Reflections

That's all the travelogue for now.  Notes from the trip:

I'm gonna enjoy this.  My fears about navigating the RV is traffic and on streets have pretty much resolved.  Merging R in traffic is still a little nervous-making, but I'm learning to change lanes WAY before I have to, L and R.  But the feeling of setting out in this is very similar to the feeling of standing at a trailhead, leaving the car and house behind, and heading out.

Emma is NOT enjoying this.  She trembles and pants and drools and whines softly most of the time.  This morning was especially hard for her: it was bumpy and noisy road right from the get-go. One we were in camp, especially someplace with nice shade, she just flopped down and did her Lab thing, as the picture in the previous post shows.  I'm thinking I may have to get her some pretty strong meds for this problem, but I'll give her as much time as I can.

For the most part the rig performed really well.  I got an overall mpg of 10.1 -- and that's with some rough up and down driving going in and out of Parker Canyon Lake.  I think if I ever decided to get on an Interstate in, say, Nebraska, and let the cruise control keep a constant speed, I'd get more like 12.  Of course, I'm not really enthusiastic about Nebraska... Depending on the trip, I'll budget 8 or 10 mpg when I plan.

It's noisy.  I think a lot of what I'm hearing is transmission noise from the "doghouse" right at my knees.  And no matter how carefully I've packed so far, there's always an assortment of rattles from the "living" area.

A few glitches:

There's a little monitor panel which displays the status of the water tanks and the battery.  The display is in the form of a line of LED's -- think about the thing on your phone which tells you how strong the signal is.  It was pretty erratic, and even though I emptied both holding tanks on my way back, it's still telling me the black water tank is full.  And this morning for a while it told me that the battery was almost dead, when it wasn't at all.  THAT corrected itself.  Maybe it was cold?  

One of the 12V fuses keeps blowing.  The circuit powers the TV and a nearby ceiling light.  I replaced it three times, it worked for a while, then buh-bye! It's either the wire from the power center to the outlet (pack rats?) or the outlet.  I think I'll take the outlet apart and disconnect it and see if the light works and keeps working.  It's not crucial, but it needs to be fixed at some point.

The latch that holds the cabinet doors over the sink won't stay closed.  The doors open and bang around; so far nothing from inside the cabinet has joined the dance.

The shower curtain won't latch in the closed (in use) position, and water splashes out.

Next trip? Maybe this coming weekend up to Phoenix for the annual Bartlett Lake Bash.