I’ve been situated in this RV space for over a month and it’s a tight squeeze as my LR slide bumps right up against the neighbors wire fence. He’s the park manager and he laughed off my suggestion he remove it temporarily.
That fence interference stopped me from working on or having work done on my slide problem where it’s bucking and tilting in an odd way when I try to extend it. But finally the RV space next door on the opposite side the RV owners moved into a nearby manufactured home on the same property as the RV park. All of the people living there were on the tipsey side often and cops were called for domestic abuse by the son towards his GF occasionally so I’m not unhappy to see them go. But they left their truck camper! I heard that they wanted $100 for it, and eventually I heard it was free if you hauled it off. I saw several people come and look but they usually left disappointed. I wouldn’t doubt that it’s in terrible shape inside as well as outside with that many adults living in it. I’ve been staying at this RV park during summers for 3 years now and there were always 2-3 adults full time living in this junker. All winter too. Wow. I didn’t get to see inside but, I didn’t want to either.
Finally, last week, a couple guys came by and slid it into their truck bed and hauled it outta here. Four days later, I moved over to that space. I would have been faster but my eye kept bothering me. Anyway, here’s some shots of the new owners I guess, hauling it out…or it’s a company the old owners hired to take it to the dump.
Seems there’s a lot of work to these truck campers when you want to move them. See that tree? I trimmed it back so my bedroom slide wouldn’t get scratched by it when extended. And it gives my RV a bunch of shade during the day. I like it. There was a wire fence this side of my original pad too but the maintenance guy had already removed that one.
Anyway, they and the camper are gone now. I had the eye problem still and there were a couple days where I didn’t trust my vision enough to move over there but eventually, I broke camp, drove around for 25 minutes to get the engine and tranni fluids up to temp and then settled into that space. So now I have plenty of room on either side of the RV so I can work on things easily. Yeah! Now if only my eye would get better.
And a couple days before moving over to that now empty pad as you can see here, it was supposed to be a week of high temps again, but suddenly, a stormed rolled in. Covered much of the NW with thick clouds. Just a few places had warnings and such, Milton Freewater area was one of them. And we were inundated with rain for a couple hours. Even had a 15 minute hail storm mixed in with the heavy rain. Small pea sized hail. And roaring wind. And lightening and thunder! Oh, MY! Thor was really working his hammer for a while.
What these movies below show is an unusual event for the Walla Walla valley in August. A full on downpour. Blustery winds, hail. The storm lasted hours. Rained off and on all night. Next morning was still dark cloudy. Had some wind events that luckily didn’t last long that could have damaged my beautiful awnings if I’d not pulled them in.
And another video…
I really should have gone outside to video or turned on the windshield wipers but just didn’t think about it, plus it was nasty out there and I was dressed in shorts, polo shirt, and had flipflops on. I did rush outside when the wind really picked up to like hurricane force and got the main 18 foot roll up awning stowed, but left the over-the-door awning extended for perhaps an hour afterwards because it’s smaller and I thought it would be okay. I did end up going out later and grabbing the tool and stowing that awning when it died down a bit but it ended up with a bent awning frame from the previous wind gusts so I could only retract around 90% of the way. Lightening flashing all around the area while doing so too. In my bare feet. Had to stand in nice warm water, in a 1 foot wide, 2″ deep stream while retracting it. I should be able to repair it though as it doesn’t look too bad from the ground. Just a little bent I hope. They are like $800 for an entirely new one and I just paid $125 for just new fabric installed last year.
So that was damned exciting. My LR slide awning on the drivers side had detached itself the day before from it’s pull strap holding hook. That was caused by a huge wind gust, so I didn’t have to mess with that. The built in windup spring rolled it up so it was safe and secure during that day’s storm.
Next day was not nearly as blustery but we did get more rain. And this valley has been in a 10 year drought so we really need the water. I didn’t hear of or see any news of flooding in this area like they had last year after I left in November, as several irrigation canals overflowed, it is possible but we have pretty good drainage all throughout the valley…all heading for the Columbia River. This RV park has an irrigation canal right behind where we all park so that can be a concern but here, this part of the canal rarely floods.
Well, enough of that. I like storms, and there wasn’t any evidence of any leaks in my RV so I’m pretty happy that short term but fierce test didn’t show anything like that. Very happy that the hail was just pea sized as it was really coming down hard.
And here’s a shot of where I park now, where that truck camper was. Gives me more access to the basement compartments of my RV, and an apron of cement on the passenger side where I keep most of the items I want to access quickly so having the cement to stand on and place stuff is handy. On the drivers side, I now have that nice shade tree, and a closer sewer connection so that’s helpful when I’m dumping. And I don’t have to contend with the wire fence like where I was parked before. The only disadvantage is that I don’t have much room for my car so I have to park it sideways and back up to that fence section. But, all the tires are on cement and I’m out of the street so no biggie.
So that’s all for now. I have several RV maintenance, repair, and remodeling work projects that need to be done and I’ll write articles about them when the time comes…if my eye finally gets well enough for me to work on things.
Thanks for visiting my blog and reading my articles. Next time, we’re going to visit the local cemetery. Should be fun.
I love cemeteries! So peaceful 🙂
I have always enjoyed looking at the dates and names on the headstones. When I was a teenager, there was this rowdy group that used to go over to the nearby graveyard and push over headstones, or so I heard through the grapevine. I thought it was ridiculous. Why? Didn’t make sense to me. Apparently it was a tradition in Walla Walla among that years HS graduates. But it was something that was sparsely attended. Not something I’d ever consider doing. They did do it that year I was a senior and the town was, once again, outraged. I seem to recall they had a couple assemblies about it.
Anyway, in a week or two I’ll publish another article about the cemetery here in Milton Freewater. And I just learned there’s two! There’s another one that’s mostly pioneers on the hilltop opposite the main cemetery. I’ll try to go visit there but I heard it’s a hike.
Hey Jim,
Good to read a new post. Hope that eye gets better soon.
You won’t remember this but we have a sister rig of yours. Its an 03 Winnie Adventurer. Laid out pretty similar to yours. Lately our Nevercold turned into a non functional fridge on LP while dry camping in 90° weather and no shade with lots of wind. So I did my usual read everything I can find and I ran across an article about the recall and wound up buying a little device created by an engineer designed to prevent boiler overheating and getting dead from a horrific fire. If you email me I’ll send you some links. Another part of revamping this fridge was adding blower fans to the inside of the access door and we discovered that the plastic cover over the top of the fridge was missing. I told my DH it wasn’t truly missing because apparently we never had one. Got a replacement on Amazon and had to replace the base as well since whatever tore the cover off tore off the attachment points. Next RV we get is going to have a residential refer. After all that stuff got installed and fixed we got a steady 40° in the cold compartment with an ambient of 85 plus. We’ve been using our RV as an auxiliary kitchen during a tear out of the one in the house. I totally wrenched my knee going up and down those darn steps. I guess it’s better than blurry vision but this getting old sucks. We probably won’t make our annual trek to Brookings this fall. So I live vicariously through you!
Thanks for visiting and reading my articles. I am aware of the devices you’re talking about but I have a Norcold 842 model that doesn’t have the kind of fires that were the problem years ago, that was the 1200 series of Norcolds. They all should have been recalled. Even the safety devices they made for them were bogus and didn’t do much of anything. Eventually, Norcold came out with three devices over time because the first two didn’t work at all like advertised and the fires continued. The third one didn’t work either but by then, millions had trashed their refers so the government, in a downward spiral towards ‘no regulations’ and ‘never getting on big business’ didn’t bother to force the issue. A class action law suit is what made them fix the bad design and inform owners of the dangers because they insisted there was nothing wrong with their design…a total lie. The law suit took off after several deaths, and millions of dollars of ruined RV’s. Anyway, I have the 842 model so I’m pretty confident there’s no worries about fires. They have a recall list and the 800’s aren’t on it. I did put a dry powder exploding fire suppressant pack in the outside compartment though. To be on the safe side. And I have a fan in the refer section to stir the air so it cools more efficiently.
Anyway, thanks for your concern.
Where can I find the dry pack anti-fire thing?
I have an ’88 600 series, still working after all these years. (1988 Winnie Super Chief 27 RQ), ..Rear queen but it has twins. Go figure?
I’ve been reading you for a long time, not sure if you recall any of my (1-2) comments.
I do enjoy them and hope your eye gets to-a-working better.
After seeing where you’ve parked before, how can you handle being packed in like that? I’m guessing the it’s the cost as everything is going crazy and we aren’t 1%rs..eh?
Take Care, David
Seems they stopped producing the fireballs I bought 3 years ago. Now there’s something even better. I’m going to order one today for my refer’s outside vent compartment. The one I have now doesn’t fit well. Too big. It’s fine above the engine compartment though where I mounted the 2nd one. I paid $49 each 3 years ago. Anyway, here’s the link for the better one: Automatic Fire Extinguisher
Oh, I like it here in M-F. The spaces are fairly wide and deep. Not crowded at all. It is sort of a junky RV park with derelicts here and there, but the people are nice. At least to me. And remember, I’m here for family. Have my son, daughter, sister & BIL that all live nearby. My daughter is only a bike ride away. I’ve changed my home base VA clinic to Walla Walla and I hope to get these nagging medical issues taken care of so I can start traveling extensively again. But normally, I stop at a place and stay a week or more as it is, so I’m a slow traveler. Following the sun. And when fuel prices soar, I just hunker down until they drop again, like they are now.
This winter though, I’m leaving my RV here and flying to Costa Rica for a month. I’ll get back in December and then probably head over to the southern Oregon coast for a few weeks. Just for a change of pace.
Thanks for reading my stuff, David. Keep in touch! And I do read every comment, though I may not remember them all. Sometimes I’m late answering them because this site doesn’t let me know when they’ve arrived, usually, but I get to them eventually. Anyway, Cheers!