Good morning guys! From the hot springs area here off of 395 near Mammoth Lakes.
If you have not already put this on your destinations, please just do it right now!
This is awesome! So this area is called Wild Willy's or Crowley Hot Springs... But
there's all kinds of a geothermal and you can even like lay in that Creek. And
then there's a pool down there and yesterday there was a heart-shaped pool
over there. And I wouldn't be surprised if there's other things down there!
You're going to have to take my word for it! But there is no better way to start
your day than taking a soak in some hot springs......Oh! that feels great!....Now just
pick out a spot to call my own!... So the RV life may seem glamorous at times.
Especially when you're taking a soak in hot springs to start your day. But
it's no different than any other form of life. It has its complications. Sometimes
things don't go right. But there is a constant state of change that we truly
enjoy. So if you've been following the vlog you will know that we've been
having problems with our external generator. And..... It just won't start. But
last night things got a little more interesting.....
It's never a good sound when your backup generator makes this sound.... Yep!
Fortunately I'm pretty good at whacking it. I think that's all it should need. Now
I just need to figure out where the starter is on this thing. With all the
broken glass and debris on the ground, this is the last place I want to go
rolling around on it. Fortunately these mats are pretty rigid. So I was able to
get it fed all the way back there. Alright! There's the starter. So what's also
going to be kind of frustrating is ahhh... Rebecca's not here. So she can't go
push the button while I stay down here. So I'll have to like crawl back and
forth.... Hopefully, I only need to do this once!
Now that really sucks! Because that means I need to pull off the starter and see
if I can free it up that way. Because I don't think Mammoth Lakes would have a
starter for a 4kw Onan generator. But they may have a NAPA which kind of has
alot of everything and could get it shipped up next day. I suppose it's worth
seeing if this sucker will start today... I haven't really checked it yet.
Alright fuel on, chock out, switch on.
What the heck is going on here!...Life in a house isn't always easy....
Life on the road isn't always easy either.... Well safety first!
So I'm going to disconnect the batteries here...Well I guess I can look on the
bright side. I have this mat to crawl around on and the wind is blowing so the
mosquitoes are not very aggressive right now. Alright I found the problem and I
am missing a chunk of it. I know, it fell around inside the bell housing. But it's
not accessible. So I'm kind of torn but it is plastic and... Yeah! This is the piece
that actually shoots out and comes in contact with the flywheel.... I suppose I
need to hook up the batteries for the night. Think I'm at about half a charge
on the house batteries. There's definitely not going to be any running
of the heater tonight. Well the good news is there's a NAPA in Mammoth Lakes bad
news is they closed about an hour ago! So I'm now going to explore other options.
Like possibly ahhhh...Seeing if I can get it overnighted as to general delivery at
the mammoth post office because it's only a $39 part on Amazon.... Seriously what
are the odds of two generators going bad at the same exact time! Come on now! And
then this morning I woke up to a surprise..... We
have a mouse in the house this morning! I've seen him kind of duck down there
and come up. He wants to get up here on the counters so he can then shoot down
into his little area here behind the stove. Which then gets him all the way
down into the infrastructure. I do have a peanut butter mouse trap set up up here.
And then a peanut butter mouse trap set down there. I know my hair looks really
good. But I woke up to a rustling sound and this is real life. And if you're
going to be RVing and traveling long enough, you're going to pick up a few
rodents here and there. And it doesn't matter what kind of motor home you have.
You know we have friends with like a 250-$300,000 brand-new motorhome and
they'll still pick up mice. So mice do not discriminate on how nice your motor
home is. So hopefully those mousetraps are doing their job right now! One final
talking point... What do you think of our campsite?... Yeah! It's a pretty beautiful
place. The Eastern Sierras on one side,the Rolling Hills on the other. We're
kind of ducked in between these Knolls.So we don't get much road noise but.....
There's something you guys really need to know about a lot of free camping
areas. And it's that they are littered with trash and nails and some of them
are just downright disgusting! Now the past people that stayed at the campsite
where I'm at now, Molly Mish and Meant For Adventure. They
cleaned up the kind of immediate camping area. But let me show you some of the
debris that is just outside of the campsite..... You got everything from tin
cans to pie tins.Somebody likes Coors Light... Broken glass is pretty much
everywhere! Keeping things clean with a bottle of Clorox bleach... I could go on
for hours but you get the point! Well let's see if the generator wants to
start today.
Nope! I'm just going to call champion..... So I just spent about an hour with a guy
named Fernando from champion tech support. We went through a whole series
of troubleshooting steps. And.... Yeah!It is gaining spark, it is gaining fuel.The spark
looks weak. The oil level is good.That was obviously like square one
to check. But we both agree now that there is definitely a little too much
fuel inside the cylinder. So....The next step is going to be wait about an hour
for it to dry out. Well, It's an hour and a half later, Let's see
if this thing starts. Back to tech support! Called back, talked to Fernando
champion. He said we have accomplished everything we can over the phone. So....Take
it to a service center or return it to Costco. He searched up a service center
and as the crow flies it's 86 miles away. But that's 86 miles all the way over the
top of the Sierra Nevada mountain range. Which all those passes are still covered
in snow. So that is not going to happen! Now I do have an idea of going on to
costco. com and buying it. And having a brand new one of these generators
general delivery shipped to the Mammoth post office like I'm doing for the
starter on that generator. In case I didn't update you on that. I have a
starter for that generator in the motorhome getting a two nighted to a
Mammoth.So that's my next move....So one of the downsides to shopping at Costco is
that they don't always carry the products for long.And in this case, they
do not carry the generator that we purchased for six hundred ninety nine
dollars.Which was the champion 2800 watt. But they do carry a champion 2800 watt
dual fuel off propane and gasoline for a thousand dollars. I don't feel like
paying three hundred dollars more for a product or for a feature that we'll never
use.... Atleast in this time frame. So I ended up going onto Amazon and finding
the 3100 champion generator, for five hundred and ninety dollars. So....
I'm getting a bigger generator for actually $100 cheaper! That's just the way it
goes sometimes! Alright guys! Thanks for joining me on today's vlog. I'm going to
continue my relaxing soak here. And ahhh...Not sure what my next move is going to be....
But I'll make sure to bring you guys along. We'll see you tomorrow!