Tuesday & Wednesday, December 20th & 21st

 Tuesday

Monday we got checked in at the Palm Springs Oasis RV Resort with no problems. We then shoe horned our way into a spot that required tree trimming before we could get the coach off the street.

Once Kathy got backed in, I had walked to the site and had directed her into it, I opened the door and the steps would not deploy. The site is sloped. To get level required 2.25" of blocks under the front tires and 3.0" of blocks under the front jacks, so that they could raise the front of the coach enough to get level. The elevation of the bottom of the door is about waist high on Kathy. I set up our step ladder so that we could get in and out of the coach.

Photo taken Wednesday, after I got the steps deployed. The tree in front of our car is the one I trimmed.

Pile of branches from tree trimming.

The photo below shows the size of limbs I had to remove. When a neighbor across the street saw that I couldn't back into the site because of the branches he brought over a hand saw (I couldn't find the blades for my cordless recip saw). A neighbor behind us saw me up on the ladder with  the hand saw and came over with with his recip saw. Today (Wednesday) when we put out our main awning I had to do more trimming.. 

I spent a lot of Tuesday under the coach, the good news is that with the front jacked up so high I had plenty of room 😀. The rest of the day I was digging through manuals and trying to locate the fuse/s for the steps. After a half hour wait to talk to a Tech at Tiffin I learned the location of the correct fuse. I am amazed at what those guys seem to know off the top of their heads, and how customer service oriented they are.

Below is the fuse block at the front of the coach. There is another at the rear of the coach and another panel with both fuses and breakers inside the coach.

Wednesday - On our way to Aldi's, a 10 minute drive. Note the dust between us and the "mountains."

Don't know if the lighter sections in the photo below are bare rock or snow.

Definitely snow on top of this one.

The electrical panel at the "Resort". Don't they have Code people in CA? There are open slots for missing breakers.

Note the front tires of this Class C. They are at least 6" off the ground.

This Class A is up on 8 or 9 blocks that are 3/4" thick.

I have our coach front tires on 3 blocks, 2.25", and 4 blocks, 3.0", under the front jacks. If I had a lot more blocks I would have stacked 5 blocks high under both the front tires and the jacks. I can see no reason why the sites are graded so that the slabs slope this drastically. The units behind ours, that face the other way, also slope down to the street in front of them.

After returning from Aldi's I called Lippert and talked to a Tech about their steps. From some research I had done it appeared that I could cut the wires between the stop controller and the step motor and apply 12 volts directly to the motor, thus by-passing all the interlock features. He agreed that what I proposed would work. If I could deploy the steps in this manner I would know that the motor was good. It worked, I got the steps out. In order to get them back in I have to get back under the coach and apply 12 volts to a different wire. Since we are supposed to be here a month I hope I will have the problem solved before we leave.

Weather is beautiful. I think it was in the high 40's this morning but the sun warmed it up quickly. The high for the day was in the low 70's. The heated pool was almost to warm for me but Kathy was in it for quite some time. The water feels warm when you get in it, they also have an unheated pool and a jacuzzi. Getting out of the pool was a little cool, with the slight breeze. It wasn't bad, I sat on a chaise lounge for awhile and got a little sun, before heading back to the coach for a great 2 hour nap.

Drew, out son who lives in Oakland, made it to his friend's Condo, a mile from here, a little after 8 PM, after his 490 mile motorcycle ride down from Oakland. We are meeting him for breakfast at 8 AM. (His friend is out of town for the holidays.)

A couple across the street from us (the guy who loaned me a handsaw yesterday and a tree trimmer today) are from near Coeur d'Alene, ID. They spend the cold months here and the rest of the time in ID. They leave their 5th wheel unit here all year. The couple behind us left this morning for Phoenix, pulling a sand car/buggy behind their motorhome. They have a spot here for the season but are off to visit their son in Phoenix, and play in all the accessible federal land around Phoenix.

So far I can't imagine spending more than month here. It is just way to urban for me. I do like how warm the 70 degree sun feels. Our great-grandkids should LOVE the heated pool when they get here. They are scheduled to arrive late Saturday, assuming they can get out of Kansas City Saturday morning.

God is good. I pray that He blesses you and yours.