80 MPH winds. Yikes! That’s why I jumped on getting the Eternabond tape up during those few hours of sunshine. I got lucky that the sun came out early enough to dry everything, then stayed long enough for me to climb up on the roof to get the job done. Timed it perfectly. It was late that afternoon, about an hour after I finished, when it clouded over again and started drizzling. Than heavy rain most of the night. Then one drenching downpour woke me up around 3 AM, but I was able to get back to sleep.OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA Big ol’ noise from over there. Never did find out what it was. Sasquatch? Heh.OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

With the latest reports on the storm in hand, I decided to make a dash into the northern valleys of California the next day. The bottom edge of the storm would be rotating around there too, but it was far enough south that it was more of an annoyance than a problem.

[The national news had several reports about this storm I’m dodging, as it caused lots of damage, flooding, high wind issues. Spawned a couple tornados. The coast of Oregon got the worst of it. You can see at that link how it’s southern edge swirled into northern California and southern Oregon.]

And the next day, back onto I-5 southbound, heading for Redding California, the wind was not my friend. Full frontal on the RV. Most of the day. At least in the California valleys. The mountains you pass through in southern Oregon were fairly calm and the rains light. At least early that day. But in California, after I’d dropped into the valley, there were scattered showers, and a nearly continuous 20 MPH wind. But, it’s only 228 miles so not too exhausting fighting it. And I discovered that the RV really handles well in the wind. Doesn’t require much muscling of the steering at all. Very happy about that.

And that’s where we’ll pick it up next posting…the trip from Myrtle Creek to Redding.

Thanks for reading.

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3 Responses to Back on the Road…

  1. Hafcanadian says:

    Yup, you got out jus in time, Dude. This October was the second if not the wettest one on record (haven’t heard the latest report on whether Sunday was wet enough to make the record).

    I did! Boy, that was a nasty storm. I did enjoy some of my time in the storm path, than skipping off and missing the worst of it. I held up for another couple days at a RV park in Redding the day after Myrtle Creek and was actually worried about their creek rising enough to cut off my exit, but that’s in the next installment of the blog…

    I mount my old Nuvi 350 on a disc on the coach dash front … couldn’t handle as much stuff as you have blocking my grand one-piece windshield view; besides, there seems to be less solar interference with the GPS screen down there.

    At present I’m using a smooth disk on top of my dash for my Nuvi since the disk was there when I bought the rig. I did have to buy a better suction clamp & gooseneck though as the Nuvi’s didn’t allow me to place it anywhere I wanted to mount the GPS. Someday I’ll see about moving the disk. [For lurkers…my ’02 Winnebago is designed with textured plastic surfaces so you can’t just put a suction device anywhere, it just pops right off, that’s what the discs are about. You use them to mount devices that have suction cups. The disks seem to be glued to the surface]. The picture above does look a bit cluttered with all the electronic equipment, but that’s not how it seems from the driver’s seat. I’ve still got quite a view.

    I know- I often forget that I had turned up the rear camera volume to hear something behind in a park (like the biscuit burner hollering as I backed in or ditto during a toad light check), and wonder where that infernal sub-racket comes from, temporarily suspecting the entry door, an open window, or a lost side window weep hole cover. Then I recognize the dimmed and trebled, wonderful rumble of the CAT C9, and turn the volume down so it doesn’t drive me nuts over the next hours on the road.

    Yeah, it was pretty funny all those miles me trying to locate the source of what I thought was wind noise. Really thought for a while that a seam had opened up on the front end piece of the RV.

    Our Sony camera is color and dims/brightens, and changes at night like an eye’s iris to keep the toad clearly well-resolved. I’ve also learned to use it to tell during passing where the passed vehicle is relative to the toad and when it’s safe to pull back into my lane; I’ve never fully trusted just my side mirrors for that as depth perception there can be fickle.

    This camera/monitor system is nice, has all the controls and whatnot, but it’s just not color.

    I’m still getting use to having something trailing along behind the RV and I’ve already found that the rear view mirrors are fairly useless. Unless I’m turning, can’t see the Saturn at all. So I’m becoming dependant on the monitor to see what’s happening. What I’d really like though, along with color of course, is a control in the cockpit which I could use to angle the camera up or down for the best view as I’m driving. Right now I’m limited to just the car. Can’t see very far behind it.

    One thing I did that many RV’ers don’t do to their toads, is I added a charging system so I can turn on the car’s extra running lights (most toads only have the tail markers lit by the RVs system) while I’m towing without worry of discharging the car’s battery. That lights up my side markers, and I’ve changed those to bright LEDs, and hopefully, cars that are merging behind my RV are more likely to see my car.

    Monitor carefully the car’s front tires. Some models require more frequent alignments when they’re towed.

    Oh, I didn’t know that. I’ll do that, thanks for the advice. Those times I can see the car during a turn, the front tires follow the turn nicely. There is a trick some use, which is to bungee the steering wheel, but I won’t know if that’s needed until I get a few thousand pulling the toad while monitoring tire wear.

  2. SamG says:

    Hi, it’s me again. Nice falls. Veterans Day Friday. You mentioned LED trouble. And reminded me of 2 Ebay purchases. 1- single contact 1156 12V bayonet base bulbs. 2- Bright White Car COB LED Lights (outside or interior). URL address for 1- https://goo.gl/tz1ZB6 URL address for 2- https://goo.gl/kQHo2V
    Having NO experience with these lights I took a chance. Love them! Bought 2 orders of each. COB lights I use in closet, reading lights, above counter. All bright white light. So thought I’d let you know about these. Fast 4 day arrival shipping to the East coast.

    Hi again, Sam.

    Great resource links. I like the looks and versatility of those COB type LEDs. Might get those to add to my running lights. One of the things RV’ers towing a car have trouble with at 60 MPH on the freeway is people trying to drift into the space behind the RV, even though there’s a car back there. They sometimes don’t recognize it’s back there, or they don’t expect it to be there. So extra running lights like those might help people notice it before they damage anything. I’ve already got the two side markers on the car (bright LEDs) turned on when I’m traveling, along with two in the rear, but a couple of those white devices in the right places might help with visibility even more.

    And I can see many other uses inside my RV, as you pointed out. As I wander around my RV, I can see several spots where the COBs would help brighten things up. So I bought 4 of them. Thanks for the links!

  3. Eric Turnquist says:

    I came across your blog when reading a note you left on iRV2 and just spent the better part of an hour looking over your comments and photographs on Mexico, Arizona and Oregon. Excellent job Sir!

    I’m 54 and starting to spend my days “slowing down” and getting ready to join the retirement plan. As such, you are my latest HERO! Thank you! Eric

    Thanks very much, Eric. Glad you appreciate my work on this blog. BTW, I retired at 58. Hope you can do the same, or even earlier!

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