3-21-09 Saturday (Eighths of a Blah is Still a Blah)

Let me start off by telling you something I forgot to mention yesterday. As we traveled to Palm Springs, I decided to call my mom. After I flipped it open, the display started working. The exterior and interior displays both work! It's a miracle. It must have been because I was callin' my mom.

Speaking of my mom, she's doing better. Thanks to all that has asked and/or sent prayers.

I have to preface the next story with a reminder. I've mentioned a couple of leaks in the past. One of the leaks became affectionately known as the Great Caulkenstein. The other was the water heater leaking. I also have to mention that the water pressure here is the best I've seen. It's actually too high. For RVers, that can mean problems, hence most of us use pressure regulators between the park and the coach to prevent lines from bursting. Our pressure was so high that the hose and spicket vibrate when the water is in use. We turned the water down enough to stop the annoying noise/vibrations it caused.

OK now you have the information needed to better understand this misadventure. So, this morning, we had an appointment with the mobile repair guy to see about the water heater leak. When Jim and mobile guy go outside to the water heater, they see water dripping out from under the coach in many spots. Jim had bypassed the heater (with a valve) the night before so how can this be? Mr. Mobile pokes around inside the coach and finds everything wet under the tub. He can't quite see but says a pipe is leaking. Wait, gets worse. The pipe used in older coaches is a blah-blah eighths of a blah that's not used anymore. Many times when cutting this piping to install a new fitting, it spiral cracks. Wow, must have been that really high water pressure. Did the regulator fail? Now what do we do? Mr. Mobile doesn't have this type of piping but someone else may. He "feels bad" and doesn't charge us for the service call. I think at this point, Jim and I are upset. Now we can't use the water at all.

I'm not sure why I looked, but I opened the shower door and found water standing inside. Jim forgot to open the gray water valve yesterday. Gray water is non-toilet waste water. When we hookup and forget to open the valve, and when the tank fills up, it overflows into the tub. Since we've had tub leakage problems, I squeal with delight that it must be leaking again and not a burst pipe. We dump gray water, wait for the exterior leaking to stop dripping, turn the water back on and no leaks! Yay! Well, we discover the crack in the tub is what's leaking again, and not the Caulkenstein part.

Jim removed all of the wet support wood from under the tub to dry it. Jim called Mr. Mobile, explained the problem, and asked if he could come back out for the original water heater issue. He says he won't have the fitting because it's a blah-blah eighths of a blah. Fine. Jim goes under the coach, removes the leaking fitting himself, goes to an RV store, buys the new part and installs it himself. Water heater leak solved. Jim caulked the tub crack.

We can't use the shower so we use the campground showers. Awesome pressure. The kind that almost hurts to shower.... love it.

A trip to Joshua Tree National Park is all we have time for today. The park has a lot of cool rock formations. Most of it looks like someone piled boulders on top of one another. The brochure explains why it's like that but the blog entry is way too long for me to get into that. Maybe it's all the rock from when they dug out the Grand Canyon? The park is very popular with rock climbers. For us, this was a nice scenic drive but not very interesting compared to what we've seen in the past. We're jaded.

Above: A Joshua tree.

Above: Cool photo, eh?

Above: Silk worm critters.

Above: Cool boulder rock stacks.

After dinner, we met up with Steve and Tedd. They share their living/working time with San Diego. They live in an RV in San Diego and work, and on off days live in their home in Palm Springs! We went out to a few bars for cocktails. We had a great time. Thanks fellas! We'll see them again this week.

Above: 100's of windmills. I thought it was ugly, but really cool.