May 11-12, 2012
Friday- I took Cassie and drove up to the Visitor’s Center
(about 1 mile away). There was a trail
that I wanted to try. The hike was just
ok; it was very hot and the trail was covered in small rocks. The trail ended with a view of the Rio
Grande, but it wasn’t as majestic of a view as on some other hikes. After finishing the hike, I decided to
check out the put-in for the nearby run.
They had the cfs posted at the river….500 cfs, where the low end of the
runnable range is 1000. Sigh. But, rafts were still running it. That means that there has to be at least a
flow of water the whole way down, in case we decided we wanted a class 1-2
run. I drove the 4 miles to the
takeout; did not see any decent rapids.
They could be hidden from view, but I suspect that the river is just too
low. So, probably no run for us.
The day started out hot and dry. But around 2 pm we had thunderstorms move
in. It rained and thundered for a
couple hours. The temps dropped by about
30 degrees. We spent the rest of the
day reading inside the rig.
Saturday- We started the day by worrying about the slider
bar arm issue on the fifth wheel hitch.
We got out the instruction manual, and it seemed pretty insistent that
there should be a smooth, effortless movement to the arm. We now are manhandling it out. Getting it in is even harder. So we were worried about the safety of the
hitch. Finally, we decided we should
just go to Santa Fe (1.5 hours south) and try to get it fixed. On the way to SF, we drive through
Espanola. It’s a decent-sized suburb
with a library. We stopped to check out
the library. Not the fastest speeds, but
we got internet. So we were able to look
up RV places to see about getting the hitch fixed. We took turns calling places. Most didn’t do hitch repair. There were 2 that did, but we couldn’t get in
until mid-week next week. Sigh. So I changed the focus of my web research to
looking for discussions on slider bar issues.
I found a couple of forum posts where people indicated that wear &
tear is to be expected on our type of hitch.
The consensus is that it was designed for the casual user who would only
do a couple of trips a year. With
heavier use, you will see wear. Ours
isn’t too bad yet, so we’re going to risk our lives and not get it fixed right
now. Missy found an RV repair shop in
Durango, so we will try to get an appointment there for later.
After making the decision not to immediately fix the hitch,
we were going to focus on getting Jane updated. Sadly, the library’s wifi was so weak that
the upgrade was showing an infinite time to completion. The decision we had to make was whether to
continue on to the Santa Fe library and get the upgrade done, or just forget
about it. (Who knows when the next time
we’ll be somewhere with decent enough internet to get the maps upgrade). We went to Santa Fe. With those fantastic fast speeds, we got the
download done in a couple of hours.
One last chore for the day.
We had to stop at Lowes to get an air compressor. One of the new tire issues that I alluded to
before is that our trusty green machine is incapable of inflating a tire past
70 psi (and it smokes at that point).
So we need a bigger air compressor to get our back tires inflated to the
proper setting.
We’re off to Colorado tomorrow. We have a lot of options for campgrounds in
the Pagosa Springs area. Very excited
to be moving into a forest again! I
hope the drive goes smoothly. I have to
admit I’m quite nervous about both the hitch and the tires. Probably will be a sleepless night…
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