Hi Everyone:
I wanted to let you know we’ve made it back to Columbus….or more exactly, back to Worthington. We arrived a couple of days ago, and have been busy getting the RV unloaded, cleaned and ready for it’s service appointment on the 16th of this month. We’re back to our apartment which will be home base for now.
We have lots of catching up with family and friends to do and are so happy to see everyone again! We’ll be taking the RV out again right after the holidays, heading south to the beach. But more to come on that later.
Once we left Colorado, we spent 4 days driving, just stoping for the night along the way. We spent one night at a Walmart and had the same electrical issue we’ve had before when not connected to shore power, and the Co2/lp gas alarm going off almost as soon as we entered the RV. When we run the generator it is okay. But when we don’t run the generator, the alarm goes off due to low voltage. And trust me, it’s a loud alarm. So we ran the generator for a couple of hours and it was okay. I have spent way more time than I care to admit trying to figure out the problem, but I think I have a good guess. I think the house batteries in the RV are not being charged correctly while we are driving. There’s a big plug on the RV that plugs into a special recepticle in the truck bed that provides power to the RV while we are driving. Then the inverter in the RV converts the power from the RV batteries to electrical power to keep the fridge and a few other things running while driving. I think there’s something wrong with the big plug or the recepticle that is causing the truck to not fully charge the RV house batteries while we are driving. This issue is at the top of the list for the service appointment on the 16th. I’ll report back the results!
It was a fairly easy drive for the last leg of this adventure. It was about 1320 miles from where we were in Colorado to reach Columbus. It was cold for much of time, and was only 19 degrees one morning when we woke up. As soon as we left the Loveland, Colorado area, we were into the wide open farm land of Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana and of course Ohio. A rapid change from the mountains we have become very fond of. Everywhere we went on this trip we had mountains, even though they were different in each area. There’s something about being in or around mountains that is very inspiring and energizing.
We also realized how much easier it is to drive the RV in the west. Overpasses and bridges are all so much higher in the west, and you see RVs everywhere. There are many RV parks all along the way. Even on the Alcan Highway which travels through some very remote areas, there are RV parks easily found along the way. As we got further east, we had trouble finding RV parks, there just aren’t as many. And, many were already closed for the season. I don’t know why the midwest isn’t a hot spot in early November for RV travel! 🙂
Somewhere along the highway in Illinois is the door to one of our small storage compartments on the RV…. 🙁 It has been coming loose for quite a while, I always pushed it back into place during my “pre-wheels up walk around”. But alas, the bumps in the highway finally won and we discovered it was gone at a rest area stop on our second to last day on the road! A new door is on the service list too!
I plan to put together a wrap up of this adventure soon, along with more pictures from the 5 months we were on the road for this trip. In the meantime, there’s a few pictures below from our last leg of the trip home.
