Thursday: Arrival at Grand Island NY - More lessons Learned!
We got up this morning and ready to travel to Grand
Island NY. Grand Island is 190 miles
from our current campsite in Cortland NY.
We will take I81 30 miles north to Syracuse and get on the I90 toll road
for 145 miles to Buffalo and then the last 15 miles on I290 North to our next campsite on
Grand Island. We have a reservation at
the Cinderella Campground and motel. It
will be our first full hook-up site.
We did pretty good getting ready to leave, took us about an
hour this time. I plan to tell all of my
lessons here so everyone gets a since of what this is like. Two little things happened and we learned two
lessons and, so far, without real damage to ourselves or to our rig. First, I didn’t follow the check list item to
inspect the underside of the rig before we pull away. We were both sitting in the truck, I put the
truck in drive and just then I said to myself, self, you should look under
the rig. So I put the truck in park and
went to inspect the underside of the rig.
Sure enough, I had left the front landing gear down but a few inches
from the ground. I did not go back and raise
them after I performed the pull test to make sure I was coupled to the rig. If I had not stopped to check, I most
probably would have seriously damaged the landing gear. My next stop would have been a service shop
for a MAJOR repair.
The next issue and lesson was at the dump station. This was our first time at a dump
station. This station was a good one to
learn from as we were the only people there, no line to get in. I pulled the rig up to where I thought I was
close enough to the sewer pipe. I turned off the truck, got out and found that I was more than 15 feet away and downhill
from the sewer pipe. I mistakenly
decided not to move the rig up a few feet where the rig would be closer and, more importantly, uphill
from the sewer pipe. "I sound so lazy as I read what I am writing here". Anyway, I put my 2 sewer houses together to
make a hose of 25 feet and attach to the rig and Patty holds the other end in
to the dump station pipe. I first dump
the black water tank and after some time the fluid stops running but the hose
is full as the dump station is up hill from the rig. I now open both grey water tanks and the flow
starts again. At least the fluid is now
mostly clear. When the flow stops this
time I need to get the remaining fluid out of my hose and into the dump station
pipe. So I pick up the hose sort of in
the middle, (its heavy) to get fluid in to the dump station and out of part of
the hose. Seems the fluid created a suction
lock and would not drain. So picked up
the hose closer to the dump station pipe and that seemed to work. After getting some of the fluid out, I went
back to the center of the hose and again raised it up. That’s when shit hit the ground, literally! The connection between the 2 hoses parted due
to the weight of the fluid and the fact that I didn’t do a good job of securing
the pipe connection. I got my feet
soaked with mostly grey water which had a stink to it L I got the hoses back together
correctly and finished up. Now I needed
a shower. Luckily there was a shower
house next to the dump station so I could wash up.
The 2 lessons: 1. ALWAYS inspect the rig top, sides, bottom
before pulling, FOLLOW the check list!!
2. Don’t be lazy!
The drive to Grand Island was very easy. Put the cruise control on for most of the
trip and just took it easy.
Grand Island is an Island in the middle of the Niagara River. It is located about 20 miles south of the Niagara
Falls and borders Canada on one side.
Patty’s parents came to visit and had dinner with us. That makes them our first house dinner guests. After dinner we went to a local restaurant / bar where a friend of theirs was the entertainment. The Friend, Burnsey is an old time Jazz/Ragtime piano player and singer. He is quite the character! We stayed for a couple of hours and drank way too much wine. A good time was had by all!
The tent area of the campground
Our rig 2nd from right
Patty’s parents came to visit and had dinner with us. That makes them our first house dinner guests. After dinner we went to a local restaurant / bar where a friend of theirs was the entertainment. The Friend, Burnsey is an old time Jazz/Ragtime piano player and singer. He is quite the character! We stayed for a couple of hours and drank way too much wine. A good time was had by all!
Patty's Parents and Burnsey
A guy playing along with a ukulele
Tomorrow is reported to be cool, 73f and rain. We are really looking forward to some quite
time. We have been working pretty hard
the past couple of weeks. It’s also
going to be nice staying in one place for 10 days too! J
Stay tuned!
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