On The Road with Jim and Pat

Hello from Evergreen, CO

Monday Evening  July 19, 2010   (Fourth travelogue of this trip).

We are back home and for the second trip in a row, we did not come home behind the dreaded hook {big grin}.  Indeed, the bus did well.  I have my charge air cooler heat problem under control and that sure makes driving much more fun.  

This morning we celebrated my birthday by having breakfast (my favorite meal) at the “soda fountain” in Chugwater, WY  We then drove to Evergreen (about 170 miles) and arrived about 2:30. 

We have had several discussions about how fun the Eagle Bus rally was.  Part of it was being with friends who have a common interest, part because I get to talk unlimited bus {grin} and part because of the fantastic setting in Custer, SD.  There is so much to see and we missed a bunch.  They are talking about have the rally there again in 2012.

We always have a let-down when we get home and have to face reality.  Pat is trying to get several things done before she flies to Salt Lake City tomorrow (Stampin’ Up! Convention).  I have several small bus projects that need to get done before we head out again at the end of the month.
 

That is all for now.

Hello from Chugwater, WY

Hello from Custer, SD

Hello from Devil’s Tower, WY

Hello from Evergreen, CO

Sunday Morning   July 4, 2010   (twelfth travelogue of this trip).

Happy fourth of July everyone.

This was quite a trip.  We left in the bus on May 20th.   That means we were gone 45 days!  Our trip took us through 8 states.  We traveled 2900 miles.  We even made it home without the benefit of a tow truck {grin}.  During this trip we took  a side trip, flying to Orlando to spend some time with Mickey and our daughter Lisa and her family.

Up until the last few days the bus did very well.  In Kansas, we got a warning light that the water temperature was shutting the engine down.  Water temperature has never been a problem.  When I started to check out the problem, I found that the air line that turns on the radiator fan was melted and the fan was not turning.  The water temperature got over 230 degrees, which is very high for a diesel and at the point that engine damage could occur!  

Before I left home, I noted that some of the exhaust insulation had come loose, but I did not have enough time to fix it.  The huge amount of exhaust heat coupled with the high ambient temperature got the engine compartment hot enough to melt the DOT type tubing (special plastic).  The repair was pretty straight forward.  However, getting the heart rate and blood pressure to settle down was not quite so simple.  I drove the first few miles with my eyes scanning all of the gauges on the SilverLeaf, looking for signs of damage.  After two days, and several hundred miles, the engine looks like it did not sustain damage.

Then yesterday, we had THE REAL SCARE – two miles from home.  It is a very tough pull up long steep hills to get to our house (7500 feet).  I had been keeping a close watch on the charge air temperature and was controlling it pretty well with some water misters that I had installed.  We take a strange route home once we get to our tight twisty canyon road.  Shortly into the canyon, we turn and go through a subdivision so that we do not hold up the folks who think the are champion race car drivers {frown}.  In that subdivision, my fire suppression system warned me that the compartment temperature was getting high.  About that time, it dawned on me that power was not getting to the wheels.  The latter could be either a failed drive shaft, or worse yet, a failed rear end (think several thousand dollars).  I checked and my engine water temperature was also climbing.  My thought:  two separate problems.

After I opened the engine hatch in the bedroom (180 degree engine compartment temperature overwhelmed the bedroom, I found another melted air line.  This time, it was a major supply line.  The fix was, again, pretty easy.  As I was working on the fix, I recalled that my 10 speed transmission has an air operated “air shifter”.  Could it be that the lack of air had put the range shifter in what would act like neutral?  Well, that was the case!  All was well and we proudly drove home without the tow truck.

Back to the last couple of days of this trip.  From Junction City to Denver, it is 500 miles and we just did not feel like busting our tail to get home.  We were pretty worn out from all the activities of this trip and I needed to do a bit of work on the bus before we hit the big hills.  Our decision was to drive about 300 miles one day and then have an easy trip home the last day.

We ended up in Goodland, KS early in the afternoon on Friday.  Of course, we stayed in a Wal Mart.  We had to run the generator for the afternoon and early evening because it was very hot and we had to needed the roof airs.  That kept us very comfortable.  I had to fight a terrible side wind most of the way from Junction City to Goodland.  Thank goodness the bus does well with GUSTING side winds.  Had we been in the motorhome, we would have had to stop.  We did get a kick out of seeing several folks trying to get their awing rolled up on the side of the road.  A few years ago a huge side wind unrolled the awning on our motorhome and blew it over the top.  It was not a fun job to get everything back in place!

We parked in the Wal Mart such that the wind was blowing on the side of the bus and it rocked us pretty badly until late evening. 

As a part of my effort to keep make the charge air cooler more effective (keep the air inlet temperature down), I have been playing with water misters.  This is a technique that many folks use on buses that have water temperature issues.  The concept is to spray the radiator or charge air cooler with water from the domestic water supply tank.  I have made many iterations of the system, but none seemed all that effective.  So, I decided to redo the system once again.  I walked over to a farm supply store, hoping to find a agricultural spray head that would work.  They had spray heads, but none were easily adaptable.  Then the light went on.  I use special spray nozzles on my fire suppression system that would be just the ticket.  I cut up my existing system and modified it so that I could use my heads.  They flow a lot of fluid (2.25 gallons in 45 seconds with three heads).  So, I have to flip on the switch on for only a few seconds at a time when the temperature got too high.  The testing I did on the hills of SW Kansas and eastern CO suggested that they did a good job and would allow me to climb the big long hills to our house with minimal problem.  Turned out that was the case. 

I have been working on the hydraulic fan system (some details in previous posts) and think I have the handle on how to make it work better (change to a more viscous fluid).  All in all, I think I have the charge air cooler problem at a manageable level.

That is all for this trip.  We leave again next Sunday to travel to Custer, SD for an Eagle Bus rally.  Stay tuned.

Hello from Junction City, KS

Hello from Du Quoin, IL

Saturday Morning June 26, 2010 (tenth travelogue of this trip).

We are at the Du Quoin State Fairgrounds  (map) for a Fleetwood motorhome rally. We arrived here Thursday (6/24). Set-up day was supposed to be yesterday, but they let us set up on Thursday. That was nice and gave us a day to catch up on projects.

One of the projects was to pay state taxes for the last two rallies. I really need to vent here. Both the state of New Mexico and Wisconsin are terrible to deal with. I have had sign up ahead of time (a huge project where they want vast amounts of personal data and the birth certificate of our third daughter (sorry Judy {grin}). The latter is, obviously, an exaggeration, but not much. Then trying to file my payment (unfortunately very small) is equally a hassle. I would say that I have spent at least 4 hours (probably closer to 6) on each state. In the case of WI, I can’t file it till we get home, since they mailed me a “Letter ID” which is separate from my tax account ID number which they emailed me. Arrrrrgh. Of course, CA is terrible as well, but we did not sell there this year. Other states like WY and here in IL make it so easy. They hand you a slip of paper and you simply enter your gross sales and extended tax and mail it in.

Now, lets catch up on Hannibal. We chose to stop there because of some very fond memories. In 1987 we headed out in a ’56 Chevy that I had just finished a total rebuild with all three girls and headed to Springfield, IL for a big car show. To this day, we don’t know how we talked the girls into going with us (Lisa was 21!) but somehow we did. They were getting a bit restless, so we decided to do something fun. Somehow we found Hannibal (famous for being the boyhood home of Mark Twain). One evening we took a dinner cruise on the Mississippi and had a ton of fun.

So, we decided to take the riverboat dinner tour again and it was fun again. I have attached a photo of the boat taken from “Lover’s Leap” (an overlook on the huge bluffs adjacent to the Mississippi).

I had mentioned that we had observed some serious flooding of the farm fields in the river bottom areas as we traveled south. Well, just before we went on the cruise, we got a call telling us that they had to move the departure location up the river a bit to higher land. Indeed, the city had to install the flood gates in the levy that protects the town (see photo)

We also toured the Mark Twain Museum and the buildings where he grew up in Hannibal. At the museum there was an actor that portrayed him and he did an excellent job!!

We drove south on MO route 79 which is a part of the Great River Road. It was a nice drive, but we did not get to see the river very much.

The Injun Joe campground was showing its age. The sites were very small and close together, but it was on our route out of town and had 50 amp service which let us run all three of our air conditioners at once. I was able to take a dip in the pool and that was really fun.

I mentioned air conditioners. Wow, do we need them!! There have been heat warnings all over the area for several days. The heat index has been well into the 100s most days. Even the locals comment about how hot and muggy it is. The same is true here in Du Quoin. We only have 30 amp service here, but that lets us run two of the air conditioners and that keeps us comfortable.

Got to get ready for the opening of the rally today, so that is all for now.

Hello from Hannibal, MO

Tuesday Morning June 22, 2010 (ninth travelogue of this trip).

Lots of miscellaneous stuff to catch up on. Our wonderful campground in West Salem, WI was right on the La Crosse River. It looked like a good place to fish, so I bought an out-of-state 4 day license ($24). I guess that is not too bad, but compared to the very reduced fee in CO for folks over 65, it kind of hurt. Worse yet, I never find the time to fish in CO. I did not catch anything, but had a lot of fun.

I talked about how neat the campground was. We were lucky and did not have any close RVs except for the last day. Even that was not bad. The camp hosts even had great rolls and coffee for Fathers Day. We had only planned to say a couple of days, but we enjoyed the area so much that we stayed 7 nights! I have included a photo which does not come close to showing how neat the area was.

I brought my bicycle with me on this trip and have been riding it a bit. Pat got it for me as a gift a few years ago and it is the first high quality bike I have owned. The shifting is flawless! I was able to ride it on some trails in the campground area and it was a ton of fun. Rides were not long, but I still got a bit of exercise.

I mentioned that I had been working on a problem with the bus. It is not a huge problem, but my charge air cooler air flow is not what it should be and it allows the air entering the engine to get hotter than I would like. I built/installed a hydraulic fan system before this trip. That should have solved the problem, but it did not. I have been working with the fan blade supplier and he said that I must have a shroud to make the fan work properly. So, I fabricated one out of fiberglass in the campground (see photo). The photo shows the raw shroud with the fan. I wrapped the fan with cardboard to get the best fit I could, given the situation. The shroud doesn’t look all that impressive, but once I got it trimmed up, it looked pretty good. That did not solve the problem completely, so I am doing some more system analysis and working with both the fan manufacturer and the pump/motor manufacture.

When we were touring the upper Mississippi, we saw some strange purple contraptions hanging from trees along the highway. Then we found one in the campground. It turns out that they are bug traps that are mounted in selected Ash trees. It turns out that there is a terrible infestation of Emerald Ash Borer (http://www.emeraldashborer.info/). This threatens ash trees in North America.

We left the campground on Sunday and drove a bit less than 250 miles to a truck stop close to Mediapolis, IA on US 61. We then drove a bit over 100 miles to Hannibal. Normally we enjoy two lane roads, but the two days getting here were not a lot of fun. The trip through Wisconsin was not good at all. The roads were very rough and there was a lot of tight twisty areas. In addition, it rained heavily during parts of both days. Indeed, it has been raining in the Midwest a bunch. All along our journey we saw flooding of the farm fields. The rivers are out of their banks in some areas, and there have been a lot of flash flood warnings. It is probably not bad enough to make the evening news, but the huge number of folks affected are probably really suffering.

We are staying in Injun Joe Campground (map). We will have more about Hannibal in the next installment.

That is all for now.

Hello again from West Salem, WI

Saturday afternoon   June 18, 2010   (eight  travelogue of this trip).

Monday (6/14) we took a northern tour on the Great River Road.  We drove up the Minnesota side from the I-90 exit to Wabasha, MN and then crossed the river and came down the Wisconsin side.  That whole valley is so beautiful!  We stopped in Winona, MN for lunch in a great bar/cafe right on the Mississippi.  They are famous for their grilled cheese sandwiches.  Pat ordered the grilled cheese and I ordered a barbecue sandwich. We split the sandwiches and they were great.

Our next stop was Alma, WI.  That is a site of one of many dams/locks along the route.  Most of the dams are very shallow and are probably used for flood control.  The locks have an elevation change of less that 10 feet from the looks of it.  When we got to Alma, we saw a tugboat and 6 barges approaching the locks.  It was taking some time, so we decided to look around Alma (very small town) for a coffee house.  Well, not only did we find one, but it looked like it was straight out of the ’30s or ’40s.  As you can see in the picture, they use a very old espresso machine.  Not only that, they had great pie for Pat and I had a great scone.  By the time we got done, the tug and barges were in the lock.  I have attached a picture of them leaving.  I have also attached a photo of the main street of Alma.  It is very typical of the small towns all along the river.

Almost all of this tour (a bit less than  200 miles) was in drizzling rain.  Sounds terrible, but it really made for some neat scenery. 

Tuesday, we just took it easy and I started a fairly major project on the bus (more in the next travelogue). 

Wednesday, we took the southern route from I-90 to Dubuque and back.  This was a bit over 200 miles round trip.  We took the MN/IA side down and the Wisconsin side back.  As was the case with our tour on Monday, the scenery was beautiful!  The weather was bright and sunny, giving us a contrast to Monday.  One of our stops was at the Effigy Mounds National Monument in IA.  The history of these mounds is not well documented, but it appears that the Indians created them as burial grounds.  Some of the mounds are huge in breath and width.  Some are shaped like the profile of an animal.  We took a fairly steep hike in the woods (about two miles round trip) to get to the Eagle Rock overlook.  It was much more picturesque that the photo shows.

We then drove to Guttenberg, IA where we had lunch right on the Mississippi.  The first half of our return trip was a bit disappointing as we did not see the river.  However, we did go thought some very neat little towns.  On the last half to the leg, we were right on the river and it was again very picturesque.

With all of the pictures we are posting, we will cut this travelogue short and pick up with more details in the next one.

Hello from West Salem, WI