It Isn't All Peaches and Cream Part 4

It seems that through 2014 and now into 2015 here in the Northeast the weather has been the major factor in just about everything. Right now we have had week after week of snow and ice storms, multiples each week, and now recording breaking cold for this area with no sign that things will change anytime soon despite Spring being just weeks away. This past summer's rain has continued its pattern now with snow. Well, the Roadtrek is on the driveway and gets covered with snow and then it melts, only to be covered with snow again. Well, that is for another article but for now, we will go back in time to the end of July 2014.

We have an annual reenacting-related event that we attend during the last full weekend in July in Pennsylvania not far from Allentown - Dixon's Gunmaker's Fair. This is an outdoor event that I wrote about in 2013. Since it is an outdoor event the weather - once again - is significant to going or not. We attend for one day and combine this trip with a trip over to Hershey, PA where there is an annual quilt exposition held this same week. We plan to arrive in Pennsylvania on Thursday, go to the quilt snow on Friday, and then go to Dixon's on Saturday - home Saturday night. We meet some of the other members of our Revolutionary War reenacting unit at Dixon's. Weather reports, of course, for those days was dismal. I watched the forecasts and waited before making a reservation at the campground that is close to Dixon's. The afternoon before the event we finally called and made a reservation.

It was decent the day that we left - it had been raining in Pennsylvania the day before. We arrived at the campground (Pine Hill RV Park in Kutztown, PA) and went into the office for our space. This is a family owned and operated campground and we were greeted by the mother of the lady who is the owner. For some reason she seemed to think that we needed a space close to the restrooms - perhaps assuming that our Roadtrek had none of its own, though I don't know why as we were taking a site with full hookups, and she decided to give us one of the sites in the front of the campground near the office. When we were here last, we were in a site halfway into the campground and the site  was very good. We drove over to the site that we were just assigned and I saw quickly that this side of the campground was on a hill leading down to the area that we had been before. The sites went along down that hill - and while they were near level front to back, they were not even close to level side to side. I spent a half hour trying every possible position in the site before I gave up and sent Meryl back to the office for another site. They are always surprised when you say a site is not level and you can't get level in it. My theory is that the van is not big enough to find the footprint for a large trailer of Class A to get level - plus those RVs often have auto-levelers - push a button and it mechanically levels. Meryl returned with another site number which was not much better, but I was able to get into a diagonal position that was near enough level to be comfortable. (I will say this again - we don't need to be level for our refrigerator as it is all electric (condenser) but I am very sensitive to being on an angle and I need to get the Roadtrek as close to level as I can to be able to be comfortable inside. This is my problem and while I have spoken with others that experience the same thing, it is not something that everyone cares about - but I do.) While we usually get into a campground and find out spot on the site and check out the electric connections in twenty minutes or so, this time we spent over an hour.  We like to go over to the Pennsylvania Cabela's store in the town of Hamburg that is about ten miles away when we come to this area and we finally were able to get in the Roadtrek and go - but not before we marked the exact spot on the campsite using the reflective markers that I made to sit on the gravel along side the tire positions. If you are going to stay at Pine Hill in Kutztown, request a site in the lower half of the campground the section furthest from the office.

Cabela's is always fun and if you are any place where there is a Cabela's store go. It is what is called a destination store - a store people travel to just to go to the store. It is an outdoor store with everything including a walk through aquarium with local game fish. They sell clothing for various outdoor activities, camping gear, fishing gear, a very large firearms department with a museum where the museum guns are for sale, museum-quality displays of game animals both from the US and around the world, a restaurant, and a shooting gallery with laser rifles. There is also an archery range. Many Cabela's allow overnight RV parking and have a free dump station and water available for RVs. This Cabela's varies as to whether it is allowed or not. There are apparently regulations in the area that say no, but many say that this Cabela's will allow it.  There are often RVs in the lot when we have been to the store. We had a fine time at Cabela's before heading off for dinner and then back to the campground.

The next day we went to the quilt show in Hershey, PA. and that was good. Nothing exciting to say about it - unless you like quilts. It has a large sales floor for quilting and sewing supplies and related tools and items, sewing and quilting machines, and fabrics. As we are both fiber artists and Meryl is an embroiderer we both enjoy this show as it is one of the better quilt shows. The exiting part of the day with the Roadtrek came after the quilt show.

Near Hershey, PA is the Hollywood Casino. It has been there for only several years. Before this trip, I decided that it might be nice to go to this casino - have dinner, etc. I had heard that there was no problem parking an RV here - especially a Roadtrek. Often these casinos have specific RV parking lots and I contacted the casino before the trip to find out about parking our Roadtrek. The main parking for the casino is an indoor parking garage and the Roadtrek is too tall to go inside. There are also surface parking lots.  I explained in my email to the casino that the Roadtrek was no larger than a passenger van and that we can easily fit in a regular parking space. The reply that I got back was that the Roadtrek must be parked in a lot that they have for trucks and RVs and absolutely may not be parked in any other lot. I was to follow the signs on the road past the casino to this special lot. Fine. No problem - I thought.

So we leave the quilt show and drive over to the casino. As we approach the casino entrance on what is not much more than a country road, we see a sign that says "RV and Truck Parking - 1 mile" with an arrow straight ahead. We pass the casino driveway and keep going. As we come to the end of the road there is a sign pointing to the right and we turn right on that road and about 500 feet further ahead there is a small sign to the right again into a poorly paved road that becomes dirt, gravel, and broken pavement. We see ahead of us a small field filled completely with tractor trailer trucks parked just about wherever they decided to stop. The lot was small and there were pot holes and broken pavement where there wasn't just dirt. Along side there were maintenance buildings and no one at all in attendance or in sight. Could this be it? Yes, it was. We drove around the lot twice looking for a place to park the Roadtrek. There were no other RVs - odd, as this was Friday night in July. Other tractor trailers were pulling into the lot and also driving around looking for a place to park and with their size they pretty much make their own spaces. Now, there was one spot that we could have put the Roadtrek - in between the front of one truck on one side and the back of another on the other side. I could just see that one backing up to get out - it was just too close. I looked at the large regular parking lot that was not far away, but the casino in there message to me about parking was very direct - don't or you may be towed. We finally gave up and left. We just about made it to another restaurant that we know for dinner some distance away. Well, it's not all peaches and cream...  With a Roadtrek, Hollywood Casino in Pennsylvania is not for you. When we returned home, I wrote to the casino about what I found and what took place - I got no answer back so I guess they just don't care.

The next day was Dixon's and we headed over there before noon. Parking for Dixon's for this event is in a large grass field and it had been raining a few days before. The field was soft and that gave me some concern. There are a few places in the field with some gravel and what once was a partially paved road. I had hoped for a space on one of those more solid spots but we had no such luck and I hesitantly parked the Roadtrek on soft, partially muddy spot. I tried to position one of back tires on a bit of gravel just to give some traction when we were leaving. The Roadtrek is heavy - much heavier than a standard van and you never really want to get it into mud. It was fine.

So what about the noises. Well, where the pavement is smooth, the ride is smooth and the noises are almost non-existent. Where the pavement is rough or bumpy the noises are there and at this point were still not identifiable as to source. It was no worse, and no better. It is not until the next trip that we start to find one big one.

End of Part 4
Part 5 next.

It Isn't All Peaches and Cream Part 3

At the end of Part 2 we were able to actually get away on a trip in June. One of the trips we look forward to every year is our trip to Pennsylvania over Fourth of July. This is one of the weeks and weekends that requires a reservation a year in advance and we had made this reservation on this same trip the year before. When we are checking into the campground we make the reservation for the next year. We can cancel that reservation at this particular campground up to a couple of days before.When we arrived on this trip I told the very nice campground host at the desk when we checked in that I wanted to make our reservation for 2015 and she pulled out her reservation sheets that were already starting to fill. We have been doing this trip mid-week to include July 4th that was falling during the week and not on a weekend. In 2015, July 4th is a Saturday and I told her that I wanted to shift the dates to include July 4th again and perhaps a few days after as well. Well, this was not as easy as it sounded. We could come for the same days - not dates - as we had in 2014 but not the days that these same dates would fall out on in 2015. It is hard to understand - it was hard to understand then - but what she was saying was we would have to leave on Saturday, July 4th and this was not what I wanted. What we were left with was making a partial reservation and then having to call after we returned home at the end of the trip to find out if those dates that we wanted would be available. I suggested another site or a changing sites in mid-stay, but it did not matter. she had to wait until those that were coming for this year did not want to come back on those days next year. Now, this is a very accommodating campground and they have gone out of their way for us many times in the past including one year when an unanticipated hurricane during our stay and her refunding the balance of our stay mid-trip so that we could head for home to secure everything before the storm hit. I knew this time that they were not being difficult but understood as she said that she had to be fair. In the end we got the full reservation when we called the next week - and in the site that we prefer (a known to me to be a level site with a good location in the campground). 

A week ahead of this trip I started checking the ten day weather forecasts. What I was seeing was forecasts for rain during the time we would be on this trip. Much of what we do when we are on this trip is outdoors - pretty much all of it is outdoors other than driving through the farmlands and if it is raining there is not much to see doing that. I started to look for things that we can do that we don't usually do in Lancaster that is indoors. There are two places that we have been to in the long past that are indoors and I made sure to get the details if it turned out we needed to have rain day activities. As it turned out, we needed to arrange for one day at one of those attractions, but because of the weather we had to rearrange other things that we had planned to do. We did go to the National Civil War Museum in Harrisburg - and I did write about that here. As I say in that article we kept pushing the outdoor things off toward the end of our trip. That day that we went to the museum it turned out that it rained heavily in Lancaster and did not rain at all in Harrisburg so we never actually got to see the rain that day, but when we returned to the campground that night we saw that a very large tree diagonally across the lane from our campsite had been hit by heavy wind in the storm and broke sending a very large section of the tree down. The tree was not where anyone was camping and no damage was done other than to the tree. But the storm must have been severe. We realized that our choice to go to Harrisburg that day turned out to be the right one. We also came back to the site to find that the wind had blown away the markers that we put down on the ground to set the place to park where the Roadtrek will be level in the site. While this site is fairly level it does take some time to find that level spot which can change from visit to visit depending on how much one of the big rigs displaced the gravel.

We kept planning what we would do around the weather forecasts which don't always turn out to be accurate. We, ourselves, actually saw little rain though one evening before dinner we were hearing severe storm warnings over the radio that were coming to our area. We were about to head to dinner and decided to do that before the storm hit. As we were driving to dinner I saw message signs on the roads about the severe rain and winds that were approaching. Since at home message signs like this talk about traffic conditions and not "take shelter", I figured what is coming must be really serious. Just as we got to the restaurant, the rain and wind started. We parked the Roadtrek, pulled on our rain jackets, and made our way into the restaurant. As it turned out, the rain had stopped by the time we left the restaurant. The Roadtrek and the ground were wet but that was about it with the rain that day. Have I said yet that when I am traveling I am doing it to relax? This is not my idea of relaxing.

We can't just pick up and go off in the Roadtrek whenever we would like. Meryl has work responsibilities and we are both involved with organizations that require one or both of us to be at a meeting or an event. When we plan trips we are planning around dates that we can go without something else on the calendar. And we both like and enjoy what we like and we both like and enjoy certain places and areas and these were where we traveled when we used to stay in hotels and these are our places of choice when we go off in the Roadtrek for a weekend, a week, or longer.  I know many will think this as crazy, but to each his and her own. There were two places that this trip must include and those are Kutztown Folk Pennsylvania Dutch Festival and Green Dragon Farmers Market. We look forward to Kutztown and I have been attending that since I was a child. Green Dragon is only open on Fridays - which would be the Fourth of July and the trip was planned around this - we were to go to Kutztown on Thursday and Green Dragon on Friday. Well, Thursday was another day predicted for bad weather and that was the night of the severe storm coming that I just told about. So Kutztown would have to be Friday - and Green Dragon would be missed. 

We went to Kutztown and that was as enjoyable as it ever was. As usual it was hot and when we returned to the Roadtrek it was over 105 degrees inside. I keep saying that we have to put up the vent lid on days like this but this was a day that was still predicted for possible rain and I did not want to take the chance of rain coming into the open vent. The dash air conditioner does cool things down inside rather well, but I still have to be concerned about things that we have inside that should not be in such heat, particularly in the way of started insulin pens that cannot be put back into the refrigerator and diabetes meters and test strips that are not supposed to be put in the refrigerator or be allowed to go over 90 degrees F.  We have found a way to deal with this with something called a Frio pouch that has a chemical inside that when soaked in water will keep the temperature inside the pouch 20 degrees lower than the outside temperature. We have tried other things in the past - an insulated cooler box and a thermos but neither worked as what you put in has to be cold to stay cold - and cold was also what these items cannot be.

We had arrived at Kutztown early that day and when we were leaving I realized that we actually could make it to Green Dragon and be there for an hour and an hour is better than nothing. This is not close to where we were but in the direction we had to go anyway and I headed there. We arrived to a near empty parking lot and found out that they had just closed earlier than usual for the Fourth of July. OK. We left and headed for dinner.

There is one very significant part of this trip that I have not shared yet. This was the trip that went bang, bang, bang, rat-a-tat-tat, and knock, knock, knock. In our first year in the Roadtrek we did a good job of quieting the many noises that occur that you will hear when going over a bumpy road or driving on an uneven road surface, etc. There was always one noise that we could not find to quiet it and we have been trying since then to figure it out. Actually, there are two noises - the bang, rat-a-tat-tat, knock AND what I call the platter noise. The platter noise comes and goes. It happens sometimes on an uneven road or on a very even road. It happens sometimes when we start driving from a stop and it happens sometimes when you are just driving along. It starts and then stops and may or may not start again. I call it the "platter" noise because it sounds like a round platter being dropped on a flat surface and it wobbles around until it stops - that wobbling noise is the noise. Meryl and I cannot agree on the direction any of these noises are coming from. I will say it is one side of the van and she says the other. She has sat in the third seat to get closer and that has not helped to locate these noises. These noises have been happening since almost the beginning - the bang noises have been there from the start and the platter noise started about five months after getting the Roadtrek. Some have said that they have the platter noise and it is a loose heat shield under the van which would be possible if I had not had my mechanic who works on my cars go under the Roadtrek and look for a loose heat shield which he said all were secure. We still don't know.

Anyway, the bang, bang, bang, rat-a-tat-tat, knocking noise is inside the Roadtrek. Not an engine noise. More of a noise of wood against wood. The rat-a-tat-tat is a fast vibration. The bang, bang bang coincides with the road surface, and the knock, knock goes along with the bang, bang. Now, imagine you are in a big World War II bomber flying through enemy flak all around buffeting the airplane. The plane goes up and down buffeted by the shells exploding around it. The Roadtrek on a rough road goes up and down as well. And in that plane you hear BANG, BANG, BANG and with that RAT-A-TAT-TAT. And that is what we are experiencing driving my Roadtrek. As I say, it is not mechanical, it is inside. Something or some things are banging together, vibrating against each other, and knocking together and from the hollow sounds - it involves wood. We have secured everything in the drawers and cabinets. I will think it must be THIS or THAT and go and take those out and the noises are still there. On a nice smooth road they are not heard. I wish there were more nice smooth roads, but these seem few. Outside of NY, it is better - roads tend to be better. Cross into NY and the war starts."Pilot to Base, I am holder her steady. She feels like she is coming apart. We will do everything we can to make it back in!" For some reason on this trip all of this was almost constant. On the trip home, I was just on the side of going out of my mind with the noises. Meryl hears them too. It is not just me. And then to top it off the kitchen drawer would not stay closed. It was sliding open and that was adding more noises to the other noises.

We have had a way to keep the kitchen drawer closed. It has always slid open when there is a lot of vibration driving - and in NY that is the norm - at least in the Roadtrek. I took two suction cups and some rope. The rope is attached between the two suction cups and is wrapped around the drawer knob. Perhaps it was the extreme heat but the suction cups were not holding to the top of the granite counter top in the Roadtrek over the drawer. They have held there well always before. I cleaned the counter top and the suction cups and the drawer kept sliding open. For a very exciting experience drive on a turnpike at speed and when making a curve in the road, hear the drawer slide open with a bang - and then have it slide back and forth wondering if all that is inside will bounce out or worse the drawer will break as a result. This happened more than once and with few places or opportunities to stop to close it again and try to secure it - again.

To say the least, this trip ended with a bang. As was the saying for trips during 2014 (and several before) - It's not all peaches and cream!" We will talk more about the noises in the next part of this series as we head out on our next trip.

END OF PART 3
Part 4 next.