Monthly Archives: June 2020
Rushmore and More . . .
I spent some time on the phone this morning working on setting up the repair of our RV. First thing I got on the phone with Good Sam Roadside Assistance to see what I need to do to set up the towing of the rig up to Channelview.
Turns out that all I should have to do is call them the day before and schedule it for the next day. At least that’s what they say now. We’ll see what they say when I call.
Then, before I could call the repair shop, our friend, Rudy Legett called me from there. He was talking to Dean, the service manager, about my problem. So I’ll call in a week or so to make an appointment.
Then I started checking out prices on hotels in the Webster area to pick out a place to stay.
And more importantly, I asked Jennifer, our office manager, if she could keep Karma while we’re staying in a hotel while the rig is in the shop. A lot of hotels do take pets, but some charge a substantial fee, $20/day, for pets.
Hope to get all this rolling in the next couple of weeks.
Another in our Where We Were 3 Years Ago Today series.
June 8, 2017
Which One Is President Rushmore?
Off to do Mt. Rushmore again, we were out the door by 10am, with a stop in town at Wendy’s for a little early lunch since we wouldn’t be eating dinner until about 5pm.
Our first stop, a little before 11, was the Mt. Rushmore Monument itself. Although the monument admission is free, parking is $10, but for seniors, it’s only $5. Nice.
Walking up to the memorial area, the view down the Avenue of Flags is really impressive, framing the mountain perfectly.
And it’s interesting to see all the talus that was left over from the carving.
A couple of days ago, I thought to ask Google who Mt. Rushmore was named for. Was it already named, or was it named for someone after it was finished?
Turns out it was named for Charles Rushmore when he visited the area in 1885. A New York lawyer, he was in the area checking titles for mining claims. When he asked his guide, Bill Challis, what the name was of that mountain, Bill said that it didn’t really have a name, but from now on, they would call it Mt. Rushmore.
Here’s what it looked like at the time.
And over the following years when Rushmore returned on hunting trips every year, everyone kept calling it Mt. Rushmore, until the US government finally recognized the name in 1930, 3 years after the carving had begun. And later, Rushmore made the first large donation, of $5000, to help fund the carving.
But because of this name, apparently the most asked question of Park Rangers at Mt. Rushmore is, “Which one is President Rushmore?” It would have been a lot better I guess if his name had been Charles Washington rather than Charles Rushmore.
I was interested to find out that a lot of things changed along the way during carving. Originally Jefferson’s head was to the right of Washington, but during the carving it was discovered that the rock was in bad shape, so the partially completed head of Jefferson was dynamited and restarted to Washington’s left.
I guess this kind of answers a question I had about the order of the heads. I mean it’s not alphabetical, and it’s not by order of presidency. Otherwise it would be Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and then Roosevelt. So now it sounds like it may be because of what face would fit in what area.
And I was also surprised to learn that originally the figures were supposed to be carved from the waist up, not just the heads, but they ran out of money, Guess they were glad they were working from the heads down, and not the waists up. Otherwise we might have ended up with something like this.
Yesterday, in the middle of dark storm clouds and occasional heavy rains, we drove many of the roads in the area.
We also got this side view of President Washington
Later we headed south down to Custer State Park to drive the Needles Highway, including several more tunnels.
Along the way we pass through the most famous of the tunnels, the Needles Eye Tunnel
Today after leaving the monument, we headed east on 16A to drive Iron Mountain Rd. Along the 18 miles there are 314 curves, 14 switchbacks, 3 tunnels and 3 pigtails. In case you haven’t encountered a pigtail before, it looks like this.
It’s a complete loop, and in fact turns back under itself.
At the bottom of the Iron Mountain, we turned south on the 18 mile Wildlife Loop. Very scenic, but for a long while this guy was all the ‘wildlife’ we saw.
But finally coming over a rise we found 100’s of buffalo, so many and so spread out, that I couldn’t get them all in the frame.
And as you can see there were a lot of new calves.
Then a few more miles down the loop we came across these fellows, though I’m not exactly sure you can call them ‘wild’ life.
They seemed to being used to being feed.
And except for some whitetail deer, that was about it for the wildlife on the Wildlife Loop.
Coming back toward Mt. Rushmore, we drove back up Iron Mountain Rd., enjoying the highlighted view of Mt. Rushmore through two of the three tunnels.
But the third one, the most impressive, I didn’t get because my camera focused on the windshield so the monument was blurry. Sorry.
Finally heading back toward Rapid City, we made stop at Dinosaur Park, located on the highest hill/mountain? in Rapid City. Built by the city in 1936 to capitalize on the tourists coming to the area to see the carving in progress, it’s been a landmark ever since.
In fact Jan remembers coming here when she was 7 and her father was stationed at Ellsworth AFB, and she was looking forward to seeing it again.
Al least until she saw the stairs leading up to the top.
She said, “I don’t remember any stairs like that.”
I told her, “You were 7. You probably just run up them like they weren’t even there.”
She then retorted, “Well, they’re there now so I’m staying here.”
So I made the trudge to the top.
The things I do so you blog readers don’t have to .
Leaving Dinosaur Park we headed over to the nearby Famous Dave’s BBQ to meet Wil and Cyndy Olsen.
Wil and Cyndy work with Adventure Caravans helping guide RV’ers around the country so we’ve bumped into them at a number of rallies along the way. But this the first time we’ve really had a chance to sit down and spend some time with them.
And what better way to do it than over Famous Dave’s Ribs. Cyndy got the Chicken, while Jan and Wil both got the full rack of St. Louis ribs.
I stuck with my usual three meat combo, with St. Louis ribs, Hot Link Sausage,and Burnt Rib Tips. And as you can probably tell we all had plenty to take home.
It’s hard to beat Famous Dave’s, especially with friends like Wil and Cyndy.
And what’s funny about this is that the people at the table behind them are also RV’ers, thought we didn’t know each other.
Saying our goodbyes and safe travels, they headed to Safeway while Jan and I made a Wal-Mart stop before finally getting back to the rig a little before 8pm.
A really nice day.
We have originally planned to see the South Dakota Air & Space Museum, but ran out of time. We’ll see how tomorrow goes.
Thought for the Day:
The most expensive thing in the world is a cheap Army and Navy. – Carl Vinson
We’re Screwed?
Literally and figuratively.
I was back under the rig this afternoon, hoping to get the oil filter adapter and the new gaskets installed, with the new bolts, and then mount the new filter. And if possible, do the high-idle to check for leaks.
But alas, it was not to be.
I had noticed yesterday that when I took off the 4 bolts holding the adapter on, the first two were really tight, but the second two came out real easy.
Too easy, as it turns out.
I installed the adapter’s 4 bolts loosely to get things started, and went to tighten them down snugly by hand before I torqued them down tight with my torque wrench. But I never got that far.
Two of the bolts, the two that came out really easy yesterday, would not snug down at all. They just turned and turned and turned and . . .
Yep, they were stripped. And the last place that had the filter/adapter head combo off was Dix Diesel Center in Luling last November when they pulled the oil cooler to replace the gaskets. So I guess they didn’t read the specs and overtightened them.
So that means I drove the rig all the way home with only two bolts holding the oil filter on.
Yikes!
The bolts are steel, and both the adapter head and the oil cooler mount are aluminum, so it’s easy to over torque the bolts and strip out the threads.
So now it’s off to the shop. But I’m not really happy about the idea of driving the rig 35 miles north to the Channelview area to the shop on two bolts. So I’m going to see if my roadside assistance plan will tow me up there, since I don’t think it’s really safe to drive it up there and risk the engine.
As far as the fix, I’m hoping that the oil cooler filter mount can be retapped since a new oil cooler is about $1000. But then that would eliminate the whole problem since the newer oil coolers are all one piece.
So I’ll get on the phone tomorrow and try to get everything started.
It’s nice when you go out on a limb and it doesn’t get sawed off behind you.
A while back, based on what I was finding out in all my reading, research, and data analysis, it began to look like, despite all the overblown hype, that that the WuFlu was pretty much just replacing the seasonal flu/pneumonia season.
In fact, thought the seasonal flu was on track last fall and earlier this year to be another bad one, it just about disappeared as the WuFlu advanced in the U.S. And now you can’t even find much about it on the CDC website.
That’s when I posited that the WuFlu would probably not be any worse overall than the 2018 flu/pneumonia season, when almost 130,000 died. In comparison, about 112,000 have died from the WuFlu so far.
And I caught a lot of flack on this, believe me.
Coronavirus Mortality Study Shows: “Things Aren’t Much Worse Than a Bad Seasonal Flu”
Here are some pull quotes from the article.
The NYC/NJ contributions to total mortality have been so high that if they are removed from the current total mortality and replaced with levels proportional to those found in the rest of the US, the current total US death toll would be equivalent to the death toll from the 2018 seasonal flu.
And of course about half of all NYC/NJ deaths were from elderly patients in nursing homes, after the mayor ordered them to take even WuFlu + patients.
And it doesn’t seem like all the ‘social distancing’ made a lot of difference between strict lockdown and lax lockdown states.
Apart from the New England region, there appear no evident effects/deviations from the main expected increase line for states that locked down early and with more stringent requirements,
Social distancing doesn’t appear to have much of an impact on overall mortality. Finally, the actions of the governor and health officials in New York caused that area to explode with cases and death, especially when compared to the rest of the country.
Another online epidemiologist said that that in many cases, the people who would have died from the seasonal flu are now dying from the WuFlu.
Another in our Where We Were 10 Years Ago Today series.
June 7, 2010
Moab and Monticello…
We pulled out of our park about 8 am, heading first right down the street to take on about 140 gallons of diesel. And for a change, the price had gone down.
When we got here, the price was $2.97, then yesterday the price was $2.91. Today it was $2.89. And this is the first time in a long while that diesel is cheaper than unleaded, if only by 4 cents.
We left the station and pulled on to I-15 South about 8:30, heading toward Monticello, UT, about 270 miles away. We had a great time spending a few days with our friends Pat and Judy, and they did a fantastic job showing us around Salt Lake City. Hopefully we’ll be able to catch up with them again soon.
The first thing I starting checking after we got on the road was whether or not my PacBrake exhaust brake is working, or at least activating.
I know it’s not working, or at least it doesn’t seem to slow me down any more than just the downshifting than happens. But what I didn’t know is whether or not it’s actually moving into position.
But now I do. Last night I mounted a video camera in the engine compartment under the bed and ran the cable to a small monitor up on the dash.
In the first photo you can see the PacBrake valve in the rest position.
In this photo the valve has moved.
So now I know that the air actuator is working and moving the valve. I think this means that I have one of two other problems.
The PacBrake is a butterfly valve that is installed right after the turbocharger and provides backpressure to the system when it closes. So this means that either the valve is not closing all the way, or I have a leak in my exhaust system.
So now I’ve got to try to figure out where to go next with this.
Actually I was really hoping that the PacBrake wasn’t activating. That would mean that I had a bad relay or a bad air solenoid or actuator, something that would be easier for me to fix.
Oh, well. Back to the drawing board.
Side Note: I found out a while later that this problem was caused by a cracked exhaust manifold. Replacing the manifold fixed the problem.
About noon we hit a 25 mile stretch of I-70 so we stopped in Green River at an Arby’s located in a truck stop so we had no trouble parking.
Along the trip today I noticed that my engine temps were running hotter than normal. Usually my water temp runs rock steady on 175 degrees, with occasional excursion up to 180-185 on long hills.. But today I’m hitting 190 – 195 on the hills with one 199 observed. I knew I wasn’t low on water, so what was wrong?
Then it suddenly dawned on me that it was about 95 degrees outside. This is the first time we’ve seen 80 degrees this year, much less 95. Most of our travels this year have been in the 50-60 degree range. So now it made sense. One less thing to worry about.
During the trip we saw some great scenery along the way. These photos are in no particular order.
This is Wilson Arch, about 25 miles south of Moab, UT.
About 2:30 we pulled into Mountain View RV Park in Monticello, UT. The note on the office door said to find a site and pay later, so we did.
I did have to reposition sideways a little or there would have been some serious ‘slide kissing’ going on. Even now there’s not a lot of room.
This park has about 30 spaces, and is basically an RV park in someone’s large front yard. That’s their house in the back there.
Even the view across from the park was great.
Our daughter Brandi called just as we were getting parked. She and Jan talked a good while going over the wedding plans for the 21st.
We had leftovers tonight so we didn’t even unhook the toad. Just one less thing to do before we leave for Show Low, AZ tomorrow morning.
Thought For The Day:
The fact that Hooters hasn’t launched a home delivery service called Knockers seems like a missed business opportunity to me.
