…it’s so hard to leave Ridgway State Park.
This is the view out our window.
This is the view out our window.
Things not to do while motorhoming…
Well, it’s not like we decided to do it, we certainly didn’t want to do it, but we had to troubleshoot the furnace today. It’s not the first time we’ve had to troubleshoot a furnace. Several years ago, when we had a different motorhome with a propane furnace, it quit and we had to get it fixed. As I recall, a repair guy had to replace the furnace motherboard. Within a couple months it failed again, in a different state, and a repair guy there replaced the limit switch. That took care of it. But this is different. This is a hydro-hot furnace. It runs on diesel. It’s supposed to run on diesel anyway. It has always run on diesel before, but Judy got up at 6 and it was cold in the front room, 55 degrees, so she turned up the thermostat. Nothing. She turned up the bedroom thermostat. Nothing. She got analytical on it. It runs off the same diesel the engine does. She turned on the key and checked the fuel tank. Plenty of fuel. She turned on the hot water (the hydro-hot system serves both the furnaces and the hot water). The hot water was hot. She ran the water for a few minutes. It stayed hot, so she knew the problem wasn’t the hydro-hot burner, but some control that triggers the furnaces. She got out the manual for the hydro-hot. No help. She went outside and looked in the cabinet the hydro-hot lives in. No reset button. Still no heat. Can’t turn on the heat pumps; they don’t work at all below freezing and really don’t do much until the outside temperature warms up toward the forties. She turned on the little electric space heater in the front room and came back to bed. After she warmed up, we both got up. We flipped any breaker in the control box that looked like it might help. Nothing. It’s getting colder. It’s snowing outside. Checked out the electrical status display. It said we had an open ground on the 30 amp shore power. That shouldn’t affect the furnace; it runs on 12 volts. It shouldn’t be the electrical power; everything else in the coach is on. Of course, if the 120 volt power goes out, the inverter just takes over and runs all the 120 volt stuff off the batteries. That complicates the analysis. Checked the inverter display. It said we had high voltage on line 1. Still shouldn’t affect the furnace, but we’re starting to suspect an electrical supply problem. Let’s bypass the shore power. Turned on the generator. 50+ amps of 240 volt power. No help. One thing left to try. We’re getting error readings on the shore power; let’s disconnect it completely. Victory! That was it! Dirty electrons coming out of the campground power source! Dirty power. All systems go. Hydro-hot burner cooking. Heater fans blowing. A lot of space to warm up, but within an hour we were toasty. Life on the road.
Silverton
Last weekend we got to drive through Ouray over Red Mountain pass to Silverton to meet with a potential contract auditor. Old mountain mining towns.
Birders are…
Birders are a strange lot. They get up before dawn and go tramping about while it’s still cold and dark outside. Not the sort of thing we’d normally do. We’re not morning people. Except this morning. Up at 4am. Out of the house by 4:30. At the Gunnison Sage Grouse lek by 5. Park behind the half-wall. Engine off, lights out, don’t leave the car. Blackout and silence. Grouse lek protocol. Its thirty degrees outside. No-one gets to move or make a sound until the grouse leave the lek. They are most active in the hour before dawn. They are disturbed by artificial light and human presence. The males come out of the sagebrush and congregate on the lek, the dancing ground, the bare patch of earth, and do their puffing booming strutting dance. The most impressive males get the females. The display was a long way away, probably three hundred yards, but we have good birding binoculars and a scope we could rest against the partly open window. We got the whole show. Nothing, nothing, nothing, then suddenly at 5:45 a whole group of males broke out in the open in the dimmest light and began their strutting. Dancing shadows. The performance got clearer as it got lighter. Puffed up chests, flared tails, bulging air sacs, dancing fools. Suddenly, at 6:15 it was over. The birds just flew away to the sage highlands. Done for the day. They will be done for the season soon. Breeding season only lasts six weeks. They’ll be done by mid-May. A life bird. The Gunnison Sage Grouse. Very limited range; a tiny spot in Colorado. Not many people get to see them, maybe a few hundred a year. When we were sure Elvis had left the building, we started up, warmed up, and left. Back to the coach by seven. Gone from Gunnison by nine, at the Russell Stover Candy Factory Store in Montrose by eleven, and set-up in Ridgway State Park eating lunch by noon.
Crested butte
Oh I love a good commute. I used to drive twenty-five miles each way to Denver and back. I drove off-peak traffic times, so it was quiet time for reflection and music. Relaxing, really. Now it’s different. Sometimes we park the motorhome close enough to walk to work. Usually we’re within a few minutes in the car. But here, in Gunnison, we have a forty-five minute commute through the mountains to Crested Butte each day. It’s not spectacular mountain pass road, but wide-open traffic-free high country highway. Colorado Highway 135 north from US 50 follows river valleys, first the Gunnison, then the East, then the Slate, through pastoral forests farms and fields, right into the old 1800s mining town, elevation eighty-eight hundred feet, at the base of surrounding high peaks. There is still snow on the ground in Crested Butte.