Our RV Adventures

Today was kind of a rest-up day from our 235 mile round trip down to King’s Canyon and Sequoia National Parks and back. So everyone slept in this morning.

When I got up at 10:30 I fixed us coffee and had the last of our muffins from the Sam’s Club in Las Vegas. I guess it’s time to stock up again.

We’ll have to check out Von’s in Oakhurst and see what they have in the bakery.

About 2 I went over to Nick and Terry’s to take a look at their entertainment center hookup. Between replacing three TV’s and a satellite system, then a burglary, and a cabinet remodeling, there was a problem with how everything had been wired and rewired.

As usual nothing was labeled and there were a lot of extra cables connected to nothing. But with some some cable-tracing and diagram-drawing, I finally had a handle on how it was wired.

The only thing that was presently working was the satellite system feeding directly into the TV on an HDMI cable. And the Wii system was also hooked up directly to the TV using the 3 wire AV input.

However the DVD player was not hooked up, nor was the over-the-air roof antenna. Or rather there was a cable connected, but it wasn’t the right one.

It looked like the best way to hook up the DVD was to use another HDMI cable and feed it directly into the TV on the 2nd HDMI input. And neither Nick nor I had one. But I figured the Radio Shack in Oakhurst would.

As far as the roof antenna, I decided to wait to trace that cable until we took the LCD TV off the cabinet mount to install the 2nd HDMI cable.

It was getting close to 4 so we decided to head out to Oakhurst to get the cable and then have dinner at the Chukchansi Casino.

While we were at Radio Shack I also had Nick pick up an AC plug strip. I wanted to wire things up so he could turn everything off with a single switch, especially the DVR system.

These units all have a computer hard drive in them. That’s how they record your TV shows. And if the unit is plugged in, the hard drive is spinning, even if the box is turned off. And unlike laptop hard drives, the ones in DVR’s are not really made to move around, like when you’re bouncing down the road in the RV. Plus these units all generate some heat which is not a good thing in a closed cabinet.

So unplug your DVR when you travel!

After a great meal at the Casino we got back about 6:30 and I went over to Nick’s to install the cable.

Of course the first thing I discovered that there wasn’t a large enough hole, between the left section that held the DVD and the center section where the TV is mounted, to run the HDMI cable thru. So out comes the drill.

More fun.

After Terry and I took down the TV, we finally got the DVD’s HDMI cable hooked up and tested. Finally.

At this point we also found out that we had no idea what had happened to the cable from the roof antenna. The one that was hooked to the ANT input on the TV didn’t go anywhere. A little searching found us the control panel for the roof antenna amplifier, so I decided to try and trace it back from there.

But first I just wired it up directly to see what I had. And discovered another problem. As I thought, we’re down in a valley with mountains between us and the nearest TV stations in Fresno 35 miles away. All we could get was a flicker of a station on channel 27, but turning off the amplifier made the very fuzzy picture go away, so I’ll have to assume it’s working. We just don’t have a signal.

By this time it was after 9 pm so we decided to call it a day and finish up tomorrow.

More tomorrow. I’ve reposted some of our trip through Oregon last year.

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Thought for the Day:

“Writing for a penny a word is ridiculous. If a man really wanted to make a million dollars, the best way to do it would be start his own religion.” – L. Ron Hubbard, the science fiction writer who later founded Scientology

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Sea Lions and Sea Food…

Originally posted on May 18, 2010

Just what I wanted to see when I got up this morning – Rain.

Few things are more fun than trying to get ready to roll while you’re getting soaking wet.

But I guess it’s about time we saw some actual northwestern rainy weather. We’ve actually have very little rain since we hit the west coast.

Into every life, and all that.

We left Midway RV Park about 8 am, earlier than normal, because we wanted to stop and see the Sea Lion Cave just north of Florence, OR.

We got there about 10 am and found easy parking for our rig. But then we had a mad dash across the street to the entrance, trying to dodge cars zooming by on US101.

But it was all worth the trip. The cave was really great!

The Sea Lion Cave was discovered in 1880 and opened as a tourist attraction in 1932 when US101 was still only a gravel road.

And by the mid 50’s it was still going strong. Don’t you just love those car colors.

This photo from the observation deck shows you the kind of weather we had today.

We had about a 100 yard walk along the trail leading to the elevator.

We took the 200 foot elevator down to the sea lion cave and looked out into what is billed as the largest sea cave in the world.

And there were sea lions everywhere. Along the walls, on the rocks, in the water, all over.

The other end of the cave looks out over the cormorant rookery, and what is called “The Most Photographed Lighthouse in the World", the Heceta Lighthouse.

Back on the surface we looked out over the other side of the cave.

We arrived at Circle Creek RV Park just south of Seaside OR about 2:15 pm.

Around 3:30, after we got set up, we headed back down the road about 7 miles to eat at Mo’s Seafood, a place that Nick Russell had recommended.

And, as usual, Nick’s recommendation was dead on. It was great. Jan had a Seafood Platter with Clam Chowder, and I had a bowl of Oyster Stew and a Blackened Cod Fish Sandwich. Hmmm, Hmmm, Good.

Tomorrow, we only have a 105 mile run to Westport, WA, so we’ll probably go out to breakfast and drive around a little before we leave.

We’ll be in Westport for 3 nights catching up with our friends, Al and Adrianne Cox, who we first met in Fairbanks, AK in 2008.

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