Well, we are back on the road, but it wasn’t looking too promising a few days ago. In my last post, RoVer was at the repair shop for some electrical issues after we canceled our Hudson Valley trip. She spent that entire week there, and finally they felt they had fixed the issue by replacing the electrical line to the battery. We picked her up last Friday, tested everything, and we felt confident we were good to go. But, and there’s always a but, we had an interesting few days after that…I’ll try to make this somewhat short, but it’s quite a story…
- On Saturday, Mark realized that the coach/house battery (that powers things like lights, refrigerator, furnace) was draining even though nothing was on that would pull from it.
- We returned RoVer to Mark’s cousin’s house (from storage) so it could be plugged in, in the hopes that would fully recharge the battery and it would be fine. After a couple days of testing things and trying to troubleshoot…battery was seemingly recharged, but once unplugged, it was draining again. Ugh.
- On Tuesday, Mark tried to find a local repair shop to look at it, but everyone was fully booked except for the place that had just done the work for us, but they were having issues putting work through against our warranty, so we didn’t want to take any chances it wouldn’t be covered! We did buy an extended warranty package that includes tech support, so Mark spoke to a tech who suggested the battery could need some water, or that it could be a bad battery. Good tips, and Mark then tackled getting the two coach batteries out of the RV (they are conveniently located under one of the steps into RoVer). He did this very methodically, labeling each of the nine wires to ensure he would be able to reconnect and taking lots of photos (great recommendation from the tech he spoke with!) No easy task to ‘slide’ the batteries out from under a cover that doesn’t open fully, either. Ugh. Poor design for sure!
- He brought the batteries home and put them on a battery charger to try and charge them as fully as possible, and to discern if it was one or the other, or both batteries.
- Meanwhile, since we were not willing to fully cancel this trip because it’s not optional to visit your son who you haven’t seen in almost two months, I booked hotels and we figured we’d just drive our car and stay ‘the old fashioned way’ instead of at the campground.
- Once again, Mark’s cousin Jim was a huge help – he has a good friend who owns an auto repair shop in Webster, and he asked his friend to test the batteries for us on Wednesday morning, once Mark finished attempting to charge them at home. Sure enough, both batteries were bad. Seriously? We took delivery of this RV in December 2020…ten months ago…and we have TWO bad coach batteries. We’re guessing the batteries had been sitting around at the factory, or something had damaged them (maybe an Elkhart, IN winter?!). Or it could just be dumb luck.
- Thankfully, this friend was able to order replacement batteries for delivery early Wednesday afternoon…we figured they would be installed by 3 or 4pm, and we’d be good to go on Thursday. Delivery was delayed, of course, and they didn’t even arrive in Webster until almost 6pm. So it was a late evening getting them installed and working. But it went smoothly, thanks to Mark’s careful work on Tuesday. Oh, and it’s unlikely that either our manufacturer’s warranty or our extended warranty will cover this because batteries are ‘consumables’ and generally not covered. We’ll file a claim, but I doubt we’ll have much luck. Fortunately, it’s less than $300 out of pocket – we would have spent more than that on hotels for the trip.
- The main reason this was all of concern to us was that we’d be boondocking two nights on this trip, without access to power. If the coach batteries died, our fridge would not work and food would spoil, and we wouldn’t have any lights or heat. At the campground, plugged in to ‘shore power’, we’d be fine. But given that it’s 8+ hours each way to Oxford OH, we needed to stop en route and spend the night in a WalMart or Cracker Barrel parking lot.
We were on the road early Thursday morning, with a full fridge and lots of optimism that the battery issue was resolved. We’ve made this trip to Oxford countless times before, from our first visits when Connor was still in high school, to numerous trips to move him in or out and to visit. But this is RoVer’s first trip! We decided to take a quick detour in the Cleveland area to the James A. Garfield historic site. Our purpose was two-fold – learn about our 20th president, and purchase a National Parks lifetime senior pass. Mark officially became old enough (62) to own one of these two weeks ago, and we were anxious to get it and start using it to visit any national park site in the country for FREE! The pass is just $80 and is the best deal ever!
So anyway, James A. Garfield only served about six months in office – he was shot a few months after inauguration, and managed to survive with a bullet in his chest for the next few months. He and his family lived on a farm in Mentor, OH, just north of Cleveland, and he campaigned for president from the front porch of that house. The visitor center had some interesting exhibits and a short movie that summarized his life. He was referred to as the “most qualified person ever to be president” thanks to his years in the House of Representatives, service on various committees, time as a university president, and more. His assassin was someone who wanted a government position, and when Garfield turned him down, he shot the President out of spite. It was great to learn all of this about a president who I previously knew nothing about, other than that maybe a famous cartoon cat was named for him?
From there, we made our way to an outlet mall just south of Cleveland where we parked and had dinner – pre-planned to only require microwaving which our generator can power anywhere. We walked around the mall after dinner to stretch our legs, but what a depressing place. 90% of the storefronts were empty. Clearly the pandemic hit them hard…
And then it was on to our chosen WalMart Supercenter parking lot in Mansfield, OH. There’s a great app, RVParky, that tells which WalMarts allow overnight parking for RVs, and there are reviews, as well…so you get some insight as to noise levels, safety, where to park, etc.
It worked out great – we both slept well, it was quiet, we felt safe, and now we know that boondocking in a WalMart parking lot is a good option for us (and we’ll be doing it again on Monday, as we head back home!)
We knew this would be the true test for the batteries – they’d be in use all night without any electrical power, to keep the fridge cold and us warm. And, we were super excited on Friday morning to see that the batteries were still at full charge! Yay! The bad batteries were absolutely the issue and it is absolutely resolved!
Our drive from Mansfield to Oxford was smooth and easy. And boring. Central Ohio is pretty flat and there’s not much to look at along the roadside. Lots of state troopers were out, however! The final stretch into Oxford is particularly boring – just fields everywhere. But we’re always happy to be on that stretch because it means we’re almost there!
We arrived at the Hueston Woods State Park campground around 1:30 and checked in. I told the guy at the desk that we had site G23 and he took one look at our motorhome and said “I don’t think it’s gonna fit”. I was puzzled, and said “then your website must be wrong because I wouldn’t have booked a site that wasn’t large enough for a 25’ motorhome!”. And the panic starts to set in…what if their website is wrong, or worse yet, what if I screwed up and booked a site we wouldn’t fit in? He said we should go check it out and see what we think. So, we find our way to the site and it’s the absolute worst campsite we’ve ever seen. There is no chance RoVer will fit, and the paved portion of the site is at a horrible angle – no chance we could ever get RoVer leveled. But it’s possible the paved portion was for a car to park, and we were supposed to use the grass…but still not enough space for RoVer.
I checked their website later, and it’s very confusing. Says the campsite is 25′ long, which would be fine for us, but also says the pad length is 15′. Hmmm, what?
Ugh. We drove around to see if there were any open spots that might work, and we spotted a couple, but the campground was very full. More panic. What if we can’t stay here? What on earth will we do? Can’t boondock for three days…we need to be able to connect to electric. So, back to the park office to tell them we need another site. He calls the campground host to come and take a look and see what else might be available. Their internet was down, so he couldn’t check anything online. After what felt like an eternity, the camp host returned and said they would put us at one of their ‘emergency sites’ – which appear to be sites that aren’t regularly used or available to book, but have electric hookups. They are pretty wet, so we’re guessing they used to be sites, but they had to stop using them regularly because they’d be too soggy & muddy. At this point, I didn’t care…anything with a plug will do. So we followed him over there (and by now, Connor had arrived so he followed in his car, as well) and found our new site. We had to go and dump our tanks and fill our water, so we did that and then spent a few minutes trying to get things level – Mark adjusted RoVer’s position several times to minimize how much leveling would be needed and got it pretty close. Connor, meanwhile, was sitting in his car typing away on his laptop trying to get a good chunk of a history paper written.
By the time we did all this, it was getting late so we hustled toward campus to visit the McGuffey House, one of the places on my list for the weekend. Some of you have probably heard of the McGuffey Reader, to help kids learn to read. Well, its origins lie here at Miami University. William Holmes McGuffey was a professor at Miami and wrote the first four of his readers while living in the McGuffey House in the 1830s. We took an interesting tour and the docent, a Miami graduate and historian, shared some interesting stories about McGuffey and the University. And, his father had worked for Kodak in Rochester, so we chatted about that connection. Connor seemed to enjoy looking at the old engravings of the campus, from the very early days when there were about five buildings and fewer than 1,000 students. Miami was founded in 1809, so it has quite a long and interesting history, which we now have more insight to!
Then it was off to dinner – we picked a great weekend to come to Oxford, as it’s really quiet here – it’s Fall Break, so many students go home or leave campus for the long weekend, and last weekend was Family Weekend, so lots of parents were here and Oxford really can’t handle crowds like that. We much prefer it this way! After dinner, we stopped back to Connor’s off-campus house (all three of his housemates are away for the weekend) which we hadn’t seen since we moved him in there August of 2020. There’s an interesting tradition in Oxford where the off-campus houses are named. When the guys moved in to their place on Lincoln Street, it was nameless, so they came up with this name and sign…
And it’s particularly relevant since both Connor and one of his housemates are cabinet secretaries in Student Government…
We finished the evening with a wonderful campfire, s’mores, and visiting with Connor and his girlfriend Emily (who we met for the first time) at our campsite. After some stressful moments, it turned out to be a wonderful day!